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Poetry is just the evidence of life. If your life is burning well, poetry is just the ash. Leonard Cohen

Wednesday, July 23, 2014

There Is Beauty In Small Things

There is beauty in small things
if we would stop to see
Pause upon a snowflake
with its fragile symmetry

Cherishing the commonplace
bestows it with sublime
There is beauty in small things
if we would take the time.

submitted for Imaginary Garden With Real Toads, Words Count with MZ

Monday, July 21, 2014

On the Brink Of

We were ten or eleven
Still just kids but
almost not
Young enough to play on the playground
Old enough to notice
(not quite hidden in the woods)
girls stealing smokes
and making out with boys

We were at that awkward stage
One minute playing with Barbies
the next, examining our silhouettes,
waiting for them to look like Barbie's
It was a time of imagined possibilities
and dreams smashed in linoleum school hallways

On the brink of we didn't know what
Our lips kissed only by Bonne Belle strawberry
we practiced by kissing ourselves in the mirror
I suggested (jokingly)
(Why was my heart beating so madly?)
that maybe we should practice on each other
"Gross!" you said, and I
didn't miss a beat, "Yeah, I know, right?"
and that was that.

The next year you had a boyfriend
and we lost touch
But I still remember those on the brink days
and your freckled nose.


 submitted for Imaginary Garden With Real Toads, Open Link Monday

Sunday, July 20, 2014

This Poem Is Red Lipstick, Schrodinger's Cat, and Dandelion Fluff

source
This poem is red lipstick.
This poem is Schrodinger's cat.
This poem is dandelion fluff.

Crimson lipped attention-grabber
Painted patterer
Beautiful emptiness
Nothing to say but
oh so lovely
This poem is red lipstick.

Perhaps it's here
Perhaps it's not
Maybe it lives
Maybe it dies
Study it; it changes
This poem is a metaphor
This poem is Schrodinger's cat.

Breathe and it's gone
Its seeds planted everywhere
or nowhere
Catch it on the wind
or blow it away
This poem is dandelion fluff.

This poem is red lipstick.
This poem is Schrodinger's cat.
This poem is dandelion fluff.

submitted for Imaginary Garden With Real Toads, Hannah's Sunday Mini-Challenge, Boomerang Metaphor Poems

Monday, July 14, 2014

Stairs

Behold the stairs which felt our tread
Carpet frayed and thinning
Threadbare stairs which we walked down each day
and up each night, the very way
Stairs on which our footfalls fell
Our secrets they would never tell
These stairs have seen us through our pasts
The only evidence that lasts
When voices still, when bodies' lust
of flesh and bone has turned to dust
Though wood is worn  and cloth unspun
These stairs are here and we are gone.

submitted for Magpie Tales, Number 228
and Imaginary Garden With Real Toads, Open Link Monday

Sunday, July 13, 2014

Never Forget

source
It never really goes away, does it?
Some mornings I wake up and forget
for a little while
But sooner or later
the skipped heartbeat comes
and with it, the realization
that nothing has changed.

Constant companion
never invited but
arrived with suitcases nonetheless
establishing squatter's rights in the bloodstream.

We lie down at night;
it is the space between us.
We hold hands in the sunlight;
it is the shadow overhead.
We float in the ocean;
it is the undertow that pulls us out to sea.

We are never alone now
It is with us always,
lurking like a lie,
waiting to come crashing down
Crushing
us.

submitted for Imaginary Garden With Real Toads, Sunday Mini Challenge, Claribel Alegria

Monday, July 7, 2014

A Woman Must Always Look Twice

A woman must always look twice
She must look first at what she sees
Then she must look deeper
She must read between the lines
on each face
She must look for subtext,
for subtleties
She must be alert
to the riptide
below the water's surface
or risk being carried out to sea,
drowned.

Yes, a woman must always look twice
She must look first at the smile
Then study the teeth
She must suss out
the impulse to rip her apart
She must know when she meets a wolf.

A woman must always look twice
She must first look ahead,
know where she is going
not get diverted by mazes or tricks
And she must look behind
She must be aware
of those trying to overtake her,
to run her over
or leave her naked and bleeding in the street.

A woman must always look twice
Even at another woman
She must protect what is hers
from her sisters,
her friends
who are themselves looking twice.

A woman must always look twice
when she looks in the mirror
Does she look pretty?
Does she look too pretty?
She must look at herself
Then she must look as another would look at her
She must assess the message in her clothes
in her hair, her make-up
Do her hips sway?
Do they sway like a woman's should
or like a whore's?
A woman must always look twice
at her body.

A woman must always look twice
A woman must always look twice.


submitted for Imaginary Garden With Real Toads, Open Link Monday

Sunday, July 6, 2014

The Lighthouse

photo by Margaret Bednar
The lighthouse keeper
climbs the stairs for the last time
Each step creaks-
bone and stair-
to the top and down again
The light
blinks its shine in the night sky
over a black and silent sea
"I am here"
"I am here"
it calls out to the emptiness
like the last firefly of summer.

submitted for Imaginary Garden With Real Toads, Artistic Interpretations, Life On an Island and
Flash Fiction 55

Friday, July 4, 2014

In Praise of the Older Body

photo from The Body Is Not An Apology
Let us raise our voices
in praise of the older body
The body who has survived
insult, illness, and the indignities of the years

Praise
to the fragile thin skin
with its lines like poetry
written on its surface

Hallelujah
to the drooping boobs
hanging like water balloons waiting
for some mischief

Amen
to the no longer taut torsos,
hard and thin as wooden planks in their youth
Now soft, delicate dumplings,
yielding, giving pillows

Sing adorations
to the stretch marks
and the scars,
warriors' wounds,
earned and cherished

Hosanna
to silvery hair,
a glittering crown
atop the head of a queen,
full of knowledge and memories and wisdom

Glory be
to age spots,
the kisses of time,
to crows' feet and laugh lines,
birthed by so many smiles

Praise
to the body 
who is a work of art,
a work of life lived,
of love given and received

Let us raise our voices
as we raise our arms,
be they fat as Vienna sausages
or skinny as chicken wings,
in triumph 
and in praise 
of the older body.


Wednesday, July 2, 2014

Whale Hips

Whales have hipbones
though they no longer walk on land
The remnant of a past life
lingers
well beyond its usefulness

Perhaps this is analogous
to the love I still feel for you
and the hurt 
that
I haven't seen you
or talked to you
in decades

The past
imprints itself on the present
Vestigial feelings
Meaningless and wasted
Saved like an old sweater that no longer fits
but was once was so soft and warm
that you just can't give it up.

submitted for Imaginary Garden With Real Toads, Obscuring the Truth With Facts, Out of Standard