When you called my name, I rose – jumped up
during toddler years, ever at
the ready. My heart still leaps
with every summons – bound
o’er distance and time –
to the child still
gently held
inside
you.
As Mother – NaPoWriMo 2022 Day 9
napowrimo
Poetry Writing Prompts: The First
- Peel from your eyes their woolen ennui.
- Melt your soul softly into the horizon
- Now sunset flamed, all scarlets, violets
- And corals – your numinous projections.
- Absorb the glistening hues and listen
- To the unfolding of your hurts, entombed
- As they were in the moldiest heart corners.
- Inhale the cerulean vigor as it washes
- Over and among the encrusted passions
- Dormant, subverted in the daily drudge.
- Savor the tang as your senses, once
- Deadened, warble to life in a building
- Crescendo. At the climax, faculties tingling,
- Are the sparks that ignite the poem.
Fevered
it is a cat-scratch in the arch of my tenderfoot
this swelling, welling in my soul
back arched and forehead burning
I hiss
at the brush of your outstretched paw.
hairs upended and mewling
black yesterdays slink under ladders
splattered in the shabby patina
of abandoned masterpieces.
steeped in antiquated ammonia
vintage carpets curl in threadbare sedition
I weep
silent rivers of involuntary revulsion
swiped away with defiant wrist wipes
these salted choleric commentaries, unleashed
lest you read weakness in the tracks
overlaid in the dust of my disgust.
i know the rules to this game
as I clamber broken rungs, clattering
upward
upward and away from the furballs
you hock up by the scores, licking
yourself in depraved self- gratification.
your nine lives evaporate, evanescent
and vitreous, recalled by the fiends
that birthed them. i humor you
and watch you disintegrate
vanishing
Trees in Winter, Siberia
(This piece was prompted by today’s NaPoWriMo prompt, using Adrienne Rich’s “What Kind of Times Are These” as my inspiration)
in winter, trees are stark naked, like my truths
when they creak and groan in the howling wind
your ears prick up, fixated and keen
living under them, as you do.
I know my truths are hushed, silenced and quashed
shriveled scarlet maple leaves, flaming in shame
peeking, hide and seeking, from their burial spots –
hidden ‘neath the blizzard banks, ‘tween I can’t tell and you won’t ask.
it’s funny how I disappear a little more each day
in this wasteland of muzzled testimony,
gagging on marinated bear paws, downed with guzzled vodka
as I wonder how I landed in this Siberia of veritas, right here at home.
I am a shadow of myself, disappeared with my truths
lost, until I stumble upon the gathering place, brimming
with diademed women – walkers of the shadowed roads – who conjure
now the midday sun, glittering experiential jewels, scattered in hilltop shouts.
A Little Walk
hills called me forward
another and another
ever exploring
solo adventure
scrambling well off beaten paths
dusk drew nigh, slyly
each next summit piques
my need to conquer the next
majestic views ‘wait
minutes, well-trodden
morph into worrisome hours
mom never forgets
2020
“things will be so much better then”
proclaimed the dying sage
her declaration sure and certain
\how strong the words\
belying the papery thinness
of her withering husk.
her whispers rattled as I
read them, steadying my shaky
heart, rapt across the miles.
i swiped backhanded at doubts
\dripping wayward tears\
mortified at my wet-noodled spine
she is tranquil in contemplation
of her death (permanent)
while i am moldering
\rank and stagnant\
in the aftermath of mine
(though my death was the temporary kind)
on that steel stool
in my concrete cage
better was beyond the ken
a theoretical construct
\like relativity or the Big Bang\
which i believe exists on an astral plane
other than where i reside, somewhere
- out there
(though let me tell you about a Big ass Bang!)
yet she averred to me
\hope and constancy\
this woman wise and warm
from the glowing embers
of her fading days
- tattooing better
upon my flagging spirit
so i tucked her prophecy
\folded and tattered\
between my fraying ventricles
staining it with each bloodied beat
as i crawled from then
- forward
now i catch a glimpse of better
\from time to time\
guttering in the distance
a candle buffeted
- and burning still
At Day’s End
my fingers
strong yet supple
rub insistently
along your firm lines
massaging hard-working grime
from your weary edges.
with emphatic strokes
I work you into a lather
as we
release
tensions of the day.
damp and shining
we lay prone
your face a shimmering
reflection of my
earnest exertion
Questions Posed to a Petal
i beheaded our love
as i pulled off each petal
tossing my angst
into the reckoning gale
\oh, how I longed to believe you!\
green, your calyx unfurled
unveiling vermillion corolla
scented heady uncertainty.
i inhaled misgivings where i sought
passion, and the cosmos
swallowed butterflies.
in the perpetual questioning
\do you, do you not?\
fingers stained from dissecting
pistil, pollen and essence
roses morphed to dandelions
\each exhale seeded doubts\
and towheaded whispers
blew flaxen future
floating, ephemeral
on roiling winds.
Weyward Walk
the killdeer eyed me somberly
from a surreptitious vantage point
after it had skittered its twinkled toed
trek across my path. riverside plover
pleads with me in him ring-necked scuttle
to join him in the farce of his diversion
\there is no nest nearby, oh walker\
so I avert my eyes, clouded
with knowledge heavier than the burden
of protecting thin-shelled young.
we share a conspiratorial wink, delusional
in our belief of salvation, the plucky
killdeer and I. my deer-legged pup
tugs feverishly at his lead, frisky
and perseverant in his quest
for noxious odors and loci rife
with forbidden pungent rolling.
it appears mundane, this twilight
stroll under the overhang
of the looming calamity. nebula
shift miasmic and groaning
with subatomic splitting among
the swollen channels. she bangs
open the swinging “keep out” door
twitching bewitching hips as she sips
elixir of the cooling air and swigs
from her un-bagged fifth. insolent
gaze, redolent of spirits, rakes
crooked nails down the chalkboard
of my shivering spine. I inhale
her power, this she-witch
who has claimed me with the pull
of her dilating pupils. magnetized,
my feet, animated iron filings,
plod obediently in her beckoning shadow.
Things Rosy
PFINGSTROSEN
Monika Rinck
in allen phasen der faltung nisten die büschel,
geballte pakete, dicht, eng und stumm
hockt in knospen das drängen nach fetten
vermoddelten zentren in purpur und/oder weiß
wohnen rücken an rücken hinübergebogene blüten
auf krautigen stengeln und blühen sich rund.
als es zu regnen angefangen hat, ich am halm
in meiner großen hand den schweren kopf
gehalten habe, zog kindheit in die feuchte luft,
spitze schreie, habenwollen, pfingstgelockt
zum hang geworden. sehnsuchtsarten stiegen auf
und tauchten wieder ab. wie ich das flüstern
ihrer vielen tausend blüten hörte, wollte ich
die regennasse rose strubbeln, knüllen, fleddern
wollte ihr die blüten rupfen, um mich werfen,
und zertreten, freunde rufen, kommt und schaut
das fette große blütending, was ich da hab
katzenkopfrund weiß und ohne augen, ich, ich,
ich will den katzenkopf, der keine katze ist
durch’s irre rudel meiner wünsche treiben
kaputtgemacht und angefaßt, nein unversehrt
lass ich die hehren rosen reglos starr inmitten
jener bahnen stehn durch welche kindheit schnellt.
Things Rosy
in all phases of finding fault with that which I hide under bushels
I think of the pecks upon the cheek
slobbered in drunken barroom moments
those verboten moments of purple gazes/ under water
when I wreck and I wreck all that has not been blessed
of feminine strength and the bludgeon of seeing red,
as is the right of angels in wide brimmed hats, I am cool
in my sunglasses that craft my life in their mirrored lenses
exalting what has been, as kindness in the face of failure,
spritzed with glee, woolen underwear, finger lockets
that hang on our words, the sutured stitches of
our widest taut paths. when I am flustered
in the pulsing veins of the bluest hordes, I roll
with renegades wearing crimson glasses, kneading, floundering
among with aisles of the ruby slippers, and with warfare,
and regret, women refuse, orders and shouts
that fit with gross pretending, as all I had was
catastrophic and blithely undone, I, I,
I will then catastrophize, knowing the cat’s tongue
which is rude no matter how hard I try
all is kaput and angst, no universal
woman am I when I wear rose colored glasses and lipstick
swearing that I babble truth while the children run.
Insights from "Inside" 