Last day, Yay!!! The prompt for today as this season of NaPoWriMo comes to an end is to write a poem about something that returns. Photo by Zane Lee on Unsplash
***
The songs
the birds bring
each spring
remind us
of the stirring
of life, darkness
yielding to the
lengthening light
and cherry blossoms
blooming again.
Hope is the thing
that birds bring
that after death
comes life,
and rebirth.
Off prompt today:
***
After the rising
and the falling
of the things
that surround,
after the letting
off of blood
for forgiveness,
after the release of
the pressure building up,
Breathe
Today’s prompt asks us to describe a bedroom from our past, inspired by Martha Dickinson Bianchi’s description of her aunt’s (Emily Dickinson) cozy room. My room in the house on 39th street came to mind.
***
Long days
longer nights
rubber balls
bounced off walls
till smudged,
comics snuck
under the covers,
childhood fantasies
of meeting George
and the other four
of being Super Man
and Captain America.
Behind all the smell
of things lived in.
These are the things
we can never forget.
For the Day 2 prompt, a poem about questions.
***
What is this which zips
around my ears, its sound
like the deep hum of an old man
hunched down, stirring up the sand.
It shimmers in the morning light
its back a splash of gold splayed
across the sky, against which stand
the silhouettes of great metal tubes
bending to its will. What is this
but the wind, which goes wherever
it wills.
For S. Six months.
—
Beneath the light
of the autumn sun,
perched on the edge
of that seventh hill
we quivered in the
chill of the breeze,
basking in the delight
of a promise shared.
I walked away
with your name etched
on my skin, a weight
borne in my heart
like an anchor in
an uncertain storm.
Moons ago
there was trepidation
there,but now
like a once floundering
ship finally headed home,
there is a whole,
where a hole once was.
Image by M.E. Grenander Department of Special Collections and Archives, University at Albany, SUNY (via NPR’s Hidden Brain Podcast), for the Day 24 prompt. Inspired by Emma, Carrie and Vivian’s stories.
—
They branded them
the feeble minded,
when all they were
were the wronged ones.
Once a face begins
to fade into the fog
of otherness, doubt
begins to assail the
humanity of the other.
We wished we spoke
for you when they came –
before your lives
were stashed behind
that cordon of red brick
Emma, Carrie, Vivian
Emma, Carrie, Vivian
May your voices be eternal
After the sun, for the Day 19 prompt.
—
A lone man stands in front of the bus shelter, his bag slung across his shoulder, hands stuck deep in his pockets, staring out towards the square, at the space where the bus should be.
Behind him, four bicycles lie in various states of harness. Before him, the square lies suffused with light. The calm, strange for this time of the day, is broken when as though dumped from an arriving train, a flood of people begins to traverse the square. After that comes the rain, after which it becomes clear that the quiet that came before was only the calm before the storm.
Alone, his
bag slung across his shoulder
he stares.
The square lies
suffused with light. Calm, strange day.
Then the rain.
After Eduardo C. Corral’s Ceremonial, for the Day 18 prompt.
—
Here I am lord,
crouched behind the door
of this sanctuary,
wedding dress
crammed into a closet,
clenched fist
clutching a rosary
hoping the bite
of its ragged edges
will bring absolution
for this fleeing.
Like a dream hovering
just beyond the reach
of remembering
the taste of sugared
rancid sweat lingers.
This war within, between
the ghosts of things
once thought and things
now heard rages.
These thick thighs and belly fat
belie the assignation of beauty.
Prayer cannot assuage
this tumult, this self flagellation.
I pinch and pull, cry myself hoarse
In deliruim.
Photo by Ruxandra Mateiu on Unsplash, for the Day 16 prompt.
—
Where once we
Wrapped ourselves in heavy
Furs and coats
We now skip
Free, drawn by the warmth of the
Reborn sun.
The scent of
Daffodils, chirp of spring birds
Unfurls joy
Spring has sprung
And like children, giddy with
Joy, we play.
—
Cry for the riven country.
For the ones for whom doom
descended from the skies in Douma,
spreading death in the wake
of its yellow green tendrils.
Cry for the dead and the dying.
For the ones culled from the living,
whose blood, like a libation rejected
pools at the altar of the sixth fleet.
The whine of drones,
swish of tomahawks and boom of hellfires
pounding earth into tired dust
assail their ears, lighting up
the night sky.
Cry for the four horsemen loosed,
for the quickly forgotten
and the lost ones.
A Geek's Life 