In tears that blur the page
From lust’s white heat
Then betrayal’s red fury
Now the broken-hearted blues
Of too much and not enough
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Real Toads – The Tuesday Platform
Optional Extra Teensy-Tiny Challenge:
Write a 5-line poem containing three colors.
It’s a small place, but it is our own
Its mandatory comforts aren’t much fuss
Fuss doesn’t hold credence with folks like us
Be it ever so humble, it is our home
The front faces north and east
Its perimeter acres from anyone
The southwest view catches the setting sun
Between sunrise and sunset a visual feast
An aquamarine lake past woods beyond compare
I choose the rooms I live in with care
I’m a simple person with simple needs
“It shows” tease my friends with a smile
Yet they all seem to stay for more than a while
It’s richness they say is my heart and deeds
Our décor to some leaves much to be desired
Erratic colors from when we bought the place
And only a minimum of furnishing fill the space
I confess myself it’s not very inspired
Some say simple, some say austere
The windows are small and the walls almost bare
For us the beauty of this place is past the four walls
Enjoying each dawn of nature’s reception
And dusky colors beyond conception
As nature paints new pictures winter, spring, summer, fall
At home, it seems the stars shine as never before
Full moons deflect the dark echoes of silence of country nights
A most different view to our former noisy city lights
Haley’s comet is nothing to how it makes my heart soar
And at night there’s only one with whom to share
There’s only one bed and there’s only one prayer
Some say I am obsessed and such
It seems this house and you are all I know
The increment of time makes it more so
But I know you love this place just as much
As each day passes, it grows even more warm
Our humble home with its vista so grand
Such good fortune in life, more than I can stand
Each night I sleep soundly, holding your sweet form
And on the rare working night, when I’m holding air
I listen all night for your step on the stair
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(Italicized lines from Leonard Cohen’s “Tonight Will Be Fine”)
Today at dVerse Purple Pen In Portland (Sara McNulty) is tending bar and asks us to imagine that you have been given free rein to design any type of building you wish. As I already have poems of my abode out there, I decided to take this from the view of someone a whose style is little – read very – different from mine.
Gray Matter:
a) To know what we are doing here.
b) To know what it takes to hear your hoarse cry of what’s mine.
c) To know the touch of your goosebumped flesh so prime.
Pink Matter:
a) The feel in depth of what I’m doing to you there.
b) The sense of heat from your breath against my spine.
c) The copper tang taste on my lips from your bite sublime.
Indigo Matter:
a) We deign to call out the deities to compare.
b) We give envy in the scent of us to those divine.
c) We acknowledge their rhythmic moans as comets come in time.
What Matters?
a) In gray dare.
b) In pink shrine.
c) In indigo chime.
Answer: All of the above, my love.
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At Real Toads we’re asked to use a new form -well new for me- The Multiple Choice poem.
The challenge is simple. Write a poem in the form of a multiple choice test. The whole poem could be a test, or you could insert a multiple choice some where into the normal structure of a poem. Since we’re still in February, I went with that loving feeling (with sincere apologies to the Righteous Brothers).
Imaginary Garden with Real Toads – Out of Standard: Multiple Choice
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dVerse ~Poets Pub | OpenLinkNight #190
The sky seems more blue, From the bowels of earth
In shades unfathomable, to a world sealed in the night
A fidget enthralled, I’m moved standing still
By this bond twixt light and dark, A phoenix newly rising
In timelessness of twilight, The iron horse travels onward
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Over at Imaginary Gardens With Real Toads, Dreaming with Stacie provided a mini lesson on Poetry, Writing & Metaphor and invites to write a poem based on a specific metaphor.
Many of my subway travels involve elevated trains (el trains as we like to say), where my train may start at a station below ground, but ends at a station on an elevated platform above the streets. There is a marked difference in the dark of the tunnels and the dark of night. Even when riding during witching hours, when the train emerges from the tunnel it can feel like a phoenix rising from the ashes, especially in the heat of summer. The duality of the Super Tanka seemed the best form to tell the tale of transition.
Imaginary Gardens With Real Toads – on Poetry, Writing & Metaphor – Dreaming with Stacie
1! 2! 3! 4! 5! 6! 7! 8!
1! 2! 3! 4! 5! 6! 7! 8!
Her booted stilettoes are a forte staccato on the polished wood
Counter point to the allegro of the snapping castanets in her hands
1-2-3-4,
1-2-3-4,
Kitten heeled pumps are andante, in the diminuendo chords
Arms ebb and flow evoking waves, foliage that caters to a wind’s bend
1, 2, 3,
1, 2, 3
While soft soled flats give a dolce presence to the calando of the tune
Her fingers doloroso wiping imagined tears in the final longa before applause
1 and 2 and
Bare toes touch floor at last
Finite
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At Real Toads I am given inspiration to write a poem on shoes for Susi.
While at dVerse I Meet the Bar by giving some elements of music for Victoria.
I look at him and I see a face:
One that’s covered in silent tears
His voice is in the deepest bass
Every word riddled by silent fears
Don’t give!
Always so cautious, always trying
never to give himself away
And yet I can see, he’s dying
a little bit more each day
Don’t give!
And the thought stabs my heart like a knife
Time put him in this spot and only time can heal
That all I can do is pray that the strife
Does not push him past where he can deal
Don’t give!
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Real Toads | Tuesday Platform
Oh, I’m lousy at meter
Unless it’s Demeter
Of she I can speak night and day
Iambic pentameter
Just doesn’t matterer
To my muse any way
Saw what I did there, eh?
And “da-DUM da-DUM”
Just makes me feel dumb
Strike that mouse in the clock I begs
For I will give the boot
To all who mention “foot”
When lyrics ain’t got any legs,
But will run for some green ham and eggs. Dregs!
Whether di-, pent- or Hexes
Oh how meter vexes
The voice when unnaturally dropped
On meter spanned then
With lines enjambed when
Ow! I think my poor brain has popped!
And now my watch is end-stopped
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In a play against how cell phones now seem to take up so much of our time, Izy at Real Toads takes us “Out of Standard” and challenges us to pick up our cell phones for some “inspiredo” by taking the last text received and use it in a poem. Luckily, my last text had no emojis.
Real Toads | Out of Standard – From the Black Mirror
Meanwhile at dVerse, Victoria challenges us to pick a subject and write in meter to set its mood. Can you say ‘Ugh!”? I have never been one for formal meter. If a word or phrasing comes naturally to my write, an errant “foot”, sticking out like a sore thumb, will happen. The message is more important. Thus, I could not resist delightfully mocking it here as my subject, throwing in some poetic terminology, Hickory Dickory, Dr. Seuss and a touch of Game of Thrones to boot.
Calf and tendon and shin
What used to be remembers
The road left behind
With an ease born and
Taken for granted
Muscle and sinew and bone
What cannot be learns
The path is the same
Only how I travel from
Here to there has changed
Plastic and wires and metal
What will be anticipates
the trail untraveled
the way ahead
I’ve yet to roam
Two wood beams
What is now knows
the first step is
the shortest I’ll have to take
the furthest I’ll have to go
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My muse takes the view of a person in physiotherapy, looking up at the balance beam, embarking on the very first step using artificial legs, learning to walk again.
Today at Real Toads Kerry is encouraging us to pay a visit to to a Word Family. Using family synonyms or antonyms for that which is walked upon, parts of the appendages used to walk and the distance walking.
Nine and seven years
You abandon us here
In this world
Mad with anguish
Skipped to the words
Take them
Spoken in hate
Go away and die
Because of him
The need to spite
Mattering more
Than to live for us
Your own daughters
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A week before Mother’s Day. Trying to make sense of the senseless. She had been saying for months that if he kept pushing her she’d leave him permanently. We were all praying she would. None of us thought it would be like this. Leaving a note and two daughters.
From some of the comments below I see I need to clarify something. The above poem is from my muse, taking the view point of the two daughters. The pain feels real to you, because it is real to me. This past Monday night/Tuesday morning, I lost a friend, the girls lost a mother to suicide.
dVerse ~ Poets Pub | Quadrille 8: Skip
Real Toads : The Tuesday Platform
Ya needs you sumting fo’ dems chills
Yous lookin’ likes ya needs sum care
I’s jus’ da ting ta cures ya ills
Lemme put summa dis dere
Dis’ll warm ya likes a sweatta
Feelin’ real good to you, yah?
Imma makes it all betta
Jus’ open wide and say ah
When yous sick ain’t nuttin like Mama’s luv
Wid sum chikin soup and Vick’s vapa rub
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So today on Real Toads, we are asked to feel free to write a poem containing some kind of local vernacular, slang, or pronunciation. My poor, poor spell check!
National Poetry Month – Day 19
We we cure what ails you with the Ravenfly.
The Ravenfly is a nonce form that consists of two quatrains and a couplet
with syllable count of of 8/7/8/7/10/10. The rhyming scheme is abab cdcd ee
There are no metric requirements.
Raivenne-lations 