Tag Archives: poetry

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surf

Have you been on a beach with surf and small rocks? The rocks click as the surf rolls in and out.

 

surf

 

it’s hard hard to let go of the dead

harder still to let go of the living

and you say to yourself
they love me, they just don’t understand

you try and try and try to explain

“Don’t talk to us!” they say

Whispers return to you

a garbled version of your words
out of context
twisted
they twist your words

you keep hoping

hope slowly ebbs
tide going out
sand in an hourglass
no, slower
erosion of a rock
tumbled in surf
smashed on other rocks
over and over and over

water wins
the sea wins
hope erodes

let go

they do love you

and they are afraid

they cannot let you close
they cannot listen

your words are fearful

vulnerable is fearful
speaking your truth is fearful
you authentic is fearful

they shake

agony of longing

to be authentic

let them go

and maybe love
and longing
will toss them as rocks in the surf

until they too are changed

by

black on white

black on white

white on black

it doesn’t matter

angels falling
made to fall
at peace with falling

I let myself fall
at peace with falling

and wonder what that means?

death?

no

though there are times I long
for the Beloved
for union with the Beloved
for all in one
and one all

let go

when an angel falls
they are at peace

they are at peace
with falling

people

see black and white

people

see good and evil

people

separate
label
categorize

angels don’t

black on white
or
white on black

it doesn’t matter
there is no separation
we are one

Beloved

One

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Mundane Monday #158: all of the squares

Welcome to Mundane Monday #158, today’s theme is “all of the squares”. That is from an AA Milne poem called Lines and Squares:

Whenever I walk in a London street,
I’m ever so careful to watch my feet;
And I keep in the squares,
And the masses of bears,
Who wait at the corners all ready to eat
The sillies who tread on the lines of the street
Go back to their lairs,
And I say to them, “Bears,
Just look how I’m walking in all the squares!”

Mundane Monday is an exercise in joy for me: look for a photograph to of something ordinary that also is arresting or brings up something like the above poem. Many thanks again to Trablogger for letting me continue the prompts. Here are his directions and suggestions for better shots: https://trablogger.com/better-your-photography-before-the-mundane-monday/. If you have a photograph on the prompt, link to this and next week I will list yours! Also, tell me if I miss anyone.

Last week’s beautiful shots, for Mundane Monday #157: two for one.

K. L. Allendoerfer here: color matched set.

Colette B. here: fork.

 

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Butterfly Girl Comes to Visit

For the Daily Prompt: carve. I think of skiing, bicycling. And I think of a piece of my heart. I wrote this in the early 2000s.

Butterfly Girl Comes to Visit

She is so beautiful with her wings
multicolored many splendored lights caught and multiplied
as she flutters

I freeze
I am an ogre
Huge and clumsy
I know from past past many times
Not to touch you
My rough fingers have brushed the tiny feathers from your wings
You cry in pain and your flight becomes erratic
My kiss is just as bad
Rough lips
If I move the wind of my passing blows you against a window
You fall stunned

I hold and crush
the box of feelings that can hurt you
Sorrow, anger, fear, dismay
Even fatigue turns my aura red
And scorches your wings

I hate to cause you pain

Fly butterfly girl
My baby needs me, my pager rings
My ogre husband stirs
The effort of holding still plain on his face
I can’t hold still much longer

Butterfly girl
Fly on home

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The uninhabitable spaces between us

still in my heart

why are you there?

you have sold me out
more than once
disappeared when I was sick
returning when I was better
long after I stopped being contagious
and noted when the news caught up
with what I’d been saying about opiates

she’s been talking about this
you say to others
I realize that you did not believe me
until the news agreed

another with words
“If you make me choose
I will choose her.”

I think “you just did.”
do you hear?
that is a threat
to shut me down
to shut me up
to shut me out

you won’t choose
I choose now
I walk away from your threat

another tells me to visit
and talk about her dead

she has refused to talk about
my dead
to me
for five years

how can she ask me
to talk about hers?

I walk away
kicking the falling leaves

I carry each of you
in my heart

as the space between us

widens

 

For Mindlove’sMisery’s Sunday Writing Prompt #288.

Over the Rhine: All of my favorite people.

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release

For the Photo Challenge: layered. And today’s poem.

 

release

I can’t do it, Beloved

or no
I don’t know how, Beloved

release old grief, I am told

I am to have the intention daily
to release old grief

it sits in my throat
aching lump, knot, old
I don’t know how old
is it from before birth
I haven’t looked up whether antibodies
to tuberculosis
cross the placenta
attacking

Kell kills
that is one of the antibodies
that can kill a fetus

I have the grief
a tiger by the tail

at first I was afraid
that releasing it would lose
some core part of myself
that the me I have built
is the nacre, a pearl
wrapped around a core of grief

but Beloved
I try to listen
I try so hard to listen
to have faith
why pay for help
without attempting to follow
the ideas
unless they are so clearly wrong

conversation
with myself
the past the woman the girl the child the fetus
let the grief go
gently

Beloved
maybe I am not gentle enough
full speed ahead
maybe I need to cradle the grief more
rock it, comfort it, thank it
grief, you protected me so much
from the patterns in the family

Beloved
maybe I need to thank the grief
before I let it go

 

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I am sorry about the wings

I am sorry about the wings

During the massage today
my poor back aches so
where my wings should be

Guilt

If the Beloved gives me wings
I should fly

but I would rather be in the water
I feel so much safer here

and then I think
maybe I should stop
jumping off of cliffs…..

I should stop jumping off of cliffs….

I follow that thought
I should stay in the water
keep my tail and scales

I have come out so many times

lately only for you

you will not come in the water

you don’t want to hear me sing

you want me to be silent and listen

you want me to agree about the past

and collapse

I say here

here is the future

I can see it
and you don’t answer

you don’t listen
when I return to the sea

you call me
and you come to the edge of the sea
to call me
but you won’t come in

I have come out to you
on those painful legs
for which I sacrifice my voice

you would have scales and a tail
if you came to me
come to the future with me

we will meet at the edge of the sea
me in the sea
you on the beach
and talk

but this is goodbye
I won’t come out again

and I say to the Beloved
I am sorry about the wings
I will use the wings

my back was so sore
where the wings were

the wings are back

I still have my scales and tail

I rise to the surface of the sea
I spread my wings
scales, tail and wings

I begin

now I will fly

8/3/16

Another fog photograph from last Saturday. Why don’t we spell it phog?

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I miss your skin

I miss your skin

the planes of shoulder blades
layers of muscle overlying them
the trapezius sweeping up to the base of the skull
and down to the tenth vertebrae
like a wing pointed inwards
on your back
and attached to bones

more and more in clinic
I pull out Netter’s beautiful drawings
and show people the bones
and that the bones are not just floating
in a sea of muscle and organs
every bone is attached to muscles
to tendons to ligaments
together in an elaborate
beautiful
working system
and if one muscle is torn too loose
or tightens to protect itself
and heals scarred calcified
too short
it pulls on the other muscles
and tendons and bones

I miss your skin
your muscle
your tendons
your ligaments
your bones

and all the rest

 

I took the photograph in the boatyard in 2016. Sometimes I dream I have feathers….