Challenge: Five Poems in Five Days.

[PandoraGlitters]

Santa Margherita

women over wine and cider
scale their lives and pass
them around

hold this in your hand and see its bright
cadence
....flickering
and yes that was the sad bit
.................where it's smooth

a singer bounces whole notes
off brick walls
.................................wailing
possible love until we sigh

the second pressed into our eyes
this is what it is like to have sisters
..........someone starts a scrap book

 

[Tzara]

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[PandoraGlitters]

Parchment

Ink your love
war on my skin until
those chanting marches
leach occupancy through layers.

Gatekeepers relent
when you call them;
no one sings louder than
Victory. Press
your watermark

into this crumbling bank,
no mercy for protesters.
There is no treaty--
just ink and paper
and revolution.

I will know the bomb
when it is planted by
its two names.

See all the way inside
the blast
through.

 

[Tzara]

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[PandoraGlitters]

Dolly

The doll's head stares forward
from her lap, the last survivor
of the doll wars.

When daddy brought them home
it was penance for working
weekends and women
whom he kept at at least a day's
drive away, except the dollies
passed to daughter.

No wonder mother didn't protect
them from the darts my brothers threw
even though I cried.

 

[Tzara]

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.....

 

[Sara Crewe]

One

On the Patio

She twirls the pink umbrella
while the dying ice in her drink
clicks and pops like a guest
not comfortable with the silence.

There are words
but they belong to others
and bounce off her like a rain
that falls too late on parched land.
The wind knows why she’s quiet
and picks at her like a school yard bully
ruffling the feigned stillness she hopes
will save her. It lifts her hair from her eyes
but it cannot raise her chin
or surface her internal sighs.

She’s counting down her time
in this game of hide and seek.
Nobody will find her tonight—she’s covered
in her thoughts. Five more minutes
and she can go. Leave the laughter
that dances around his new found love.

When she stands printed flowers wave
as her sundress moves, fanning
the space between material and skin
like a thousand servants for their queen.
The air becomes his hands
and she is aware of every touch
that has been and never will be.

He is the sun on her waxed wings
and she must leave before the fall.

 

[Sara Crewe]

Two

French Bistro

Blue velvet boxes come with questions
that are magnified by half empty wine glasses
and when they sit unopened
in the middle of the maze
of dishes and silverware
they do so with the subtlety
of a lighthouse beacon on a clear night.

I know what’s inside-do you?

Remember there are a million
answers between yes and no.
That logic was not invited to dine
with us tonight and there is always a little magic
and sleight of hand in shell games.
If I told you the answer
there would be no question
and I wouldn’t want to play.
Follow my hands
as I show you where to look
and not look. The truth
is always some where in between.
When you cover me
with your palm, don’t listen
or feel for a pulse. Take it
from me and set it to yours.
Dance with me
until you close your eyes
and accept that I am a fluid being
that changes between fire
and air in seconds
and if you cannot jump
into the certainty that I am immeasurable
you will never have enough faith
to find me next to you.

 

[sassynyc]

Stripped - (1)

I would sooner shed all garb
And stand before you bare,
Than shed my dermis, to have you see
This assemblage of certain imperfections

Peeled away to reveal more
Than simply flesh and bone
~so much more than that, you see~
Scars that won’t scab, never kissed by air
Frayed tendons worn from ‘holding it together’

Cabled conduits carry an interchangeable flow
Of crimson life force and arctic water on any given day
Calcified bones, seemingly strong, in truth risk fracture
Threatening shatter under the weight of circumstance
I’ve learned to guard them all, carefully of course

I shroud myself in the fabric of aesthetics
All the words that never find their way
To the conversations we may never have
Find themselves emblazoned in the annals of my art

The collage that composes me, marbled in black and white
Speaks the color of my existence in infinite hues
Read them and know me, see them and feel me
Know that on these strips of tree, I stand before you…..stripped

 

[Tzara]

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.....

 

[PandoraGlitters]

gazing in the glass of your eyes too wetly

poet how could you know
every way my gaze fails me
the things I can't see through
but see through me

red light glowing right through my arm
and you don't have to be an X-ray
technician you don't have to be
a covert operative just

a poet because poets know how long
before a person needs a breath
how long I can keep my eyes closed
nose low before I have to peek

to read too deep because
I'm a poet and I know there are ways
my gaze fails me
I think I see through

that moss of rotted tshirts and cigar stubs
that string of too short fuses
and I see myself there
and I see you looking back

 

[Sara Crewe]

Three

On Remembering

The river is more than water
that evolves with grace
around its bends. It is not one thing
but everything and cannot be defined
by its froth-lined banks
or by its cold stream of life.

It is not the reeds that grow
in the crook of its curved arms.
Nor is it the frogs that sun
on heated stones or fish that surf
currents just to stay still. It is greater
than its graveled bed with no end
beyond the ocean. When you stand

beside its waters it seems linear
but from above you can see
that it is not a line of stitches
sewn across the land but a circle
that rests outside of time
in a place where change
rises between the sun and moon
and faith greets it with a smile.

It cannot be measured with eyes
that sometimes cannot see
or caught in fractured pictures.
There are no words to capture
its constant journey or the faces
it carries in reflection
but as long as people say
its name and drink its history
the river will be remembered
and it will always run.

 

[PandoraGlitters]

Boundless, Staked

I had marked on the calendar
this day to be bound to be
love letter petals spilling from torn
pockets. I had picked this day

but waited too long. Yes this
is a lament: I broke the day
in fragments of my face now glittering
like thorns across night's fabric. Still
a thorn can be put to service.
Hope glosses the whisper even a planet
turns in a night.

I am using the vines
until you come for them, plucking away
the dry leaves.

I have pitched a tent hoping
you can smell the full boil
steep of this pot after all the bitter
boils were tossed--this
pot sweetens with your tea
in a mirrorless room.

 

[Tzara]

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.....

 

[sassynyc]

Bitchcraft - (2)

cool smiles curtain
saliva-threaded fangs
and forked tongues


………………………...…he said, she said…
………………...…….....i heard that…


poison-tipped words
sail on thickened air
seeking jugular targets


………………………....she thinks she’s cute…
………………………....i happen to know…


carnivorous packs gather
‘round the proverbial water cooler
feast on the carcass of a limping gazelle


………………………….that’s not what I heard
………………………….everybody knows they…


wolves in chic clothing
sip blood martinis
held in manicured claws


………………………….bitchery mistaken for femininity
………………………….elevated to an art form


not a watermark
but a stain
to be sure

 

[Tzara]

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[sassynyc]

Cadence - (3)

st
….ac
……..ca
……..….to
………....…rhythm of the
………..…..c-h-o-p-p-y
………...….boom bap flow

silkyrunonrhapsodyoffluidwordbursts
………………………………………..............cascading
………………………………………..............letters
………………………………………..............tumble
………………………………………..............over
……………………………………..............…tongues
……………………………………..............…rushing
………………………………………..............through
………………………………………..............parted
………………………………………..............lips

sing songy lilt
of the lyric
waiting to be sung
poetry happening
all ……...…..…us
…..a……...…d
…..…r….…n
…..…..o.u

conversational compositions
heartbeats
meticulously
measure
the meter
of verse

 

[Tzara]

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.....

 

[Sara Crewe]

When I am alone
time stands behind me.
He measures his footsteps
with mine-- never passes
me or lets me read
his shadow like a sundial
that might give me a sense
of how much longer
we will be together, married
by a solitude unbroken
by spoken words or talk
of seconds. Sometimes I scream
and then listen
but there is nothing.

There are no answers
when you're someone else’s echo.

 

[Sara Crewe]

five

Summer Christmas is celebrated
in strawberry fields. Ripe berries
stain her mind. The perfect ones
are sun and shortcake.
The rotten ones are like sea shells
and she can hear the screams.

They roll from her fingers
and hide under the vine, waiting
for someone who will listen.
She no longer cares
and leaves with her basket full.

 

[sassynyc]

Atonement - (4)

I am learning
slowly
but I am learning
to be shed of the guilt
of being human
and subject to error
Though I would rather
be infallible
I know this is
never to be, and so
I am learning
The value of forgiveness
of self
Giving up the ghosts
of mistakes past
Regret, an exercise in futility
Living in a film reel
stuck on rewind
I know well
how the story ends
but, there is always
hope for a sequel
Seeking atonement
for the sake of sanity
Inner peace and clarity
await me, and so
I am learning

 

[Tzara]

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.....

 

[sassynyc]

Crash and Burn - (5)

when my own words betray
me in retreat, I seek
the camaraderie of
fellow wordsmiths

inspiration flows through
the energy of shared thought
brilliance nestled, awaiting
discovery in interpretation
the beauty of a multitude
of translations gives
new meaning to old words

the new math applied
one poem times 100 readers
equals 100 poems

so when I doubt
that I have words to say
I touch pen to paper
and watch
the poem inevitably,
write itself
as translation blooms

 

[Tzara]

un

Tourniquet

I want the split of thighs,
the spinal arc, the buttocks' lift,

the offer of that murky, perfect slit.
I want the sudden plunge,

the crash of hips, the tidal pull
of sighs, of shivered groans.

I want the slip of sweat, the knot
of long, resistant hair, the pulse

and shriek of anguished springs.
I want to sense the aura's wash

flood over my laboring body
so it won't matter

what I want,
for then I can no longer stop

the arterial spurt
of white, meiotic blood

.....not even with a tourniquet.


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[Tzara]

deux

Sharon Olds

is an odd girl who
left her father on the sidewalk
in front of my house.

I cried out, "Sharon!
Your father cannot stay here! He is your guilt
or even trash

and does not belong to me, my wife,
nor this fair city.
Perhaps he should be in some landfill

in California or New York.
That might prove a better place
to dump your biohazardous waste."

Then Sharon said: "No, I want to lay Him here,
in that flat space in your front yard,
because I will never visit you

and there will end
His words, His deeds held over me.
At least, I think and hope."

So, spare me God, I told her, "Then use our parking strip.
That's, after all, the city's land
and we have often thought they might

just brick the whole damn thing,
anyway." So Sharon, she unearthed a spade
and dug things up,

including some well-rooted sod.
For Ms. S. Olds, it's one more monster gone;
for me, a brown patch in my lawn.


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