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: emptiness
Ghost Marks
Image courtesy of depositphotos.com
Before morning, she wakes, adrift still in half-remembered dreams, dirtied by ghost footprints upon the waking to muddy tread marks ever present, no matter the hours spent in scrubbing— the marks indelible— tattoos of mud. Leave her to the simple tasks of morning, to her daily reckoning, preparations of covers and cases required, all the hiding away, layering as if for winter, this bandaging of tender spots.
Hardened Earth
dry, drought ridden earth
riddled with cracks inches wide
forms chasms decades deep
layered in dry dust
rising as rain pelts away,
determined to flood
chasms, erasing all cracks
but this earth is too hardened
unyielding to any rain,
seeking to soften hard soil
No Lexicon
There exists no lexicon
For the echoes of emptiness here–
Where the azaleas bloom
Purple, pink, and white,
While dusty looking
Lavender sends up
Multiple spikes,
As roses yield up
Open, thirsting mouths
To the sky.
Though the soil here
Nourishes color and green
Growing things,
While life appears
Apparently abundant,
Although neighbors smile and wave,
The soil remains absent of truth, of meaning,
Of love—of a spirit—of a soul.
No lexicon exists for the emptiness
Echoing throughout the soil
In this place.
Questions
Originally written for Sammi Scribbles Weekend Writing Challenge- Using Question in exactly 84 words but I didn’t get back to edit it down until today.
Questions hang in the air Like heavy coastal fog On cool autumn mornings Eternal questions of humanity: All the whys, the wonderings-- Never answered prayers-- Laying pressed between the Pages of a book like brown, Dried flowers—forgotten, Having lost their sentiment. Speak the differences Among roses, weeds, wildflowers— Inconsequential answers For inconsequential questions. Could sense of counting Out the hours be sliced Like blood, blooming meat To find truth absolute Like high priestesses of old, Scry the answer In a blood filled bowl?
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.
Dream No More
https://godoggocafe.com/2021/08/31/tuesday-writing-prompt-challenge-august-31-2021/
Todays prompt: “waterfall wishes”
She will never fall to earth again After soaring among the stars, The planets a blur. No. No. She will never swim In the deepest oceans, Cavorting with dolphins and whales. No. No. Never will her soul fly, Brushing shoulders with angels, Their wings touching upon her face. No. No. Never these things. Never these dangerous things again. Never allowing illusions to gain sway. No. No. She will plant her feet firmly in the ground. Her heart cemented in her chest. Yes. Yes. That once mighty waterfall Has slowed to a trickle As there no longer exist Any waterfall wishes.
No Art (Revised)
I first wrote this a few years ago after reading Elizabeth Bishop’s work once again. Well, after revisiting Mary Oliver and gaining familiarity with Pablo Neruda this summer, I once again returned to Bishop’s work and then had to re-watch Reaching for the Moon. So I decided to dig this one out and tweak it and revise.
In this thing called losing, Bishop said we become masters And that losing isn’t a disaster. No, not a disaster. Losing socks and such stuff. I’ve lost earrings, bracelets, Expensive ones too, didn’t care Beyond maybe a minute or two, And never was it a disaster. And no pain beyond a stab of nostalgia Did I have upon saying goodbye To three houses and two cities, And never did I feel it a disaster. And yes, it was no disaster To bury my mother, A father who really wasn’t, The man who really was, First one brother, then the other, Then lastly, a wife. With each, my body and soul Savaged by a catastrophic hurricane, yes. But no, no disaster. No disaster is it, I’ll admit, For a tiny bit of soul to erode As I buried each. But nothing, nothing did I ever master. Except, maybe this— I did not look for them- Looking to forget them Since they were gone, Emptied of this earth. No, I did not look to forget While driving home In darkness under a full moon Lighted with regret Of a new unfamiliar scent. Yet the swirling of this sad scent Is no, no real disaster. No real disaster is it— That I look to forget A lost return now. A return to life Captured, fleeting, lost-- Filled with a scent Of hope or a fool’s thought— Matters not but now lost. And in this thing Called losing, In which I am well-schooled, As are we all, I have tried to make an art, To make an art of all this loss. Yes, this may be no real disaster, But Bishop lied. There is no art in losing, No art at all, That I can find to master.
Travel These Tracks
https://godoggocafe.com/2021/08/17/tuesday-writing-prompt-challenge-tuesday-august-17-2021/I
Climb this ladder
Away from here
To some place
That mattered,
Real, no abstraction, real
Stone
What is it that you wish to know? How someone could live with The edges of a life chipped away, Breath not taken, suffocated, Heart stilled, Walking dead Through the days of life, Just so onlookers believe The pretense they wish to see? While I, struggling for air, For the beating rhythms of life, Having lived too long inside a shrinking skin, Become petrified wood, stone, Armored in minerals. Only so close. Only so close. For I have lived years and years Of rings and more rings, All mineralized, Surrounding the core Of me. Nothing Could truly touch, Know the center. Nothing ever did Perhaps, ever will. It is easy to live As stone.
Hearing The Mermaids Sing 