Kite String

The way that wind lends tension to the kite string
this is how I am without you here and now,
here in the narrowest of narrow spaces.

The way that sand is the mission and fate of stone
so am I scattered without you.  Here and now,
in the broken, lightless night, only the stars are fixed.

Tonight the wasted, unreflective moon’s in flux
above an icy earth.  Here and now, without you
here beside me, there is no dark so cold, so deep.

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NaPoWriMo 4/26/24
~ alliteration / consonance / assonance ~
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Ragtag Daily Prompt – Friday
04.26.2024
~ String ~
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The Most I Could Do

An oldie (written almost half a century ago) originally appeared in the May, 2000 issue of Able Muse, resurrected here for this week’s Open Link Night #360 at the dVerse Poets Pub.

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The Most I Could Do
         –for J Lopes

I watched: her breasts grow large
Her nipples swell her belly
Barge-like ferocious with child
Comes knocking
Like the moon at a midnight door
While angry he at home puked
and swore

Grudgingly she grew. He
Distracted, drunken, sunk
Beyond his own oblivion,
Telephones:
I don’t remember what / if he said:
The phone or he was nearly dead
or dead

And what could be said, then?
What could one say? The day is
Ended? The night is coming on?
What to do?
I offered her a cup of tea;
The most I could do: far more
than he.

Erasing The Ex-es

Erasing the Ex-es

While you’re away I dream about
Debbie in her late-night soccer bar,
her pierced tongue in some biker’s ear
but her eyes on me in the corner.

All day long the following day
I think about the Grace I knew
in college, how I wrote for her
about crows on the phonelines,
and how Patty knew I was falling
so she invited Grace and Debbie
to visit us at the beach
where we all sat around on the sand
and who loved whom was settled.

And yesterday I sat in the sunshine
up on Prospect Hill, thinking about
a Kathy I’ve never mentioned and
the Susie who took me to Canada
and red-haired Beth, and Linda.

This morning I sorted the mail
and put out the trash.  The sky
is the same sky, the grass is
the same green green as when we met.

The ghosts that still haunt me, even
after all these years, are insubstantial
in the face of my longing for you.

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(Rewritten For)
Fandango’s One-Word Challenge
FOWC 04.25.2024
~Girlfriend~
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NaPowriMo 2024
(off prompt)
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Not To Mention The Fries

 Not To Mention The Fries

It’s hard to tell the plastic
from the plastic here; hard
to know where it’s safe to
sit, or if a couple thousand
unwashed hands have
handled it all before; hard
to tell the burger from the
bigger burger, the burgers
from the fish burgers, the
chicken burgers, the chicken
bites, the bite-sized breakfast
burrito, the bagel bonanza, or
even the brown paper towels
in the otherwise sparkling
men’s room.
                      And it’s all
served up from one big old
gloppy vat, a tub in the back
where no one ever goes and
lives to tell the tale; all served
up happily by identical pimples,
ladles at the ready, smiles set,
plopping it all onto paper-lined
plastic trays, only the wrappers
to tell them apart, or packaged
for take-out, nestled in greasy
pasteboard that, if it had to,
could probably pass for dessert.

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Weekly Prompt Wednesday Challenge
04.24.2024
~Menu~
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NaPoWriMo (Off Prompt)

 

 

 

Sounderminded

I’m reworking a previously posted post, fearfully fretting of failing Quickly’s question: “Can you create something cool that passes for poetry; something that sings a singular simple sound?”

 Quickly suggested vowel sounds, but I went with initial consonants:

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 Sounderminded

He wanted to 
capture her attention
and hold it
almost forever.

He decided on G.
“Guh, guh, guh,” he said.

She looked up.

“Guh,” he said again,
smiling; then:

“Gum. Gum. Gummie.
Gobble Gobble Glitch.
Glossolalia? Gone!

Gotta get goofy!
Gotta get great!

Gimme grateful giggles!
Gimme giggly Grins!

Go, go, go girl!
Go, girl, go!!”

She grinned;
got back to her book.

“Oh, Babe,” he blurted,
believing she was bored,
“Maybe B’d be better;
B by bedtime, Baby! 
Believe me,
B’s the best!”

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Quickly’s NaPoWriMo Prompt
04.23.2024
~Vowel Sounds~
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NaPoWriMo 2024 #23
(Off Prompt)
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Sunset Approaches

It’s Earth Day 2024 as well as Haibun Monday, and Frank J Tassone asks us to join him at the dVerse Poets Pub and create/share a Haibun (prose/haiku combo) incorporating some reference to remind ourselves of that fact.

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Shame On The Mirror

I’m not sure I can care anymore about people who don’t try to alter the fate of our shared planet. I used to pray for them; pray they’d see the light; see they’ve screwed things up. But I know it’s not fair to just blame others, especially since I’ve become one of them.

tomorrow’s another day
we should have done more
–final sunset approaches—

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dVerse Poets Pub
Haibun Monday 04.22.2024
~ Earth Day ~
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Three-Way

Three-Way

It was a deadlock or a draw
or whatever you want to call it,
but either way, neither the
keyboard nor the blank journal
had enough oomph to get him
to give her one last kiss and
offer up some lame excuse for
leaving her there, alone in bed.

And their battle was not alone:
the last half-full journal page
contained an unfinished sonnet
demanding a closing couplet;
his laptop had almost forgotten
his living room’s easy-chair lap;
and she was left lying there in bed,
unsatisfied, watching him drift off
swearing she’d never marry a poet.

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NaPoWriMo 2024
Day 22
~ The Fight ~
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Near Miss

 Miss

What does it mean,
he wonders, waking,
to dream so clearly
a fear of falling, a fear
of edge and precipice;
to dream so clearly
of rocks, of ledges,
no handhold near,
no safety anywhere,
no hope of return,
no hope.

And yet, somehow
in the dream
just after he falls
he does return;
returns unhurt, returns
alive, ungrazed, and
astonished; makes it
back inside safely,
back into his bed
amazed, avoiding
the great grey inevitable
one more time.

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NaPoWriMo 2024
(off prompt)
Day Twenty-One
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Triku

A haiku triptych written in response to four prompt sites: Poetry Super Highway (3 birds/bees haiku), Poets and Storytellers United (April), Fandango’s One Word Challenge (valiant), and Weekly Prompts Weekender (flow).

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Springish

crocus blooms early
—still only the morning crows—
half-way through April

snow drifts melt into small streams
winter flows away 
valiant chickadees arrive

windows will open
all things green will reappear
—months of waiting end—

 

 

 

Dona Nobis Pacem

Why Wars Never End
(Or)
Recruits

It was pretty clear on day 37
that we weren’t going to last
much longer down here in the
collapsed bunker, haunted by
our memories of life above.

Most of us just want to
be found and freed, released
back into our ruined gardens,
our rubbled homes and playgrounds;
to stand in some fresh and sunlit air.

Some want something else:

A few among us want revenge;
want to hunt down and destroy
those who have done this to us;
to return their fire with an inferno;
to make the enemy pay.

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NaPoWriMo 2024
04.19.24
~ Haunt / Hunt ~
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