Growing Pains - 55

There is treasure all around

but you blacken and turn inward.

You are an ink blot

on an illuminated manuscript

a burning nettle

in a field of wildflowers

a sliver

in the knuckle of a pink finger

Let me help you pack

your blanket and suitcase.

You no longer belong

or want to be here.


This is 55 words for Hedgewitch at Verse Escape.  It's regarding a dream I had two nights ago.

Something New(ish)!

Hi Everyone -

Maybe you've noticed it's been quiet here for quite awhile.  That's because I've moved.  I hope you will go check out what I'm doing at my new blog, here :  In Other Words.

Neighbors

    Image by Tess Kincaid

   
While the adage is true,
good fences make good neighbors
don't forget the gate.


For Magpie Tales, carried across the Atlantic.

*The adage is, of course, from Robert Frost's poem Mending Wall.

Tracking Time

Take

this day

It is your starting block

to hurtle into tomorrow and tomorrow

and ten thousand tomorrows.

More if

you’re lucky

Minutes, hours may drag

but the years screech past

relentless as a train

Meanwhile, you have these

empty days

to fill with

colors, bright or muted

music,

white noise or a

frantic cacophony.

You choose

today

Night Tones

    Nocturne in Grey and Silver by Jame McNeill Whistler

Dark walls of water

and sea-foam lace

reach up for a moon

pinned impossibly high,

while the woods settle in

to the bed of the earth

with a shrug and a yawn and a sigh.

Then you lean into me

as I reach out for you

and we bid all the specters good bye,

 at the edge of a world

where the nightmares are curled

and the stars fall away from the sky.

Over in the Imaginary Garden Hedgewitch asked us to write a piece in keeping with the Tonalist painting movement, "with 'no under drawing,' by tkaing an idea, a place, a persn, an event or a mood and quickly fleshing out a portrait of it in a blur of words.  Use language to mass light and dark verbal'tones' and build up our poem in dashes of description and image. The end result should be something immediate but 'misty.'  Or we could use a painting from this school to inspire our writing.  I'm not sure I achieved that first bit, so the painting is one from the Tonalist School. 

Fine Art

   Artist in His Studio by Remberant

Don’t you see

it’s the art that matters -

that’s what matters

they say,

not the artist

not the life

not the love

not the heartbreak

not the scars

not the anger

not the joy

not the long hours of boredom

not the sinking nights

not the coffee-infused mornings

not the growing pains

of body, or soul, or life, or death

that generated them

but the mill, the night watch, the philosopher in meditation

or the sunflowers, the irises, the olive trees

or guernica or three musicians or the kiss

...so long as it matches the couch

Sometimes I wonder about how we judge the value of art, and in this picture, provided by Bjorn at The Imaginary Garden, the size of the canvas relative to the aritst is what prompted this particular little musing.

Strung Along

Like a puppet

you have strings 

attached

dancing 

to another’s tune

until you are

tied down.

For Margaret's "Play it Again, Toads" at IGRT.  I went back to Mama Zen's Words Count.  She asked us to write about a power image (part art, part personal mythology, part creative shorthand part art, part personal mythology, and part creative shorthand...anything that a writer imbues with a greater meaning that it would ordinarily have and adopts it as a signature symbol) in 25 words or less.  I'm not sure this is really a "power image" by her definition, but it is a recurring thing in my writing.