Category: poetry

Where the Heart Is

Image from the openingbelle.com
Written in response to https://sammiscribbles.wordpress.com/2020/05/09/weekend-writing-prompt-156-home/

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.

Tapestry of Spirit

my mother

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.

Fine tune

Tuning Fork in Water #1 courtesy of KaroAntonyan
Written in response to Weekend Writing Prompt #155 
“Tune”
This weekend your challenge is to write a poem or piece of prose in exactly 10 words.
Sammiscribble.wordpress.com

Use a tuning fork,

Fine tune this old tone-deaf heart.

Dream of Dancing

Tango by Noonsp on DeviantArt

https://amanpan.com/2020/04/27/eugis-weekly-prompt-dancing-april-27-2020/

I dream of dancing–
Intricacies of Argentina,
Ebb and flow–
Grace of Vienna,
Lift and swirl
Through shifting scenarios.

I wake.
Dancing ends.
Truly, I did dance once.
So many years ago.
Steps, lifts, patterns
Long forgotten.
I tried and tried to learn
That Texas Two Step.
Quick, quick, slow, slow—
They said.
But some inject a little extra step,
A tiny pause here or there.
I stand accused of trying to lead
When I should have followed.
My pointy boots, often in the way,
Did nothing to protect my feet.
And if you must know,
This last try crushed
My instep and toes.
I’ve just started to walk again.
So dancing, my friend?


I believe my dancing days are at an end.
So, do not ask me to try again
When I stumble and fall
Just walking and talking.
Dancing, a longed-for energy,
I no longer possess.

I may want, I may dream.
But I cannot chance
The crushing of another’s feet
In my bumbling, stumbling attempts–
To dance once again
The passionate closed embrace
Caricias and lustrada footwork
Of Argentina,
Or the sweeping flow
Of canter time pivot turns
And fleckerls and contra check
in the grace of Vienna.
So, no tango, no waltz.
And this old dog
Has proven she is just too old
To learn any new tricks
Of dancing.
Let this old dog sleep
And dream
And remember
What once it was like
To dance
With such
Passionate, graceful
Abandon.

The Blanket

Image courtesy of Elftown.com

Written in response to Sammiscribble.Wordpress.com Weekend Writing Prompt #154- Use the word “Fabric” and no more than 131 words

A tiny explosion within the diagnosis:

Stage 3C ovarian cancer,

Blasts a hole in our family fabric.

Threads of surgeries and chemo

Stitch it shut.

A hard-knotted mess left.

We live without holes a few months.

 

New scans, blood tests.

Cancer slices a nice size gash,

fraying at the edges.

More chemo knits shut our fabric, 

No longer perfect with knots, scarred seams,

But whole.

 

Six months,

A rending– bowel resection,

Rips– chemo for a bit,

You stopped, couldn’t do anymore.

The rips, the tears—too many

Too many damaged places to repair.

We learn to live with holes, rips

Fraying tears, worn places—

Until you are no longer there,

Until there is no us—but the child and me,

And no blanket left to cover

What was left of us.

 

The Perfect Legend

image courtesy of windowtoparadise.com

Written in response to Eugi’s Weekly Prompt-

“Legend”- April 20, 2020

The day you left,

You became a legend

In the child’s heart.

True, she was a woman/child

By that time, but you—

Dying too young,

You became a legend,

Crafted to perfection

In her child’s heart.

Her memory forging steel

Fiction tales of your deeds

With iron ore dust of truth.

And I became the villain,

Who had neither the words,

The charms, the incantations

For healing to whisper

Over your body,

Nor had I the spells

To cast so you would live.

Thus, I was guilty of crimes against

Humanity in the book where she kept

A record of all my misdeeds, sins, crimes.

And now, she is grown.

A woman now and she finds

I am just a little less guilty,

Not so much the criminal,

In the present.

But you,

You will always be

The perfect legend.

Drift, Taste, Memory

image by Ivy Schexnayder on Unsplash

Written in response to Tuesday Writing Prompt Challenge on

https://godoggocafe.com/2020/04/21/tuesday-writing-prompt-challenge-tuesday-april-22-2020/comment-page-1/#comment-48478

I drift
Drift in purpose, direction,
Resolve in question.
Telling myself on repeat
I’ve no need, no want
Of soft skin against mine.
To feel another’s heart beat
Against my chest.
Though I remember,
Though I can still imagine,
When I close my eyes
What it is
To close my hand round the soft hand of another,
To fall asleep embracing—entwined, entangled,
To wake and smell sleep warmed skin,
To touch and take and give and kiss
Before coffee should touch my lips.
Such hunger is not a thing I allow myself to taste,
The risk too rich, too great to let it touch upon the tongue.
I am not young enough for a taste of what
Should bring me to my knees—
Of what I imagine
That she’d taste like memory.

Early Morning Walk

Her Mona Lisa smile

Early mornings I walk my dog.

What a pair, what a sight we must make

in the early dawn light.

She, with her little legs flying,

her little French Bulldog smile–

Then me with my crazy, curly, too early,

morning hair and not enough coffee yet face.

As the cool sun, rising, greets

us with a loving grace,

no one would know

how my little dog schools me in life.

in her jaunty little prance,

in her little smiling face, looking up at me,

her joy, her pure delight

in the movement of her body,

in the scent of morning in the air,

in the gentle quiet of dawn upon us–

It is the moment,

Purely, simply–

The moment

Of being–

Catacomb of Colors

Wikipedia image of Rosh HaNikra grottoes

I can hide in catacombs of colors and never look to the sky.
My blood shed, bled out in tiny droplets of all the years of parting,
dripping, draining in the darkness
And carried away, scattered to the winds,
Leavings upon the ground, seedless seeds,
Sprouting up in colorless flowers of summer without colors,
Without the dreams of sunlight on their faces,
Without fragrance sweet, divinity in scents we can never forget lost.
We learn to live with regrets taken, earned, packed away
With the mortgage of things within our hearts, within our lifetimes of meaning,
Within our trying just one more damn time,
Drifting up in clouds of long-ago cigarette smoke.
Crush this dried out husk of me,
Scatter those particles of dust to the wind
And see if colors sprout once that dust settles upon the ground,
See if there’s meaning left within their regrets,
See if there’s fragrance, some elegance of divinity within a scent
To be remembered when there is nothing,
Nothing left but this wisp of memory
Within your breath.
Let go my hand, love. Leave me wrapped in the shroud
Of all my days and regrets shared along the way
To here, this time of parting. Leave me to hide away
In this catacomb of colors.

Horrid Spring

image from kilduff’s.com

Wind and rain
Of this horrid spring
Whips us to perfection
Of brokenness being
Beaten souls
That we are
In this time of need
And want of touch.
Our loneness sheltered
Bodies, our silence shattered souls,
Contoured colors of minds
Restrained our madness
In this once upon a time.
If only to wake in the warmth
Of human skin upon skin
Once again in some perfumed swirl
Contained in believing a speck of faith
Preserved as a fly in amber.
That fly who found rest
In warm liquid ooze
But was never to escape.
Yes, grateful to escape to
This fitful rest though, yes,
It is, indeed, blessed.
My mind scatters,
Struggles to find a train of thought
To ride in peace from one station
To the next, make a trip to the elegance
Of a dining car, white glove service
And all else– in contrast—
To this vast emptiness—
With which to wrestle like Jacob,
But my soul has long been crippled.
All the trains left the station,
Ran circles around my heart,
Chugging on into the tunnels
To find there isn’t much
In expectation on the other side
Of those darkened tunnels.
No light, no light,
Just a cold grey
Of a horrid spring.