Poem A Day - Day 4

Hold that question

Someday it will be the question;

- Is beauty enough?

Someday you'll find yourself

Looking at that porch 

Without anyone who remembers even a bit 

of what you remember

What the ringing phone meant

How smooth was the litho stone

What you sound like, crying

Someday you will find yourself without anyone 

who remembers you 

Little

Dancing in your mother's shoes

Growing through versions of yourself

Then standing by the roses

All of your life you have said it is enough

All of your life 

You have said it is all the proof you need

It is all that you need

- indivisible, inexhaustible, infinite
beauty.

But will you care

When you are orphaned

Under the brilliant blue sky

And the multiverse has swallowed

more light, more,

And the other

half of your heart

Poem a Day - 2013 - Day 3

Write a tentative poem.

shootphooey.
lost the original of this, which I liked.
maybe I'll remember more later.
ah well.
detachment.


Making Sense

I have wasted my life on these four things:

believing I won't die
wondering if its true that I can be seen
wondering if I speak if I can be heard
wondering if words do anything but destroy

sense

strange (or not) that meaning and perception
are the same

I am an invisible eye
and am all that I see, as far as I see
my name - a distinction
barely
between breathing and air.

my size is indefinite to me
it expands down avenues
and fills vaults
changing its composition
of air
to light

I am everywhere, a dispersion
of memory and yearning
or I am here curled, contained
in this dear body, warming.

I make love as water
folding over as a wave
into ourselves,
my arms, arms, these mine,
but also, made only
of time
and only briefly

My voice is always a surprise to me

- an awkward, too quiet attempt,
at unpolished anecdotes, while the moon waits,
slips like truth,

at the back of my throat.

I do see I am not not invisible.
The body is not an afterthought.
But it is porous
Spring travels through me in spiraling paths,
trajectories of energy.  Sometimes I am all petals or all scent
all Tuesday, all love.

This doesn't make for good stories,
though I am immortal
and dying at the same time.

There is no point in speaking of this.
Maybe as a poem.
Not in the the words people use when they see each other
when they sit across from one another and use words
as if they actually speak of what they know
of what life is
and how living feels.

Poem a Day - 2013 - Day 2

Today’s prompt is a Two-for-Tuesday prompt. For those new to the challenge, you have the option of writing to the first prompt or the second prompt–or even both if you feel so inclined. Here they are:

• Write a bright poem.
• Write a dark poem.

Siena

It is not as if you shine
- you shine -
from where?
this dazzle different
this radiance, new
no, grown

Bold red hair now
down straight
half-covering
your huge blue eyes
alight with all
the life that awaits

that you await
sparkling
diamond
cut in the setting
of your self
your place
your incisive, bright, mind

adazzle
self named anew.

who will be the first to find you
and how will they not be blinded?

Poem a Day - 2013 - Day 1

The April PAD (Poem-A-Day) Challenge is designed to help poets do one thing and one thing only: Write more poems! The process of revision may go on for weeks, months, and years later, but this challenge is all about getting that first draft. Please poem along with us–either in the comments below or silently at home.

For today’s prompt, write a new arrival poem. The new arrival could be a baby or a person. The new arrival might be a car or other piece of technology. Heck, the new arrival might be an idea or poem. (Btw, if you’re a new arrival to the site and this challenge, take a peak below about commenting.)




Coming home

there is the toast, uneaten
dried stiff but buttery still
the bouquet - camelias
all but one fallen like soft
dresses to the table
the mail stuffed in the box
all asking for money
but one
with my name on it
- thank goodness

"Blue Skies"

early to bed,
still moving from travel,
my exhales animate the dead air around me
the familiar sheets
touch me
home
I dream of a butterfly collection
I do not have
of needing to return
a monarch to its crystal case
before anyone knows
I have it, fluttering, in my hand.

In the morning I stand on my porch.
My neighbor is walking her dog
and the cats that were born under my back stairs
that I didn't want
dart out of bushes to follow her.
Good life.
The unfolding of stories -
the growing of things -
proper.

awake early
my body expects New York
expects to see bare branches
pressing back the buds of Spring
expects a world of nothing but potential

But here, in my California,
the leaves have already pushed past
the almond blossoms,
the shadow of the mighty oak
has camoflauged itself in the exact color of the hill
and so vanished
and my life, it seems,
as I walk through it like a stranger
is here,
I can see that,
and has been largely
lived.