he comes and goes as he pleases
it’s a mystery to me
what he does when
he’s not here
sometimes
he brings clues though
a lemon scent
a gleam in the eye
a flattening of fur
today it’s
a paper chain
strung around his neck
pink confetti
in his mouth and ears
were you at a party
or in a parade
i ask
he looks at me as if i’m nuts
(from Dog Series)
Seema Chopra
.
Modest moon’s mid-day pale
smeared white-out
clipped fingernail
flung on a blue sheet
This famous ruler of night-
light of Rome and Egypt
Debussy, Beethoven, Apollo Eleven
assuredly unspectacular today
D.E. Stevens
https://stevenspost.wordpress.com
.
A summer, I remember so well
although I was a shade too young
to sit still willingly and she, my sister,
was in love with Bill.
William and Silence enthroned
all over the premises . . . even
in our backyard
She was making him a sweater
the colour of Jailbird, our canary,
knitting so diligently, into what she told me
were called cables; looked like magic
to watch them appear in the yellow yarn
of Bill’s vest which would later be
blessed with a zipper.
But I wouldn’t stop hopping about,
so she sat me down
by our long-fingered willow,
found some old wool,
made me stick out
my indexes . . . and
taught me to flat knit
And today, all these decades later. . .
the willow has since been hit by lightning.
Bill was thirty-seven when bitten by the crab
and today . . . it is unbearable
Sitting by the window
that now looks out on nothing,
trying to knit myself a patience
and a peace, she stood before me
and called me mean and asked twice
why I refused to teach her
how to do it, that it looked
like fun
Memory alone is often cruel,
but to remember what has been erased
in one so close . . .
and when she saw me crying
she said she wouldn’t take it back
and served me right.
c.m.anderson
http://allpoetry-classic.com/catimini
A child again
I cannot find the classroom
heart pounding
looking for the exit sign
running taunted from the recess line
in neural-stormed confusion.
I stand-alone again
while rain beats down
on monkey bars.
I never could perceive
the path to interweave
it might be nice
to have a friend I said
while walking to the trees
through salmon-berried nettles
to the massive trunks
of bark-clad guardians
dressed in moistured lichen
north and south.
The briars shook my hand
the Devil beat me with a club
and underbrush embraced me
with her formic acid sting
and fungi whispered windy truths
to guide me to a place of refuge
water all around me trickled
into stony paths where rivers
birthed themselves from
earth-wombed cracks and craigs
The one child left behind
sat eagerly before
the mossy teacher’s desk
and held the lessons of the earth
in bitter-mouthed suspension
and the spirit-animals began to speak
their softly structured wisdom
and the heart began to stir
until its root-seed anchored
deep relief in shimmered
spider webs of destiny.
Robert J.Foss
https://allpoetry.com/Betoangel
This poem knows it can’t compete
with its neighbors
the Freeverse-Smiths
over there on the left
in concise lines and white spaces
of their modern open plan
and on the right,
the Traditionalform-Joneses,
with that fancy meter on the siding
clicking along in whatapest iamb.
It’s no secret
that this poem’s comment box
is always empty,
almost as if it had no identity,
no real composition.
This poem believes
it’s entitled to more.
So it will lurk.
It will do close readings
of them all. It will wait enjambed
until their phrases are turned
and steal as many as it can carry,
stuffing its stanzas full of cool devices
as it exits through their workshops.
If caught, this poem will plead
no contest.
j. blakkan
http://allpoetry-classic.com/dune
It can’t be true that I was born this fragile.
Jennie always seemed the hothouse bloom
perceived as soft (where I was seen as agile)
yet now I fear I dare not leave my room.
I cared for her, had time for little else,
my weakness something I could ill afford.
Untended left the cuts the scrapes the welts
yet now I have become so eas’ly floored.
Yes, I was different on the very morrow
but not one-size-fits-all funereal grief.
Do not mistake my feelings for plain sorrow.
There was, I will admit, a strange relief.
It’s just her illness was my sole foundation.
In truth we are no thing in isolation
c.m.anderson
http://allpoetry-classic.com/catimini
I will not meet you there directly, no
we will meet at Mirador San Nicolas
on the outskirts of Granada and there
we will dine and catch up on so many things
as it has been several incarnations, since last
we were face to face – and it is from there that
we journey together, thou and I, to hear nightingales
beneath a cloudfree sky of robin’s egg blue
and we will listen to a little concert of the Goyescas
of Granados and you will laugh because the encore
will be called a la cubana and I will laugh too
and later when we have reached it
we will hear de Falla’s Noches en los Jardines de España –
En el Generalife the jasmine-scented gardens
around the palace of the king’s harem at Calat el-hamra
La Alhambra – the red – because of the sunsets
on the ancient ancient walls
how long have I longed to go there with you –
a thousand years of conquest and reconquest
and Berber kings of Al-Andalus and the Nasrid dynasty
moorish palaces with their long reflecting pools
that at night are filled with dancing stars
and we will get drunk on the scent of roses, and you
will spin me tales as we wander through the orange groves
and not only horror stories of pillage in Latin America and
we will forgive the tyrants and the jesuits – the imperialists
the Incas, the Mayans, the Catholics – everyone
we will forgive them all and listen only to the fountains
Timea Deinhardt
https://timeadeinhardt.wordpress.com
.
I peek cautiously through the kitchen blinds.
It’s like a BBC 2 jungle documentary out there,
A green canopy growing wild and untamed.
Nature is reclaiming my garden,
and I feel like
this is a job for another day.
I tentatively open the cupboard door.
It’s like an explosion in a skip,
no antiques or heirlooms here.
This is Tutankhamen’s stuff for the tip
rubbish unfit for any afterlife.
Another job for another day.
I’m no Attenborough or Carter
Fearlessly investigating or excavating.
Instead I brave the TV channels
to visit far away lands
armed with a cup of tea
Sitting comfy in my armchair.
Richard Archer
https://skaggythepoet.wordpress.com
You see it everywhere,
this detached oddfellow
rolled up in gutters
leaning on lamp posts
dust covered and weed riven,
in every town from Marseilles to Berlin
along the Mississippi,
washed up by the Seine
this scatterling castaway
not able to hold on
skidding off into oblivion
Unfastened Flying Objects
that can’t find their cars
from the top of Mt. Everest
to the parking lots of Mars-
plastic moon hubcap
cheap modern design
ubiquitous fake chrome fixture
an alien creature
from the planet Audi, Ford or Fiat-
a testament to the fact
that man cannot permanently
fix anything.
D.E.Stevens
https://stevenspost.wordpress.com
although the nearest neighbours
are a mile away, I tell myself
these silent occupations
are designed to not wake them.
What is there to do at 5 am?
I scan the room, decide to proceed
with a needed floral funeral
to remove the now-colourless
and wizened jonquils that once
were inserted precisely
to add colour to philodendron cuttings
set in water to grow roots.
The viscous brown stems
now in the shadow of a cannister
are living worms, seemingly mobile,
soft and ready to wiggle
on the kitchen counter.
I shudder at the ghoulishness
of an autopsy turned vivisection
but manage to distract myself
with the amusing paradox
that plants must be sunk in the ground –
buried – that they may live.
c.m.anderson
http://allpoetry-classic.com/catimini
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