Category: Free form poetry

NaPoWriMo Poem #13: Empty Calendar

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Poem #13 of 30

Empty Calendar

Appointments serve as structural dividers that cordon off our days into neatly ordered sections

In the off season
Or in retirement I’d guess
The absence of these structured
Place holders causes days to collapse and run into one another
Like cake batter poured on a plate
That can not hold the volume
Yet we expect it to firm up
Once the heat of the day gets at it.

We find ourselves confused that it’s weekly trash day again
Didn’t that just happen two days ago?

The phone tells us which day this is because we didn’t care enough to cross them off on the wall calendar we never look at.

There’s some rebel, Kerouac shit that rises up in us when we eliminate time commitments

It’s a free range

Confusing beautiful.
Mess.
See you Thursday

Or not

Poetry: NaPoWriMo #2 Freeform- The Train Ride

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The Train Ride

He on his train

Me on mine

Same track

Same destination

One hundred fourteen years later-

He was 15 and like his brother and cousin

Braved the ocean passage from the north side of the island

to the dirt streets and crowded immigration buildings of Ellis Island

The hard part still awaited him

The years working at the rail yards-

Carrying a meager sandwich, a partial bottle of wine and an ever present switchblade in his boot that he used for more than cutting apples grabbed from trees along the way

This rough place where boys- almost men – spoke languages foreign even to the foreigners

Working, sweating, laughing, fighting

Finding their way to gathering enough to dare a dream of a home and family

To imagine the unknown future sons who would one day bring the rest of us into this world

Like me-

Moving now on this same track

Also Chicago bound

And imagining an unknown future grandchild who may cover this same ground

In a distinct future

With her own dreams held like this journal

Filled with the promise of more

Poetry Day: End of the Season

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For my Northport Dear Hearts❤️
October


I stretch my heart across the land to see if I can hold you all as you drift homeward to your corners~ far away.
I’ve made room for you now inside my ribs

where I can carry your voices

until the trees bloom again

and you return to this northern town

where we move like circus folk –

readying our spaces before the show begins again.

Short, sweet season 

filled with a thousand birds gathered on a wire outside our night windows. 

Gone now

Quiet fills the spaces

where you all just were.

Happy 

to have had this time 

surrounded

In your friendship.

Poetry Day- Stand Mother’s Day

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nature-balances-herself

 

STAND

 

You stand with us

You, who nurture cities

You, who stand as big sister

You, aunt

You, best friend

You, neighbor

You who nurture the soil and raise up food and blossoms

You who bring creatures home and show them humans can be loving too

You who protect us, heal us, inspire us and entertain us

You who teach us what we need to know

Mothers – all

You stand with us.

 

Poetry Day: My Mistake

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lonely road

My Mistake

My mistake

was not

going down that road

to the place

where I

threw my arms open

to love –

vast, wild and freely given-

it was

in

assuming

that you

had come along

with me.

My Creator of All Things

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After writing a full novel manuscript I find myself only pulling smaller word threads for a while; resting some muscle but keeping it taut with sprints through poetry and essay. It’s another poetry day and I’m feeling like offering up this one to the cyber pyre of anonymous eyes.

 

RS_Eagle_Nebula

 

 

Creator of All Things

 

My Creator of All Things

Is not the playground bully created by religion

Not the God with the small “g” who has a vocabulary

With words like

Hate

Vengeance

Disappointment

Exclusive

Ultimatum

And judgment

~

My Creator of All Things

Needs no words.

To name a thing is to capture it

And stop its evolution towards something more

~

My Creator of All Things

Set a dance in motion a trillion, trillion, trillion years ago

A trillion, trillion, trillion years from now

One second ago

Now

~

Time is a measuring stick designed for tiny human brains

To help us organize events into simple patterns we can understand

~

My Creator of All Things

Swirled the dust of everything into a golden spiral

And I see the signature everywhere

From the perfect turn of my DNA

To the galaxies spinning in dizzying proportions light years across the vastness beyond

~

My Creator of All Things

Swirled the dust of everything

And the dance began, begins, will begin

Throughout the Multiverse

Flung far

Growing

Changing

Evolving-

triggered by possibility

Every possibility

Every choice

Conscious or unconscious

Amongst the sentient and insentient

Everywhere

~

My Creator of All Things

Is the observer

Watching as each speck of dust finds its way around the spiral

And back again to be part of itself

Though it never left

~

My Creator of All Things

Does not require membership

Tradition

Worship

Teams

Armies

Compliance

Sacrifice

Or

Offerings

~

My Creator of All Things

Touches my heart

When I sit in a field of flowers

Looking closely at the perfect design of a

Clover blossom while the bee

moves without hesitation

Knowing its purpose and its path

~

My Creator of All Things rocks me gently

When I feel the earth moving in its orbit

~

I grow

Change

Evolve

And discover the possibilities

Of every choice I make

Consciously or unconsciously

As I dance around the spiral

On my way back to where I began

~

My Creator of All Things is not the school yard bully created by religion

~

My Creator of All Things is the Alpha, the Omega

and everything in between.

~

And I am a microscopic, macroscopic

Vital and relevant part of All Things

∞

Poetry Day: Never

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image

Never

…and if I had never
heard your name
would the sound it makes
still echo
in corridors of memory-
brushing the walls
like velvet and fire-
hammering the soft middle of my heart
where hope lives-
leaving it bruised
and aching
decades later?