Interview in Poetic Bloomings

I know everyone who visits this blog has probably already seen this, but just in case . . .

Put out

She breathes fire
the smell of singed wood
the subtle soot
sitting on happy words 

It lingers
in the corner of her eyes
an insatiable heat
burning into her thoughts

The burdens
The book
The smiles
The love

Lost

You could see
in the corner of her smile
a wet sigh
extinguishing the fire in her soul

 carried in the flames of her laugh

 --

Archived from Feb. 11, 2008 on Rising from the Ashes

i can entirely her only love

i fell for you
before time was time,
as we tumbled through the summer grass
and back yard sprinklers.

i unlocked your smile
on secret adventures
into closets and blanket-covered
couches-turned-tents.

i laughed
as we trick-or-treated
in kimonos and
Wonder Woman Underoos.

i fell for the
wondering woman
navigating the twists and turns
of an emerging adulthood.

i smiled unlocking
the still-giddy girl
hiding her secrets in the creases
of adventure-seeking eyes.

i laugh
at the face i see
in the fogged-up bathroom mirror,
sweating in the summer heat.


Poetic Bloomings #72 -- At First Sight

Back to Jack

Back to Jack

The way my father tells
it, Great-Grandpa Jack
was a lawyer in L.A.

back in the days when
the city was
really beginning to take shape.

He walked out of the
courthouse one day,
fed up with the system,

and across the street to
a construction site
and asked for a job.

He never looked back.


The way I remember it,
it was hot
where he lived. He was

frail and his head shook,
a subtle nodding,
as he smiled at me

and my little baby sister.
I squirmed, not
understanding why we were smiling

and sweating at this house.
Perhaps they knew
that death wasn't far off.

We drove away and never looked back.


I was 6 or so
when Dad whispered
to my mother in the

upstairs hallway that Great-Grandpa Jack
had passed. "What
does that mean?" I asked.

"He died. Funeral is Thursday,"
Dad said. I
wanted to go with him.

He couldn't understand why I
wanted to mourn
a man I barely knew.

Perhaps I just wanted to look back.



--

Poetic Bloomings Memoir Project
Part 8: Death, be not proud

waiting

My eyes cannot 

stay open tonight. For weeks

I have longed

to pull back 

the thin sheet that separates

me from anxious

dreams; the kind 

where I'm waiting tables in some

vaguely familiar place 

and people are 

waiting for me to take 

their dinner orders.

The guilty panic 

starts setting in just as

I remember that

I haven't worked

at a restaurant for years.

Still, I feel 

them waiting for

me, just as I wait 

ever more impatient 

for just one restful night.

Poetic Bloomings #65 - Betrayal

Your mean-ing

I just don't know what
you mean when
you say you're a follower

of a religion whose deity
clearly stated that 
the greatest spiritual law is 

to love one another as 
you love god;
to judge not; to forgive. 

And yet, you judge. Harshly.

You call it god as you
judge true followers
who know to love you

despite the self-righteous wrath
you spew at
people whose lives, decisions, and

agony you could never imagine.
They will never
forget your judgment. Your mean-ing.




Poetic Bloomings #63 - Uncertainty, I don't understand

The Way

Just finished watching "The Way," so this prompt couldn't have had better timing.

Sometimes we walk
down paths chosen for us
by well-meaning folks

Sometimes we choose
the well-worn paths for ourselves

Sometimes we chance
down paths with well-meaning folks
who choose to share their journey

while searching for a path
of their own

Top 10 Tanka

Clear Direction made it to the Top 10 of Writer's Digests Poetic Form Challenge!

Thanks to Robert Lee Brewer for doing these. It's a great chance to try something new. This short form is one of my new favorites.

Foxy lady

You do not seek
to see behind
my mask
of timid refinement

You do not see
how I slink
unseen
into the background

You cannot hear
the faint pant
of anxious breath
trapped in this cage

You wear me around
your neck
a fine catch
to show your friends



April PAD #26 - animal

Love, rinse, repeat

What can be said that
has not been
uttered by thousands before me.

I am no Rumi or
Shakespeare or Shelley.
I  trip over trite words

and into your ready arms,
laughing at the
foot in my bumbling mouth.


April PAD #24 - love or anti-love