Posted in poem, poem of the day, poet, poetry, words, Write, Writer, writing on 04/16/2011| Leave a Comment »
Symphony of the Seasons
Spring’s song bursts forth in warbled note,
As woodland sports a light green coat.
Hot Summer hums and croaks and trills.
Her gentle breeze too quickly stills.
Crisp rustling leaves and wild geese call
Announce that Summer’s bowed to Fall.
As north winds howl and nights grow long,
Old Winter dreams of Spring’s sweet song.
-Sandra Price
Posted in Nina Alvarez, poem, poem of the day, poet, poetry, words, Write, Writer, writing on 04/14/2011| 3 Comments »
I saw her through the prism of winter
In the dawn slivers of ice coated branches
In a dust of clear crystals swept skyward by God’s breath
In spectral glacial mists dancing through a ray
In the luminescent glint of glistening frosts
In twinkling drifts between cattails and river sedge
In dangling droplets from icicles beneath sheer cliffs
In a majestic frozen weave of nested emerald moss
Perhaps she flew but once, around a silver moon
glomming iridescent halo dust into a palm
Perhaps she puffed and rainbow detritus was strewn
Upon the mountains while the earth was calm
She is wind across red bee-balm, and Indian paintbrush
She is the orange firelight of Turks- cap and the flame azalea
She is sun bounced from lady slippers and yellow Jessamine
She is rain taps upon the greenbriar and striped maple
She is the dew- mist on wild chicory and Virginia bluebells
She is the healer in wild indigo and Curtiss milkwort
She is the scent of wild rhododendron and the blazing star
A vernal maiden has kissed my mountain
But I saw her first through the prism of winter.
Posted in poem, poem of the day, poet, poetry, words, Write, Writer, writing on 04/11/2011| Leave a Comment »
A Sort of Prayer
On rage-filled nights, I reinvent you, my god
And spew angry bile at your black-hole divinity.
Leave what is vile,
Absorb what calms
Like a wash of sleep after a nightmare.
Had I faith, I would pray – not to a formless void
That contains galaxies, but to all that is
Gentle in us.
And praying, re-awaken my spirit
From numbess, the distance of fear.
Teach me, o sky-faced god, to pray:
Teach me words that do not spin in futile orbits
Around the universe, but touch
What is best in me.
-Mukul Pandya
Posted in poem, poem of the day, poet, poetry, words, Write, Writer, writing on 04/09/2011| Leave a Comment »
ah oh let me love you
let me be the first to mourn
on an ennui tomb
in your proud red summer later
whilst the frolic ends
ah or have you sprawled over the midst
telling me less mangy at first
your prayer
besides
I am where the light goes
the stuff it ebbed my sigh
true my days caged foxing up a hole
oh caring this an that
for sheer obedience
for the laughter hence my laughter
in a thicket of breath
breathing my airs of impulse
hair twiggy in the frozen thump
for I am oh so
not for whipping out a lute
also freakish with a bone
I must’ve lost that lute in a bone wager
gambling all
black as stench
in the faroff your nose is lost
fish-eye beyond me my heavenly Williams looks
he’ll shave a copper spoon for right
and place that suck
near his bosom shine bloody
whoever who shall watch him prove
who dies will
let the light burst in through the dark oak dampy doorwell
and the shadows flitter up the beams
chasing you
seeming to melt that old precious old room into us
nude upon a hush
ah hark
I demand a poisoned summer
Posted in Mel clifford, poem, poem of the day, poet, poetry, words, Write, Writer, writing on 04/08/2011| 1 Comment »
When I am worried I cannot write
I think and worry about the kids each night
Yet so young and they think they are old
Big enough not to do what they are told
With each year they become so big
Always wanting to do their own gig
As a parent they will never know
How difficult it is to let them go
Why do you worry in this day and age
Each day they grow exploring another stage
Yet I worry all the time
Because I want to protect them as they are mine
So when does this pain go away or awful fright
That something may happen to them one night
When I was young I was just the same
So let them go to play life’s game
Posted in poem, poem of the day, poet, poetry, words, Write, Writer, writing on 04/07/2011| 1 Comment »
(he wears rude billboards for wrists, an easy guarantee)
we lick – black air beside whiskey, lips reflecting plum lines
him – tasting more like stale cigarettes than a hurricane’s mortal pride
(while my expression leaks atmospheres – camouflaging his bouquet of fire)
our silhouettes penciled together above colour’s loyal surrender
(he smiles from right to wrong)
unraveling my bare spine’s shouldered-switchblades
and darning the keen curiosity that stiffly fiddles restraint,
clouding each other’s modern science
Posted in poem, poem of the day, poet, poetry, words, Write, Writer, writing on 04/05/2011| Leave a Comment »
my hands were first loves and we never stopped dreaming of blurred joys a plastic world hurling itself in begging begging to be tensile to the latest disciple supple curls realized in throes along with the unyielding betting betting dear in hopes that we would never learn of anything harder while tools and glues tarried knowing the day for solution sauntered apiece with the horror ideal that well is not all and walls are but pretexts the limits of the stage and we are but playing little little do we get to apprehend until too too and ages later i’ve got mother dirt for you now some crocus blossom to thrust through your fertile folds of surface your tension better sundered and rude beauty as i was a plant once crawling blind from the surf to seek the attentive two have been everything and through the star stuff i’ve caught sight of other coined sides interim my will water filling as gravity lent and refracted by the wont this vessel demands and who am i to pull at the tiller i say as you say and neither captain and though works pray to be done we today are idols painted in each our image own we we retire to our corners pretending to have disagreed when a stone has but presented itself before the plow
“blurred joys”
-Robert David Williams
Posted in poem of the day, poet, poetry, words, Write, Writer, writing on 04/03/2011| 2 Comments »
Poison Ivy
She ruined you.
with all of patience
Slowly.
Her delicate words
And warm embraces
Consumed your passion,
left you hollow.
But you, unaware
begged.
Begged for more.
She laughingly obliged.
You disappeared, since.
Posted in poem, poem of the day, poet, poetry, words, Write, Writer, writing, tagged mark cox on 04/02/2011| Leave a Comment »
—
She will agree, if you back her into a corner, that it is
Well past time to rejoin the living–memories are disembodied
Ghosts which after having been invited to lunch, decide to stay
The week usually–but her acquiescence, and nod, will come sheepishly half-hearted.
She has, for half a century now, consciously elected to remain
In the red-shuttered white farmhouse she helped Ed build
Where peals of laughter roaring from decades past
Resonate within the walls of her soul if nowhere else.
Quietly she slips her needle in and out of triangles and octagons
above a firkin box of thread spools, scissors, antique thimbles,
and puffy pin cushions. Her concerto grosso– a cacophony of
cicadas, katydids’, and the occasional whippoorwill– fills her senses
ten times better than some fancy concert hall ever might.
She wonders why–If the present is so wonderful–there is
Such a dearth of smiles nowadays. Time was when smiles weren’t rationed
Into time blocks between puerile reality TV shows, mindless jabs
Of buttons on cellular phones, and catatonic sessions in front of
computer screens; somewhere along the line everyone had missed
the fact that with the indolent life of invention and ease
came the sudden death of personality and distinction.
She has heard every argument–for and against–
progress and convenience, and has concluded that an unfathomable
amount of benefit and virtue is to be gained in the effort of life’s pursuits,
which she sums up in one of her succinct and rather quaint idioms:
If too much is freely handed out, it won’t be appreciated”and–
If a body ain’t careful will soon be expected.
She is excruciatingly aware that the opinions of Dr. Marie Thompson
With her crisp suit, spurious half-smile, and pointed questions
Carry a great deal of weight in determining whether she will remain
At home with her memories of Appalachia or be involuntarily admitted
To the Lifesteps Geriatric adult day services facility over in Kingsport
Where undoubtedly the song of the crickets, bullfrogs, and owls
Will be replaced by the chatter from the nurses’ station
Where bored coffee swilling workers will talk only
Among themselves and refuse to look at the magic mirrors
Which show them images of themselves a few years removed.
Ed has left her with ten thousand memories–good memories–
Any one of which on occasion will elicit a broad smile connoting
Some esoteric reason for its rapid and unexpected appearance to
A face punctuated by laugh lines, crow’s feet and well weathered crinkles
Situated–somehow beautifully–around two bright sapphires
which can still catch the light and dance with fire, as anyone
who happens to be watching her quilting beneath the Single porch-light fixture
with its dangling pull-string and dozen circling moths can attest.
She will admit that her life has been a hard go at times
But she allows that triumph through fire is to be preferred–
and is vastly more rewarding–than things that just show up.
Her and Ed were never ones to let life come to them, they reached
Out and grabbed it, squeezing every drop of happiness it would
Yield–and the Good Lord respected that–she surmises with
A reverential smile that confirms it as unquestionable truth.
She will a narrate a story flipping pages of scenic color
from a mind as of yet unravaged by Alzheimer’s
with a fervor and oratory style reserved For those twice blessed
with the gift of song and voice which she exercises beautifully:
She and Ed didn’t have the time to give the great depression much thought.
They waded Spicewood creek catching black Hellgrammites
And climbed a thousand trees gathering Catawba worms
To sell to the TVA workers headed up to the lake but they
Laughed and smiled together all along the journey.
Those smiles and laughter from a bright yesterday are now sewn into
A dozen tight and perfect ten-sided polygons cut
From the fabric of Ed’s old green shirt”and–from the
Fabric of memory.
She understands something about long term memory
that the doctors cannot grasp– The elderly
Only know of two roads: the one by which the hayfields
Sway and the old schoolhouse stands, running some
Two miles past Hayes filling Station winding upward
past Grayson’s weathered barn and it’s emerald cornfields
and onward to the single-lane bridge crossing Gilmer creek
which leads to home, and the one which leads to someplace
altogether dim and unfamiliar.
A choice has to be made; Forward to the swirling haze
Or back down the road toward home. And smiles.
-Mark Cox (originally posted at his blog XOCKRAM)
Mark Cox is originally from Bristol, Tennessee (which, he says, might explain why the piece has a decidedly Appalachian flavor…) Though he humbly called his piece “very amateur free-verse” I don’t see anything amateur in this poem. Tone, voice, imagery, and subject matter meld deftly to create a real experience for the reader. Don’t you agree?
Posted in poem, poem of the day, poet, poetry, words, Write, Writer, writing on 04/02/2011| 9 Comments »
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