On Love and Storms

We can’t always choose

spring rains quench, revive or drown,

but drought is lifeless.

Take your chances with the sky -
leave your umbrella behind.

This is for Day#7 of PAD and linked to the open write in the Imaginary Garden.

A Litle Schmaltz

    Image from Wikipedia.com

Under the stars

and over the moon
is where you take me, Love.

This is for Day #6 of Poem a Day for April, National Poetry Month.

On Easter

     Photo by Mary Bach

This morning the moon  

begins to wane

in the lightening sky.

Mourning doves call to

you, you, you

but jays and wrens and barn swallows

are chirping too.

Outside the window

there are ten thousand branches, more

that were dead,

now, near bursting

with a million, million buds.

Don’t tell me there are no miracles.

Thank you for the prompt of a 55 word piece, and the subject of Easter in the Imaginary Garden with Flash 55 Plus.  This is also for Day #5 of PAD.  Happy Easter or Sunday or whatever you are celebrating today.

Portrait

    Ambroise Vollard by Pablo Picasso

Here is the child,

running and singing

and drawing before knowing

that drawing is hard

cutting class,

fighting and loving

and thinking

of the magic between pages

and stars.

Here is the parent, the sibling the spouse

giving and tender,

arguing, withholding

open, reticent, stern

eating potatoes, sorting the mail

thinking of winter 
and making love.

Here is the worker, here the boss

productive, proactive, lazy

smoking a cigarette

worrying about shoes

and overtime 
considering the nature 
of beauty and loss.

Here is the artist

crying and spitting and drinking gin

darning a sock,

selfish, doubt filled, egomaniacal 

trying to pay the rent

and save the world

with a pen

thinking of the magic

between words

and stars.

Over in the Imaginary Garden we were asked to consider exerpts from Gertrude Stein's Tender Buttons, which has been called verbal Cubism, and write a poem about an object, food, or a room in the style of Stein. Alternately we could write a poem without any gendered pronouns, as she did.  I tried doing my own "Cubist-ish" poem, considering Wikipedia's definition, "In the Cubist Style subjects are rendered from multiple perspectives using faceted forms and simplified geometric shapes."  And this is also my PAD Day #4. 

Alarm

We must not allow the clock and the calendar to blind us to the fact that each moment of life is a miracle and a mystery.  -H.G. Wells

I dread the ticking of the clock,

it dogs my steps, it shreds my wits,

and stabs my life with each tick-tock.

I dread the ticking of the clock

it’s both a weapon and a lock.

that snips my future into bits.

I dread the ticking of the clock,

it dogs my steps and shreds my wits.

This is my poem for Day #3 of PAD.  I got the idea of writing a "machine poem" from Robert Brewer of Writer's Digest where he is providing a prompt each day of April. 

First Home

I dwelt

under a cage of ribs,

and was fed from

blood pushed through

veins,

oxygenated by lungs

that sang and argued and

laughed and whispered

I was woven

from the dreams carded and

thoughts spun and

stories that knit together

generations

in a tapestry of

sun and wind and plains

and paths into forests

and over oceans

leading ever

home

Mama Zen over in the Imaginary Garden asked us to write about the house they built us for day #2 of National Poetry Month, Poem a Day.

Lists

Today is a day of lists:

return library books

board meeting 

mail statements 

grocery shopping:

  -meat

  -carrots

  -cinnamon

  -oats

  -Athlete’s Foot cream

  -sympathy cards…

for it is also a week of deaths:

agonies, endings

and the requisite attending

social conventions…

4 sympathy cards

1 wake

1 funeral

1 meal for grieving family

1 batch of cookies for grieving family

because after all, food really is love

or at least the only solace

we can figure

But poetry is solace too,

and this is the month of poems

so to the list I add

30 poems for April -

and for today

I sneak away
for one
entire
poem

This is for day #1 of PAD (Poem a Day) for April, National Poetry Month.  I'm linking it to the Imaginary Garden, because "lists" are not what sparks my poetic heart, but poetry is what saves me.