Crescendo

           The cold silence quivers, swollen with memories,
           Until, with a flash of cymbals and the thunder of drums,
           It shatters, spilling angry notes from the past to
           Rain over me. They cut like ice shards as they hit
           And flood my heart with pain.

***

Written for dVerse Poets Pub where the word of inspiration for a quadrille (a poem of 44 words) is spill.


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Lost

"Touch me / Remind me who I am. 

~ Stanley Kunitz, Touch Me, 1995

                  I'm lost in the mist, seeking your touch.
                  Are you there? Take my hand and lead me.
                  I can’t find my way with nothing to remind
                  me that you’re close, walking beside me.
                  I hear voices in the fog, but don’t know who
                  they are. Is one of them you, my love? I
                  need to know so I’ll know where I am.

***

Written for dVerse Poet's Pub. Today's prompt calls for a poem in a form called "The Golden Shovel."

According to Writer's Digest, these are the rules for the Golden Shovel:

- Take a line (or lines) from a poem you admire.
- Use each word in the line (or lines) as an end word in your poem.
- Keep the end words in order.
- Give credit to the poet who originally wrote the line (or lines).
- The new poem does not have to be about the same subject as the poem that offers the end words.

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Arroyo Serenade

Our hostess’ little ranch house is surrounded by cactus and the occasional Palo Verde tree. It sits in a fold of parched earth at the edge of an arroyo several miles north of Phoenix. During the monsoon season each June, the arroyo churns with racing waters. But this time of year, it’s dry, serving as a convenient highway for the critters who call the desert home. As we sit around the table on the lantern-lit covered patio at the rear of the house, the desert beyond crashes the party like a noisy dinner guest.

The first tentative note comes from a distance down the arroyo, but is soon answered by another, much closer. Our hostess has just told us that we might be visited by the local javelinas, a wild pig-like animal that frequents the area. Though nearly blind, she says with a laugh, javelinas can smell a grilling sirloin a mile away. But this is no javelina. With each passing minute, another voice is added to the chorus, surrounding us with song. Like a traveling minstrel show, the troop passes through, their music echoing over the desert. I am enchanted.

                       coyote crooners

                       their howls a song of longing

                       filling the darkness

***

Written for dVerse Poet's Pub.

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Pedernal

(Source: New Mexico Museum of Art

                                      He waits, wooing,
                                      Whispering words of
                                      Love and longing.
                                      Paint me, paint me
                                      Purple with passion.
                                      Caress me with
                                      Strokes of seduction.
                                      Make love to me
                                      Again and again, and
                                      I will be yours.


“It’s my private mountain. It belongs to me. God told me if I painted it enough, I could have it.” ~ Georgia O’Keefe

***

Written for dVerse Poet's Pub. The prompt today is "Sentiments of the Southwest." One of my favorite places in the southwest is Ghost Ranch in Abiquiu, New Mexico. I am in good company. Georgia O'Keefe fell in love with it too, and settled in Abiquiu after her husband Alfred Stieglitz died. While there, she painted Pedernal over and over until she made it hers. Her ashes are scattered at its base.

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Lady Lucretia's Lapse

(Source: WikiMedia Commons)

Lady Lucretia was a model of decorum.

But that summer’s eve the minstrel arrived,

Her dignity skipped merrily away,

With prudence and pride at its side.

With petticoats aflounce and feet aflight,

Showing more pantaloon than propriety,

Her ladyship was no lady that night.

***

Written for dVerse Poet's Pub, where Toni serves up "skip" as the prompt for Quadrille Monday. In case you are like me and don't know what a quadrille poem is, it has exactly 44 words.

Balance?

(Graphic Source: Open Clipart)

***

Created for dVerse Poet's Pub, where Victoria asks us to think about how we bring balance to our busy lives. While thinking about the ways I've tried to do that, I kept coming back to wondering if it was worth it. Might it not be better to just let some things go? Do we really have to do it all?

Apocalyse

(Artist: Mauricio García Vega; Source: WikiMedia Commons)

Noisy images, 

           crowding,
                    shoving,
                             splashing
                                     life script
                                             onto the page...

Scenes of cities never visited,
        memories of days more real than those lived,
                 screeching, blaring, thumping street songs
                          filling the mind, spilling words by the hundreds,
                                   day after day, never pausing,
                                            until, one day, they do.

The end?

***

Abhra at dVerse Poet's Pub asks us to 'fess up to being a secret admirer of a poet who inspires us.

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Renaissance

The announcement reads, “Friends and family are invited to a celebration of Dave’s life.” His was a life worth celebrating. It is his early death that they mourn.

Echoes of his laughter are caught like dust motes in the kaleidoscope of winter sunbeams slanting through stained glass windows and warming those crowded into the little chapel. One by one, they step to the altar, cast off their wrappings of grief, and share the memories of his escapades they carry within. When the last laugh fades, his son and his family stand and move to the large marble font at the rear of the nave. The minister annoints his grandchild, and Dave’s spirit is reborn.

petals drop, decay

fertilizing future life

winter unto spring

***

Photographer Susan Judd is sharing some of her lovely photographs at dVerse Poets Pub as inspiration for Haibun Monday: Beauty in Decay. For those of you (like me) unfamiliar with haibun, it is a Japanese form of poetry that combines prose with haiku.

Faerie Four Step

(Artist :William Blake.c.1786)

In her dream, they hold their ball 

Answering the night minstrel’s call 

Gossamer gowns glitter, all a-twirl 

Faeries emerge to play. 

 ‘Round her pillow they come to meet 

Tripping lightly, fleet of feet 

Swinging and swaying to the beat 

They twist the night away.

***

It's been a long time since I paid a visit to dVerse Poets Pub. Stopping by last night, I was greeted by Grace with a challenge: write a Quadrille using the word "twist" somewhere within its 44 words. I don't know a Quadrille from a Texas Two Step, but it caught my fancy, so...

Grace

My fall from grace was 
unexpected.It hurt like the 
devil; I can tell you that.

With the flick of a finger

and careless aim, you sent me

flying from the promised land

like an inconvenient crumb

sullying the surface of your life.

Through no fault of my own,

penance paid or so it seemed,

redemption came today.

Angels sang and golden

rays shone from the heavens

as, with nary a trumpet, the 
pearly gates cracked open 
with the dawn. Hallelujah.

Once again, I was saved.

Or was it doomed? Because 
then I discovered you wanted  
something. Figures.

***

Linked at dVerse Poets Pub.

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Self-Portrait

big feet, big butt,

bigger mouth, 

that's what he said.

that's OK, I told him.

I've got a good under-

standing, a well-seated

position, and the ability

to make my opinion heard.

*** 

Linked to dVerse Poets Pub

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A Place

(Photo by Danny Ouellet

Source:  Stockvault)

There's a place at edge of light

Where thin the line 'tween day and night

Where nightmares wait just out of sight

And sunshine turns to dark.

There's a place in black of night

Where safety fades, replaced with fright

Where nightmares come with dad's goodnight

And childhood life departs.

There's a place above the deep

Where ere I jump, I stand and weep

And pray the lord my soul to keep

From this body torn apart.

There's a place where nightmares dwell

Where witches cackle and conjure spells

Where demons dance, escaped from hell

And hate pervades the heart.

***

Linked at d'Verse Poets Pub
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Breakfast Under the Tum-Tum Tree

  Illustration from The Jabberwocky

by Lewis Carroll 1871

(Source: WikiMedia Commons)

‘Twas brillig and the slithy toves did…

Oh, crap, who am I kidding?

‘Twasn’t brillig at all, not

on this very un-frabjous day, and

there is not one freaking slithy tove in sight.

Instead what's here is this giant bandersnatch

who galumphed in from the wabe

with no interest at all in the gyre and gimble

and one hell of a frumious appetite.

You thought the Jabberwock was bad?

Oh, man, you have no idea. The only uffish thought

this Bandersnatch has is – one two! one-two! – how to

ruin my day and steal my callooh, callay away.

Not today, big boy. I’m going back to bed.

***

Linked to dVerse Poets Pub.
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Her Royal Highness

She walks with pride much like a lynx

Who knows she's more than just a cat.

When your eyes meet, she seems to wink

And seems to say "Yeah, I'm all that,

Quite clearly an aristocrat."

And in your heart, you know it's true.

This is no ordinary cat...

She is all that, and much more too.

The challenge today at dVerse Poets Pub is to write a "huitain." This is a poetic form of eight lines consisting of eight or ten syllables each, with a rhyme scheme of a,b,a,b,b,c,b,c.

When I sat down to give it a go, my muse took the form of the princess pictured above, who directed my efforts from her rightful place on my lap.

The Yearbook

looking backward into those years past

drawn in inks black and blue and red

scrawled in the empty space between all

the good wishes and ads for the future

sentiment and names barely remembered

looking back between pages of pictures

of slightly familiar faces strangers smiling

she most this and he likely to do that

the smart ones pretty ones and the clown

most funny holding footballs basketballs

posies of pink dressed in tulle remembering

it was all about filling the blank page

Thrill Ride

Image source: WikiMedia Commons

once a year, we played hooky, you and I,

calling out sick from work on a warm spring day,

skipping off in search of the ultimate thrill ride,

a coaster to speed back to yesterday, to cotton candy

and bumper cars and a lifetime more years to ride.

we loved the coasters, especially old woodies,

the clackety, clackety, clack of anticipation

as our coaster cart and our hearts climbed to the pinnacle,

until  

    WOOSH!  

                coaster cart and heart 

and years gone by…  

                  p

             l

               u

                  n

                     g

                        e

                           d

taking our stomachs with them.

we always sat up front and center, you and I,

in the first seat of the front cart, arms high in the air

with nothing before us but the edge of time, the abyss

between now and a forever of yesterdays filled with

coasters and  bumper cars, fried dough and tummy aches.

I don’t know about you, my love, but I don’t eat cotton

candy or fried dough any more, or aim thundering bumper

cars,not deliberately anyway, and sadly, I admit it, I don’t 

see you anymore either, and I don't ride coasters, not even

woodies, not after that last time when we hopped on a

coaster that would take us backwards, and it did... literally.

it didn’t work the way we wanted it to and we were no 

younger after than we were before. it was scary and 

sickening, and the scariest thing of all was that when we 

got off, the young whooping in glee all around us, we felt 

older than ever before. that’s when I stopped seeking 

thrill rides because my heart just can’t take any more.

***

Written for dVerse Poet's Pub, where the prompt on Poetics is "Fun Fair."

Escape

Image from Where the Wild Things Are 

by Maurice Sendak 

Scaly, furry, great horned beasties

Flashing wide with snaggly grins.

Reaching out with long sharp claws

To grab some kids and draw them in.

The creatures gnashed their terrible teeth

And roared their terrible roars.

Reaching, grasping, drooling… Run, kids!

They'll eat you up and ask for more.

Instead the young ones push in closer

And find great comfort in those furry arms.

For children know things, don't you know,

And they know these monsters mean no harm.

Children know things, oh yes, they do,

With wisdom born of hidden scars.

Raised by snarly monsters with flying fists,

They know exactly where the wild things are.

***

Written for dVerse ~ Poet's Pub, where Aaron Kent invited us to "let the wild rumpus begin" in honor of Maurice Sendak, who died on May 8, 2012.