Currently displayed on Tygpress.com. You guys did it!
Well damn! You guys actually did it! I’m impressed. I was going to take my ball and go home, but you folks with your outrage went at this entity with your cease-and-desist and your pitchforks, and they didn’t want any of that smoke!
I know most of you were just as pissed-off as I was, and I’m grateful that you acted on your own senses of justice instead of turtleing like I planed. I am the undeserved benefactor of your righteous actions, and I thank you all. This little guy is grateful that you collection of little guys didn’t take this lying down.
I honestly hope that this the last time I find myself writing about blog harvesting, but I suspect it won’t be. We’ll cross that bridge when it comes, but for now, let’s get back to our scheduled programming.
Summer sunsets are the laziest, followed leisurely by dusk layering softer, dimmer pastels as if Saturday were being saturated by a steady drizzle of chocolate sundae topping, even lingering as prelude to indigo, with tree leaves reflecting slivers of light, giving them an ethereal glow, and as roosting birds sing to replace loneliness with companionship, adding their voices to the frogs in the pond beyond the vanishing horizon, I smile in gratitude of her unhurried transit.
westward moving sun
carrying her solar tides
twilight consumes me
***
You’re a pain in my ass; sassy so-and-so.
Atypical opening as odes go, I know.
But your fiery spirit serves you well thus far,
and as far as you’ve come,
who the hell knows where you’ll go?
I’m going to level with you here, dearest one;
this wasn’t supposed to have rhyme or meter.
In fact, I almost wrote another clichéd line
– about catching the stars, as if!
I mean, I know, right? – but
you’ve been earthbound
for a quarter-century now,
so no more fairy tales.
You’re as tough as I raised you, tougher
than I envisioned, and I’m relieved for it.
You’re tempered for a cruel world, and yet
you refuse to let it make you unkind.
And while I’d love to take all the credit,
like I knew the masterpiece of you
was hidden in the marble all along,
you are the artist of your destiny;
I’m just pleased to see who you are
and who you will become.
I say again, as it is a good catchphrase;
you’re a pain in my ass; sassy so-and-so,
and I’m lucky to have you around, I know,
wherever you go, I’ll be with you always.
Oh, and please rinse your dishes.
I’m your dad; I’m not your maid.
***
It began with the kind of rain
that made me change my shoes
a healthy April shower needed
for continuity of respiration
as trees kneed saturated soil
roots rooting for their share
new leaves are budding, color
restored to pre-bloomed florae
vivid hues contrast with a heavy sky
unending clouds spill themselves
rolling in from faded sepia photos
I wonder if you’re enjoying rain now
just as I am, about two-thousand miles
and the rain-soaked earth between us
a miracle of technology at hand
and I couldn’t retrace my soggy steps
to you even if I tried, but I hope
you have a good view of a budding oak
I hope the rain humbles blossoms’ heads
showing you proper respect,
attracting good bumble-bee company
for reproduction and continuity of
respiration, for as long as this rain
is doing more service for you,
you who can no longer feel it,
as long as it does more for us
than forcing me into dryer,
sturdier shoes, then I ask you,
how can I not be content with it?
***
Written for NaPoWriMo’s day 18 prompt: “write an elegy of your own, one in which the abstraction of sadness is communicated not through abstract words, but physical detail.”
I almost skipped this prompt. Not because I didn’t find the prompt interesting, but because I did, and yet I struggled mightily. I’ve lost count of the elegies I’ve written for folks I lost, but I’ve never tried to keep the scope of my loss contained within the tangible world before.
If I’m dissatisfied with my resulting poem, it’s only because I had to restrain myself from bleeding wailing abstractions everywhere. This challenged me in ways I never envisioned, and I’m glad for it.
That iconic church
catching fire
is not upsetting.
Firebombing
less-iconic black churches
is not upsetting.
Random hate crimes
against minorities
is not upsetting.
A murder of another
based on who they choose to love
is not upsetting.
Having a government leader
with no empathy, no tact,
no impulse control, no shame,
no fundamental grasp of science,
not even the service of
an official proofreader
or spellchecker
is not upsetting.
Passing the tipping-point
of human-aided
catastrophic climate change
with a collective shrug
and a doubling-down
of business-as-usual
is not upsetting.
What is upsetting
is the growing numbness
incinerating our
collective superstructure.
What is upsetting
is realizing that faith in humanity
was firebombed decades
before observation,
like a lobster having no idea
they’re slowly being
boiled alive
until there’s steam.
What is upsetting
is our growing detachment
from the humane.
What is upsetting
is catching yourself wondering
what the victim did to provoke
such violent hatred
before remembering
that all they did was
have the audacity
to exist.
What is upsetting
is that a hilariously-terrifying,
poisonous, treasonous,
wood-rot-brained,
dementia-demigod
is executing the will
of a percentage of people
I call neighbor.
What is upsetting is receiving
such an oppressive influx
of terrible things,
that the nervous system
reflexively shuts down
to protect itself.
What is upsetting is knowing that,
even after adjusting cosmic perspective,
knowing that no one is coming
to save you from yourselves,
compelling you to root for the
sweet, sweet probability of a
random extinction meteor.
What is upsetting
is slowly realizing that
nothing is upsetting anymore.
Not even when the steam is visible.
***
Written for NaPoWriMo’s day 16 prompt: “write a poem that uses the form of a list to defamiliarize the mundane.” Again, I took license and adjusted the scale, as I’m running dry on mundane topics and I’m a bit sleep-deprived and grumpy.
Also written for Real Toads’ day 16 prompt: “poetry as an insurgent art”.
Hephaestus’ Waste & Cosmic Rubble 