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.
Fine tune
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Sharing Our Truths: Arrival of Spring – M.A. Morris
I am honored to be featured on BraveandReckless.com
Spring arrived
Barely seen.
Our eyes turned inward.
Suspicious of air,
We could not take spring
Deeply into our lungs,
Feel the warmth of it on our skin,
Taste the freshness of it on our tongues
For fear.
We counted our first born
And tried prayer.
Had we forgotten the blood of the lamb
Above the lintel?
We sought protection in distance,
longing for human touch.
Hate and fear drained us.
We grew weary hearing–
Wash your hands
Don’t touch your face
Wash your hands
Prayed Mother Mary full of grace
Six to ten feet apart we must stand
We feared to touch
Our mothers
Our fathers
Our sisters
Our brothers
Our sons
Our daughters
And longed–
All the more–
For touch.
Yes, this will make us aware—
Appreciate what now
We could not do.
Yes, we would improve,
We would appreciate all.
Technology would see us through.
Somewhere in…
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The Perfect Legend
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.
The Quilt
Sown together,
A patchwork quilt,
Torn and worn
Through all the years.
Sew places torn.
Patch places worn.
Put away to be used again.
Soft and broken in.
But not much left
To cushion or to warm
Against the chill of autumn,
The cold of winter, or the setting sun.
Not much left to be any good at all.
You’d have to take it apart.
Re-stitch, re-sew, replace the batting,
Find new scrapes and cut to make the pieces fit.
Wouldn’t it be better to start from scratch
Than to try to re-make something so old, so worn, so weary?
Wearied from the years of sheltering breaking hearts,
Wearied from the years of taking tears,
Wearied of being tossed to the floor
When the needing time ended,
Wearied of being the place
Of softness
For everyone else,
But itself.
Early Morning Walk
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–
The Nomad
I have lived a nomad
Inside my own life.
I have wandered
From old homes
To new, attempting
Always to find a fit,
A place my tent could forever rest.
A time or two, maybe three,
I took rest in the heart of another,
Feeling blessed for a time of such
Delightful comfort,
Yet I’ve never found a place
to end my nomadic travels,
A ceaseless, endless
Restlessness.
Written as part of Sammiscribbles.wordpress.com writing prompt where one is given a word, in this case NOMAD, and must write a poem or short fiction piece in exactly 68 words.
Horrid Spring
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.
Arrival of Spring
Spring arrived
Barely seen.
Our eyes turned inward.
Suspicious of air,
We could not take spring
Deeply into our lungs,
Feel the warmth of it on our skin,
Taste the freshness of it on our tongues
For fear.
We counted our first born
And tried prayer.
Had we forgotten the blood of the lamb
Above the lintel?
We sought protection in distance,
longing for human touch.
Hate and fear drained us.
We grew weary hearing–
Wash your hands
Don’t touch your face
Wash your hands
Prayed Mother Mary full of grace
Six to ten feet apart we must stand
We feared to touch
Our mothers
Our fathers
Our sisters
Our brothers
Our sons
Our daughters
And longed–
All the more–
For touch.
Yes, this will make us aware—
Appreciate what now
We could not do.
Yes, we would improve,
We would appreciate all.
Technology would see us through.
Somewhere in our collective soul
We had doubts, questions–
We had to know–
Hadn’t there been signs?
HIV, Ebola, Bird flu, Swine flu,
Zika, West Nile too,
All killers, all unseen—
Hurricanes, droughts,
Famines, earthquakes—
Natural disasters ripping
The world to shreds.
Had we done this to ourselves?
We hadn’t been the good stewards
We were charged to be.
Drowning seas with plastic, killing bees,
Melting ice caps, making greenhouse gases–
Killing the mother God gave us.
We hadn’t loved each other as we were loved,
As we were instructed to do.
Then our arrogance, a weed within our souls grew.
We killed, pillaged, maimed, raped, started wars–
For the one skin that made us master,
For the name of God, the only one to worship,
For riches, since the strong should prey upon the weak,
For gender, after all women were things to use,
For sexuality, holy books said there’s but one way to love,
For everything was ours to take.
We’d killed each other
For these grotesquely grandiose ideas,
While calling ourselves Godly,
Saying our actions were sanctioned
By our God, our religion.
Only we knew the natural order of things.
In pride, we claimed
Where we walked—
Holy Ground.
Then guilt filled our lungs,
We finally questioned—
Was this it–
The fourth seal broken?
Had the pale rider been loosed
Upon the land?
While wanting to believe
It was all simply science.
Drying Time
Turn toward the hours passed.
Size them and arrange.
Let soak in dyes of prism colors
As the minutes pass away and then
Lift them, dripping dye,
To hang in the warming sun
Over tight strung wire.
Watch the colors drip, splashing on the floor.
Wet splotches collecting in puddles
Of liquid silk to be mopped away
As the hours drip colored dye
In the drying of time.
Ash and Blood
Ash soft upon the brow.
Atonement drifts
On frankincense smoke.
No one ever seeks
To wear the stigmata
Upon hands and feet.
There be no martyrs here.
Confessions worn down
By touching whispers
Of brokenness.
A shattered seeking
Of what heals in ash and blood,
Whispering of saints and sinners.
Wingless prayers spoken for things lost
In a darkness of light.
The wish of a murdered truth
Contained in dusty grey skies
Of wanting and desire
Sought over again–
To now seek and send a trembling
Hand to reach with no strength to grasp–
For a soul too wearied
From the grinding away
Of trying.
Hearing The Mermaids Sing 