Saturday, April 30, 2011

Aphrodite

She pushed the door shut with her bottom
threw her cloak on the marble table
and sighed.
Being the goddess of love and beauty
certainly presented its own unique challenges
in the modern world of dating sites
and matchmaking services.
What a pain in her beautiful ass to observe 
humans who don't describe or perceive themselves
accurately and use twenty year old photos
to lure unsuspecting and equally dishonest mates.
She stepped out of her sandals as she 
drew a bath, thinking
it'd been a while since she gotten a little
herself, but Zeus!
Ares had gotten a little wild in the Middle East
and she just wasn't going to wade through
that minefield, even for a little nookie.
She filled the scallop-shaped jet tub, 
throwing in a handful of foaming beads,
remembering the good old days when a magic girdle and
the toss of one's head
brought many a gorgeous Adonis flocking to her bed.
Sinking into the warm bubbly water,
she hoped Hephaestus wouldn't be home 
any time soon.


(NaPo promptretell a Greek myth with modern trappings.)
(Also posted for Gooseberry Garden Poetry Picnic Week 6, 
"Stories from Mythology, Culture, and of Life", 9/26/11)

Friday, April 29, 2011

Mysteries unsolved

You talk to me as if I am your friend.
Seemingly, we have common goals and enemies.
But I wonder if we really do.
What do you truly seek?
Validation or rationalization?
Rubber stamp morality?
Contraband information to bolster your
self-esteem or kindred ties?
My truth and my God are not yours
and yours are most definitely not mine.
Too many years of wariness and duplicity
purl coldly through my mind
reminders that
things are rarely as they seem
in our family.

(NaPo prompt: write a poem based on a news headline)

Thursday, April 28, 2011

Naïve fences

What would it be like
if we had a world
without intolerance
judgmental attitudes
prejudice
bigotry
haters
fear
any other form of bias or
division or difference
that keeps us separated
from each other?
All of these keep us from
love.
I want the love.
(Poetry prompt: write a poem about a world without something else.)

Wednesday, April 27, 2011

Hurting

Angry.
So angry.
Cold tears of yet-again betrayal
slowly creeping down my cheeks.
Why does everyone keep lying
about what really happened and
the content of her character?
The finger pointing and judgments
just keep coming, even after years
of living amends.
Could they ever even consider that
the first eighteen years strongly shaped
the following thirty?
(Promiscuity, alcoholism, miscarriages, divorce -
brokenness and an inability to cope/live;
we were never taught the proper skills, so we
'managed' as well as adult children can
with no other options offered except
constant criticism.)
I strive daily to shield myself and
live my truth
but poisonous vapor-like comments
somehow manage to find the
microscopic cracks in my scarred soul.
There seems to be a determination
among the survivors
to make a silk purse out of a
sow's ear.
And perhaps she was a saint
at the end.
(I wouldn't know - I wasn't allowed in.)
But what about all the time before that?
And the pain and hurts caused, never healed
or regretted, by her?
Does alleged sacrifice heal
actual, real harms?
I do forgive, reluctantly.
But I will never forget
the abandonment
that is going on
even now.

(Today's poetry prompt: my own pain.)
(Posted for Jingle Poetry, "Saints, Monks, & Meditation" theme, 6-26-11)


I've been invited to participate in the Promising Poet's weekly rally.  Here's the link back to the rally so you can read more great submissions.

Tuesday, April 26, 2011

Hurting to healing to helping

Please, God.
Soothe the wound
Remove the craving
Fill the soul hole
Parent the Inner Children
Integrate the disjointed Self
Love us unconditionally
Like no human ever has and
allow me to serve others and
You.

(Poem prompt from Poetic Asides: write a prayer poem.)

Monday, April 25, 2011

Another language

I sing the body recovery,
celebrating new chances freely given,
toasting release from bondage of self.
Experiences are cherished as I trudge the
road of happy destiny, hand in hand
with the Spirit of the Universe.
Creative wings unfurl,
celebrating the me now emerging.
My True Self arises to proclaim
the principles that have robed me with
a spiritual sunlight.
  
(Poetry Prompt - Write a poem using the following title: "Another Language".)

Sunday, April 24, 2011

Epic

…………………Tens
Reading to learn, experience, travel the world,
writing to understand and record a magic-filled life and
to escape the relentless expectations and tensions of others.
Worshiping the sun, the earth, nature.
Believing in fairies, talking to animals, seeking secret caves.
Bike and backyard adventures and seeing meaning and
message in every breeze and rock pile and soil formation.

…………………Teens
Absolutely broken by family and bullying.
Reading to escape, eating to sedate the rage and pain,
Counting the days (years) to freedom.
Writing abandoned as pointless, childish, unfulfilling.
Everyone uncomfortable with the
emerging scathingly truthful creative voice.
The volume on writing dialed down to mute, to the
level of assignment and required project.

………………..Twenties
Physical freedom at last attained
though unaware and unable to throw off the
clinging fetters of upbringing and indoctrination.
Rattling the mental chains as slow awareness of the
prison of the mind is revealed without solutions.
Transient relief attained through addiction,
word-smithing a chore of academia.


………………..Thirties
Unexpected violence and pregnancy.
Gravidity a double fecundity,
intense creativity and spirituality
addressed to and inspired by the rapidly swelling belly.
The demands of a new baby subsume
the old selfish life of addiction and escape
for a time.
Understanding and enlightenment and acceptance of
the Call to parent, mixed with battles to not
inflict the harms of the past on
the next generation
Inevitably spiraling into addiction again,
the disease and dysfunction of the past relentless.

…………………Forties
Intervention leads to un-sought-for awakening.
Addiction and self-harm at last arrested.
Life simplified to the current day.
The past now able to be slowly released and the
true clean self emerges from long hiding,
acutely discerning voice intact.
Freedom from self and past.
Writing for joy and love and faith and God and service.

(Today’s NaPo prompt: write an autobiographical poem.)

Saturday, April 23, 2011

(Child) ‘Hood

Blankets, chairs, sticks, and clothes-pins frame a tent
Basement bivouac ensures no random breeze
Squeals and shouts and giggling do not relent
Sisters romp for hours, innocent ease.
A pilfered broom creates a center pole
A big top cathedral rose heavenward.
Next, dressing up captivates each young soul,
a wrapped sheet, and round the waist a tied cord:
a priest born, mock solemn prayer upward bound.
Indeed, our tents were independent thought,
staking our space, protecting cloth walls round 
young adventures. Together, we taught
ourselves to talk dream imagine free air.
Ears e’er tuned for parental foot, aware.


(NaPo prompt: write a bouts-rimes, a poem using rhyming end words from another poem. Poem used: The Silken Tent by Robert Frost.)

Friday, April 22, 2011

Unique

Friends, the slowly changing dance partners,
square dancing to life’s caller.
Jobs always available for those who would
apply and work.
Faith and religion too bounteous,
fungible and evolving.
Candidates always seem to line up
for another man, husband, partner, date
if one is wanted.
Homes and books and destinations - definitely abundant.
Education, knowledge, and
some second chances – multitudinous.
But there are those who are  
irreplaceable, unfindable, rare.
One daughter
one mother,
one father
six sisters.
There will not be
more of this original
family
now
but sadly, inevitably, eventually
less.

(Today's prompt from Poetic Asides: write an "only one in the world" poem.)

Thursday, April 21, 2011

Cento the first


For six months I arranged museum dioramas,
sad beds wide enough for planting.
The trick is to make it personal.
Now I am safe in the deep V of a weekday.
A hundred times consider what you’ve said
implicit with stars in active orbit.
Let silence drill its hole.
We’ll kiss each kiss other on kiss the kiss,
disappear, emerge, twitch, reverse course
in the glaring white gap.


(NaPo prompt: Write a cento, a poem composed entirely of lines from other poems.)

Wednesday, April 20, 2011

Summer

Gum wrappers sunbathe in arid gutters,
lazily twitching in sultry breezes.
Unexpectedly spinning excitedly
in the gusts of running feet and
ebullient calls of “me, me”.
Leaves tango together fearfully
as young voices are dimmed
by the klaxon summons of
“Dinner!”

(Today's poem prompt from Big Tent: write a poem about what you would shout down the street.)

Tuesday, April 19, 2011

That stupid, stupid girl


I stared at him as he unctuously delivered
his evaluation of the choice
made by my sister,
his daughter.
Certainly, it has never occurred to him
that he and our mother had been telling both of us
(in fact, all six of us, his children)
these sorts of things all of our lives
and that these negative words might have had something
to do with her making a ‘stupid stupid’ decision.
The average person tends to live out 
what they hear
repeatedly.
Can you hear me now?

(NaPo promptwrite a poem inspired by something you’ve heard.)

Monday, April 18, 2011

Simply red


Red and wrinkled face squeaking in outrage
at the indignity of being born.
Reddish blonde baby hair, breeze ruffled,
short chubby legs running through a park.
Reddened silver patches on her mother’s skin,
psoriasis paining, cracking, redly bleeding.
Red patterned flowing dress worn so elegantly,
made for a company party.
Red tints soothing the hair when
hereditary grays tried to dominate.
Red faced anger on matching faces
during every battle of independence.
Red, a so-called whore’s shade,
a dazzling dress.
Red roses, suffusing and scenting,
pampering the lady of both their dreams.
Red blouse, artfully back-lighting
the now fully silver tresses.
Red leather coat, sister gift, the wearer
a long bright flame in a winter world.
Red anointed lips and nails,
luxuriant rebellious ruby.

(NaPo poem prompt: write an incantatory color poem using a particular color in almost every line.)

Sunday, April 17, 2011

Wilks


Troubled child
neglected, abandoned, adopted, abused.
Never believed or shown he was loved.

Violently unhappy adult,
alcoholic and drug addict.
Serial molester and skirt chaser.
Impregnator and perpetrator
of the innocent and helpless
and the too closely related.

Murderer.
Yes, MURDERER, I say, of
his
own
son.
Covered up and excused and repressed
by the wounded and fear-filled
(and mercifully forgetful)
(and dead)
victims.

HE RAPED CHILDREN
engraved on his headstone by
an enraged survivor.
Many the ritual enacted at his grave
disowning and dishonoring
a damaged man who chose to harm others
when healing could have been embraced.

So many children violated,
lies and tears and damage and scars
and tormented lives,
our experiences punished by the telling.

My sisters and brothers of the secret:
you are heard and remembered and honored
by my telling of the TRUTH
about him.

(Today's NaPo prompt: write a portrait poem.)

Saturday, April 16, 2011

Family tree

In this club house
boys are not allowed
nor girls.
Those who are certain that
the only definitions that matter are
race, religion, gender, orientation, or creed
can go find a different tree
to swing in.

Those who can play “nice”
tender their words with kindness
and commonality and
share their toys and joys unreservedly
are always welcome.

Climb the rope ladder, swinging wildly,
cheerfully shout the password, “friends!”
Joyfully clamber onto the wooden deck
balanced in the verdant heights.
Come ride the free winds and tree limbs
of fantastical imagination
in an exclusively inclusive world
where all are equal and gently loved
by each other.

(Poem prompt from Big Tent prompt for 4/11/11: write a poem about the tree house or club house rules)

Friday, April 15, 2011

Censuring chocolate

Seductive melodies
In boundless arrangements of
Dark, milk, white
Chili, bacon, almond, salted caramel
Cake, cookie, bar, nibs, drinks, syrups.
The varying architectures tantalizingly loom
On the edge of unconscious yearning,
Smugly assured of possession.
Swearing off, taking the cure, making the pledge
Of never again
And yet assortments teem in the secret spaces,
Desk, purse, drawers, office, pantry, night stand
(And that’s just at home)
Darkly lurking, waiting for that moment
When serotonin sings for satiety
There seems no way arrest the obsession
For more.


(NaPo promptwrite a poem in the form of a complaint about something that is good or you like)

Thursday, April 14, 2011

Ain't none of my business


We would be friends, you seemingly plotted
I agreed, as I was always seeking
A creative accomplice undaunted
By perceptive and quick-witted speaking.
Lack of eye contact was the first best clue
The loud and proud pronouncements did record
As did no mutuality from you,
My thoughts and interests very ignored.
At first annoyed, then amused
Fading hope for reciprocity,
Your pompous surety found me bemused
Then bitter at this old dishonesty.
Proffered friendship is e’er a fairy tale
Proposed by the fatally shallow male.

(Today's poetry prompt: write a 14 line sonnet.)

Wednesday, April 13, 2011

Something fast

The clothing comes off
bodies thrash between the sheets
tetris positioning
for maximum sensation
It’s over
dressing
parting
emptiness
So empty
a yawing abyss of loneliness
In those long-ago flurries of
horizontal aerobics
Meaningless moments
of friction

(Today's NaPo prompt: write a poem in five minutes about 'something fast'.)

Tuesday, April 12, 2011

A simpler time

Home from the hospital,
Sitting on the couch, eyes full of tears
As you shriek in my lap,
your voice a tiny insistent chime
Wanting to be fed
My shirt wet and breasts aching
I study your miniature perfect face
And wonder at
The responsibility of a baby
And the rapid shift of my former life
From professional focus and free-wheeling partier
To your mom.
You nurse vigorously, your tiny fists kneading,
Always so sweetly demanding.
But I knew where you were –in my arms
And not behind the wheel of a car or a desk at school
At the mercy of the uncontrollable world.
I love  you just as unexpectedly and completely
As the moment you were born.


(NaPo prompt: give an old photo a title and write a poem based on the title.)

Monday, April 11, 2011

Being Little

Crouched on the sidewalk,
her sundress ruched up
around her waist, bottom lightly 
grazing the cement,
the little girl is
intently studying
a beetle 
strolling the tightrope of
a concrete crack, observing
its struggles over each
mountainous crumb of dirt,
so she sticks a finger
in its path, whereby
the bug obligingly
mounts up by
clinging to the soft folds of
skin as it
cautiously ascends
this new challenge, while
she gleefully giggles and
it tickles its way to her wrist,
inspiring her to squeal and shake it off
marooning the insect
on its back, legs churning furiously
until it flips over
and resumes the pilgrimage
to the grassy forests
of the lawn,
as the child now lies
full length and
face down, nose
almost touching the membranous
forearms as they fearlessly
scale a long green blade,
her breath gently swaying
the slender frond as
the beetle reaches the top
and descends the other side
to her upside down delight
while the oblivious beetle
encounters the next
eminence of a
tan pebble.


(NaPo prompt: write a poem of at least 40 lines that is a single sentence)