I wonder listlessly at rapacious melancholy,
its beast-stalking litheness, peripheral,
ghosting my mind-altered diminishment
how in the revenant fury of buried bones
whose salient menace springs expansively
as darkness goes unhallowed by requiescat in pace —
it thrives
I wonder clinging to my devourer.
WhimsyGizmo at dVerse asks us to write a quadrille (exactly 44-word-poem) using the word “go.” Click on Mr. Linky to read more poems.
Mish at dVerse’s “Poetics” asks us to take on the persona of a color, “imagine what they see . . . . slip out of our human bodies and become nothing but a color.” So it is written, so it is done, but in the voice of one particular color, Vincent van Gogh’s yellow.
Van Gogh died in July 1890 from a self-inflicted gunshot wound to the chest.
When you turn to me away from Rachel
For whom you sheared your face of an ear
Isn’t the world brighter, like sunflowers?
And the walls of your house in Arles
Lavishly canvased, as the awnings
As cafés, bedframes, straw hats, sunsets
I am the light running before you
Swirling you up to starry nights and moons
Away from the blackness of eyes
That never see you like I have seen you
Radiant in the waving fields of wheat
Until the day you clasp your hands
Round the ochred skin of despair.
Click on Mr. Linky to read more dVerse poems.
Today, Grace at dVerse asks us to “Meet the Bar” with regards to setting. So I began with that age old phrase, “once upon a time” and discovered that it seemed to be a setting unto itself, one that the speaker and the listener partake of evocatively, symbiotically. Or so I indulge myself in believing.
Once, the old woman/man/animal/tree/rock began,
in the ages when spring set in for a millennium
water gushed from every nook and cranny
of underground wells and the vaulted heavens opened
she/he/it paused
there was an orchard where a blind child played
the rains dancing like fingertips, skimming her face
leaving braille-like tales of love and longing
the old woman/man/animal/tree/rock sighed,
upon the upturned eyes that could not see, the nose, the chin
the water savoring their quill-like strokes
the papyrus face now a harbinger of things to come
so that the blank eyes took on diamond sharpness –
here a tear fell, or was it a leaf, or a stir of dust –
her breath like the sifting wind among the chaff
her words a beat out of time so that the foolish laughed
but the earth claimed her as a shepherd’s star one still night
in the ages when spring set in for a time.
Lisa at dVerse asks us to write a quadrille (poem of 44 words) using the word “way.” Here’s my drowsy offering as midnight creeps closer. Click on Mr. Linky to join in!
When sleep comes my way
darkness warm like mother’s milk
lulls my hungry wakeful eyes,
I sink at last in ocean light
to caverns deep where you await
a Prospero’s Ariel caught betwixt
reflections of the world above
and the mirrors of my mind.
Thought I’d see if I could squeeze a few fun writing prompts (see below) into one tale of terror. Thanks Di, Linda, and Michelle!
“That … that … that THING is coming closer!’
Kroot hugged her red scarf tightly and tried to be brave. Beside her Kreet cleared her throat, ready to deliver the speech she had been given by the Grand Penguin himself. Kruff shrank back into her corner, her eyes squeezed shut.
Continue reading “First Encounter: A Tale of Terror”Common-Place or “Locus Communis” — a place to remember
Many great poets wrote their most magnificent poetry in their youth rather than at the peak of their maturity. Take, for example, Dante, Lord Byron, John Keats, and T. S. Eliot. Others wrote throughout their life with equal prowess: Milton wrote Lycidas when a student, and Paradise Lost as an old man.
But many come to poetry as late bloomers. Emily Dickinson considered herself such, watching others pass her by. Only ten of her nearly 1,800 poems were published in her lifetime. She kept “singing” anyway, saying with confidence, “I shall bring a fuller tune.” What do you think she means?
I Shall Keep Singing! by Emily Dickinson (1830-1886)
I shall keep singing!
Birds will pass me
On their way to Yellower Climes –
Each – with a Robin’s expectation –
I – with my Redbreast –
And my Rhymes –
Late – when I take my place in summer –
But – I shall bring a fuller tune –
Vespers – are sweeter than Matins – Signor –
Morning – only the seed of Noon –
When I left her yesterday
the black was in her hair
the gold was in her eyes
and she spoke of fathers
and unmourned sons
but now she freezes the air
like a stray from bygone forests
and primordial paths
looking at me like a traveler
she’d warned before
of hazardous roads
and one in particular
where red foxes
appear to startle the unwary
from perilous paths
and slipping slopes of memory
but for the shibboleth:
Mother?
You’re safe.
I somehow missed posting on this prompt from Sarah of dVerse who chose quotes from a book for us to use as poem titles. "She said if a red fox had crossed somewhere, that area was safe" was the one I chose. Click on Mr. Linky for more. Image credit: https://www.pexels.com/photo/mother-and-daughter-on-grass-1683975/
It’s “Meeting the Bar” at dVerse, where Bjorn asks us to use the autocomplete function in Google to generate lists that transport us to imaginative poetic heights. Check them out by clicking Mr. Linky and join in!
I began with typing in “Give me” as a search term which led me down rabbit holes ending with typing in “silence” midway, trying to find my way out of the dark wood in which I’d ended. Beware Google.
Give me one reason, sister silence, give me directions home, oh sister do you hear? give me the time of day a nightingale sings Silent bays, skies, silent rage and silent lambs must sit on silent hills, searching Google in Thrace Satyr Silenus, do you hear, your drunken nights by Dionysus's side have all led you to make a king turn a daughter's flesh to gold, oh, oh, oh! Give me liberty sits enthroned, untutored, give me love lyrics for dirty ears, Alexa! ask tongueless Philomela, oh sister hear! "inappropriate predictions" don't you think? Google, show me the severed head of Itys unmourned unseen, "I'm feeling lucky," tereu, tereu Non, silento! Basta! Enough! Give me love I don't need the win, just directions home from here to there. Give me Jesus. Please.
Gifts from the sea, some called them. Once there washed up a shack, whole, an eye-catching man within, seal-brown his hair. The tunes he could sing, when the winds around the water took wing.
She spied him sometimes by moonlight at the water’s edge, secretive, saw him take out a seal skin, disappear within, into cold depths. Then one night, twin shapes followed after.
Alone, she managed, bled, bided her time, calling out across the water, “Selkie!” People wondered.
When two children washed ashore, one seal-brown, the other raven-haired, we knew. Far inland, she kept their pelts hidden. Selkies nevermore.
Genre: Folklore Word count: 100 written for Rochelle Wisoff-Fields's Friday Fictioneers click on the frog for more tales of a hundred words or less. And join the fun!
Y’all know there’s red, white, blue
Violet, purple and cerulean too
Jazzberry jam, purple mountains’ majesty
Canary, cornflower and fuzzy wuzzy
But strike me dumb if ever you see
A spectrum as mind-blowing as ZANY
Not even a Crayola box can contain
The uncanniness like an outrageous grin
For when you happen to chance upon it
Everything’s a subject for merry wit!
This Jolly Beggar 