Tag Archives: dVerse ~ Poets Pub

Sleepless

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8

With twirling thoughts inside my head
In knowing each step I took was right
I lay here gazing at walls instead
There is no sleep for me tonight

This first night without you here
Coldness where warmth beside me lay
I find myself in anguished mood
With twirling thoughts inside my head

In this desolation of my thoughts
I mourn the path that brought me here
To blame is futile and pleas unheard
In knowing each step I took was right

The bright moon scoffs at my attempts
And shines its light on the truth of it
Watching its path travel this room
I lay here gazing at walls instead

Somnolence will not be found here
In midst this turmoil of my soul
Dawn will find me as dusk left me
There is no sleep for me tonight

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Today I Cascade.

In a Cascade a poet creates the initial stanza then takes each consecutive line from that first stanza and makes those the final lines of each stanza afterward. If the first stanza is sextet, then the complete poem will have seven stanzas of sextets. A tercet results in four stanzas of tercets and so on. Beyond that, there are no additional rules for rhyming, meter, etc.

 

dverse

dVerse Poets Pub | Open Link Night #183

Our Father’s Time

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6

Finding the world in the smallness of a grain of sand
And holding infinities in the palm of your hand
And Heaven’s realms in the seedlings of this tiny flower
And eternities in the space of a single hour
Gordon Sumner | Send Your Love

I think hard when I scoff at life’s demand
Can I comprehend all that He has planned?
Can you? Do you even dare to ask?
It’s mighty and daunting task
It’s beyond anything that man can understand
Finding the world in the smallness of a grain of sand 

For what’s a hundred years of a life spanned
When on the very edge of time You can stand
We mere mortal like Luna simply wax and wane
With only trite things called words to explain
All the power and glory that is Yours to command
And holding infinities in the palm of Your hand 

As I glimpse the fleeting rainbow after a shower
I’m reminded that He is the Ultimate Plower
For the seasons cater only to One whim
Over galaxies that are but gardens to Him
In the palm of His hand yes the Heavens tower
And Heaven’s realms in the seedlings of this tiny flower

Oh the magnificence of The Father – Our
Time immemorial is but a page for Him to scour
It’s long past when Mother Nature’s blue eyes close
And beyond a phase even Father Time knows
For infinity’s but an instant for Him to devour
And eternities in the space of a single hour

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Feeling some Gordon Sumner (a.k.a. Sting) lyrics  in  modified Glosa form.

dverse
dVerse ~Poets Pub | OpenLinkNight #169

Mountainous Words

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7

On a mountain I want to cry
Searching for words to supply
Words that uplift or upend
I aim to try, find them by and by

Pen poised to paper I pretend
I have vast thought to append
Come noon no words yet to construe
Down this craggy end, I descend

I jot the only thing that’s true
These mountainous words to pursue
Try as I might the words won’t spill
Evening comes through, with words still due

My mind as blank as the moment still
Waxing poetic instead on this blank bill
I realized I no longer needed to try
And the mountain ill, became a mole hill!

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Lynn at dVerse prompts us with a “summit in sight”. My usually loquacious muse was drawing a blank with this, so I went with that as theme. And in a loose Monotetraiyet form.

dverse

dVerse ~ Poets Pub | Poetics: Summit in sight

An Unkindness

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11

Since Edgar quoted me with “nevermore”
From sea to sea, from shore to shore
Stuck am I with the forlorn evermore

That is an unkindness

My midnight plumage my mark
Damns me with the dark
Never exaltations as a lark

That is an unkindness

A terror, a blight
That is all you see
Even my brethren feathered white are considered a fright
My bane, my plight
The passion of me
Do I dare then make sight, even I seek the light?

But oh, to all my feathered kin
Who share not in my chagrin
Know that I cringe within

When you say we gather in murder
If only it were an unkindness

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At dVerse De (aka WhimsyGizmo) invites us to “draw our poetic inspiration from the whimsical, musical, magical names given to groups of birds.”

Naturally, I take up the cause of my namesake. For while their near cousins, the crows, are quite known for killer gatherings, few know how much of an unkindness it really is for ravens.

dverse

dVerse ~ Poets Pub | Poetics : Poetry is for the Birds

Do You Hear Me Now?

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9

She starts with the hand open,
Near her mouth, palm toward,
But not touching her face,
Veins appearing on the back of her hand
Forming a claw
That moves downward past the mouth
Oh hell

I try not to smile

I watch the bend and flex
Of her wrists and joints
Her delicate bones
Making fierce gestures
As she tells me off

I try not to smile

She yells at me something fierce
Manicured fingers
Form intricate patterns
Punctuating the strong words
Silently speaking volumes

I try not to smile

I know she’s caught me
Her tightly fisted hands at chest level
Fly up and then open in exasperation
I gently grasp her soft hands
Holding her attention

“Darling you’ve just yelled at me solely in ASL again.”

The hand signal
She uses next
Needed no translation

I smile

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At dVerse “Mish” leaves in in our hands to conjure up a write about those most hard-working appendages – our hands.  My muse took me to one pissed off woman “yelling” at her not yet fluent in ASL spouse.

dverse

dVerse Poets Pub | Poetics – Poetics – Can You Give Me a Hand?

The Spirit Believes

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18

Where there was something and suddenly isn’t,
an absence shouts, celebrates, leaves a space.
I begin again with the smallest numbers.
“Burning the Old Year” by Naomi Shihab Nye

Romans, Countrymen
Sons and daughters of Israel
The spirit believes
Where there was something and suddenly isn’t
The heart sees what the eyes belie
The soul comprehends He is risen

This cannot be, so many claimed
And yet it is, as many others knew
The spirit believes
An absence shouts, celebrates, leaves a space
A new calendar of the divine
Marking a new era that time cannot erase

Grand strides began with
Faith the size of a mustard seed
The spirit believes
I begin again with the smallest numbers
Each morning’s new breath, my daily bread
And a nightly prayer before my slumbers

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Today, Mary is our host at dVerse Poets. She introduces us to writer, Naomi Shihab Nye, and challenges us to choose a line from Naomi’s poem “Burning the Old Year” to write a poem of our own. Overachiever that I am I chose an entire stanza to work with in a stylized Glosa.

dVerse ~Poet Pub | Poetics – Choose a Line
dverse

Oh Cap’n My Cap’n

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17

The captain is dead, he is no more 
His boxed life wasted 
His crunchy remains

Scattered

Across the tile floor 
I should be sore

But instead I’m done in
By a toddling perp
Who knows not his sin
Munching
With that drooling
Cereal killer 
Grin

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Putting a memory to grin with a Quadrille…

dverse

dVerse ~ Poets Pub | Quadrille – 4

Take Me Home

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21

You run your hand just slightly over my curve as though wanting desperately to touch,
but just not quite ready to commit to the act.

Yet, before I can exhale from the kinetic energy that runs between us from that
almost touch, you take me in hand totally,
and totally breathless, I sigh.

Soft and pliant to your administrations as your fingers alternately
grip me possessively for I am no one but yours;
you knead me solidly until I can do nothing but yield and then
you caress me in tender mercilessness.

Completely without care you lay me down before any who care to witness.
Completely wanton I am spread wide for you as you layer temptations upon me
in what feels like a never-ending circle of desire.

I am lifted, transported and though expecting it, am still totally unprepared
when subjected to the full force of your heat.

Your fire that surrounds, fills me, fulfills me; until it feels like
every square inch of my body is bubbling in throes of the ecstasy I am.

Still quivering, you pull me just from the verge and I want to cry
from this cruel game you play, easily slicing into me knowing
I am too far gone to protest  as you take me in to your hands yet again lifting me.

Even if I could, any such dissension is immediately silenced by the sudden feel
of your hot breath across my fevered surface as you lower your tongue
to the tip, slow torturous circles testing, tasting my flavors.

And just when I think I can take no more, I am plunged into the ecstasy of your mouth as
little by little I am devoured by your desired until I am naught by a memory.

<><>

You question my hunger for the freshly prepared pizza slice in front of me that sits untouched.
I wipe the crumbs of the slice that is now memory from your lips and assure you that my hunger
is for something else entirely.

Seeing the expression on my face,
you raise an eyebrow quizzically, knowingly…
and I answer…

“Yes, take me home”

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Going off the eaten path this evening…

dverse
dVerse Poets Pub | OpenLinkNight 167

Via Dolorosa

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7

I go where it began
My faith a spiraling question
Seeking answers

He passed here

My fingers lightly graze the warm stone masonry
At the Lion’s gate
I am as repulsed
As I am enthralled
In modern reverence
And ancient remembrances not mine

He was robed and crowned here

I look upon the heavens now
That surely looked upon this path then
And kneel under the weight
Of the millenniums twice beheld since

He fell first here

I hear those most ancient of sounds
And understand at last how
Simon’s act was hardly simple
I’ll share your load
In its truest meaning
As he and I follow the throngs
That once walked these cobbled streets
Worn smooth with time
Yet as torn as a betrayed heart
And a marker carved in stone tells me

He fell again here

Past and present collide
As somber robed monks walk the path
Singing songs
Alongside khaki clothed pilgrims
Marker molded in gold tells me
What in my mind’s eye I see

He falls for the last time here

Among the sun faded stones of then
Contrasting a gaily painted door of now
He speaks to this Daughter of Israel
Where I, this woman of the new world
Kneels down to kiss the sacred silver disk
Of Christ’s ending, Christianity’s beginning
Arising with a metallic taste
That tingles my lips reminding me
There is power in the Blood

He died here

No longer in question
My faith found answers
Where it ended
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Via Dolorosa, “The Way of Grief” in Latin, is a winding cobbled stoned street within the Old City of Jerusalem, belief held to be the path that Jesus walked on the way to His crucifixion. Dotted with “stations” that mark specific moments – Simon helping Him carry the cross; Christ speaking to the Daughters of Israel; etc. Many Christians visit Jerusalem for this pilgrimage, especially around Easter.

I personally have not taken this pilgrimage, but it is on my list.

dverse
dVerse ~Poets Pub | Poetics – Adventures in travelling

Namaste

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10

A far cry from the skyscrapered sky I call home these desert dunes stretch far and wide in hills and valleys that exude its solidness and its fluidity. A breeze blows, pushing the fabric of my shawl against my body.  Making a tangle of my curls. And I wonder, not for the first time, if this is a new breeze, or an old one. One that has circled for time eternal. One that ever circles these stretches of endless red sand that surrounds me only now coming back around.

In the timelessness
Of the middle of nowhere
Winds blow everywhere

A not-so-gentle notice that I should not stand here long, the wind goads me, pushes me. It wraps tendrils of itself to anchor my feet, only to then shift around in drifts loosening my stance.  I do not want to leave, yet I do not want to be here forever. I know these sands are very accepting of those who wish to stay, for sometimes the desert reveals the bones of those who have. And as large as I may be to some eyes, I am oh so small in this vastness.

For all that is seen
Much more is hidden away
In the sands of time

Watching as the setting sun makes magic of the sand turning it near indigo in the shadows of its deepest, furthest valleys. Shifting through purples, reds and oranges as the dune keeps the last vestiges of its natural color along the upper curves. This is the moment I was here for and I reveled in the majestic beauty of it. The camera in my hand should be attempting to capture this, but I can’t make myself lift it to place the viewfinder to my face. Knowing this moment for the gift it is, I want nothing to obstruct this view from my naked eyes.  Reluctantly, heeding the radio call to come in, I put the camera away and get in the truck as I take one last look around. Above me the stars begin to appear for their slow travels across the crystalline night. I start to recognize constellations before only seen in a book and I know I’ve done right by the universe. Namaste.

Some sights in life
Must be seen to be believed
By no one but you

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Thanks to Rajani (Thotpurge) hosting at dVerse  I’m finally trying my hand at a haibun for Haibun Monday. With travel as a prompt, and my recent trip to Dubai as inspiration, I’m enjoying a moment in a desert.

dverse

Haibun Monday #8