that's mrs. mediocrity to you

my ancestors
ate bones for breakfast

rolled skulls downhill and
named them boulders

i sit on the shore
of borrowed time

listening for home and
waiting for whispers

knitting stories with wool
gathered from the vines

on these ice carved hills

a cradle of lakes strung together
by the unraveled skein of impermanence

and history warms my skin as the sun
slides down between grand houses

built for wide-eyed strangers

once, in winter
i walked over this water

a solid white surface laced with holes
left by disappointed fishers

and my father caught my hood
just as I slid into the calm crest of frozen

saving me with love and quick reflexes
on a morning filled with grey-solid echoes

a memory of almost ending

lost beneath the bleached white
surface of ancient fealty

crackled feathers floating down
through tributary motion

slipping silent from a pocket
left behind long ago

.

.

.

first, you have to dance
arms flung wide
with hope’s last vestige of abandon

you have to care and not care
at the very same time
drop permission from your vocabulary
throat your laugh and hug the sky

your dress must be free and made of history
your face must be painted with your own experience
(hand-me-downs and borrowed wishes
will be confiscated)

you must wear a ring on every finger
one for each time you pretended to know
the answer to anything
and you must refuse to lick the plate
of shallow dictate

this isn’t about being naked
you can do that well enough on your own

this is about your true colors
the ones you wear when no one else is looking
because exhibitionism does not equal honesty
and besides

it’s your skeleton that always tell the truth
skimming shallow skin and baring marrow bone

but it’s your heart that hears the music
and your sleeve doesn’t have to be fancy
or short or even rolled up

if there’s lace, tear it off
drop the bangles
bare your wrist

and two-step the pattern of your flaws
across the floor we all stand on

close your eyes
listen

we’re all here

the beat cannot beat you
or make you special

we’re all here

.

.

.

Joining in over at Dverse Poets Pub
for Open Link Night...join us!

.

.

.

.

.

she wore crinoline and ruffles
tacked on with sap and honey

earrings made from dewdrops
and a necklace of morning glory vine

(each leaf a green heart of forgiveness)

she danced with the whirl and the twirl
of a long lost travelling gypsy

(which is to say she was barefoot)

and the music called forth
by the bells on her ankles
echoed throughout the hall

and the prince
(oh, the prince!)
how he carried a shoe
on a satin-faced
sleep-wrinkled pillow

offered up with a bow
and a deeply felt flourish
and (of course)
the perfect fit

but she’d already chosen

the sky as her lover

the moon as her (k)night

and so,
in the end

she sipped champagne
from the toe
of a willow bark slipper

raised her arms
with a smile

and invited
each and every
singing soldier
painted lady
purple wallflower

to tango
a path to the door

and her dance card
left behind

(with gratitude)

became a blank-faced
notebook

of possibility

.

.

.

the ripe ones are always waiting

closed up holed up sewn up
biding time like the best of new mothers

and you think you know how to birth them

“sounds like so and so” i hear you snort
as you rustle past with your wrinkled paper
on your way to tea and toast

all posh and proper
confessional only on bitter days

the rest of the time you’re sure to rhyme
though you much prefer to couple

and i always listen

ears pressed to the floor with fingers tapping

waiting for more

there’s always more

cadence calls and you’re off to supper
swilling syllable and savory refrain

waving your fork in the air mid-rant

even as the knife continues sawing
through the vein

i serve cold soup and sorry sentence
in a too-tight apron laced with stain

and hope that later
once you’ve finished

we’ll invent a new word
for dessert

.

.

.

An ode to poets, both here and gone,
and all of my friends over at Dverse Poets Pub,
celebrating their third anniversary this week!
Come on over and join the fun!

.

.

.

is contemplation

e x  a   g    g    e     r     a  t  ion

the epic fail of epic

on a trip to Misnomer

any other name gets you to the same place

a beginning (seed)

a middle (flower)

an end (pod)

and you can’t separate any one of them from the other

without breathing in someone else’s perfume

crushing stem and spilling life

but you try anyway

again and again and again

and all the words you cannot say

(because i said so)

take root

in the cracks of cement

that line the path you’ve chosen

to pave with your rules

and your yeses and your nos

no!

but all you see is your own

vision

through those rose-colored glasses

of derision

mocking  the singsong silence

of the empty vowel left raining

from the mud-caked corner

of your tongue

.

.

Linking in over at dVersePoets for Poetics today,
where Shanyn has us imagining poetry as seed.
Join us!

is a pernicious master

always telling stories
you wish to be untrue

i live in a glass house
beside an ocean of allegory

the warmth of the sun
burns holes in my persona

the plate i offer is filled
with door-shaped cookies

but just you try and leave
the epochal corner of sanity

i’ve carved in the shape
of false idol altar growth

you’ve no idea how much light
it takes to reveal

the vitiligo that’s running
down your chin like a chink

in the armour of your sentence
and i will keep you here

reshape you with a version
of my own black branched form

feed you wine and golden wafer
from a tray inscribed to say

from the solid root of darkness
you will bloom

.

.

.

Linking in over at dVersePoets for Poetics today, where Anthony
gives us a list of words from which we must use at least five in a poem:
(Messiah, Allegory, Luminous, Plate, Shadow, Door, Persona,
Glass, Vitiligo, Epochal, Pernicious, Warmth).
Join us!

.

.

i want to be left by the side of the road
ash to splash and leave my mark
on the side of each car passing by

or can-kicked down a street
filled with knees and laughing children
my voice fading in the breeze of lost giggles

dust me from your shoes and purse your lips
blow me off the shelf you keep your heart on
toss me out the door with yesterday’s crumbs

i want to be the song you cannot scrape
from the tip of your tongue and the dance
you bobble out when you think no one’s looking

spin spin spin into the white whirl of wind
as it carries scraps from home and everything
gets dropped in the laps of perfect strangers

remember nothing of the spoken and every measure
of the pattern our two heartbeats mixed and
melded and never forget the midnights

we hollowed out with hands digging and feet
kicking life further back down the hill

if you have a box i want you to burn it
sit by the pyre and warm your crackled shins
listen to the howls in the cold dark behind you

and kiss the moon for me, just once
when she comes to light your way

.

.

Linking in over at dVersePoets for Poetics today,
Marina asks some questions that will really make you think.
Join us!

.

.

i always knew you could sing

your very existence is music,
wind rustles and breeze whispers
howls of moan and humming creak

i hear you finger tapping tunes
in the night of dark glass
against the cold window between us

i always knew it was you
absorbing years and belting them
back out as harmonized sustenance

as a teenager i would run to you
cry on your rough-cloaked shoulder
while you plucked my brokenheart strings

you always listened and i always remembered
to look up into the green gold eyes
of  your long standing deep rooted ballad

to find the leaf of your only regret:
your eternal inability to waltz
in the wallflower forest of forgotten

i’d stand up then, arms placed just so
on the shoulders of a stand-in barkcloth partner
and box step through the shade

of your resonant silence

.

This poem was inspired by THIS video I came across featuring music
that was created from the rings in a slice of tree trunk, it’s enchanting.

.

Also linking in over at dVersePoets for Poetics, join us!

.

.

.

i stand at the kitchen window long enough to grow roots

twisting down through the egg-cracked floor
into the fallible foundation of basement

this is my mirror and my afterlife and i know
i will haunt this place with my broad moon face
for seven wing-tipped generations

yet you taunt me with your hollow hope umbrage
moving through me as you glide overhead

my fingers the branch you choose to land on
though i never catch a wing or move a feather
and your song is more metaphor than melody

still, we know each other through this dark dirty pane
recognition confirmed by the silver you drop

even as you know i will tarnish-change to black
just like you and your silhouette of hands cupped
life running down my white sketched arms

as this sink filled with mud overflows

.

.

.

Linking in today over at dVersePoets for Open Link Night, join us!

.

.

of ever-growth and always-change
married to shadow music and feather sky
by a fine-filmed pastor of sunrise

morning-moves act as guide and angry compass
tea-burnt and beauty believed

by every sacrosanct ripple-day
mind-lair

everywhere ordinary

breath-bane and
mirror time

existence

.

.

Linking in today (if I got this right) over at dVersePoets for Meeting the Bar,
where we are playing with kenning. Join us!