days spinning faster
now toward twilight it seems
hours before dawn
years ago hours
lived, died, born again screaming
before twilight’s edge
watch the dawn hours
spin, dizzy and drunk with years,
into twilight’s grave
Twilight Days
Category: aging
Orchid
My militant mind reels,
victorious over sleep,
now warring with the words—
I grapple, attempting to find
the right ones,
the ones I left behind in dreams
or at war with other chores,
so in these early hours,
during a brief cease fire,
I stop
watch the sky
begin to pink
in the east.
I do not want to wish
yet it is easy,
to think
to want
to believe
I have Samson’s strength
to break this encasement
of fear of longing,
this fear of loss.
Others say
nothing ventured
nothing gained —
I used to think that way
before the drought
came and withered
hope away before
any intercession
could be made
and that thing
inside became like
the stalks of an orchid
shedding the petals of spent,
exhausted blossoms,
thin and dry as parchment paper,
falling, drifiting to the floor,
leaving the stalk empty.
I may wish to reach my hand,
twitching with something
resembling longing,
to the eastern horizon,
where I imagine you
warm and dreaming still
but fear cements me still,
fear of longing
fear of loss
for that place inside
cradles no hope
for green stalks
holding buds
yielding blossoms.
Return
Weekend Writing Prompt #267: This weekend your challenge is to write a poem or a piece of prose in exactly 31 words using the word “Return”.
https://sammiscribbles.wordpress.com/category/weekend-writing-prompt/
I envy the monarch’s, the hummingbird’s arc of return,
infinite, eternal.
My jealousy consumes as I have
no return, no cycle—
Only the damnation of this linear thing,
finite, directionless.
Bouquets of the Ramshackle
https://amanpan.com/category/eugis-prompts/
With ramshackle shards Of heart, soul, self Falling away like the browned petals Of a long-wilted bouquet, We create a riotous noise In ramshackle attempts To find some connection. Lumbering, awkward attempts At reaching out to touch once again, To replace, to freshen The brown wilted and missing parts With new bouquets of spring Whose stems sit in eternally Fresh, clean waters. We dream of a life lived No longer ramshackle, With no long-wilted bouquets Of a past to haunt with falling petals, But a life returning whole, To move without noise Through the world once again.
A Prayer to the Ancestors
What would I learn Could I raise your bones From the earth? And like some ancient medicine woman Scatter them like runes to read Or use them in the making Of a sacred instrument To rattle next to my ear? What would their music tell me? Would their rhythms move me? Would there be some wisdom spoken? Hidden within the notes of rattled rhythms Of all your dried out unearthed bones Is there enough marrow left to have All my ancestors speak to me? Should I, in some ancient tribal ritual Of ancestral cannibalism, Ingest your ground bones Mixed with magic into an elixir Infused with your ancestral spirits, Be given the power of thunder And lightening that is your strength Earned by you through the ages? Is this how your spirits will travel through me Teaching me of all the earth and sky? Is there a way to know, to learn To hear all the secrets you deem I need, Need to know in this time, this place For this, this last chapter Of what I have left to me? My ancestors, for I have wasted Away pages and chapters, Squandered decades of the anthology You have written into me. Ancestors, speak to me, So I waste not the years Left to be written By your spirits into me.
The Work of Spring
I clipped away dead branches
From the living shrubs today.
Not an easy thing,
But a thing that must be done.
Strange it is how dead things
Will cling so tightly to the living
As if to squeeze
The last remaining bits of life away
And thus, have company in death and dying.
There is yet more to do
So only the living things are left
To flourish in the spring sun.
An Afternoon of Creation
Curtains drawn against the sun
Of an autumnal afternoon
Spent in another hotel,
She drowns in what
The bathroom mirror shows
Of emptiness in sapphire eyes
As her empty heartedness grows–
Her wrinkles a road map
Of crosshatched lies
Told and lived even now,
As her fingers grip
The sink edges of porcelain
Cold against her skin.
Her mind swirls,
Dizzy, lost in her creations
Of new golden plated lies.
https://godoggocafe.com/2020/11/17/tuesday-writing-prompt-challenge-tuesday-november-17-2020/
Schooled
https://amanpan.com/2020/10/12/eugis-weekly-prompt-foresight-october-12-2020/
https://godoggocafe.com/2020/10/13/tuesday-writing-prompt-challenge-october-13-2020/
In the fading light,
My hindsight schools, lectures, drills
My foresight
In how to take steps,
In how to look away,
In how to live hopeless,
In how to heal with saltwater dreams
Overflowing with hope.
Yet still with foresight
In how to guard,
My scars, my wounds,
My picked at scabs
In this
fading light of days
Unfilled,
Lived,
Cheered,
Flowering with dreams,
Left
Of life remaining.
Mystical Fields
https://amanpan.com/2020/10/05/eugis-weekly-prompt-mystical-october-5-2020/
Meet me in the field
Where heather sways with the wind
Through time we will live.
Life, never a friend,
Kept us from knowing true joy,
Meet me in the field,
Where loss is gaining
And grief blossoms into joy
Meet me where gold grows.
Musings on the Cracked Crystal Ball
https://amanpan.com/2020/09/28/eugis-weekly-prompt-crystal-ball-september-28-2020/
When you found the things you could,
A mist of breath showed in the rain,
Twin clouded rain shimmered colors
Of gray stone before you on a path you would go.
If only, if only, you should know the bones of us,
Move knotted stiff with the griefs you’ve piled upon your soul,
We’d glow of phosphorus and neon in velvet darkness.
Walking the dark, shadowed canyon of dreams
Wilted by disappointments and deflated sunshine
Waking to dimmest daylight at noon
Where you cannot bear to look
Upon your own reflection,
A sight of horror in your own eyes now
In that cracked crystal ball where you stand,
In your own self-consecrated field
Of plastic flowers bowing their majestic heads to you,
Your straw haired head is bowed,
Smiling at the ground.
Hearing The Mermaids Sing 