A Muse: Discussions with a Mirror on Tuesday Afternoon

A Muse: Discussions with a Mirror on Tuesday Afternoon

Part I: Not Someone I’d Wish to Meet in the Alley

My muse is a tapestry of images
and events. Some true, some not.
My muse is a herb garden where
tarragon is the only discerning scent,
where all else succumbs to its desire
and will. Its thoughts bend still water
into motion and softness to stone.
It takes, it bends, it destroys,
and floods the heart with tears.
It is grey shadow, it is sharp light,
it is hooded and shapelessly opaque.
It’s bony and it’s starving for attention.
This muse of mine
is most certainly a woman.

Part II: How to Kill a Conversation

For all I know my muse …
is a spoon,
maybe that one chasing off with a dish,
or wait, perhaps that cow who ran off
with the moon. Maybe not – I think it’s quite
likely a dumpty, that silly sod who took
a great fall, and then spread thin as money
at Christmas across the ground while we
all puzzled over which piece went where,
and which came first, the egg or
(The chicken! The chicken!)
at which point metaphor meteors
fall like pearls from sky,
and if Hennie Penny isn’t the most amusing
fowl’s name … although Cocky Locky,
Ducky Lucky, Drakey Lakey,
Goosey Loosey, Gander Lander …

…and I take a sip of sweet fennel tea,
and realise that it’s the only thing
that will shut this bitch up.
.
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Margo’s Poem Tryouts: You and Your Muse
http://margoroby.com/2013/05/21/poem-tryouts-your-muse-and-you/

A Clash with Green

A Clash with Green

I speak to you of a clash with green,
of ash forests with tints awash with shades
beyond my count, and into villages fair where
gardens hot with colour attempt to copy nature.

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Written for Joseph Harker’s Refinery prompt of 19 May/13 as I listened to “Bach in the Amazon”

A Stone Revealed

A Stone Revealed

To a stone, a touch, a crush,
to crack with blazing heat,
a stone, a slab below my feet,

to cut, opaque, to shine with breath,
a stone, to fracture, grains of sand,
bleak nebulous strewn on this land,

from stone to sand, a vision, mirage,
stony winds hovering around,
behold your timeless face unbound.

.

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Written for Sunday Whirl Wordle # 109 Words: nebulous, bleak, cut, vision, timing, touch, hover, crush, opaque, blazing, slab and breath

A Dissolving Moon

A Dissolving Moon

The meat in this relationship,
they agreed,
was as thin as paper,

and for an instant
they thought
they saw the moon drop,

just a bit, the maestro’s baton
missed a note,
maybe skipped a beat,

and they held their breath,
both suspended
between who would speak next

and who still had the strength
to turn, to walk toward
stars strung along the skyline,

but neither walked, neither spoke;
they knew the moon was
dissolving in their heated long kisses.

.

.

Written for Naming Constellations Refinery prompt 11 May
http://namingconstellations.wordpress.com/2013/05/11/the-refinery-pamela-sayers/  Write about a personal relationship using a celestial metaphor: heavenly bodies, space, weather, etc. Don’t make it about two specific people, but make the interaction they have specific. Have the poem be six stanzas long, each no more than five lines; in the fifth and sixth stanzas, the reader should begin to see how this metaphorical interaction represents the whole relationship. Include the words “skyline”, “suspended”, and “paper”.

Observations from the Eighth Step

Observations From The Eighth Step

I once sat on the eighth step
to the basement of Grandpa’s house.
I knew it was the eighth one
because I counted them.
Eighth from the bottom
and eighth from the top.

Those stairs were due respect;
they were varnished ice,
and they treated stocking feet
with disdain and intolerance.
Grandma wouldn’t have shoes
in the house, so we’d moor them
like boats in pairs on the porch.

And as I sat there on the eighth
step, a bit too scared to move
in case my stocking feet slipped
into limbo through the open risers,
I sat there quietly entranced
watching Grandpa dancing
with a tall cotton thread mop.

Grandpa was mighty tall and lean,
like a Norwegian pine he was,
and spindly as rising smoke.
He always seemed to be
on the move, on the run.

I didn’t know it then but one day
I’d grow up to be just like him –
tall, lean, spindly, and completely
incapable of sitting still. We loved
to move, to run, to glide and feel
the world rush by us like wind.

And as I sat there on the eighth step
watching him holding a mop
and dancing across the basement,
I asked “Whatcha doin’, Grandpa?”
and he replied, “Dancing with a cotton
thread mop, child. Are your eyes dim?”

I didn’t answer because sometimes
my eyes were dim; sometimes I felt
dim all over. And I sat there
for the longest time, watching
from the eighth step of Grandpa’s
stairs as he danced round and round
through soft streams of dusty light
with a tall cotton thread mop.

And again, I hasten to say that only
a third of this tale’s true. All the rest
is fiction of the highest tall-tale degree.
.
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We Write Poems prompt #157 “Zen and the Soul of Body Maintenance”
and Poetic Asides prompt #219 “On the Run”

AprPAD Day: 22 The Earthiness of It All

The Earthiness of It All

Worms never scared me
never turned me into
a girlie-girl.
I loved them –
their twisty curly bits
that swirled J shaped
hooks off the end
of my finger. I loved
that they lingered
and lounged
wrapped around
my thumb.
Earthy jewellery.
Nature’s ornaments.
And they were also
damned useful for fishing.

.
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Miz Quickly’s Prompt; Day 22 – Earth Day, and Flashy Fiction’s All Things Small prompt

Spring on the Tableau

Spring on the Tableau

Your little silver
vase sits between flames
of candles bright, glows
with apple blossoms –
spring scents greet the air.
But winds howl down

the branches, raining
winter into May, white
petals stir the air,
blossoms in my hair.
Your little silver
vase greets apple scents.
.
.
.
Poem Form: Tableau – two stanzas of six lines each that must reflect a scene or representation. Written for Poetic Bloomings

My Poems Aren’t Puppets

My Poems Aren’t Puppets

My poems aren’t candlelit dinners for two
with red roses and coy glances. They’re
earthy; they’re dirt stuck under your fingernails.

My poems aren’t pretty pink heels
and gathered gingham frocks. They’re denim;
they’re jeans with holes in the knees.

My poems aren’t sheep that go where
they’re told. They’re mindful and spiteful,
exuberant and deliciously delinquent.

My poems aren’t puppets, rigid and wooden.
They’re seagrass, salt-laden with breezes
that sway, and they go wherever they wish.

My poems aren’t mine. They are children
who wear tutus in my dreams, they are
wonderment to my pen and my companions.

My poems are not me –
they are all that surround me.
.
.

Written for Margo’s Poetry Tryouts: Metaphors
and WordPress Daily Prompt

Thoughts of Peculiar Purpose

Thoughts of Peculiar Purpose

Of my thoughts, I am rumbling rapids.
I am thunderous clouds that drip
dew-spritzed letters that stretch
gelatinous, disconnected and threadbare.

Of my thoughts, I am iced water soaked
into linen weave. I am that singularly
peculiar ribbon of nondescript purpose
that shrinks in a heated conversation.

Of my thoughts, I am green gummy boots
that empty puddles with an ill-timed
splash. I am puckered lips waiting,
I am muck and mire and filled with desire.

Of my thoughts, I am the darkness that
hides inside the tip of your shoe. I am
surprise behind the back door. I am
good and I am bad, as all of my thoughts
are a coin with a face on each side.
.
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Margo’s prompt this week is to strap on a snorkel, dive into metaphors, swim about in the little beasties, and try not to drown in their undertow. Well, she didn’t exactly say that. Well, she didn’t say that all, actually. But I suspect that she probably wishes that she did. And I wonder if Viv will start making a Margo voodoo quilt….  Margo’s Poetry Tryouts

The House on Damper Hill

The House on Damper Hill

There’s a house on Damper Hill that’s the colour
of my worst mood, and when the weather turns
the shade of weathered wood, beaded deep
with pitted rain, well, that old house just
disappears against the colour of the sky, and its
inhabitants fade into someone else’s thoughts.

And I think that’s why Grandpa bought that
house; so it would swallow up my moods.
.
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Written for We Write Poems prompt #155 A Red Letter Day
http://wewritepoems.wordpress.com/2013/05/08/prompt-155-a-red-letter-day/

The Passing of a Viking

[process notes: these are anagrammed words generated from my surname “Braendeholm”]
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THE PASSING OF A VIKING

Haled hard boned old man,
a lone nod on honed elm,
no drab hole on a broad helm.
Hero o’ home,
an olden end,
born o’nor realm
and had lo a noble end.

On morn a dream,
bend alder a bed
and laden named herb,
adorn embered on helm.

Her blond noble nomad,
her horned hero o’nor,
her one man,
her hand,
alone.
.
.
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Poetic Bloomings, prompt #107 “What’s In A Name”
http://poeticbloomings.com/2013/05/12/whats-in-a-name-prompt-107/

Losing Sleep Over Little Lost Sheet

LOSING SLEEP OVER LITTLE LOST SHEEP

Grandpa had a dream,
a nightmare, he said, as his
dreams usually woke him in a sweat.

His fist is circling
the crook of his hooked cane, and
he squints low into the cold
winter sun. It’s binding and

blinding thoughts
deep in his head, and
he rambles the crags
like a scrambling spider.

His mouth chants vows in deep drones
“I will. I do. I promise. Come to me,
run to me, my little lost sheep,”
but this shepherd is broken, his

mind a cave, an empty
hallow of shallow space
that echoes the night that a pack
of grey wolves killed his flock.

So Grandpa took this warning
to heart, avoiding flocks and herds
of every sort, which I reckon is why
he became a dentist.
.
.

Sunday Whirl Wordle 108
We Write Poems Prompt 156