Poetry in Progress ~ construction zone

[Angeline]

dont thank me

ok. i take it back.

 

[Tathagata]

ok. i take it back.

LOL

meshugana

 

[Tathagata]

.....

 

[Tathagata]

These gasping colors
bloodless
struggle against the
inevitable grave
the fall to earth
return


dust mote flecks
of ragged beauty
and in their endless sleep
taken by the winds
of karma



In their final hours
they mock the sky
surreal landscape
of Monet and Gauguin

postcards of suffering
and we display pictures
of the slip into darkness

We sigh
looking out from well padded bedrooms
and over hot cocoa steam
finally see the beauty
in death

 

[champagne1982]

I'm trying to find some new things to write about and what spilled out of me was this musing about those early morning people you see in Tim Horton's, who, obviously, haven't gone to bed yet.

Observe

feel their eyes upon you
as they hide behind the shield
of polarized smoke-grey
clamped in polyethylene

watchers seem to be outside
the realm of possibility
since prediction
of their predilection
for inactivity would be so easy

if you could depend on them
to remain watching

there are those few
who jump outside the scope
of what can be found behind
those nightworn shades

their eyes red-rimmed
from too much smoke
and not enough
wholesome diurnal activity

instead

they draw you inside
their outside
and teach the lessons
borne of midnight waking
and mornings behind curtains
drawn against the day

 

[Tathagata]

.....

 

[flyguy69]

Second draft

Ghost House

Lawnmower roar
is silent against the white pall
of that house,
shades drawn to shield death’s eyes
from the light of life outside.
Shadows slide past the windows, anticipating
the glide of ghosts inside
whose arrival has been assured
by hospice announcements, and reassured
by softly held hands.

Snarling scythe
swings its blade, weaving
base paths and soccer pitch closer
to an unseen line in the grass, the threshold
between laughter and sorrow,
promise and conclusion.

Sun burnt salt
stings my eyes as it flows
over lash and cheek, weeping for work.
As I mop my brow with sweat-wet cloth,
dry eyes in that house wonder
what it is I have to be sad about
as a brow is mopped
with cool damp cloth.

Out-of-state plates assemble
at the curb, reacquaint
in the hall below strobe-light biographies
and scrapbook vignettes. Seeds
strewn far return to sit
outside of a room made click-whir silent
by an oxygen blanket, to ask
their role, and to meet
the young pastor.

I press hard into the stillness
surrounding that house
and reap playspace from thicket.
Shoulders hunched, I avoid death’s
shutter-lidded gaze and feel the mower
tremble.

In tall grass the blade binds
and I wonder if, this time,
the grass might win.

 

[Angeline]

What Basie Knew

Four/four and you get there baby.
Find the space between notes.

That sweet spot moves music,
swings harder than sound. This
is the body's elemental song. You
are bioprogrammed to rock
from inside out. Muscles dance,
hips bump, feet pat, limbs sway.

You jump your blues away.

Basie knew the center holds
the circle. Watch him roll back
from keys. Nonchalant cigarette
dangles, head bops, but big eyes
fix on some distant siren.

Get your tonics together now.

Slide in and out of time. Stretch
pointed as a starfish awash
in sweet rhythm waves, surf
back, smile soul smooth splanky
jazz.

 

[Tathagata]

.....

 

[Tathagata]

.....

 

[Tathagata]

.....

 

[SeattleRain]

how Mike Found You

roughroughrough rough ideas not a poem yet


how Mike found you

empty six pack
Rolling rock green
shotgun empty
lawn chair kicked back
to the cement floor
of your Mother's garage.


how the Prostitute found you:

naked with knife
sliced neck blood collected
in the hotel tub
as the collection agency
began to load their trucks
with your furniture
despite your wife's protests

"there must be a mistake"


How security found you

dead in the emergency room supply
closet after having handed
the woman at the front desk
your organ donor card.

But it was too late.


how they found you with
a gun how they found
you with a rope how they
found you with the knife
we find you every day
always on the day before
always the day before.

 

[PatCarrington]

......

 

[Angeline]

Everland

Those mornings were noisy things
waking me with hammers knocked
on nails like expectations knock
on dreams that want to believe faith

is born in spring when daddy hammers
latticework to a bench on Saturday
when even rain was sunny. Expectation
wore shorts, pedaled round the block
on a blue ten-speed with hand brakes.

Is faith hammered from memory?
Brushed on a crooked bench with love
and the arc of climbing roses
dropping ribbons of vine
through uneven boards, spilling
rainy sun perfume on a little girl
who sits and reads and dreams?

Dreams smell like varnish, feel
like rose petals dropping from a secret
spot on one who someday despairs
of ever finding somewhere safe again,

but turning the page at the second star
and flying straight on till morning
discovers redemption not in a dream
that never was but woke once
upon a Saturday with roses and a book.

 

[PatCarrington]

.....

 

[Angeline]

Re: The Gifts of a Dying Sun - take 2

hey ange, that's lovely. the last stanza is a knockout.



The Gifts of a Dying Sun


Given no choice, the bursting sun falls,
tossed like leaking fruit across a sprawling sky
into parabolic pails of tomorrows. It squirts
one beam, sprays a last glance of watered
light on the tired and dried faces that walk
bad streets, barefoot and bleeding. A benevolent
goodbye, promised resurrection that soothes
them for the religious closing of eyes. Flight
over, it writes its will, passing wings to heirs,
and then

they are birds, lifted from the pinch of pebbles,
the gravel wounds, floating over armored
winds that stung their skin with the hail
of dead dreams. Soft feathers salve their
blistered fingers, glide rests their aching arms
and they

fly, high

above the weighted necessities, the rusted
wheels of carts and tractors, the heavy push
of plows. They whirl over worry, untouched by
the lead of what is comprehensible and true,
blow fear down dirt roads of forget with airy
storms of soaring, wet once more for the kiss
of another morning. In that final flare they
taste yesterday, the early oatmeal, smell
a spring rain, its baby rose. They hug a tree,
and

they are children, without backs that bend
in smokehouses, palms that crack in fields.
Men can be too long with salt and iron, too
far from toes in trickling streams, battered
on anvils of certainty, tugged through time,
but

when they whistle to a skipping rock they
remember, when they rub the bark and taste
cinnamon at breakfast their hands heal,
backs straighten on soft beds under quilts
whose warm patches are the summer sun.

Thank you Pat. That bench my dad built for me was my dreaming spot, and I carry the memory of it like a jewel.

Your poem is pretty damn wonderful, too.

 

[Tathagata]

.....

 

[Angeline]

Take 2 (really take 20 or so)

Everland

Those mornings were noisy things.
I awoke to hammers knocked on nails
like expectations knock on dreams,
wanting them to live, to believe

faith is born in spring when Daddy
fits latticework to a bench. Saturday,
when even rain was sunny, expectation
wore shorts, pedaled round the block
on a blue ten-speed with hand brakes.

Is faith hammered from memory,
brushed on a crooked bench
with an arc of climbing roses
like ribbons, the vines dropping
through uneven boards, spilling
rainy sun perfume on a little girl
who sits and reads and dreams?

Love smells like varnish,
feels like rose petals slipping
in the breeze of a secret spot.

Someday I despair of ever
finding somewhere safe again,
but turning the page second star
to the right and flying straight on
till morning, am redeemed,
not in a dream that never was,
but once upon a Saturday
with roses and a book.

 

[Tathagata]

.....

 

[PatCarrington]

.....

 

[flyguy69]

::::::

 

[BlueskyBeauty]

sunset's kiss (take 1)

 

[BlueskyBeauty]

sunset's kiss (take 2)

 

[*Catbabe*]

Maternal Nature


I hear the wind sing, watch
his hand scratch the sidewalk
with a dancing leaf, dyed
maple red, waving summer’s
surrender. Soon, all her flags
will fall, pile on glacial grounds.

My eyes follow the wind
over the lake, a chilled bowl
of blueberries topped
with cream, a frothy warning
that suns swim only
in the shallows now, dip

their toes in cresting waves
that wink at me till I smile
and see my children in piles
of leaves, see snowmen
skating across the lake.

It’s windy, Mom.
Can you close the window?

I do and drive away,

from a mother who also watches
the rising wind, but feels
the warmth draining off
of the earth. To her, the seasons
are more than shifting scenery,
and she mourns the loss
of summer’s shelter.

It was all she had.

Open water already bites her children
when they bathe; ever-freezing
ground makes a bumpy bed
that even cuddles cannot soften.

They sleep in a cradle of cold,
will soon be draped by sheets
of snow that sting, freezing
their faith. In her torn time,

that red maple leaf is bloody,
abandoned, forced like her
to wait for winter, for the wind
to pierce the cardboard, rip
windows she can never close.







I have decided that this place doesn't like me to use italics. *G*

 

[BlueskyBeauty]

weekend classes