that's mrs. mediocrity to you

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

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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!

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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

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

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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

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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!

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i have a memory of you
in a gilded glass globe

soft baby curls glinting
and denim legs running
in a pinwheel
of red blue and yellow
spinning out
from the color-blocked
tiny
chuck taylors
i tied to your feet
every morning

you were so fast
and i was so busy

the years told me lies
and i looked away

as you grew
into life’s
perfect stranger

the other day
you asked me
to help
shave your head

it was not a surprise
i have done it before
and you always clean
your own messes

but what i saw drop
to the cold tiled floor
was not simply a month’s
worth of stubble

at your feet
was a clock
made from curls
and lost wheels
marking time
with an amateur’s
ticking

you swept it up
and i went to bed

i think that i dreamt
of cracked mirrors

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A poem a day for 30 days, in honor of National Poetry Month.
This post is part of NaPoWriMo.

Also joining in with PAD (poem a day) over at Writer’s Digest.

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all the words you leave
surmised unsaid
will grow wings of weight
forced to cower behind
the lace of an albatross curtain

held by
pursed parched lips
and a fissured fish heart
from a sky that knows only
blind patience

this is your charity necklace
worth only the gold
of your final sunrise
and your bottled up notes
of forgiveness

if you want them
to fly
you must sing

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A poem a day for 30 days, in honor of National Poetry Month.
This post is part of NaPoWriMo.

Also joining in with PAD (poem a day) over at Writer’s Digest.

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wind calm and storm weary
home calls north and a red sun sinks
in the corner of never there

your patience lifts you higher
than the slow measured progress
of orion’s glitter-faced swordbelt

the original darkness-slayer
cold hard viking laid to rest
in a calloused monument of sky

you sleep through rumble snore
and bright bear claw
goddess chair and perfect cross

as i tat patterns on a ceiling
bright with current
dancing dream and forgotten

constellation

climb into my kitchen
and i’ll build you a window

walled by whisper wing
and fire dream

we’ll marry word and wonder
filter fear and petty shadow

press cold noses to the glass
of each season’s metronome

i’ll feed you butterfly and brimstone
bits of light and captured night

with dragon song and maiden dawn
to keep you from flight’s rescue

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A poem a day for 30 days, in honor of National Poetry Month.
This post is part of NaPoWriMo.

Also joining in with PAD (poem a day) over at Writer’s Digest.

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infrastructures crumble cry and all the trees are lying

i walk through your concrete garden
stunned by lack of growth and claustrophobia becomes
my escape

there is no air here but you keep breathing
wheezing teasing freezing oxygen into clink clank cubes
lining glasses of liquid liberation

what have you done with the flowers? even the weeds
are afraid to breech
your barrier of sophisticated cement

give me your heart and i’ll plant you a memory

give me your disease and i’ll grow you a cure

give me your hope and i’ll bury the bones you cannot hide

lie

down and watch comets race a sky you cannot see
blind yourself with light and reputation
sit in your city white-noise silence

i have your bird in a cage of freedom
every morning we sing you back into existence
though you’ll never find a single luck feather

as you rest your bare head on a synthetic pillow

of down

.

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A poem a day for 30 days, in honor of National Poetry Month.
This post is part of NaPoWriMo.

Also joining in with PAD (poem a day) over at Writer’s Digest.

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

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four miles
of dirty-drunk bottles
discarded on the cold shoulder road
you walk
night after night after night
sipping bitter salt and rubbing open
old wounds

four miles
of hollowed out chest
and improper possibility
leaching into land passed down
for seven generations
of food in the belly
no one wanted to harvest

four miles
of fuel for the red-lipped
rage that lines your palm
and marks your forehead with
furrows deep enough for planting
the seed you cannot reclaim
or purchase

four miles
between you and the house
never built
by too many logs and not enough sky
the stars were your compass
before you chugged them
in a toast to disappointment

four miles
of mud-caked proof
and not enough leaving one
last sip for the lean wasted soul
soon to follow your dedicated footsteps
to the same oblivious
abandoned address

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I’m not big on explaining poems, but this one has a story.
On my block, a four-mile-around country block that circles farmland,
there are dozens of discarded whiskey bottles lining the ditch.
Dozens. This has been going on for years.
A sad mystery with its own story,
begging to be told.

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A poem a day for 30 days, in honor of National Poetry Month.
This post is part of NaPoWriMo.

Also joining in with PAD (poem a day) over at Writer’s Digest.

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there’s a place
in my garden

no one ever goes
to sit

broken down
skeleton of glider

left hanging
in the wind

tattered flag
of patience

marking time
with rusty creak

and forgotten
expectation

.

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A poem a day for 30 days, in honor of National Poetry Month.
This post is part of NaPoWriMo.

Also joining in with PAD (poem a day) over at Writer’s Digest.

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