Begin with unpacking
the loss of years.
Perhaps, for once,
Win the battle with tears.
Start over clean, new.
Carry emptied, broken down boxes,
bundled and tied, sticky at the edges
with their old used tape, to the curb.
Balanced no longer on narrow ledges.
Breathe now, once again.
This is the lesson of you,
Oh, the things you do teach–
Wearing your blue mantle
Lined in blackness
With your crooked fingers
Tipped in painted red do you reach
Ripping out hearts
Adding to a collection
You keep in a box.
Until the day of the dead,
When you light your fake fires
And scented candles,
Spread your blanket
For the time to admire
All hearts in the box of your collection,
Chant your incantations and prayers
To La Muerte for protection
From the evil you spread
And La Llorona for aid
Searching for the newest victim
From whom your red tipped claws long to rip a heart.
It does begin with whispers of wind,
Steady, slow rhythm of fattened rain drops.
The distant rumbles begin.
Then the slight, quick flashing starts.
Soon the wind howls.
The rain beats as if a beast
Against the windows.
The rumbles, the shouting of an angry God
At the petulant child of a world.
The flashing, the cracking whip
Of our forgotten master.
The downpour is here,
The sobbing of the forgotten,
The hated, the poor,
The ones we were to love.
No ark on this horizon is seen.
This week’s prompt ~ Painted
For visually challenged writers, the image shows a rather oriental red bridge over a pool covered with waterlilies and surrounded by trees.
She lived a painted life.
Careful with her brushes
Always touching up
A chip, a mark, a ragged flaw
As she found them.
If she found a rip or tear
In the precious canvas,
It just would not do,
But she would oh, so carefully
Apply the much-needed glue.
No. Not a single person could tell.
Not a single person knew.
No one knew the time
And care and money
She spent on this
Carefully painted life–
Of verdant grasses,
Irises of every shade
Deepest purples
To palest pinks,
The lush canna lilies,
Fragrant gardenias and lilacs,
The splendor of magnolias,
The stately cedars.
Everyone speaks of a gentle stateliness,
In the air of her personal dress,
Her blonde locks, and her wounded blue eyes
As they looked out
Upon the careful paint of her garden lair,
A spider inspecting her web.
But her victims knew
Of every rip and tear
And all the rot beneath the paint.
For her victims lay silent, faint
Cocooned beneath
Many coats of paint.
This week’s prompt ~ Dance
For visually challenged writers, the image shows a pale sun piercing the mists above a green path through a golden field, leading into the center of a circle of stones.
A mist of souls weaves among the stones
A dance between grasses of green and gold
Breezes chant in ancient secret runes,
Speaking in tongues of priestesses and druids–
A single soul leaps toward a shrouded sun,
And something in our blood no longer runs—
At all fluid.
In breaking silence,
earth and sky kiss again.
At a toast of mid-day,
the moon shows her face,
a smile of grace.
In the glimmer of a star’s dance,
a thorn on dried roses prick,
a reminder of circumstance.
Pieces broke away,
pebbles and stones
chipped from a boulder.
The edge of a pane of glass
broken off, no longer smoothly square,
but rough ridged like a broken thumb nail,
begging to be filed away.
Pieces broken away,
missing in wordlessness,
cannot be found.
Jig saw together the rest,
glue, duct tape,
what is left,
never to imitate new, unbroken.
Broken, hollowed parts,
make for an ever incomplete,
an always abyss
to fall headlong into,
always a scratchy roughness to scrape
a knee, an elbow, a hand.
Always a sharp edge to slice open
an abdomen, an arm, a femoral artery, a throat.
No. No. No.
Everything, everything
at once, best kept at arm’s length.
Never can such wounds be allowed
in the here,
in the now.
Isn’t home where the heart is?
Or where you hang your hat?
My heart, well, I don’t know.
I seem to have misplaced it
Somewhere along the way.
I think I just mistreated it
And it decided to run away.
Didn’t treat it tenderly–
Let it get bruised,
Broken, bashed about.
So, it up and decided
It was time to go.
It bought a one-way ticket
On a now defunct airline
And went to catch the sun
On some tropical beach.
But that’s what happens
When you carelessly
Fling your heart around.
It develops shadows,
Misses beats,
Valves leak.
Then it gets pissed off,
runs away,
and home isn’t
what it
used to be.
In her grandchildren,
her spirit is woven–
What a tapestry
These children create.
The strongest fibers
of her determination run
In the eldest, wearing her grandmother’s face,
Though she never knew her.
Threads of her courage and strength
Weave into the only one who knew her,
Who can remember the smell of her beef stew,
As the grown child wages a battle for her life.
Yarns of responsibility and fun spin
In the lone grandson,
As he raises his son
And forgets not how to play.
The delicate fine threads of her caring and her dreams
Spin through the twins,
Born too late to know her,
One doing what must be done
to care for others.
the other creating a business of her art.
The warm, soft yarn of her love and generosity
weaves through the youngest, my daughter,
Born under the same December sun,
As she becomes a nurse caring
For babies born too early.
In my mother’s grandchildren,
A tapestry of faith is woven,
And I am taught
DNA is more than science,
Woven with soul upon
Some ancient loom.
This tapestry of spirit
Where my mother lives still.
Walk to the end of dark uncurling days
at the edge of the earth,
witness it split open
flowering,
beautiful.
I’d give it to you
could it be contained
boxed, bottled,
held within my hands,
weak as they are,
that cannot hold
such flowering strength.
undone in spectacle
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