First Freeze

Crystalline phases

white frost, turning greens to brown,

water as slayer.

Poetry Bus: "Not yet"

Not yet, Yorick,

don't clean my bones,

someday, but not yet.

Someday, you may bury me

in rainbow socks

to feel our dance.

Burst bubbles

like a belly laugh

crests the surface of a lake.

Bounce a rib-bone
like heartbeats,
on a drumhead of goatskin.

Wind me 'round
with beads of amber
breasts to navel, warm as sun.

Store rain enough
to quench thirsty kisses
in desert glass of O'Keefe's sunsets.

My genes alive beyond
my life won't recall
nursing from my breasts,

sleeping in my crescent lap,
nor private words of lullabies
to quiet tearful nights.

Someday, they might
wash my flesh,
cold and heavy, but not yet.

They may dress my remains

in a tie-dyed tee,

and tomboy's cut-off jeans.

But for a princess
of the earth, please add a
crown of flowered wreaths.

They will smell my ashes

in the smoke,
heft my bones to rattle.

But I am cycling as
the full moon glows,

and the insistent, crisp wind blows,

as guitar notes strum,
as pen and paper hum.
I’m still saving my life,

not to lose it yet.
Not my bones, poor Yorick,

don't clean them yet!

Chris Alba, at Enchanted Oak HERE hosts this week's poetry bus.  Her prompt is:
Poems that address your existence on this earth. Good, bad, or indifferent, tell us something, anything, about your life here.

Poetry bus comes from blogger Totalfeckineejit  http://totalfeckineejit.blogspot.com/

("Alas poor Yorick, I knew him, Horatio." a famous quote from Shakespeare's Hamlet, in which the subject of the play holds the skull of his nursery servant, jester, and castle clown in a graveyard at night.  In certain southern Mexican communities, and in Pomuch on the Yucatan peninsula, the bones of the ancestors are exhumed on the Day of the Dead, "Dia de los Muertos", cleaned, redressed with new clothing, fresh food and favored items, to be reburied again.)

Happy Birthday at Enchanted Oak

Today is Chris's birthday at Enchanted Oak blog. HERE  Wish her joy that we share the earth the day she was born.

EARTH SONG

Listen to things more often than beings.

Hear the voice of the fire, hear the voice of the water,

Listen in the wind to the sighing of the bush:

This is the ancestors breathing.

Those who are dead are never gone;

The dead are not down in the earth:

They are in the trembling of the trees,

In the groaning of the woods,

In the water that runs, in the water that sleeps,

They are in the hut, they are in the crowd.

Those who are dead are not ever gone;

They are in the woman's breast, they are in the wailing of a child,

They are in the burning log and in the moaning rock.

They are in the weeping grasses, in the forest and the home.

Listen to things more often than beings.

Hear the voice of fire, hear the voice of water.

Listen in the wind to the sighing of the bush.

This is the ancestors breathing.

(traditional song from Senegal)

my first post, 1 year ago

The rhythm of the light

rolls away, rolls away.

An orange orb bounces
on the road, on the road

Signaling the way to begin
or end the day, end the day.

The strain of my feet
chips away, chips away.

My heart heats up a blanket
which drags down, drags down,

While the rhythm of the light
rolls away, rolls away.

Skin’s cold dark drink
renews my speed renews my speed

In center of the road,
tempting pumas, tempting pumas.

Trees are hiding frogs
croaking song, croaking song

and merge with humming crickets
strumming beats, strumming beats

To Night’s rolling blackness
Infinite, infinite:

The rhythm of the light
rolls away, rolls away.



Thanks to my inspirations, Pablo Neruda's Pumas in Love Sonnett XI if you haven't read it.  Blues musicians.
Chris at Enchanted Oak, happy birthday! Running before twilight when the earth glows.  Death when the blackness rolls infintely. Fellow poets and writers and bloggers who take me under their wings and fly with the wingbeat of the rhythm of the light.......

for Wordless Wednesday (aka Tuesday Toes)

Do you recognize

the coastal trails,

 estuaries,

 sand spits,

bays,

famous landmarks,






and Tuesday Toes?


(volcanic morros, seven in all, the "sisters" they are called, here standing upon the black one....)

My seeds are flying.

Windy forces lift them high

to find fertile ground.

Sheilds and swords protect

in battle and hunting games.

Minds must find their own.

my two boys won art awards in a county-wide annual scholarship contest this weekend, you have seen some versions of their work,  another of the lake in snow won 1st place for all high schools in the county, it took time and effort and attention to help them pursue their goals, what a return!

Gratitude for:

for the fertile crescent in the desert

crescent moon changing my tune

crescent smiling when I touch

crescent rocking into crescendo

crescent of your arms at rest

 
 
This is a flash fiction, poem in exactly 160 characters, spaces included.  Our Sunday 160 host is Monkey Man HERE .  Visit, comment, and try your own on Sunday.  Let him know of course.

Friday Flash Fiction 55, for poets

We can’t all be poets, but

with only one,

we can live…..


For the poet takes us

to the deepest, dankest

worm’s stank bed,



drags our fingers

leafing through

the crumbling acrid yeasty loam.


He overturns bones

to dig us out and

quenches with liqueur


distilled in dew

from the bud

of the deepest red.



This is a flash fiction poem, in exactly 55 words, hosted by Mr Knowitall, HERE  .  Write your own story or poem, let us know, and post on Friday!  Should I change "red" to "read"?
Photo by J.Giese.
I am grateful to the talented and truthful poets I heard tonight, who lifted me and shredded me and wrung me out.  I am ready to get up and face another day...

shields

Aura is a veil
proximity frames the day

ravens hide inside
















Photo: Shaver Lake, CA. by J.T. Giese

veiled threat

Close enough to touch


veil of fog shields nearer threats

horizons will wait.

Wordless Weds. = Tuesday Toes

Leonardo knows, the smile Mona Lisa shows, and today's lack of prose, are due to Tuesday Toes!

This is my answer to wordless wednesday, to say a brief Hi and check in mid-week my fellow bloggers.  I am ok, not in any hospital (unless working) and not writing (unless on a new computer charting system - aack!)

I don't travel much, but started these photo shoots after college, to add humor and a foreground gage to scenic travel shots.  These lovely piggies are compliments of my college roommate, Anne G, taken from the Louvre last month!  Thank you, Anne. As Kim said in response, I bet the guards thought they'd seen it all until now!

Feel free to comment, or send your own shots of life in your shoes! Ha!

Magpie Tales: cock cold

Cockeyed, she scries,

as if a diesel fume plume

filled the colorless sky.

Her skin shivers

in a spidery twitching,

awash in a wasabi sinus scald.

Should she shave her head,

rub ashes until pimples puss,

lay prone and moan over a backless grave-

-as women in the past had done

when their man was gone?



It feels like pushing a steam roller

wading upstream in the river-mud

to shove a suitcase down the hall.

Why do we only

call men

cuckold?





This is a Magpie Tale, read some fabulous other tales, and enter your poem to this image promt HERE

Friday's 55 flash fiction: Apathy

To avoid apathy, I have conversations with myself.




Apathy isn't

A Pathetic Ye

A-pathetic Me

Chronicity of the late last minute deadline…..

Dead line/transeunt

Disarticulate/repair

Pre-postulate/prepare

Dis-intelligence/disguise

Disintegrate/improvise

Indifference/recognize

Transience/stabilize

Pathos/Aperture

A Path
To sadness/Is in a bottle or a stimulant or a week in bed.



(sorry if this doesn't make sense to anyone but me.  blame it on a sleepless night.)

Theme Thursday. love is rough

The ocean is rough today:
the wind blows sand from my hands through my heart.

Sea clashing, frothing the rocks, leaping into the air:
the sound continues as I move out of sight.

The wind brushes its fingers through silvery grasses:
a snare-drum song carries upward.

It transforms in the moaning of the bare cypress branches,
still in view of the sea.

Rocks rattle in a pocket against languid fingers,
after a sky-bleached day.

Once dried in the wind and sunlight,
a cotton towel rasps my steamy skin.

A rope swing tightens as it’s wound,
before dizzily spinning out.

Eyes spark to instant attention,
as if a finger or a foot pokes into the comfort zone.

A joy-juiced hug, rocks you over your feet
without knocking you to the ground.

Share a whisper of fear in a doorway,
Shhh, don’t tell anyone.

A touch of coarse hair raises
boar-bristling, blood-tingling life.

I sink my teeth into the source
of my hunger and my satisfaction

I like it rough, I’m finding out.


This is a reprint of a poem I wrote at the beach a while back.  I adjusted the first line and it fit for Theme Thursday's writing prompt HERE  , Megan provided the photo above. Visit her and the other writers of Theme Thursday and comment, PLEASE!

Wordless Weds. = Tuesday Toes

The best part of Halloween is making the costumes, the worst part is finding out only 1 in 10 of my family had actually SEEN "Avatar" (sigh).

Microfiction Monday: Switched

If Ophelia traded sugar and spice

for the eye of newt and tongue of frog,

it would’ve tasted awful
switching her from fairy tale to real girl.