O, lowly kumquat
With your sour meat
And sweet skin
You are rarely
Appreciated
Plucked fresh
From your tree,
But cooked
Into a jam
Like marmalade
You earn accolades.
#NaturePoetry
Give yourself permission
To sing outside the shower
To dance to piped-in music wherever—
Elevator or grocery store
To dream in the daylight
To make room for beauty
A flower, laughing trees
Dogs and cats romping
The kind word to a stranger
To take time to notice life
Feel its pulse in the air
Hear the breathing of the earth
To feel the touch that says you are alive
#Freedom #lifestyle #LifeAdvice
It was old.
It was used,
A hand-me-down.
Chrome handlebars
Goose-bumped with rust,
The body once blue
With racing stripes
Of red and white
Now sunburned
Into shades of brown.
In secret
I named it Flag
For its service
Long and hard.
Faster than I
Could walk
Or skate,
It took me
Where I needed to go.
Together we rode
To no place
While I sang
Angry or sad
Songs I wanted
No one to hear
Songs that said
What I could not
Dared not.
When I left home,
Flag was handed down
Once more.
#BicycleLore
Five stalwart soldiers face the battlefront.
Then one by one they fall until only one remains,
The true soldier, not a replica like the four who fell before.
The last soldier, now alone, finally knows
His heart, his mind. He stands
To face the opposition, look them in the eye
That they, too, will know he is not afraid
To stand before them all alone:
They who prize winning above all,
Who break rules they agreed upon
As right and fair,
They who value winning
More than kindness
More that friendship.
The last of the five stalwart soldiers
Gathers up his fallen replica comrades,
Turns and walks away.
The fallen four will rest upon a shelf
To remind the fifth of what was learned.
One stalwart soldier stands tall
At the battlefront, alone but unafraid.
He can do nothing less.
He knows his heart, his mind.
He will look the enemy in the eye
That the other will know
To be kind is not to be weak,
To be a friend is not to lose.
One stalwart soldier stands
At the battlefront, alone.
Drifting ghostly in our memory—
A boy of shy and gentle smiles…
Quietly determined
Yet too fragile for the world
Blown away on the winds of war
Shipped home in a crate
From a field in Viet Nam—
Drifting ghostly in our memory.
I crawl into the warmth
Of my cocoon,
Pulling the bed covers tight
To seal in the heat.
Slowly the tension sifts
From each tendon
Each muscle
Until there is only peace.
As the body’s stillness
Drifts upward
Seeping into my mind,
Slowly I let go
Of tomorrow’s worry
Yesterday’s sorrow
Releasing both
Into the indifferent air
Surrounding my cocoon.
The molecules of that space
Waft all my agitation
To some distant universe.
I slip into the sleep
Which mends the broken pieces,
Smoothes the balm of hope
Over hot lesions
Building someone new
To wake from a cocooned silence.
In a castle of translucent walls
Full of flash and brilliance,
When there is light,
And thick with shadow
When there is not
You will search in vain for water
Which might assuage your thirst
You will lay your body
Against wall or floor
Seeking illusive coolness there
But in these deep green depths
There is always fever:
The heat rising
From within the heart
Of a perfect emerald.
To my mother I read
My poemed cries
In a sudden release
Till she woke
Startled by a dream
Where a woman with unknown face
Wore her daughter’s name.
A novel may sometimes reveal
the world more clearly
than we might ever see
A poem strips bare
our frightened soul
and lets us know the truth
of what we are
#Poetry #WhatIsPoetry
Denial is a natural for the anapest.
The tongue and mind in a one-two sprint
To the sudden, slam-burst of sound:
i did Not!
Blast and echo
Is the pattern
Of an accusation
Meant to turn the ear
From an anapest defense
To the dactyl of offense:
HE did it!
In two quick steps
The unshakably stubborn
Will push you out the door
With their anapestic vigor:
i will Not!
But the whiner will whimper
With the torture of iambs
elongated horribly, terribly,
i C A A A N’T,
i D O O O N’T.
The liar, ‘not ME’
And the doubter, “not HIM”
Will also favor the short iamb.
To stun and numb
Belligerence delivers the dare
With a one-two trochee punch:
TRY me.
MAKE me.
But for the truly outraged
under unfair accusation,
the choice will forever be
the shock wave of the anapest:
i am NOT!
#PoeticMeter #Poetry