Once upon a frosted moon
I gathered diamond dust in June
Nonsense or hogwash, dare you say?
Perhaps you’re right; it was in May
With snowdrifts icing late spring blooms
I laced my skates and headed north
Her hand outstretched from feathered plumes
My butterflies flittered for warmth
This bird migrated in three-fourths
I lagged behind her melody
Her song was lilting, light, on-key
We danced our dream with fragile force
Her sea-salt kiss reigns tearfully
Melting capricious symphony
My snowbird left this lonely loon
In sentiment and fantasy
That once upon a frosted moon
I gathered diamond dust in June
***
I enjoyed this prompt… but look, I get it… I know there’s not much to hold onto in this poem (or perhaps too much, depending on your perspective), so pardon my whimsy.
“Once upon a…” prompts get me in a bit of a whimsical mood. 🙂
NOAA predicts a warm, wet winter for the Seattle area this time (so no snow days), but Farmer’s Almanac says batten down the hatches for unseasonably cold weather.
I was going to write a satire about the two conflicting predictions from the dual weather sages, but mindful presence moved me in a different direction.
I haven’t looked at the data for myself, but meh, I’m genuinely good with either outcome. 🙂
She had typed each letter
carefully
with thumbs that already knew the way.
That was at least a half-hour ago,
electronically,
via direct-message, which was
a slightly incomplete method
of describing one-way messages
traveling the speed of light
towards their destinations;
A miracle of technology
that may as well had been substituted
by carrier pigeon
or message in a bottle,
for all the good it did her tonight,
or any other night she found herself
waiting.
She stares at her phone
for a notification that won’t come
quickly enough,
or perhaps ever.
Who can say with that boy?
God damn him.
God damn that lovely,
delicious boy.
God damn his dreamy eyes
and his earthy scent.
He is taken with another.
She knows this
and tries to shrug this truth away,
knowing he knows the way back to her,
knowing she will open to receive
his sweetness
despite all common sense;
he doesn’t deserve her grace, but
she’ll extend it for as long as it takes
as long as it extends their private duets.
She needs to know she still matters to him,
even knowing that all that knowing does
is make her bite her lip,
chewing on his absence.
She waits,
ingesting delicious potions,
hash-laced chocolates,
and green smoke; she’s faded,
divided against herself;
her mind craves comforts
her body finds increasingly toxic,
pooling upon her needy tongue,
seeping into her spleen and spine.
His saccharine non-declarations,
when whispered softly into her
arched spine under cover of night,
warm her bones against her
malnourished brain’s better judgment;
when etched electronically,
they relieve her scanning eyes
while stinging her perceptive heart.
And when there is nothing but his silence,
that leaves only text that never refreshes.
Two hours fall away into nothing,
and there is nothing from that foolish,
delicious, selfish boy.
She logs off social media
a rather incomplete method of
describing some rather
anti-social behavior
closing apps, tabs, and legs
for another lonely evening
of binge-watching stories
of lonely characters behaving foolishly,
As an artist, he spins artistry – I wholeheartedly admire
But lustful seed; malicious need, delicious greed fueling his fire
Misdeeds come to light and overnight, his blights birth a pariah
Setting his art apart in heart makes me Descartes to his pariah
His harmful slips trumps craftsmanship, ripping all I admire
Provoked folks were broken on his yoke, and where there’s smoke there’s fire
Using muses won’t excuse abuse; can’t recuse flair from our fire
Through introspection, we selectively reject the learned pariah
Yet we learned the life-affirmed abuse of the abuser I admired
This known pariah grown from man’s own fire of cruelty, I admire
***
Written for imaginary garden with real toads Fussy Little Forms: Tritina. This is my second attempt at this tritina form.
Background: There is a gifted poet who I admired and wanted to emulate a great deal. I won’t mention his name here, but some of you may be familiar with his work. He basically came from nowhere, grew up in squalor, as his people were oppressed and all-but-erased by the US government. He was physically abused as a child. But he eventually fell in love with language, pulled himself up, and rose to prominence as one of America’s dynamic new literary voices.
But tragically, he then used his newfound influence to sexually harass aspiring writers looking to him for mentorship. Obviously, my heart goes out to the women he victimized. Also, I feel like a fool for admiring him in the first place, and in some small measure, for still admiring him today.
I’ve been grappling with this for several months now. His actions were abhorrent and unacceptable. But I also cannot ignore the abhorrent conditions that birthed and probably informed his actions. Hurt people hurt people. Should this man be erased for happening to others? And what of the others who happened to him when he was a young innocent child?
I don’t have the answers, but I just feel sick about the whole damn thing.
October breeze brings arctic bite to air
Leaves leave their moorings upon knotted crust
Shadows stretch further north with greater depth
Autumn sound-tracks in jazz with folksy depth
I steep our tea; honey-kissed, clears the air
She preps the pastry; flaky, buttered crust
Her hand brushes mine, piercing well-worn crust
We speak-easily; a bottomless depth
She smiles, I forfeit breath, gulping our air
We fall for our mid-fall, air, crust, and depth.
***
Written for imaginary garden with real toads Fussy Little Forms: Tritina, Imagined By Marian. This is a tricky little form, but it was also fun. I may try a few more like this.
My name is Barry Dawson Jr. IV. Barry either means fair-headed, or sharp and spear-like, depending on which Gaelic historian you ask. Dawson means “son of Dawe”, which is shortened from David, which is Hebrew for “beloved of Jehovah”.
A Traveler searching the cosmos for entities worthy of elevation to Their plain of existence, upon trillions upon trillions of millennia, countless dust-specs orbiting one insignificant glowing orb after another, upon becoming disillusioned after the last red dwarf about 7.9 light years ago yielded no intelligent life, no rocky shores, no gas giants, not even the hint of an orbital debris-disk, had reached Their lowest point when suddenly, They encountered an unremarkable main-sequence star with thriving bedazzled bodies including eight stout jewels, with the third-from-center dazzling; an aqua-marine lively thing with atmosphere, liquid, and life, including intelligent life that was taking baby-steps in exploring itself and understanding the nature of things.
The Traveler was overjoyed. But then They looked deeper, seeing that this intelligent, relatively new life was rotting from within; at war with itself, exploiting and treating those perceived as lesser with contempt, fear, and hatred, hording food, healing, and education in exchange for trinkets of no intrinsic cosmic value – all at the calamitous global expense of poisoning the very environment they needed to survive, justifying all of this with superstition, dogma, and the disingenuous type of religion that closes minds from fully grasping the nature of things.
The Traveler sighed the resigned sigh of One who has seen this particular scene far too many times in Their travels. But there was no time to contemplate this decaying world’s all-too-brief impending fate; perhaps there will be better luck at the next star over, which is actually a binary system, so perhaps not. Still, the search must go on if the Traveler is to prove that They’re not roaming Infinity alone, searching for meaning within the nature of things.
the leaf never knew
what she was when she reddened
falling from the tree
no one else saw her twirling
only I mourned her last gasp
***
Hephaestus’ Waste & Cosmic Rubble 