Lovers' Morning

Dawn whispers curl,

so hot they scar the breath,

cue sparks.

Clouds and shadows open. 

We leave them ajar:

roses spill on the breeze.

Spring-green, scented

zephyrs skip and twist,

shimmer and melt. 

Our grins bubble 

into laughter without lull

as morning dances.

Written for Quadrille #25, dawn at dVerse. This one uses all the prompt words from Quadrille #1-25, in reverse order.

Seduction by Quadrille

I dance, even 

when music lulls –

I'm a bubble.

You grin, I melt,

we shimmer.

You twist, I skip.

Green breeze 

spills roses,

as from a jar;

leaves open.

A shadow

clouds our spark. 

Cue: breathe fire!

Old scars curl away –
whispers at dawn.

Written for Quadrille #25, dawn at dVerse – using all the prompt words from Quadrille #1 onwards, in order: dance, lull, bubble, grin, melt, shimmer, twist, skip, green, breeze, spill, rose, jar, leaves, open, shadow, cloud, spark, cue, breath, scar, curl, dawn.

Also linked to Poets United's Poetry Pantry #348

She Becomes an Indoor Cat

In heatwave, dawn and dusk 

are the times she likes to go out

into the cool, to her garden.

But these are the times forbidden –

mosquito hours. The allergy 

strips her rich fur.

She distrusts help, resists 

calendula cream or diluted 
lavender oil. Stalemate.

Denuded on belly; thinning on paws, eyebrows and behind ears


Actually she is being treated by tablets crushed in her food, which will help even without the topical calendula cream. But I must not let her out at all during her preferred hours – and without the lavender oil to discourage the mozzies, I can't let her out at any time.

Written for Quadrille #25, dawn at dVerse.

Poetry in the Mouth

After Neruda: ‘Sweetness Always’

Some poems 

are hard and immobile

as statues

made of gilded stone.

Though fine indeed to gaze upon

from behind the barrier,

how can they portray

the everyday?

The sweet everydayness of things

I want to put in my mouth, 
bite down and suck, lap my tongue
around and through the honey taste.

Please make me, bake me

a confection of a poem,

to feed and sustain me!

Always, then, I will sing it.

Written in response to Weekend Mini Challenge: Condense a Poem at 'imaginary garden with real toads'. The original Neruda piece may be found at this link. We were asked to restate it, condensed, in our own words while keeping the essence of the original.

Photo of baklava from public domain.

Good Company

The great god Thoth

the Egyptian

patron of poets and giver

of written language

deity of the moon, 

magic and wisdom

record keeper, scribe,

and measurer of time

presides in statue form

over my desk and laptop.

He holds a tablet and pen

in the act of inscribing.

Next to him, in a goblet,

I keep an ibis feather.

(Ibis abound here.

I like that.)

Thoth was often portrayed as ibis-headed, as he is in my statue. The crescent-shaped beak symbolised his connection to the moon. (He would have used a stylus for inscribing his tablet, but I said 'pen' to make a bridge to the present.)

I'm linking this poem to Poets United's Poetry Pantry #338

No, Old Men – Things Fail to Fall Apart (and that's the trouble)

When we neglect our country,

monuments tatter.

The holy gyre is revealed

as turning by artifice.

Drowsy in our anarchy,

we fail to see, in the centre

of the incoming tide,

the waste it carries. We turn

even oceans to desert. Pitiless 
and without ceremony, how 

we debauch earth’s innocence.

In Get Listed! today, at 'imaginary garden with real toads', we are asked to use at least three words from two poems by Yeats (Sailing to Byzantium and The Second Coming) in a poem of our own. I used all the words, in the order given, and in keeping with Yeats's despairing view of the world in the poems cited. The words are: 

neglect
country
monuments
tatter
holy
gyre
artifice
drowsy

anarchy
centre (center)
tide
waste
desert
pitiless
ceremony
innocence

The Way It Changes

I am not writing so many 

sad poems any more.

Four years and four months

have passed since your passing;

I am adjusting. I would even say

my life is pleasant, I have learned

contentment. 

Or perhaps it’s all gone underground.

I’m bingeing on vampire movies 

and TV series, over and over

exploring death, dying, afterlife, 

immortality, and what to do 

with love when the loved one’s gone.

How to keep it / them?

Escapist, I've told myself. But

now I think, It’s just the way

it changes. And Leonard too

has left us, like so many.

They are changing constantly,

the shoreline and the sea

that make my life.

I read, I play with my cat,

I make more poems, 

I meet my friends 

for coffee and chat,

there are family visits.

Still, obsessively, I contemplate
undying passion, resurrection.

Prompted, in part, by Midweek Motif ~ Change at Poets United

The Voices

I overhear fragments 

of conversations bypassing me – 

not whispers, not secretive; 

I'm simply irrelevant. 

They feel no obligation 

to address me directly 

or at all. Merely, my head 

is the space where they live, 

their context, background. They 
have their own lives going on.

Responding simultaneously to Quadrille #24: Whisper at dVerse and Mini-prompt: Voices at 'imaginary garden with real toads'. Also linking to Poets United's Poetry Pantry #337.

A Chemical Reaction

I watched in awe, savouring every detail: the fluttering fingers, the almost imperceptible bronze metallic cloudiness that appeared on the skin, as if, before my very eyes, it were being breathed upon by death. 

    And then the utter stillness.

– from The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie: a Flavia de Luce mystery, by Alan Bradley

The slow discolouration of his skin;

its cloudiness; the metallic cast.

The abrupt silence of the breath 

drawing in – out – in – then nothing.

(After the fluttering fingers had stopped).

These are her delights,

the keenly dispassionate observations

of the fervent scientist.

She thinks herself blessed 

to come so close as this to the marks of death.

It is not a personal interest.

The dead man is a stranger

who wandered into her garden ... died there.... 

She simply likes to investigate 

the effects of specific poisons.

Linked to Inside the Ink at 'imaginary garden with real toads' – where we are invited to take a quote from the last book we read and play with it in three stanzas. (I have also written a review of this book: here.)

Because You

Because you are music,

I sing you, even 

when you aren't here,

softly in memory.

Because you are wine,

you intoxicate me

slowly and smoothly,

the taste lingering.

Because you are ocean,

I bathe in you, plunge

and almost drown, then float

on your buoyant blue.

Because you are poetry,

I return to you again and again; 

you fill my mouth, 

I give you utterance, but –

Because you are mystery,

I cannot touch your core,

fathom your depths, recover 
from you, find your truest chords.

Written in response to Literary Excursions: human in terms of non-human 
at 'imaginary garden with real toads'.

Pain

This chain that holds me

here in place,

this block of stone

and the metal ring

fixing me to it,

tighten and firm 

as I struggle to pull away.

If I give up

if I give in – 

might the stone soften,

a bed for my rest? 

Could the heavy shackle 

open into a door? 
And where would that door lead?

Written for Poets United's Midweek Motif: The Door

There Was This Man

(this out-of-standard dropout)

He climbs from a hole in the ground,

trots jerkily through the cemetery

gorging on wreaths of roses

redder than blood –

plunging his whole face, tearing. 

Wearing green; devouring flowers ...

yet nothing about him suggests 

life or nature. He has crawled

from some circle of Hell; he has lost

everything he ever loved or was.


For Play It Again 7 Jan. 2017 at 'imaginary garden with real toads', we are asked to be inspired by Laurie Anderson, or the Out of Standard movie clip 'Film School Dropout' (see below), or (in 55 words) by Dante Alighieri. It was mostly the movie clip that got me, but I also gave nods to Anderson and Dante, and wrote it in 55 words. The fact that I have recently been bingeing on 'The Vampire Diaries' crept in there too.

A Conversation About Creating a Vision

The vision the conversation is about is recorded here.

Me without –

without hope, without vision,

without a dream for the future –

what could that be?

A testing? 

A between kind of place?

A terrible thwarting?

No – matter

is not sufficient.

I need also the soft frisson

of hope, though it may be

delusion.

The truth of fact

is one thing, and facts

are hard to shift, they are

rocks you trip over.

Truth stretches though,

to fractal infinity

with built-in random.

So I have hope

enough to create a vision.

The way is up,

I believe.

Then my friend 

tells me

her truth.

Rich, awful telling.

(Some of it I've heard

in other places before.)

A vision for the future

will pull you back, she says.

You'll be stuck

in / with / to 

the past you label bad.

Isn't it better to see 

your vision here, now?

Never mind (I think)

what I do see here and now.

The mere word Aleppo

conjures maimed children, 

terrified parents. 

In my own town

I see the deranged,

the homeless,

walking about

as part of 'normal'.

I will not blind my eye.

How long

should we let this lie?

Well, there is being and doing.

Nothing ventured....

The watery grief, even

the shock and rage,

all are real, each

is necessary, this

is a way to finding out 

what more brings life to life.

From that we create vision.

My soul can have it be

here, now, radiant, yes,

but my body

is trapped in time,

and my personality too,

frequently.

Pausing 

for reflection

is a thing we can do.

We can pull the vision close,

make it

an act of creation.

Deliberately stepping

for this moment

out of time,

hearing in mind and heart

the sweet words 

expressing our vision –

right then it is here,

we are in it,

and we carry back

to the everyday world

that consciousness –

a mechanism

of infiltration,

helping the vision spread.

High?

Far?

Always yet to be reached?

No. Only hear it.

Only hold it.

Know it. 
Be it.

And if that seems unreal, 

simply start

here, now.

Back Story

Susan, at Poets United's Midweek Motif, asks us for a vision of the future, in poetry. I am one of a sisterhood called the Goddesses of Shining Light, who spent months last year creating and articulating just that (though not in verse). Here (again) is the link; we are inviting people to listen and, if they choose, hold it in consciousness (and in their daily meditations if they do that). I couldn't say it better (and btw the concepts are not new – though arrived at anew – but bear reiterating). So I thought to write, instead, a poem about creating a vision.

I began with an erasure, and the idea that I might expand it. A friend (Debi Swim) sent me a package wrapped in a Barnes and Noble bag with an excerpt from Huckleberry Finn printed on one side, one from Moby Dick on the other. We don't have B&N in Australia; I was enchanted!  The first verse of my (unexpanded) erasure poem below was from Huck, the second courtesy of Ishmael.

Meanwhile I posted on facebook the invitation to listen to our vision. A friend suggested we'd do better to envision our ideal world as already here, not to dwell on the negatives (though in fact I don't think our vision does that, except perhaps by implication). I understand where she's coming from. However.... We had a long discussion, which gave rise to an expansion of the erasure poem into something else. I even incorporated (in verse two) some of Spellcheck's more creative mistakes! The resulting poem, above, is my vision poem for the prompt (not the vision itself – for which you must click the link and listen – but about the process).

Creating a Vision 

(erasure)

me without 

no matter

the truth

stretches

the way is up

rich awful

never mind

how long

nothing

the watery 

is a way 

my soul 

pausing

deliberately stepping

high

Mothers' Secrets

Without warning

time reels back, 

returning always 

over and over

to those fragments 

best forgotten – 

which of course 

we don't forget.

A half-revealed eyebrow

in a photo, the reminiscent

shape of a stranger's shoulder,

a stray curl on a forehead ...

our lost children.

Written for Quadrille #23: curl at dVerse.

New Book!

Dear Poetry Readers –

If you are not on facebook, don't read my SnakyPoet personal blog or look at my official website, and haven't noticed the ad currently at the top of my Publications list in the right side-bar here on this blog – I just want to make quite sure you know I have a new book of poetry out: THREE CYCLES OF THE MOON.

It's a collaboration with old friends and esteemed fellow-poets Jennie Fraine and Helen Patrice. At SnakyPoet I describe how our friendships began, and how, many years later, we came to produce this book together. The article at the website also deals with the genesis of the book, in a briefer, more business-like, but I hope still interesting way.

Both of course are glorified ads, as is this. We think it's a terrific book and we'd love as many people as possible to read it. To that end, we made it an ebook, available at Smashwords in whatever format you require, for the ridiculously low price of $3.99 USD.

Enjoy!