Todays prompt: Begin a poem with “endless”
Endless winds rustling
Through leaves baked a thin crisp green
By summer’s noon sun.
Endless wilting flowers
Reaping words of empty dust
Sands away meaning.
Endless hope sprouts blooms
In the dry cracked refuge of earth
A survival scented thing.
Detach,
Detach from it all,
All that held her down,
Sandbags of what others wanted,
Needed, expected her to be.
She detaches,
Cutting loose and through
Tentacles of veins and arteries,
Strangling ropes of memories.
The things she could never be-
Mary, The Mother, to wash you clean
Before placing you in your tomb;
A variant of some second coming
To cure you and cleanse you of sins;
The perpetual penitent
To beg forgiveness from you:
All these she will not be.
From these things you wanted her to be,
She detaches, though she wears
The scars of the floggings given her
By those who accuse her, blame her
For not being enough—
The scars waxen now melt
In the warmth of her detachment.
Though you call her cold, emotionless,
When she detaches from those who
Bleed her life away,
When she rises
From beneath the ton of stones
You place upon her chest
To stop her breath,
Freed from the stone,
She breathes.
The magnolia tree is dead or dying
Said the experts at the nursery
Which planted it.
No green leaves hang upon it,
Only these brittle, brown things
Cling to its limbs still.
The experts give me two things,
Free of charge of course,
To try to resuscitate my magnolia.
The experts tell me everything to do
Over the next eight weeks,
But not to worry, if it all doesn’t work,
The tree will be replaced. It’s guaranteed.
A guarantee I never thought I’d need.
I did everything right:
Watering and fertilizing,
Watering and fertilizing,
Factoring in all the rain—
Yet here it stands dead or dying
In this place you never knew.
Like with you, in the place you knew,
I did everything I knew to do—
Replace the cooking pots and pans with stainless,
Only organic foods, red wine the only alcohol,
Broke all the cigarettes in two,
Quit my job to care for you—
Until—
Until the fourth time it returned,
Spread to the lungs and liver,
You wanted your cigarettes and alcohol back.
How could I argue? Say no to that?
Yet even then—
I found you cigarettes with no additives, organic tobacco too.
Until January, our magnolia bloomed as you lay dying,
When at midnight a storm blew through,
Minutes later, you died
And the magnolia shed its blooms.
So here now, in this new place,
I planted a magnolia in memory
Of what was, what was not,
Of what could have been, should have been,
Of what would have been
If I possessed the magic to shape shift
Into the one you most wanted.
And now, this tree in this new place
Stands dead or dying.
But I will do as the experts say:
Spray from top to bottom for disease,
Shock the roots every other week
Until mid- November, hoping to bring it back,
Bring it back from the edge of death.
If I can’t, the nursery will replace it
With another magnolia tree.
Yet I must think on that.
In this place, in this soil, perhaps
A magnolia is not meant to be.
I may ask them to replace it
With a different tree.
For it could be,
That here and now,
Magnolias are no longer meant for me.
Caught in the evening downpour, I am washed clean of summer. Summer’s red rock, red dirt dreams Sluiced from me with this autumnal drenching. Morning greets me with a cool hand Of sunshine upon my brow. Autumn whispers of a harvest Under skies of bluest topaz. A clear, clean, honest reaping In days yet to be had.
I’d nail all the windows in that month shut.
Board the place completely up.
All closed and shuttered,
Leaving it to the dust and rot.
July—the only summer month
I’d abandon
The month forced me to abandon you—
How is a starving child forced to leave
A mother who sold herself
So the child could eat?
Thus, I cared for you
Until I had to reach out and close your eyes—
Then I dreamed
Dreamed–
I nailed the windows in every room shut
And I boarded up every room.
I took a hammer to that floor to ceiling avocado green tile
Of the kitchen tomb,
Shattering every single inch
Of mirror green shine.
I brought the garden hose in
And hosed down all our scars
Until yours and mine
Nearly disappeared.
Then I woke
And buried you
Under roses
In hot, steamy July
Shuttering you away
Until I thought there’d
Be nothing left of you.
But you are always here.
I pick the good of you
From the rubble,
See little bits of you
In each of your grandchildren.
I see bits of you in my daughter,
And our legacy is not only
One of scars.
Walking in fractured twilight
Is the smoothest time of light and mind–
A wish made–
To braid reality, this curve of light, with sweetest memory
Thus, so entwined
One begins to hope,
Believing in miracles once again
To spite all fractures made of years.
Today’s prompt: Write a poem that uses the words “weary”, “nails”, and “mind control”
I weary.
Weary of the white noise
Spitting out layers
Striated stone
Of itching mind control,
Of mica and gypsum
Rough, itchy flakes
Others carved out for me
To keep me in what they
Saw as my place.
My nails worn down, bloody raw
To relieve the itch from time to time
The itch that speaks the words
I know are not true
But still have the power
Of stone to crush the ribs
Of my soul with the weight
Of their damnable tonnage
That I am not enough of anything
Not smart enough
Not pretty enough
Not thin enough
Not good enough
For anything or anyone
Yes, I know—
None of it is true—
The stone skin
I’ve worn down
Over all these years,
The itch rarely there.
But sometimes—
Sometimes—
The itch returns—
Vicious, relentless
Until my nails,
Bloody and raw,
Leave me weary.
Yet still,
Still, I now create
My own place.
( An older poem written in 2015 while in Provincetown, MA. Revised for this week’s writephoto challenge.)
At sunrise over water,
Remembering as if in a dream
The child and you and me
As we stood by a sea
Half a world away.
Both of you now baptized differently by my tears.
And for and from you,
I am left with things neither given
Nor felt in years,
Linked by all the fears
To form over a decade of a life
Lived like a stranger
In my own shrinking skin.
I have stood
Since the dawn
At this ocean’s edge
Waiting, waiting.
And now at noon
The rain begins.
Fierce pelting blows
Washing me clean
Of all I know
Or dare to dream.
For living continues
Within my own skin
Storm clouds rode in
Upon a sky soaked in sunset red.
Wildflowers bowed their heads
Down on either side
As I drove by
Smiling, thinking of all things new.
Once home, I stood in the yard,
Arms akimbo, welcoming the new—
What the storm, the wind, the rains
Would bring—
As gently as their nature could—
All things new, clean, green
With spring.
I gather hardened scars of loss and damage
Braided into keloid beauty
That are not blossoms of bitterness,
But fragrant beauties
That make me who I am.
Even the bars of your barren garden
Called love could not steal away
The essence of my hope.
Instead, the black, barrenness
within sugar syrup words
Of one never able to love
Contain no acid
To eat away
My skin of hope.
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