nighttime enigmas
I often dream about classrooms,
never empty, choked highways,
elastic cars with too much leg room,
their steering wheels spiraling away.
What haven’t I learned?
A transcript says I never passed
math, students leave before we adjourn,
parking lots have glassed
over with ice, no headlights
to brighten my path.
I am an actor who needs to re-write
my lines. The director is no empath.
There’s [...]
Yaake from Mirrorcracked tagged me with these questions, so I thought it would be fun to answer them for Confession Tuesday. Visit The Polkadot Witch to hear more confessions, and visit mirrorcracked for interesting and illuminating stories and tidbits from real life. If you read this and want to answer the questions, consider yourself tagged. [...]
sand sculpting
A sculptor will seize
a trowel to carve and mold a prairie-
like stretch of beach, while the faded
tide laps a distant shore. Cartilage-
soft crab shells protrude as globules
in bas-relief. No maquette to pardon
mistakes, only real-time dollops
of wet sand. True to materials, an arm collapses
in a rush of wind. With carte blanche
the sculptor roughs out a [...]
Turning and turning in the widening gyre,
The falcon cannot hear the falconer.
The Second Coming, by William Butler Yeats
Spiraling questions
Twenty-first century angst tilts
the world off its axis.
Will a Big Bang blast us
into a parallel universe?
Will there be a second coming?
The physics of quantum
questions spiral unanswered
in my mind.
A primrose doesn’t need to ask
if it’s an ordinary [...]
You leave us, our muse
My heart knows a mystery as old as life:
perfumes and dreams dwindling in smoke,
sinking ships
circling through time.
Mother born old? Brought up
pocketed inside dreams,
unable to believe in burning again,
then burned the ship.
You leave us, our muse–
fall apart. You will go back to your old ways,
earthed in tradition and roots
quilted from a million [...]
In the midst of all this writing of poems, I’m traveling to Texas for a writing workshop, and more poems! The workshop is a training offered by Patricia Lee Lewis. I’ll be learning effective ways of leading a writing group, in the tradition of the Amherst Writers and Artists, founded by Pat Schneider.
I [...]
Painting by Rick Mobbs
Lantana
is a miniature town carved in rock high on the Cathedral of St. Peter and St. Paul, on Peachtree Street in Atlanta, Georgia. Most Atlantans remain unaware of its existence, as Lantana perches along the eaves of the cathedral. Inhabitants of the outer world see carved stone and gargoyles, but as soon [...]
How I Triumphed over Harlequin Death
A harlequin named Death
danced a hair’s breath from me
on the edge of my dream.
I offered her green tea and toast,
a porridge of fresh oats,
a promissory note, to hope.
Instead she telescoped
away on a tightrope vision.
I needed some lotion,
a magical potion to rinse
off lines of age that winced
in the mirror since a [...]
Pablo Picasso, Girl with a Mandolin, 1910
Fractured love
It snowed while we waited for the train
I looked up at your dark chocolate eyes
you’re a china teacup
I cried on a sidewalk in Madrid
a man buying cigarettes at a kiosk
soft flakes fell in the dark
I said you sounded like Cary Grant
but from a different angle
facing you, my face [...]
A time of drought
As she stood in the grass waiting for rain
arms open to the sky,
her feet felt the tremble of a distant train
whose wheels shook and rumbled the wide-open plain.
A blackbird landed on her shoulder
as she stood in the grass waiting for rain.
A piece of your flesh would taste better than grain,
the bird whispered [...]
