National Poetry Month

Four More

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Alright – here we go.

I’ve got one day and too many poems to write. Here are a few, and I’ll post a few more tomorrow.

4.17

I’m working with a calm heart and hot hands.
I’ve got undressing on my mind.
I’ve got skin to ruin.
I’m collecting my thoughts sequentially.
I’m breathing, breathing.
I’ve settled my actions.
I’ve unleashed my mind.
I’m calm.
I’m ravenous.

4.18

Putting a rhyme in the middle of a sentence
Throws off the time and the beat of the poem
Stuck hitting lines that create expectations
How the brain pines for that matching set of sounds
Sensing a path in the rhythm and the cadence
Facing the wrath of an uncompleted couplet
Perhaps without knowing you’ve already discovered
You’re already flowing making breaks of your own

4.19

On the banks of the Tsurumi
Fuji fading into shadow
I’ll let you listen to me
Dream about tomorrow

In the Stillness / Climb

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In the Stillness

In the stillness of an early morning pre-sun
One eye opens halfway
To ensure you are still there
Resting as you were the night before
Sleep smoothing life’s tensions
Limbs bent and wrapped around the blankets
One eye opens halfway
Ensuring I am still here
Resting next to you
Undiminished and whole
Before the demands of the waking sun
Remove us both
Both eyes shut
In the stillness of an early morning pre-sun

Climb

I told my muscles, “Upward!”
They responded, “Not inclined.”
I chuckled and climbed.

Not far, I promised
When muscles asked for rest
That was just the first crest.

Second ridge was harder
Nothing but stairs into the stone
Muscles took accusing tone.

Pushed us further onward
So close to the peak
Muscles cried out, “We are weak!”

I cheered them “You are strong!”
We hit the top
And had to stop.

Then the horrid moment
Muscles shaking, scared and bent
Contemplating the descent.

Upward, I had cried
Muscles knew from town
What goes up, must come down.

Muscles win the argument
Once I’m soaking in the bath
Facing their knotted wrath

They don’t know my plan
Of going out with a friend
And climbing next weekend.

Fell behind. Must catch up…

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Well, ok, I got sickish.

Then I had work and it all just started tumbling away from me. I’m nine days off, but I have nine more days to make up for it. If I do two or three a day, I should be caught up.

Luckily for you readers, I have been scribbling poems down on paper!

Also I’m working on an epic poem as a bit of joke for a British friend of mine. More on that later!

4.13 Bitch on a Train

Your instincts told you that the foreigner wouldn’t know to pounce.
Safe in your prejudices.
Fool.
Know what you did not anticipate?
This foreigner has been riding the rails for months.
I’ve lost my fear.
I’ve lost my patience.
That seat is mine.
I claimed it ten stops ago.
You may want it,
But you won’t get it.
Sorry, Junior.
You snooze.
You lose…that seat.

4.14 Sakura Philosophy

Sakura season is but a breath of spring
A flippancy, a dalliance, the barest floral fling
Two weeks tops of cherry blooms under which we dine
Staring up at flowers while drinking sweet plum wine.

Such times seem held in stasis as though to last forever
And yet the trees are stripped with the barest hint of weather
Seeming snow-capped branches shaken by a forceful gale
Spring begins by shaking off the prettiest of veils.

Perhaps that is the lesson that we are meant to learn
That we are the like the buds that bloom and fall in turn
So take heart, my blossoms, that spring will come and then
Upon our fall new sakura will burst into bloom again.

Two more: 4.11, 4.12

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Busy Bee: Interpretation I (4.11)

You up?
You down?
You want to go for a night on the town?
How’s six?
How’s eight?
Work’s not till Monday so we can go late.
He’ll come.
Her too.
We’ll drink and maybe do something taboo.
We’ll walk
I’ll text
And make sure y’all know where to go next.
I asked.
It’s grand.
Everything’s going just as I planned.
It’s time.
Let’s go.
Trust me – I’m the girl in the know.

Busy Bee: Interpretation II (4.12)

Near the Iroquois River sits an ice cream shack.
It’s been there for thirty years, surviving cold and flood.
Open for the hot Midwestern summer and nothing else,
The Busy Bee does not offer blizzards but “tornadoes”
Which taste the same, cost a dollar more, and fill the void
With nostalgia and something resembling Oreo cookies.
Every summer the local populace buys raspberry soft serve flavorbursts, mudslides, blue ice slushies,
Then sit along the riverbank, noting the water level, cleanliness, and any interesting debris washed to the muddy banks after the latest thunderstorm.
As far as rituals go, it is delicious.

Fresh Soil (4.10)

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Fresh Soil (4.10)

Decay has never smelled so sweet.
Bury my nose in the bag of “leaf soil”
And inhale deeply
Breathing in microbes, rot, and
The promise of roots writhing in happiness.
Just give me the dirt
Under my nail beds, into my pores
And wrap me in that rich smell of death offering life.
My euphoria easily bests
The pleasure I felt at buying the plant in the first place,
Though there is the secondary joy
Of realizing that I’ve made both our days
With a single purchase.

4.7, 4.8, and 4.9 for Good Measure

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The past few days, I’ve been toying with free-form verses that have a vaguely hip-hop aesthetic. I’m usually terrible at this, but then that’s the point of practicing, right? And that would be the point of this monthlong endeavor – to practice stretching out muscles and learning some new tricks!

Enjoy!

Post-Booze Brainstorm (4.7)

Buzzed with booze, a brain
Firing neurons terrified to lose
The wisdom of cups and relaxed blood flow
Is not done thinking
Chasing the siren song to dawn
Tied to the mast of exhaustion
Sinking in the unknown

Falling in Rain (4.8)

In Japan, it rains so heavily,
umbrellas are barely a remedy,
Rainfall patters out a melody where
I fall like a drop into reverie
Mess with the rhyme scheme
and pay a heavy penalty.
Soon words wild in anarchy
Make forms flown to thunderstorm cacophony
Little April showers ripped of all their piety
Best use that umbrella to fend off your anxiety
Lest you run down gullies of depravity
And settle into puddles of stagnant mediocrity.

Grey day Walking (4.9)

My mind is a Jane Eyre grey
Pinched in, cinched in every way
Until my voice goes quiet
And I lose the need to speak
People become my visual cues
Not to cross the streets
Muted eyes rest on blind sights
Unable to recognize my own fights
With attic-dwelling feelings
And a hollowed chest sounds a lone note
Suggesting fiery heights
Of deeper meaning
Lost in the repetition of day-to-day pattern
I do not wonder or wander, yet I do yearn
And hear the premonition
That the destruction of my worldly goods
Signal a break from Jane Eyre grey
And the woulds, coulds, and shoulds
Give way to brighter days.

Couplet Practice (4.6)

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Couplet Practice (4.6)

Stuck in the curse
Of my free-striding verse
Like cuffs on my feet
The hamper the beat
Of the song in my mind
Which is one of a kind
Yet I can’t touch the sound
Which ambles around
The edge of my sight
And won’t enter the light
So I write what I know
While I wait to be shown
What the words have to say
At the end of the day
If I’m lucky I’ll see
What my words need to be
Or else I’ll waste time
With a series of rhymes
And hope for the best
After a decent night’s rest.