For Carrie’s 100th Sunday Muse BlogSpot. whoo hoo! 100! I am having trouble with my ancient computer and so I cannot post the pic of a teal door. I ended the poem with an American sentence. Congrats Carrie and thank you so much for the prompts! Here’s to 100 more.
Behind the door I spend my days alone.
I fix meals for one,
sleep alone,
don’t talk to anyone.
I have become the ultimate introvert.
Outside my door –
spring arrives.
the lawn is full of tiny blue
forget-me-nots,
dainty blue Johnny jump ups,
countless purple muscari hyacinths.
green flushes the branches of trees
and the blue sky covers all.
I don’t feel alone when I am outside.
I walk around and remember.
then I go back inside.
The alone starts again.
Spring returns with a canopy of blue overhead – the vernal sky.
For Margaret’s Photo prompt on Real Toads for day 28 of NAPOWRIMO. Two pictures in the several given appealed to me.
Desperation
“The mass of [men] live lives of quiet desperation.” Henry David Thoreau
The cat is desperate.
the woman holds on tightly –
she found the cat in the street
and rescued it, thinking she was doing it a favor.
The cat wants to go to her kittens
hidden under a basket in the back
of the abandoned store but the woman keeps hold,
never realizing she is condemning
the tiny blind kittens to death,
staring out at the street
into herself and not the cat.
anyone can see the cat is desperate.
anyone but the woman.
Unidentified Woman ca. 1950’s – Walter Silver Photographs
She stares out at the city sky –
staring at the almost invisible clouds
eaten alive by the pigeons
who perch on buildings
storming the air with their inevitable
cooings.
she remembers the country
from which she escaped years ago,
the house filled with too many people,
the ragged wash hung out to dry.
all she wanted was to be alone.
now she is alone –
except for this cat she picked up off the street.
the cat doesn’t like her.
but still she clings.
A sad little cat is better than nothing.
House with trees and clothesline – Walter Silver Photographs
For Margaret’s Artistic Prompt over at Real Toads. I used to live across the river in Philadelphia, across from the Pine Barrens or the Pinelands or the Pines as this area is known. This is one of several poems written in this mysterious and beautiful setting. There is a Blue Hole hidden in the Barrens – its depths have not yet been fathomed and it is freezing cold all year long. Some call it the Devil’s Puddle, others the Blue Hole, some call it simply The Hole. The Jersey Devil is said to haunt the Barrens and to hunt around the lake. People live in the Barrens, called Pineys. The creeks that flow through the Barrens are stained rusty brown with the tannin from all the pine tree roots. It is one of the most beautiful and silent places I have ever encountered.
The Blue Hole
The Jersey devil swims here –
In the silence and loneliness of the Pine Barrens.
He drinks from its ever freezing waters
and hunts in the pine trees
that rim the Blue Hole.
He sighs with the trees –
A soft lonely sound.
People approach and he slides
into the surrounding trees
leaving only a branch moving as if with the wind.
The Devil’s Puddle,
The Blue Hole.
The Jersey Devil calls it home –
the only home he has ever known.
For posting on Poets United Poetry Pantry and also on Real Toads for the Tuesday Platform.
Desolation
The day dies.
The cool of the day is settling on the land,
the green corn moon casts shadows
on the fields – the dried golden tassels
flutter in the slight breeze.
A stray dog walks down a row
and sits down at the end,
scratching himself. A distant howl –
he pricks up his ears,
then trots on.
The field looks like some alien landscape
in the light of the green corn moon.
I have done a Bussokusekika, a Japanese poetic form that follows the rules of tanka, except there are three seven syllable lines that end the poem for a 5-7-5-7-7-7. Bussokusekika is an ancient form of poetry, older than Tanka or haiku. It translates to footprints of Buddha.
New Moon
crescent thin against
the black night – overpowered
by the stars she sings
a faint song of undappled
water and hunting owls – she
is lonely in the darkness
#Haikai Challenge #18 (1/27/18): Raven #haiku #senryu #haibun #tanka #renga #haiga
I.
across the snowy field
the sound of a lone crow floats –
coldness overwhelms
II.
silent neighborhood –
distant crows break the silence –
cold and still today
“I love storms. Primordial. Every bit of civilization gone. Everything true coming out.” Vanessa Ives, Penny Dreadful
Hot. Smoldering hot.
The sky like molten bronze.
It is amazing the stones of the buildings do not explode in the heat
or melt and run in the gutters.
Rain coming. Soon. Soon.
And then the first breath –
The rain begins and
the skies rip and before I can open my umbrella
I am soaked to the skin –
The rain like cold needles drives into my skin,
stabbing into my heart and emptying it of secrets.
Steam rises from the street,
the buildings
my skin.
In the rising steam and driving rain
people move, barely seen, like wandering ghosts.
I have tried to chase away the memories.
In my mind I hear your voice
like a call that crackles from a bad connection
and disconnects before I can interpret your words.
A man bumps into me and for a moment
I think he looks like you.
But he disappears into the mist and rain
…and I accept I will never see you again.
Every time it rains, it reminds me of you.
public domain Utagawa Hiroshige People Sheltering From the Rain 1857
Monday at dVerse Poets Pub, the post for Quadrille Monday will go live. It is the first posting for the new year here at the Pub and we are pleased to have Bjorn hosting it. He has chosen the word “curl” to include in your 44 word poem (not including the title). So drop by at dVerse to read these wonderful short poems and to submit your own! I am submitting two poems containing the word “curl”.
1.
the days have knit themselves
into a pattern of sameness –
an afghan in shades of grey.
like the winter sky and trees.
the elderly woman settles down to sleep.
the younger woman brushes the curls off
her forehead and whispers,
Sleep mama, sleep.
2.
I found out today where Nobody’s Cat
goes after I feed him in the morning.
I looked out the back way and
saw him limping laboriously
over the back lawn
crawling under the potting shed.
Brown leaves curl back onto themselves
not showing his passing.
It’s Thursday at the dVerse Poets Pub and this Thurday, it is Meeting the Bar, which means we all write to a specific word, theme, form – given out by the dVerse Prompter. Today it is Victoria; a true lady, amazing poet, lover of her husband and their dogs, good friend, and most excellent prompter of forms or themese. Today she is asking us to write musically – to use musical terms, or a theme, or a concept – to turn our poetry, lives, experiences into music. Come join us!
New Music
today starts with the music of a
low tuned cello – slow, hesitant, dolorous.
No more lively forays into the forest
to play my violin,
to let my music dance through the trees
giving the birds something different to
listen to or sing along to –
now my days are filled with lonely hours.
No one calls,
no one visits,
no one emails.
My husband is at work.
I bake cinnamon rolls.
Now it is only my mother and myself
going through the same routine.
Routine is good for her and
doesn’t disrupt her memories.
Every day is a slow waltz –
it does get lonely.
but there is sweetness in the days as well.
a swirl of dolce de leche
in the bitter coffee of the day.
I watch my mother – calando.
The sun fades.
All aboard! Today Bjorn is the conductor for our Poetics prompt of Trains at dVerse Poets Pub. Come join us for train tales and travels. I haven’t been on a train in a few years but when I lived on Long Island and in Philadelphia, I was a regular on commuter trains to and from my destination. And even further back in time, before the routes and owners changed, traveled on the Orient Express from Paris to Venice and from Paris to Budapest. Get your ticket punched and join us on our Train Poetry Journey. http://dversepoets.com/2016/04/05/poetics-wheels-of-steel/
public domain image
The Haunted Platform
every morning – same time –
onto the train to my assigned seat.
we all have our seats where we always go –
same seat every day.
the two men behind me smelling
of coffee and CKOne and Hermes Terre
in front of me the blonde woman
who piles her laptop and brief bags into the seat
beside her so no one will be beside her.
I do the same thing, I always settle
in and pull out my tablet and read the paper online
while drinking from my travel mug of coffee.
on the way home –
same people same seats
eyes all closed or on their laptops
finishing tasks or a head start on new.
the smell of bourbon replaces the morning smell of coffee.
in the morning stopping at the various platforms
car fills up.
in the evening stopping at platforms
car empties.
at the platform where the train never stops
there used to be a sign hanging announcing the stop.
last year the sign was hanging by one hook
swinging fitfully in the wind: MAYF ELD
the sign fell earlier this year face down and
now soiled by weather and mud.
a bench is on the platform broken at down at one end
and the back bent at that end.
Yesterday a man(?) was lying on the bench
back presented to the track –
cold rain and snow swirled and as the train
blew past the platform where the trains never stop
faded dirtied ancient newspaper pages and trash
blew up in the air and then settled back into their place.
this morning the man(?) is still there covered with snow.
one of the men says behind me:
hey, that guy is still there and his companion
(I can imagine him looking up owlishly from his laptop)
says “hunh?”
on the way home with the train windows flashing like
yellow strobes in the darkness
I see broken images of the man(?) clicking past –
still there, covered with more snow.
at home, late at night, I awaken and shiver with cold.
across the few miles I hear the sound of the train
roaring past on the tracks and it’s horn as it
approaches an intersection.
I wonder if the man(?) is still there in the darkness.
a chill I cannot control causes me to break out
in a sweat and in the darkness
I press myself closer against my sleeping husband.
I wonder if the man(?) is still there in the darkness
covered with deepening snow.
http://hastywords.wordpress.com/2014/02/12/sabishii/comment-page-1/#comment-17920 I’ve always been a loner. but I have stepped out of that and into something so totally new and insanely wonderful, I feel like taking off my fuzzy bedroom shoes and going outside and running around in the snow to cool down some. We had a major storm last night and received snowsnowsnow. Yowzer y’all
but anyway, Please click on the link. You will be taken to a great poetry blog, Hasty words. super poet, great lady. I’ve never done anything like this before – doing a poetic duet – but Hasty has. She is not only talented in her own right, but she brings out talent in her poetry duetry partner. Gracious and patient, funny and sincere. I hope we do it again because it was fun, it was encouraging, it was a boost to my sometimes solemn and entrenched style. Please go read this poet and please spend time on her page. Get to know her better. I think you’ll end up following her blog.
Lately, I’ve felt…….lost. I don’t know where the wild girl, feisty woman went. The suicide of a long time friend a few weeks ago has aged my soul in ways I cannot describe. He and I used to drive around at night, windows down and radio blaring, singing at the top of our lungs. He comforted me when my Samurai returned to Japan. And now….
But this song, by Chris Kane ,a wild Oklahoma boy with a gift for rock ’em, sock ’em country rock songs and songs of heart stirring wistfulness, reminds me of a lot of things. Maybe, that girl is still within me. I hope so. I miss her a lot.
kanzen sakura 