Ode to A/C

You save me from the burning depths of Hell

From life in the Inferno oh so cruel

Embracing me in your arms, clean and cool

If not for you, in misery I'd dwell

But you surround me like an autumn breeze

Though better for your constancy and speed

So loyal, you are never to recede

My love for you keeps rising by degrees

Though some claim you are frigid, find you chilling

You've healing powers to which I avow

The remedy to soothe my fevered brow

What 'ere you ask of me, you'll find me willing

Through August depths you answer all my prayers
I love you, and I'll always put on airs!

submitted for Imaginary Garden With Real Toads, Sunday Mini Challenge:Ode to the Quotidien

Beneath the Violets

source

Although he should have know he would get caught

His boundless arrogance encouraged him

He couldn't understand how he got got

Male vanity so often makes wits dim

Desirous of both the sun and shade

Well, you know how that greedy story goes

His rendezvous deep in a forest glade

He thought it secret but we know talk flows

They both confronted him with all his lies

Dried tears upon their faces cold as stone

Where trust no longer flourishes, love dies

For all his sins, he never could atone

He's buried in their yard beneath the lawn

The violets now grow brighter since he's gone.

submitted for Imaginary Garden With Real Toads, Sunday Challenge, Bout Rimes

Dance With Me

Dance with me

Hear that jazz play

We will be

redeemed in the sway

Let the others make way

I deem this night ours

These few hours

In your affection

Do not be remiss

I long for the perfection

of your kiss

Let the others see our bliss

Don't miss the chance

Hold me and dance.

submitted for Imaginary Garden With Real Toads, Get Listed for Feb.: Absent
and Play It Again Toads, Rhyme Royal

The Seasons

source

The flowers bloom then go to seed
The leaves turn brown and fall from trees
So all of Nature's children heed
the calling of the Seasons.

The frogs and turtles go to sleep
The squirrels hide acorns buried deep
so all of Nature's children keep
the rhythm of the Seasons.

But humans are a stranger breed
We oddly seem to have a need
Refusing to give in, concede
the cycle of the Seasons.

So stubbornly we do believe
That loss of youth is cause to grieve
And though we try, we can't deceive
the passage of the Seasons.


submitted for Imaginary Garden With Real Toads, Sunday Mini Challenge, Salvatore Quasimodo

A Grain of Truth

photo by glitterdarkstar

You pour lies into my waiting cup

I drink them greedily

like an addict

They go down

smooth and warm

They feed

a lack

I know they devour

as they fill

Leave a bigger hole

in my soul

This is how I exist:

empty fullness

full emptiness

Craving more

You always oblige

I hate you

I want more.

submitted for Imaginary Garden With Real Toads, Sunday Challenge, In Other Words

Persephone's Invitation

Garnet by Dragon Of Lust on Deviant Art

When you are ready for me,

wear garnet

Red

is not enough

Rubies are cloying,

cherry Koolaid red,

jellybean red

That kind of red

is for the timid

Call me with garnets,

with blood,

deep, warm things

not so sweet

Drape a string of seeds

around your neck

I will take you to dark places

where the moon fears to shine

I will bring you September;

you will wear its leaves upon your fingers

When you want me,

cloak yourself in autumn's satin

Whisper my name to the reddened, black sky

You will taste wine upon the breeze, and

Your heart will glow like a gemstone.

submitted for Imaginary Garden With Real Toads, Artistic Interpretations With Margaret, Mineral Rainbow 
and Sunday Challenge, September Skies

Avant-Girl

Street Art by Saki and Bitches, London East End  (photo by lolamouse)

I saw you walkin' down the street

Can't get you off my mind

Your brown skin glistened in the heat

Ripe peach from the behind

You flirt, you flaunt with your tight dress

Your hair is waves of blue

You leave me shakin' and a mess

Don't know what I'mma do

Girl, you know you're fresh and brash

And you make my mind whirl

Some folks be sayin' you're just trash

But you're my avant-girl.

submitted for Imaginary Garden With Real Toads, Avant-Edge: A Sunday Challenge

The Girl Who Loves Winter Wakes

Snowy Dreams by Natalia Drepina

The Girl Who Loves Winter

sleeps through the summer months

Impenetrable

to the sun's assault

She dreams

of a white fox

If you look closely,

you might see her silvery whiskers

and her ivory coat,

soft as elder down

The Girl Who Loves Winter

begins to stir and stretch

She lifts her head

just as you are bringing your plants indoors

before the first frost

Lento heartbeat

quickens to restless accelerando

as she steps into the cold

The Girl Who Loves Winter

raises her head to the granite sky

Snowflakes fall on her eyelashes

like butterfly kisses

from a long lost love.

submitted for Imaginary Garden With Real Toads, Birthdays in January

A Very Fine W(h)ine

It tastes like cherries and sadness
With just a hint of despair
The plum notes contain certain madness
that releases when it breathes the air

The body is quite melancholy
It lingers with a pronounced dread
To drink it would be total folly
Let it age well like any good red

When you try it, I'm sure you'll agree
It has a distinctive bouquet
that tickles the nose with ennui
from terroir with a subtle dismay

Grown on a most morose vine
These grapes make a very fine w(h)ine.

submitted for Imaginary Garden With Real Toads, Sunday Challenge, All In the Family in which we were to ask for a poetic first line from a family member and then write the rest of the poem. This first line came from my daughter, Baby Mouse (17).

Ribbons of Red

Ribbons of red to celebrate

the holidays, good times ahead

We wish, count down the days, and wait

Ribbons of red

I'm thinking of you, instead

How your numbers are of late

Hope you're well on the new meds

Whether chance or whether fate

connected us with life's fine thread

To you, my prayers I dedicate

Ribbons of red.

submitted for Imaginary Garden With Real Toads, Sunday Challenge, A Birthday in December, Christina Rossetti

'Tis the Season

'Tis the season to be marginalized
'Cuz the Christian majority can't realize
that holidays come in more than one size
Or maybe they're not celebrated at all
Not everybody decks the halls
or hangs those colored Christmas lights
Yeah, that's my menorrah shining bright
for eight nights, oy vey!
Not all gifts come on a sleigh
Though every year, the same old scene
My eyes assaulted with red and green
as the stores roll out the Christmas machine
And what about the rest of us?
Always there to make a fuss
when we protest the nativity
in a public space for festivity
or ask for a kinara too
or a Star of David in white and blue
(isn't that just like a Jew?)
to try and make us all rephrase
"Merry Christmas" to "Happy Holidays?"
But would it really kill the mirth
to have a little peace on earth?
To acknowledge and embrace
those of more than just one faith?
So while you defend your Christmas cheer
Remember there are others here.





submitted for Imaginary Garden With Real Toads, Sunday Challenge, Woodie Gurthrie (protest poem)

Poet's Corner

Mike Worrall, Poets Corner, oil on linen, 122x155cm, 2002

I walked the labyrinth until my feet were sore

Discovered that bliss and blisters do not happily coexist

I sat and meditated until my ass went numb

Emerged no more enlightened than when I first began

I prayed to God, the saints, the Devil, the muses, and Jesus

It was the religious equivalent of mixing ammonia and bleach -

Yet here I am, still dumb as a bag of rocks

and empty as a Halloween pumpkin in the head

The music I create is birthed between my legs

Oh well, at least it makes you happy to sing along.

submitted for Imaginary Garden With Real Toads, Sunday Challenge, featuring Mike Worrall

Red Tulips

art by Baslee Troutman

Before you died,

you planted red tulips in the front yard

You never asked us first if we wanted red tulips

but I didn’t mind because they were beautiful

After you died,

the tulips still bloomed each spring,

pushing up through the snow and hard earth,

rising from the dead

It seemed to me somehow metaphorical

Spiritually significant

Then the rabbits ate the red petals,

leaving only headless stick-like green bodies

and the voles and squirrels ate the wintering bulbs 

Now we have no tulips

I’m not sure what the metaphor is supposed to be

but I see you looking down,

shaking your head,

laughing.

submitted for Imaginary Garden With Real Toads, Sunday Challenge, April, Come She Will

They've Been Together

They've been together for years
They're remodeling their home
They call their dog a spoiled child

Their pain is neither Democratic nor Republican
Their fear is neither liberal nor conservative
Their tears are neither gay nor straight

Illness doesn't know politics.

submitted for Imaginary Garden With Real Toads, Sunday Mini Challenge, Sevenling

God In the Synapses

photography by Daryl Edelstein of mosaic by Isaiah Zagar

On my knees

I pray to the gods of pain

Offerings, sacrifices upon the altar

What I won't give up if they will spare me

just for this day

this trip

this event

Do they even hear my pleas?

Are they laughing?

Searching for God in the synapses

between neurons

I realize it's already too late

That familiar haze has descended

a gauze curtain over my brain

I am here yet

Not

My ghost is living my life again

Panic

I must abort abort ABORT

before...

Scents of patchouli and blueberry drift

into my consciousness

I retreat into the dark

I am a bat

I need to sleep, sleep, sleep

but the gods deny even that

They play with me like

a cat does a mouse

Infliction of pain is more satisfying

than the kill

The eye twists in its socket

while a vise tightens around the temples

A garage band has parked its amplifiers 

inside my skull

Bass and drum pounding, pounding nonstop

Head shatters

Dozens of jagged fragments

each holding its own misery

The bed has become a tilt-o-whirl

no way off

The gods won't be bribed

to stop this ride

I make one final appeal

for unconsciousness.

submitted for Imaginary Garden With Real Toads, Fireblossom Fridays, Stress

and Sunday Challenge, Featuring Daryl Edelstein, Part 2

Maybe a Proselyte

© Mama Zen Photography

Maybe I'm just moonstruck

but the color of your eyes could inspire a religion

and I could write a hymn

to every laugh line when you smile

Maybe it's just the moonlight

that has softened our faces

and given us a glow

but when I'm with you I feel like I'm still a kid

Maybe it makes dogs howl like wolves

Maybe it unites lovers

Maybe it incites lunacy

Maybe it's just a moon

but when I feel my heart race like this

I am a proselyte.

submitted for Sunday Challenge, featuring Mama Zen, at Imaginary Garden With Real Toads

Trains

photo by Susie Clevenger

The trains roll in

the trains roll out

and that's the way life works

Mama says 

stay off the tracks

or you'll get yourself hurt

The whistle blows

the whistle fades

You left at half past two

I waited at the station but

you wouldn't take me with you

The tracks brought you

into this town

and you left on the train

You gave me fifty dollars

and I never learned your name.

submitted for Imaginary Garden With Real Toads, Sunday Challenge featuring Susie Clevenger