Nothing Ephemeral Exists Here

on the first year after the Uvalde mass shooting

Image courtesy of The Texas Tribune
All shapes of brutish violence,
written in sprawling spray
of innocent blood.

Did Eden ever exist?
Every rain of bullets instills doubt.

Pray heaven exists
for the sake of parents grieving still,
their children, bloody sacrifices
on an altar to the 2nd amendment.

Bandaged, She Walks

image courtesy of drnimaplasticsurgery.com

Bandaged, gauze covered, blanketed--
now--

She never thought of bandages
until one wound oozed infection,
a malevolent fluid.

Thus, she learned of cleansing wounds,
bandaging them for protection,
changing dressings.

Twice, she thought her wound healed, scarred over,
rejoicing, removed her bandage.
Twice, her scar split open, infection returning.

Resigned, resolving to keep her bandage always,
Refreshed daily, keeping infection at bay.


https://sammiscribbles.wordpress.com/category/weekend-writing-prompt/

Return

pexels-miriam-fischer-2671074
Weekend Writing Prompt #267: This weekend your challenge is to write a poem or a piece of prose in exactly 31 words using the word “Return”.
https://sammiscribbles.wordpress.com/category/weekend-writing-prompt/

I envy the monarch’s, the hummingbird’s arc of return,
infinite, eternal.
My jealousy consumes as I have
no return, no cycle—
Only the damnation of this linear thing,
finite, directionless.

Handmaid’s Tale on the Horizon

Brevity of years
Right, paid in blood + death, destroyed
Fiction drips history

https://sammiscribbles.wordpress.com/2022/06/25/weekend-writing-prompt-265-brevity/

Brevity in 12 words

No Lexicon

Photo by Pixabay on Pexels.com

There exists no lexicon

For the echoes of emptiness here–

Where the azaleas bloom

Purple, pink, and white,

While dusty looking

Lavender sends up

Multiple spikes,

As roses yield up

Open, thirsting mouths

To the sky.

Though the soil here

Nourishes color and green

Growing things,

While life appears

Apparently abundant,

Although neighbors smile and wave,

The soil remains absent of truth, of meaning,

Of love—of a spirit—of a soul.

No lexicon exists for the emptiness

Echoing throughout the soil

In this place.

 

A Cave We Build

Photo by Erika Osberg on Unsplash

https://sammiscribbles.wordpress.com/category/weekend-writing-prompt/

Close the blinds 
against the grey light.
Prepare a cave for the soul 
in cold January
as the wind rages.
Contemplation, prayer
like John of Patmos?
This cave
readied, awaits
the apocalypse
devils wish.

Questions

Image is my own

Originally written for Sammi Scribbles Weekend Writing Challenge- Using Question in exactly 84 words but I didn’t get back to edit it down until today.

Questions hang in the air
Like heavy coastal fog
On cool autumn mornings

Eternal questions of humanity:
All the whys, the wonderings--
Never answered prayers--
Laying pressed between the
Pages of a book like brown,
Dried flowers—forgotten,
Having lost their sentiment.

Speak the differences
Among roses, weeds, wildflowers—
Inconsequential answers
For inconsequential questions.

Could sense of counting
Out the hours be sliced 
Like blood, blooming meat
To find truth absolute
Like high priestesses of old,
Scry the answer 
In a blood filled bowl?



Bouquets of the Ramshackle

https://amanpan.com/category/eugis-prompts/

With ramshackle shards
Of heart, soul, self
Falling away like the browned petals
Of a long-wilted bouquet,
We create a riotous noise
In ramshackle attempts
To find some connection.

Lumbering, awkward attempts
At reaching out to touch once again,
To replace, to freshen 
The brown wilted and missing parts
With new bouquets of spring
Whose stems sit in eternally
Fresh, clean waters.

We dream of a life lived
No longer ramshackle,
With no long-wilted bouquets
Of a past to haunt with falling petals,
But a life returning whole,
To move without noise
Through the world once again.

Turn It All Back

Image courtesy of Jon Tyson on Unsplash.com
Marshal forces
Of the earth, moon, orbits of planets,
Laws of time,
All we hold mighty and true,
Stop everything in its tracks,
Turn it all back
Before the start of any of it,
Falling away,
Marshaled from memory.

Take Both for a Test Drive

Image courtesy of easydatingprofiles.com

https://sammiscribbles.wordpress.com/2021/08/21/weekend-writing-prompt-223-pre-loved/

wk 223 pre-loved




A woman like you,

When considering a pre-loved model,

Will want to think about the year,

The model, the make, how it fits

With your social set after all.

No, not that one. 

You need a more recent model,

One more high end,

Less mileage, fewer scratches, dents,

And no door dings!

Here, look at this one.

Much more recent, higher end.

Fewer miles, scratches. No dents or dings.

Shopping done.