Month: April 2009

breaking slow

The Poetic Asides prompt for Sunday was “miscommunication”:

Verbal Tender

Not wanting to talk,
Ron pretends he’s asleep,
hoping that Dan
will read him as “exhausted”
rather than “mad”

but when Dan drops onto
his side of the bed
without even a sigh
to suggest a considering
look, it is all Ron can do
not to demand right then
that they un-fold all their cards
and agree to new stakes —
to something able to light
the same fire under their tails.

This week’s Fifty Two Pieces prompt: Dzunuk’wa Feast Dish:

From a Woman At the Fork in the River

You cannot flee from emptiness, for while
it may devour you without its many lips
grazing upon any part of your skin,
your life may depend upon its gliding grasp,
its darkness rich with teeth
that will tear from you new eyes.

– pld

[P.S. Mary, when I saw the image and read its caption, I confess my first reaction was, “That is so a marymary poem in waiting…” 🙂 ]

Swallowed, Sweet, New Start

Okay, in theory, I am three poems behind and have none for today. (Yet.)

To cover for April 23, I took Joanne’s wonderful suggestion about the camels and wrote a small acrostic whose final line makes up today’s title.

To cover for April 24, I wrote from a line in Longfellow’s The Song of Hiawatha which Jaime quotes from.

First a shadow, then a sorrow,
lapsed from wood to covered road.
First a ballad then lament
as footsteps brought the traveler home.

Spin the world as I spin forward
searching for the light inside,
testing self against all darkness,
bringing shadows on the ride.

While we bring the wider sorrow
home, home sings its own lament:
where once was fire and love embracing,
all but what we’ve brought’s absent.

To cover for April 25, I stole wrote something inspired by Diane’s comment on dandelions:

Tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow
creep dandelions through the sunlit hours
to the last photosynthesis of time.
They’ve lit each of our yesterdays, we fools
who weed by chemical, hand-pull them out,
their candle color fading down to shadow,
their tale deemed insignificant
no matter what our lawn-borne fury.

You can guess that I prefer weeds to manicured lawn, I take it?

Ah, well, I’ll have to manicure twice tomorrow night; three risings-above-drivel may be enough for tonight.

slogging along

Today’s PAD prompt was to make an event the title of a poem and then write it.

Marathon

This morning, a 26-year-old man
died after crossing the finish line —
a terrible echo of Pheidippides’ collapse —

but later in the day, four women over 70
completed the full 26.2 miles.
Nenikekamen, said the messenger.
Nenikekamen, I write
in water across your skin,
our sun-reddened limbs
on the shoreline
of sleep.

– pld

[Nenikekamen – “we are victorious” – Pheidippides’ last words]

Seriously, I’m about to die.

Progress: This is today’s poem, another pantoum (a bit broken, and without the changing meanings for the repeated lines that make me so love pantoums), written last night. I figure since it’s too slight to be published, I’d post it here where some people might get a kick out of it. The entire poem consists exclusively of things I overheard him saying.

 

My Husband Plays World of Warcraft

 
There’s me, dying.
I’m going to need some heals here.
Seriously, I’m about to die.
Shit, I got hit.

I’m going to need some heals here —
not to tell you how to do your job or anything.
Shit, I got hit again.
Yeah, 300% damage.

Not to tell you how to do your job or anything,
but I’m getting my shit knocked here:
300% damage,
alright? I understand how this works now.

I’m getting my shit knocked here —
seriously, I’m about to die.
Alright, I understand how this works now.
And, I’m dead.

 

Prompt for today: from the P&W Speakeasy, “the scent of ______.”

Mirrored at joannemerriam.com.

PAD 24

Today’s prompt at Poetic Asides is “travel,” in any sense of the word.

I started out by reminiscing about a blue-and-black flogger I’d brought home from Amsterdam, but this is what remained on my screen once I was done:

Souvenir

Last summer, while in Chicago, I gave away
two pairs of long black satin gloves,
one which I’d worn to a party in Detroit
with a leather mini that now no longer fit,
and the other — I don’t even wear gloves
to rinse dishes, I don’t know why
I thought I needed a second pair
considering how I like to fondle olives
with my bare fingers, which I love
men raising up to their lips to kiss —
so that had been a stupid splurge

so it cheered me up, to see those gloves
on the hands of other women, both
beautiful as they danced, one who purred
as her velvet sheath rustled against
the scarlet folds between my legs

and while our fingers didn’t trepass
beyond self-imposed hems, I will
never relinquish that night, for
its sweet heat rushes back
every time I open my closet. The dress
is neither baggage nor keepsake:
to touch as we did was neither
a secret nor a sin of distance.
Yet, it speaks to me not only of Chicago
but of valleys I chose not to visit, and how
I travel with what-might-have-beens
mingling with my mementos of bandits —
those marvels that overtook me unawares
long before I acquired sufficient wit
to treasure whatever they would leave of me
once they left me behind.

– pld