B: Bird of Blue and Black

Uhm, so "A" is bogging me down and will be back-dated...don't tell! Here's something completely different for "B."

Bird of Blue and Black

Bird of blue and black
beak dipped to the feeder on the deck:
             The mountain is shrouded
             in sun and snow.

You have mined my body of seeds
for treasure and for sustenance,
flicking away the shells with your
beaked mouth.
           I am the feeder;
           am shrouded in sun and snow;
           am the wind which blows you from
your feast and lifts you to mountains
new and far, deserts of sands
in piled shapes you will
not describe to me, smog and cities
that shall remain unnamed
where they fall into that final ebb
of waving sea.
          
            But all is me.

So do not tell me these things,
bird of blue and black,
nor snap your greedy wings or beak.
          (For I am the seeds of a mountain
          the dunes you drive past
          the smog over the County
          the rush of salted water like tears.)
What is light is light and not is not,
shrouded both in sun and snow.

And you are flown;
          the feeder empty.

Random Scribblings in Nebraska

Warning: the following is unedited and the result of...35 sleepless hours and counting. Hence the ... . 'Cuz I had to count. lol. Oh, and coffee; the following is the result of 35 sleepless hours [and counting] and coffee. And yes, I did make up my own word. So there. 



Oh Snide, Bitter Omaha, How Inspiring. Is This Tongue in Cheek?

Oh Omaha how I hate you but
your sidewalks are dusted
in snow and ice
and it makes me smile and
it makes my nose run and
it makes me write


Oh for the snow gray grown black winter
you that are so white once you dust
down it doesn’t seem right our grime
and our dirt
there it is
where are you


I am one woman in this snide wide city and
my own snidity is naked to one and all oh how
you bluster around me
bluster and fall
one and all
you buildings you
people
Nothing is nothing
that is all


Bitter cold bite and blowing through the
door why do you make me so bold
and so fearful
of nothing Is nothing


Change that music yeah find a
new station I’m on my way
to Amtrak and I
like blues too


Red bicycle framed upon the wall
your wheels don’t roll but you’re up
nice and tall decorating corn bound downtown
coffee shop loft walls
that must be the best heaven for bicycles


I have decided that I shall not
decide why America is wondrous or horrid
keep your opinions to yourself
nothing is Nothing



And finally, a poem!

Something I threw together this weekend.  First in a loooorrrng time. I wanted it to be all nice and neat and metered and whatnot, but that flew right out the window. *sigh* As you can probably tell. Tweaks are still in the shop.

Crystal Quartz Penchant

In an overpriced apparel store I once saw

a beautiful display of necklaces. One would
think all jewelry is beautiful; all jewels divine.
It is not so. But when my fingertips flit-lit
upon the strands of fine gold heavy with crystals,
silicate soil bits still stylishly attached
to their tips, I could not hesitate. Bought one; slipped
it into my pocket, that refined Earthen bling.
No need for a whole plastic bag; it’s now cool
to “Go Green.” But that is not why I buy such things.
My mother’s main window back home is a wide yawn
of a bore, monstrously sized for a view comprised
entirely of highway for tourists. Across
its top there long have ranged the chunky, shiny hunks
of crystal that she loves so dearly, some fashioned
into teardrops, some stars, some awkward hearts, and some
plain and unadorned, content with hexagonal
superiority. There the afternoon light
bends though their depths and becomes a million different
colors. People say the spectrum of the rainbow
is redorangeyellowgreenblueandviolet.
This is inaccurate. A rainbow is dancing
continuity. This is what light becomes through
crystals; this live and dancing space, which, from the far
side, we cannot see. Our shadow will blot out light,
eclipse the sun, so that all we see is a rock,
dead, mom would say, as the proverbial doornail.

WPC 2: IDK

Weekly Poetry Challenge

 Prompt 2

*A short one, but here it is all the same:

IDK

Generations X Y Z your zipper is

down on the world wide

web global economy individual

autonomy

stages of war

waged with the words of binaried

network centric dynamos.

Don't lose the connection.

Okay, Let's Make It Monday...

Long story short, I was behind for my first post in this challenge. Luckily, it's just the first, so I can change the rules. Let's make the weekly poem post come on Mondays instead of the end of the weekends. Sounds good.

Prompt one for my challenge was a poem called "Hero Worship"  by Amy Lowell. I stayed with the same format and theme, just a variation, for my poem...it still needs quite a bit of work.

Sonnet # 20 (?)

Your Face on the News

Your face was on the news the other night.

You spoke of heroes, and you spoke of truth

but did not mention once yourself. In light

of this omission I recalled our youth

together, of the bus from project grad—

your words of the future— going to war

me to school. While I was away, you had

looked for my parents; the tornado tore

around them. You’d rescued them, pulled them loose

from all sorts of sorrows unknown to me.

Because you are a hero.  It’s not news,

my long friend. It’s something the world can see.

My friend, my guardian, my own true hero;

I’m so thankful for you; this you must know.

Weekly Wednesday Poetry Prompt

So, as the post title suggests, I think I'm going to do my own poetry challenge....for.... say, the rest of the year. But none of that daily business; that's killer. That's hard-core. In short, I am too lazy and too untried. *grin*

Instead, I'll put up a prompt every Wednesday as a note to myself and any other lovelies who'd like to join (yes, I'm looking at you!). Then, perhaps over the weekend--I'm leaning towards Sunday--I'll post my poem that matches the prompt. Anyone else who would like to do this with me, well, I can post yours as well, with a link back to your own page. Plus, I can add you to a specific blog roll at the right. It's a win-win!

The concept is a bit rough, but I think you follow my drift. Everybody get ready!

Next on the to-do list: Figure out a better name for it than "Weekly Wednesday Poetry Prompt." LOL.

Listening to the Whippoorwhill

NAPOWRIMO Day 30

Good gracious me...made it, barely. I have to say I am an awful poet when there's a daily deadline to be met! I would however, be interested in a weekly version of a poetry challenge, maybe for a year or till the end of the year or something. My brain just doesn't churn out poetry once a day, I've discovered.

But I would never have known that about myself had I not tried the NAPOWRIMO daily challenge, so overall I'm quite pleased with myself.

Here's [to] the last one....

Highways

In the nights there are roads that lie quiet

and untraveled but for the blowing wind.

The pavement is black as the night itself

so that together, the roads and the night

are the unfathomable distances

of a soul full of dark and wondrous things;

nocturnal miracles, thought to be glimpsed

only by fortune and by destiny.

Or headlights, perhaps, to brighten the dark.

On Warm Weekends

NAPOWRIMO Day 29

On Warm Weekends

Tourist season

is the reason

there’s anything here.

Raucous racing

boats drag down

the highways on hitches.

Aboard their decks dwell

the cowed, bored upper-middle-class

who fled their suburbs in Suburbans.

They’ll pee their names in the lake

and show off their fake tans

while drunk; then go home.

Such beauty and stupidity.

Economy has a sardonic

sort of humor.   

One Mistake

NAPOWRIMO Day 28

One Mistake and You’re Back

I have been busy this year. The garden

stretches clear around

the back.

Radishes, carrots,

cucumbers and garlic, tomatoes,

potatoes, beans and basil,

rosemary, lavender, bolting cilantro,

a hybrid tea rose, lilies, flags

and peonies—

so many things, all

in the race to grow.

Winter was heavy, full

of sleep-inducing snow,

and then the flow of the melt

combined with spring rains

left everything soggy and cold.

Two days of ninety degrees!

The flowers, at least, began

to feel bold.

So eager they were, that when

the heat broke they

almost choked in their hurry

to die back.

Now the ground warms slow;

so does all the garden. Fool me once;

fool me twice.

But the sun shines

and we grow

to reach the sky.

NAPO's Belated

NAPOWRIMO Days 24, 25 and 26 Belated,

and Day 27

Well, I got behind and have finally caught up, although a small part of me feels like I'm cheating since I used this opportunity to do a series of haiku. I couldn't resist, they're just so fun to write. Anyway, here we are, my belated NAPOWRIMO poems...

Midwest Spring

Each field waves clover

far in every direction.
Hares grow fat this year.

      Tough man stands in door
      before spring thunderstorming.
      Tornado shuts door.

               Feet of snow fell thick
               this winter, as did spring rains.
               The levies will break.

                           Ninety-five degrees,
                           forty-five degrees; who knows.
                           The rose skulks; grows slow.

Mosquito Weather

NAPOWRIMO Day 23

Did a lot of garden stuff this afternoon, between the storms. Can you tell? *laugh*

Mosquito Weather

The woods are agleam

with the sheen of spring

rains.

Wear bug spray.

Tea Time Sestina

NAPOWRIMO Day 22

This is my first ever sestina! It's more than a bit rough around the edges, but hey, that's what learning is all about, right? P.S. I'm having an awful time with the formatting, so I appologize if it doesn't look right on your screens!

Tea Time Sestina

When I was younger, my girlfriends and I would gather for tea 

on a summer porch facing a fine garden. There, the sounds of ceramic

and laughter, scents of scones piled with cream, the warmth of sunlight,

sweet of sneaked sugar cubes from the dish, jokes about the highway

at the edge of town which would one day lead to new lives and old age

left our hearts enamored with the future’s beauty.

Too often we talked of movie stars and divine new cars, in regards to beauty;

brains stuffed with the fluff of pop culture nonsense. But during our teas

we tended to our wishes, hopes and dreams, befitting our age,

and so at once felt very young and very wise, and loved that the ceramic

tea sets and their elixir. One by one we grew up, and left for the highway.

Long and unknown, the road was inevitably bright with that warm sunlight.

We found the world a wide, wild place, full of all sorts of sunlight;

some dark and fierce, some blown open, some even pink with beauty,

(New England… Oklahoma… Paris),  making us drive our respective highways

blinded.  Babies. Studies.  Hubbies. Jobs good and cruddy.  And still, our tea.

Truffles and delicate eclairs shaped like swans. Roses on our plates. Gilded ceramic,

and the garden with fat pet rabbit beloved from childhood till old age…

each memory sweet as sugar, the secrets and the victories—and I’m a young age

still, for now. And when I am not, I shall build a porch to catch the sunlight

of the afternoons and evenings, and fill that bright place with the ceramic

remnants of people’s lives bought at estate sales; fragile, breakable beauty

of a mismatched sort, piled with delicate yummies to tempt those reluctant to tea,

perhaps a haven to even those prone to a life too full of the highway.

The day I build that porch may be far down my own stretching highway.

Each day it looks longer and fuller of hills; I think this must be age

hinting I’m finally becoming a grown up lady. Perhaps I should just drink more tea;

I’m determined to be young enough to not know what to believe of the sunlight

on my winding path. In that way, the stress of life becomes a taste of beauty

like bitter cocoa to the chocolate which melts on sunlit antique ceramic.

There are so many metaphors between life and tea. The ceramic

a participant in people’s lives, the drive of those lives down their own highway,

perhaps on the way to a tearoom to gather with friends (that’s true beauty)

and wonder  (when young) what will happen, and then (with age)

remind one another what did; the future and the past all aglow in the sunlight

shining upon a smart group of friends, enjoying a nice long tea.

This is why I love ceramic cracked with use and age

of some other person’s highway, dulled by some other sunlight

and filled with dreams of beauty and hope…such is tea.

Brain Fry

NAPOWRIMO Day 21

Alright, confession time: Perhaps before attempting to do a month long poetry challenge, I could have prepared myself, by, oh, maybe, you know, picking up poetry writing again, beforehand... *laugh* Derrr. This is suddenly like a 25 k marathon, when my tired little you-know-what can't even make a sprint happen with a gun to my head. Whew! Just a little longer than a week to go...

Now prepare yourself! Here's my smashing haiku for the day. I know how wonderfully well written this is, and how perfectly it meets the rigid and aesthetically ideal demands of haiku, and so on and so forth...prepare to be amazed! *snort*

Brain Fry

Poem twenty-one:

April dwindles on and on;

few more, then I'm done.

Rain and Drought

NAPOWRIMO Day 20

Yet another day for experiments! Today I tried a diamante, a very deliberate concrete-sort of poem almost, but the focus is on the contrast of a thing. Here's what I scibbled; I'm still not sure about the shift in the middle:

Rain and Drought

Rain

scatters splatters;

clouding-flowing-flooding

muddy growth...remedies parched,

baring-drying-dusting;

arid, windswept

drought.

Cadenced Landscapes

NAPOWRIMO Days 15,16 and 18--Belated

Very late and in no particular order, here are three more NAPOWRIMO poems. Hooray! Now I'm all caught up--poetically, at least. And no, the post title has nothing to do with anything, save I thought it had a pretty ring to it. *laugh*

Okay, no more hem-hawing. Here you go:

Dinner

The gravy swirls into smooth bubbles which pop

brown across the stove top. Hot outside today, the air above

the stove is hazy; away from the burner the bubbles

murmur to a stop, but memories are always astir.

While cooking anything its hard not to think on things passed.

People of the past. Bridges burnt like plastic spoons left

in gravy pans while fixing up a pot pie. They bend till

they are backwards, beyond use.  So I cook for myself.

For any kind of sustenance can provide substance to the

most maudlin moments;  flake of the pie crust, shape of

mouths smiling through morsels of food, cold beers, wood table,

till suddenly the meal is over and the night creeps in upon the kitchen…

Dinner: scent of oven, bubble of gravy, cooking alone, the quiet of a hot

afternoon in a bridgeless country of spoons that can no longer stir.

The Numbers Game

Seven billion people in the world; seven billion chances to get it right. Growing every day.

Don’t Blink

If life were any

shorter,

what would we

see at the

end of it?

Beauty queens in sparkling

gowns under spotlights?  Late

night skin-e-max? A clash

of MMA giants? Death of

our spouse?  Tickle fits and

BAM!

(Sublime cosmic divine presence with the white light at the end of the tunnel and everything?!)

So just another gorgeous

empty show of beauty

sex

violence

death

laughter

and god in a moment?

Don't close your eyes

unless you must. You

might miss it.

Convoluted Sexism...Guilty

NAPOWRIMO Day 19

* Disclaimer: Contains mature content and an instance of bleeped cursing.

The Convoluted Sexism of Which I Am Guilty

 

I despise when men cry. Perhaps I shouldn’t. Perhaps you wouldn’t. But I unabashedly justify that I am a woman. This means that

I stamp and I scream and have trouble with mason jars; I dance, I plant, I brush my hair a  thousand times. I get my gory periods.  I cook. I fight. I love.

 How do I have time for crying? How does a man?

Crying is not for a man that I can stand for any length of time. No. He must abhor tears.

(And while we’re on the matter here, have arms as thick as my waist and stronger, a silent smile, a temper worse than mine and a cultivated mind. I write this just in case this man also reads poetry.) 

All strength, virility, spirit, discernment; this is what is for a man.

For I fear for a world where trained athletes cry over scores, or boyfriends over the thresholds of their girlfriends’ doors, or even the look of the woman becoming a wife, or the birth of a child in the laboring night

 (though these two are more understandable).

I fear it unsafe to stamp and to scream, to glare at pickle jars, to dance loosely in bars, admire the flowers I’ve arranged, to reconsider sideswept bangs; somehow irrationally, impossibly emasculating to the sex of men, for me to drip blood down to my thighs once a month, to cook coq au vin for dinner, to fight sweeter and love harder,

until I am no longer myself and a woman, but become an anomalous androgynous  wonder whore—that’s all I’d be good for—

with a misbegotten streak of smile when I’m pissed buy my groceries all in plastic containers not brazen enough to dance forget the garden and go to a florist let the salon pick my haircut sneak tampons ashamed fill the freezer with freeze dried flash fried frozen munchies

never fight never love all that’s left is f*cking and

true, it doesn’t make sense, but this is why I despise when men cry.

 

For Fun--Belated

NAPOWRIMO Day 14, Belated

Warning: The following limmerick is terrible...but it was fun to write!

Oh, and it contains a curse.

For Fun

There once was time when I had fun with rhymes,

would even make lists of them during classtimes.

Then I got out of habit

--which nearly rhymes with damnit!—

and now write poems with rhymes that are crimes.

Gives A Human Touch

NAPOWRIMO Day 17

It Gives It A Human Touch

The rip of the rough and ready weed

eater is a roar. Before its

buzz, the poor reedy stalks shiver.

Guillotine of the garden;

death is interminably imminent

and inevitable. I prefer

the handheld method of felling

something. Of snipping the unwanted

neatly,

with shears. Man to man

combat, so to speak; or rather,

woman to weed. No rip

 of machine, no motor

roar. Just a quiet day

and a wayward growth;

 a woman made of knees

and snips. A pile of tiny,

neatened deaths is much

more dignified in such a way.

Barking at the Cow--Belated

NAPOWRIMO Day 14, Belated

I decided I'd try writing a tanka today; I don't think I've written one before, and if I have, it was a very long time ago. The poor old doggie supplied the inspiration for this one. She gets awfully scared by the nieghbor's cows when she goes out to take a pee...*smile*

Barking at the cow,

the old house dog shakes with fear.

The cow munches grass;

chews slow and calm, for it knows

fear can’t make the unknown known.

I Don't Care for Math

NAPOWRIMO DAY 16

As I mentioned in a previous post, I am terribly behind! Today I will endeavor to regain my momentum; I've still got Days 13, 14 and 15 to finish. But here is today's poem....

I Don’t Care for Math

A plain, white and plastic school ruler

yes, the kind which children use

(with the black markings of inches

and on the other side centimeters),

lies in every scholar’s desk –though as a guess

most deplore using it; wastes

the outdoors — this instrument beats

the young brain into submission.

Counting. Length. Dimension. Knowing

the measurement

of a Thing.

Few bother with the uninteresting

details; who decided the counts, lengths,

dimension, measurements; how many

Rulers make a mile of dark

pavement? The distance in a stride of

a Man? The pitch of a mountain peak;

pit of despair? Who decides? Why?

Science? Careful, I do not wish to entrap

us in both in the reasonings of maths I do not

understand—because it is a universal language

that is too smart for me, like understanding the

reasonings behind heaven and hell;

well, not quite. What Ruler then,

commissioned the ruler? What road

led man there? What summits were reached to

determine the world could be described

inch by inch centimeter by centimeter. Don’t get

me started on protractors. They

protract my interest until all is 

lost. What ruler can behold the pits

of a man’s soul?  It must be a very strange

Ruler, and very large. Forget first grade, for no

Man can ever behold that measuring.