Tag Archives: poem

NaPoWriMo: Anticipating Mayhem

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Public Speaking: The Clothesline Project

I knew the challenge was to be real

That the courage I needed would take nerves of steel

I went over the words that I wanted to say

I covered them over and over in every which way

I walked through the crowd feeding on them

Terrified that the words I’d speak, they’d condemn

I laughed, joked, and performed pulling pigs from my sack

When I stepped to the stage there was no turning back

I showed them my underbelly, one of my dark days

I used it to educate so my flashlight could help them find the way

I stood there in silence giving up a slight bow

Then I teetered off the stage with my mind in the now

I was greeted with warmth, forgiveness, and hugs

The healing I get is better than any other drug

I can shine my light of love into the crowd

I can speak my truth, though shaky, way out loud

And they know, like I do that I’ve struggled and cried

But they trust that what I tell them will never be lies.

NaPoWriMo: Art Speaks to Art

Chasing Angels and Blessed Mothers

Jamie Lopez is one of my favorite contemporary artists because she sings with her creations in a language I understand and frequently sing myself. She is alive, vibrant, willing to be compassionate, and shares her life with open arms. The painting I chose has owls and a mother which reminded me of an event that happened to me while I lived in Oro Valley just north west of Tucson, AZ.

http://fineartamerica.com/products/1-blessed-guidance-jamie-lopez-canvas-print.html

I drove down the darkened Arizona road

My pickup truck headlamps chased colors through the gray.

I didn’t have the radio on because the music sang in my head

The moon was barely rising when I saw

Crumpled in the middle of the road, white with feathers

A figure that stood up to the size of a small child

Gazing at me with eyes so large I took it for an owl

Skin so pale it appeared as milk. My brakes stopped willingly.

I began to panic. I began to wonder, but I realized neither.

With a gaze upwards, a woman dancing the skies with dark stars

Dangling pearls and diamonds on indigo, held open arms.

The creature spread wings as wide as the road side to side

Asphalt to asphalt; dust to dust; rising into the night of Tucson

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NaPoWriMo: Pain and Sleep

Pain in the Foot

Love, Lucky Happiness, and Courage. You can see Courage and part of the luck in this picture.

Love, Lucky Happiness, and Courage. You can see Courage and part of the luck in this picture.

The best thing that ever happened to me was pain

I’m not a masochist if that’s what you think

(and even if I was, that’s personal preference not pain).

I worked many jobs that didn’t quite fit me.

Who needs happiness when I got bills, ya get me?

Then I learned about pain when I bare handed broke my foot

THUMP! VOMIT! “That can’t be good.”

Two days of crying while I hobbled around before I got to see

A doctor who looked at me and exclaimed, “HOW could you BE?!”

I’d collapsed my foot bones, broke them in two

By rubbing a cream on my foots that were as stressed as I was.

But that pain, that pain that, two years later remains

Is a constant reminder of how much I’ve gained.

I have time to create, to speak, to volunteer.

I have time to be, to love, to give, to cheer.

Pain has pushed me to places I’d never have learned

Pain has given me new ideas to churn.

But Pain, dear pain, has given me more of myself

Than anything I’ve done, nay, anything else.

It’s taught me courage, strength, endurance

It’s taught me to keep going even with hindrance

Pain is a wicked friend but it never lies to me

It allows me to push limits; to set up healthy boundaries

Pain is the best thing that ever happened to me

My only issue is when it won’t let me sleep.

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Terms of Bereavement

That side of my bed is cold as death.

It fills me with such emptiness.

The lingering scent of absence

haunting the corners as if

they had a right to be there anymore.

I stare at the dreams we once

shared together

as they drift like chipped paint

on a breathless breeze from my ceiling.

I lose the fragmented pieces

as they get swept up each Monday

on chore day.

I recognize the longing for the echoed laughter,

the heat of your kiss,

the flesh of our creation sweating drops of love

onto my flesh on a Sunday afternoon.

I remember that night I stayed up

soaking your t-shirt with rejection

that you soothed with caresses of forgiveness.

I roll away from death

even as I reach my hand to grasp the pillow

that no longer smells like you

even though I’ve not changed the fabric case.

I’d hoped that it would imprison the thoughts

that made “we” an

unbreakable, indivisible, apocalyptic force

to be reckoned with in our unity.

I pull the blanket your mother made for you

(on our fourth Christmas wed)

over my head

tasting the salt of my regret

that I didn’t know that was the last.

That side of my bed is coffin cold.

It fills me with such emptiness.

NaPoWriMo: Finger Licking Good

PUERTO RICAN RED RICE

1 Tbs oil
1 pkg Smokey Links, sliced
1 lg onion, chopped
1 green pepper, chopped
1 6oz can tomato paste
1/2 lg jar salad olives
1 teas garlic powder
1 1/2 teas dry oregano
1Tbs cumin
1# (2 cups) rice

Heat the oil and the sausages medium sliced,

Onions, olives, and peppers add as they’re diced

Not yet for the paste, but add in the rice

Cook until it’s brown stirring it twice.

Add the rest of the ingredients, mixing well

Three fingers of water over, allow yourself to smell

The aromas as they blend

Cook until the liquid is absorbed and the rice is ten-

Der.

This makes me think of Demi, the lady from where this comes

She used to live upstairs from me on Caufield where I’ve from.

She taught my mom to make this, and it’s still a fave of mine

I think of her when I make this dish, each and every time.

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NaPoWriMo: I, Tree

The north eastern tree

Brrrr! Yah nasty wind, ye stripped me clothes off!

Ye made me blood retreat from my trunk

Burying me roots in the frozzzzzen earth

Unlike the kiss of your wetted white,

I will return to shatter your deaf silence

With barbaric spears of buds piercing yer with renewed life

I will return!

 The southern tree

Hey, ya’ll! Check this shit!

I was jist standin’ here by the sod of ‘his her road

An dis nassy smillin ting came at me bro!

Flippin me a nasty finger cut uppin der

Ya see that scar? Loss tree branches in a wind storm

Still stannin.

 The South western tree

Wwwwwwaaaaaaaattttttteeeeerrrrr

Fuck you nestle

 The north western tree

I am paramount to the indigenous people

That…HEY! Cut that…bad choice of words

STOP THAT! HEY! That’s my history! HEY!

YOU! LUMBERJACK!

TIIIIIIMMMMMMMBBBBBBEEEEERRR!

–thud—

The Midwestern tree

So ya see, I get used for maple syrup

Vermont thinks they have the major bunch,

But we’re really number one

Except for Vermont

 The plains states, middle America

Come on baby! Let’s do the TWISTER!

Whoosh! Caught me a trailer home!

OH! And a car! Roll the dice, weather,

Papa needs a new pair of 18 WHEE!-lers.

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NaPoWriMo: Coffee or Tea

Ode to Kawphy

Kawphy Thyme is my Bapa's brain child. It is a truly magical experience when done properly.

Kawphy Thyme is my Bapa’s brain child. It is a truly magical experience when done properly.

The dawn blooms silver-pink, barely lighting my path

I climb the high hillside, filling my lungs with thinning air

With burlap in hand, I carefully select the dark red ripest

They drip from the fruited tree like tiny whiny grapes

I don’t cherish the fruit as much as I covet the seeds

The dawn heats water per the dictator’s striking hand

I am in Kenya, Ethiopia, Costa Rica, Sumatra, Timor, New Guinea.

I am roasting in the sun. I am cool beneath the shade.

I am the Sabbats and Esbats wrapped in the Holy Grail

I am the earth which collects my offspring

I am the water that nourishes my roots

I am the air which determines my wealth of ideas

I am the fire on which my ovaries are brought to life.

I am the spirit wrapped in each element,

Indulged with a noisy slurping morning prayer,

“Ah, nectar of the Gods.”

I am Kawphy, not the coffee you seek.

I am the commune of commiseration

I am the lifeblood of the creators

I am the dreamless sleep of the catatonic believers

I am the dream of the hillside, delivered for a tithe of glazed donuts.

I am to be honored as family, birthed to live among emotions.

I am the power to move the world from my small hillside tree.

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The Eyes of Heaven

The eyes of the heavens looked into my beaten soul

With darkened lashes flashing seas of green

I was commanded to surrender to the bow

As the arrowed kiss pierced me in cosmic explosion

Birthing worlds anew with feathery curls

Desire painted the skies with lustful sunsets

Stunning the world awake with a flip of longing sunrise

Each blink of those intensely exquisite eyes

Made me worship my own demise with ecstasy.

NaPoWriMo: Valued Activities in My Poetry

Experience, Embrace, Enjoy

Southern Spring

Southern Spring

The winter haints poke billowy chill
In the clouds that pass my window sill
My sight obscuring by the white washed flowers
Coaxed from sleep by rumbling showers
I release my heater from whimpering to silent
As the spring rains come with stormy violence
I creep my window up inches by foot
Dependent on if the weather is good
The dogwoods bark perfume
As the red-buds come to bloom
The lazy flowering magnolia trees
Smell like Southern backyard orgies
I heed the spring promising summer lawns
With the haints of winter fading
Now
Gone.

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NaPoWriMo: Poetizing the News of 1913

The assignment is to write the news poetically, from 1913. I express that I do not believe every cop to be a representative of his brothers and sisters. I believe there are good cops as much as I believe there are good people everywhere. If this strikes your conscience, then perhaps you need to evaluate where you stand on race. I, personally, stand on the side of the Human Race with love in my heart. I do not condone the use of violence that seems prominent in law enforcement (admittedly it is reported because it riles up the masses) currently. It was in 1913 but for a different reason even if there are strong similarities.

Negro and Phagan

Negro and Phagan murder trial headline

The Knights of Mary Phagan

The Knights of Mary Phagan no longer wear robes of white

Instead they put on the shades of gray, wear badges in broad daylight

The Knights of Mary Phagan were making “justice” of perceived wrongs

While now the blue badged brothers sing the same lyrics of the lynching song

Mary Phagan was a 13 year old girl, found murdered on an April night

When the nightwitch discovered the heinous crime, reported it forthright

Battered was her death, filthy with dust her face,

Her childish life void of life or innocence in grace

Her neck emblazoned with her own petticoat, her childish body ransacked

That the responding officers were convinced at first their victim to be black

But she was Mary Phagan, just shy of turning 14

just trying to get her paycheck, instead her labor demeaned.

Leo Frank, a Jewish man was accused of committing the crime

The evidence said he’d dragged her face down, which caused the face of grime

But yellow journalism sensationalized the slightest breath of truth

The state of Georgia ran amok chasing stories like the fabled golden goose.

After Leo Frank was convicted and sentenced to life in prison,

The Knights of Mary Phagan, refused this coward judge’s give in

They stormed against the “who cares” guards and took Frank to the lynching tree

Where they made strange fruit of the Jewish man just like they would a darkie.

Over a hundred years have passed since street “justice” faded to shade

But now we’re shown it differently, yellow faux journalism with failing grade.

And we’re told, to look over here while the story is in plain sight

So we can’t tell the difference of 37,000 days and nights

The Knights of Mary Phagan no longer wear robes of white

Instead they put on the shades of gray, wear badges in broad daylight

The Knights of Mary Phagan were making “justice” of perceived wrongs

While now the blue badged brothers sing the same lyrics of the lynching song

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