Category: poetry

The Promise We Must Be

Image courtesy of Sue Vincent
https://scvincent.com/2020/07/23/thursday-photo-prompt-darkness-writephoto/

Darkness gathers upon the horizon of our land:

A land we have loved with the lives of our sons and daughters,

A land we have bled for,

A land we have built upon golden ideals,

Shining as a beacon to other nations

 

But the darkness gathers upon the horizon of our land:

For which we have done things of shame and sin,

For we have killed our sisters and brothers

Of all different colors,

For we have kept others in chains of injustice

Because we saw others as less than.

 

And now the darkness gathers in our cities,

Creeping along the horizon of our land.                                                          

 

Now. Now is the time to carry that torch

Lifted above the water of a harbor

And see its light spread across our land.

We must be the promise

For which our daughters and sons died.

Driving out the darkness,

We must all be the promise of the dream—

Liberty and justice for all.

In Our Youth

Image Courtesy of SueVincent.com
https://scvincent.com/2020/07/16/thursday-photo-prompt-glisten-writephoto/

 

You glisten always.

Lighting no difference–

In pitch black even,

You glisten,

As if oiled

With diamonds.

My heart twisted, bent,

Burned by the prism

Of your light.

Sweetened Stolen Dreams

Image from Pexels

Syrup still dripping from your fingertips,

you try to gift me the sugared dreams

you have stolen away

from a pearlescent candied sky.

I long to taste such dreams

of sweetened rest.

Leaden

image courtesy of scvincent.com
https://scvincent.com/2020/06/25/thursday-photo-prompt-silver-writephoto-2/

I can not begin to hold

the silver in the twilight air,

for it too quickly slips from my fingers.

My feet stuck in my quicksand thoughts

of moonlight shimmering on silvered hair

so, stop any step toward a silver chance,

Slipping away like silk as twilight

Fades into velvet night.

Charms

Image from BBC Culture- The Strange Power of the Evil Eye

Serrated edges of your secrets

Sliced open my chest long ago.

Yet, I carried those secrets

Across the borders of decades.

I guarded those secrets like gemstones.

I wore them as talismans,

Good luck charms, rubbing each

Like burnished bronze of ages old.

Why have I kept them so?

I do not know.

 

Should Not Have

Image courtesy of brecks.com
https://sammiscribbles.wordpress.com/2020/06/06/weekend-writing-prompt-160-kaleidoscope/
Write a poem or piece of prose in exactly 23 words–Kaleidoscope

A woman once held a kaleidoscope to my eyes.

I, like a child entranced, fooled by a prism of colors,

Gave my soul away.

Spirit of Stone

Photo courtesy of Sue Vincent’s Thursday Photo Prompt Veiled #writephoto

For visually challenged writers, the image shows a green horizon, beyond which the mist veils a hill topped with strange rock formations.

I knelt before God

as the earth was formed.

For ages I have been here,

spirit of stone unmoving,

waiting above the forest land.

I am the tonnage of stones,

living veiled behind swirling mists.

Yet, I am billions of stones,

existing beyond the veil.

I press the earth for meaning

when I hear the children of earth wail

of suffering through centuries.

I rise above the peace of forest land,

lifting the tonnage of anger I carry.

I am the billions of stones now,

moving beyond the veil.

I have risen, the world,

carrying justice

in the weight of stone,

the children of earth will not be moved.

Behind the veil, I am the tonnage of stones.

I will retreat there when this time is done.

 

Thursday photo prompt: Veiled #writephoto

Silent No More

We were silent,

Back in the day,

When death came

In white hoods, noose in hand

To hang our darker sisters and brothers.

We were silent

When death went

Across an ocean

With bent crosses, yellow stars, and gasses

for the Jew.

We were silent

Back in the day

When death came

For our gay brothers

Who pleaded with us–

Silence equals death.

A lesson we’ve not learned yet.

No words for all this

As we shake our heads

Our silence kills yet again

And another black man dies,

Crushed under authority.

Yes, silence equals death.

We cannot stay silent

If we believe a nation’s promise

Time for us to stand up

And find the words to say–

Should you do this

To our darker sisters and brothers

You do it to us all.

We are the burning flame

Burning away the old ways.

https://onewomansquest.org/2020/06/01/vjs-weekly-challenge-98-no-words/

The Watcher

Image courtesy of Sue Vincent Thursday Photo Prompt Challenge
For visually challenged writers, the image shows a flower-strewn cliff-top above the sea, where a rocky outcrop, seemingly shaped into many forms and faces, looks out over the waves.
This week’s prompt ~ Guardian
https://scvincent.com/2020/05/28/thursday-photo-prompt-guardian-writephoto/

The guardian watches the sea,

Waiting patiently

For the return of old ones

Who long ago slipped away

Out to sea, speaking

Words of promise,

Words of return–

Not unlike your words to me.

Like you, the old ones

Will not return,

Lost in an ocean

Of time long forgotten.

They found new homes

Where to light their fires,

Burning away old, shriveled desires,

Burning away the salt of the sea,

And the dirt of old known shores.

 

The guardian waits,

Like a widow upon her widow’s walk,

Staring out to sea.

But as I have finished waiting,

 I must walk away.

Renew

Image from Gumtree.com

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.

Written in response to: https://amanpan.com/2020/05/25/eugis-weekly-prompt-renewal-may-25-2020/