Smile–Jesus Loves You dVerse Meeting the Bar

He wore no smile. Square jaw, set firm,
taut muscles. Skin like latte, stubble-covered,
(more like fuzz.)
Skin too soft for who he was,
who he pretended to be.
Salvadoran sun backlit the scene
set on the borders of insanity.

Not a game he played that day,
a game his peers in other lands
and other times still play.
This was a game of war.

He stared at us, each one, with eyes
too full of sadness for an almost-child.
Compared our passport photos with reality.

And there, upon the submachine gun’s butt—
a smiley face, a message, too.

I wonder–can he smile today,
and can he still believe?

Earthquake–El Salvador
1986

At the height of the civil war in El Salvador, the country suffered a massive earthquake that resulted in much loss of life and many injuries. I spent close to a month there, helping to nurse the wounded not requiring hospitalization. We flew into Guatemala and drove to San Salvador, the capital. On the way, we had to pass through numerous military checkpoints. At one of these stops I observed a young soldier. I’d guess he wasn’t much older than 15 or 16. There on the butt of his huge machine gun was a smiley face sticker with the words in English that I’ve chosen for the title of this poem.

Submitted to dVerse Poets’ Meeting the Bar that I’m hosting this week. The doors open Thursday at 3:00 PM EDT. Hope to see you there. The theme, believe it, or not, is IRONY!

Deserts

Today at dVerse Poet’s Pub, Meeting the Bar, I’m happy to introduce Pamela Sayers, who makes her home in Puebla, Mexico. I’ve always been impressed with Pamela’s ability to capture a sense of place in her poetry. Today she shares with us a bit about her own process of bringing us into the heart of Mexico, and invites us to join her by sharing something of our own, about the place we call home.

Photo: David Slotto
Chaparral CC

While I make my home in the high desert of Reno, Nevada–a short 40 minute drive to Lake Tahoe, when those cold winter winds and snows start getting to our old bones, my husband and I pack up the dogs and head south with the birds to Palm Desert, California. The desert is in my blood from my childhood, when we would head east from the LA area each April to soak in the sun and get our first sunburns of the year (big mistake).This poem is more of a reflection on what the desert means to me, than a travelogue. If you have a sense of deja-vu, I have posted it before!

I look forward to reading as many of your poems as I can and Pamela will support me since my husband and I are currently in the midst of a small renovation project.

Photo Credit: Tim Laman

i
Sometimes something
we judge to be barren
throbs with life.

ii
Wind scatters sand
like gossips spread destruction.

iii
If you go to the desert,
you will see the stars.
Perhaps one of them
holds your life purpose.
Then you are no longer
afraid of the viper’s kiss.

iv
The power of thirst
consumes all other desires.

v
Shifting sands
are like people
who vacillate—
you don’t know
where you stand.

vi
The desert is a canvas—
open to splashes
of vibrant color.

vii
The desert is
a state of mind.
Are you alone?
Or lonely?

viii
The desert is
a place of temptation.
There the devil tempted
Jesus—
bread,
greed,
power.
Nothing has changed.

ix
If you try
to leave your mark
upon the desert,
Nature will erase it.
Wind.
Earthquake.
War.
We don’t really matter.

x
The hotter it gets,
the fewer people hang around.

xi
Many people
do not understand
the beauty of the desert
or of wrinkled faces.

xii
At some point
you will visit a desert
and discover
aridity.

xiii
When the desert blooms,
you will find grace.

4622 Castle Crest Drive

Photo Credit: jeunited.com
I found an actual photo of the house my grandfather built on Google! I lived there till age 7.

4622 Castle Crest Drive–dVerse Open Link Night and Meeting the Bar

She rules—pristine white, glorious
as a crown on the skull of the hill.
Alone, inviolate. The stuff of which
childhood myths are made.

And I wove those stories, weave them still,
envisioning dry days of California summer,
days steeped, like my first glass of iced tea,
in sunshine, scrub brush, and scents of citrus.

Geranium blooms, red and slightly pungent
grow wild among yuccas that, most years, burst
into white blossoms on March 19th, St. Joseph’s day.
Predictable as the swallows coming home.

Eucalyptus trees surround my fortress,
stanchions holding the house and our lives
erect, until the day the fires trundle up
the ridge, and they erupt in rapture.

The room where I wake—beneath the crest—
Is the home of an almost-stranger—a man
who wears a sheet each year on Halloween as
Grandpa takes me door-to-door in his neighborhood

that cradles the base of my princess-world.
It’s different now, sixty-some years later. They’re
dead, the ghost and my dreams of royalty.
And someone painted my castle black.

I’m linking this to both dVerse Open Link Night and the Meeting the Bar I will be hosting this Thursday, February 7th. While dealing with computer issues and upgrades, I’ve made the difficult decision to cut back on the number of posts I do each week, as my priority right now is to get my second novel and a book of poetry out to agents. I will continue to be hanging around the Pub, but will post any prompt I respond to on OLN.

Here’s a hint for Thursday…dig back into those childhood memories and savor the details.

Running–dVerse Meeting the Bar

Photo: healingfeet.com via Google Images

Thursday, 3PM EST,  I’m hosting Meeting the Bar at dVerse Poets Pub where I invite you to join us with a descriptive poem that packs a wallop. Hope to see you there.

Running

You told me to take it easy.
“Deep breath,”
you said.

Early morning—
17 degrees outside.
Frost covers the deck
and grass crunches
beneath my feet.

Trees stand still,
stretching naked branches
toward the sinking moon.

But still, I chase
yesterday.

My computer is moribund–it’s croaked on me a few times in the last 24 hours I have one on order. In the event I don’t show up right away…:0(

Be Free–dVerse Meeting the Bar: Craft and Critique

I miss the you
you used to be
before your mind
took flight from me,

before dementia
had its way,
painting your world
in bleakest gray.

Where is the fragrance
that you wore,
or stories of
the world war

that took your loved one
from your side
leaving you widowed
alone, with child?

You still speak of
the love you found
a few years later
the second time round.

“The heart has room.”
you used to say,
“for second loves
and better days.”

Where is the joy
you brought to each—
your family and friends,
all those within reach

who found in you
both wisdom and grace?
You opened your heart,
with a smile on your face.

Do you remember
the parties you threw,
the mess the day after,
the hangovers, too?

The strength you found
when you joined AA?
Gratitude flooded
your life from that day.

I miss the you
you used to be.
I want you back,
I want you free.

I spent much of my nursing career working with patients who had dementia. This poem, written in the 2nd person,  is a response to the prompt over at dVerse.

This is very much a first draft and I welcome your critique.

I hope you’ll join us at the Poetry Pub where, today, I’m honored to be tending the bar.

Photo Source: geripal.com  Photographer not specified.

Fall-ing–dVerse Meeting the Bar

Tonight, I will be busy tending the bar at dVerse Poets’ Pub where I’ve mixed things up a bit with prompts dealing with STEAMPUNK and ENJAMBMENT. You are invited to join us, write to either or both of the elements, and sit back to sip poetry and comment on your fellow pub-crawlers. This poem features enjambment. Have fun, every one!

Photo: D. Slotto

Fall-
ing

Tonight—
sluggish cricket songs
falter,
wail a mournful tune,
announce
the demise of summer.

Tomorrow—
season’s final farmers’ market,
offerings
scant, I fear,
squash
green, yellow, orange.

Yesterday—
summer ecstasy
shouting
“taste my intensity,”
flaunting
colors of an artist’s palette.

Autumn god–a Cento

Photo Credit: sparygraphics.com via Google Images

In every heart there is a god of flowers, just waiting
where the wild asters, last blossoms of the season straggle uphill.

We are the dead. Short days ago we lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow.
Back then, the green grass sprouted and little red flower blossomed.

O world, I cannot hold you close enough. Your woods this autumn,
that ache and sag and all but cry with color, a dazzle dim;

he fathers-forth whose beauty is past change, as when a leaf
or petal is drawn to the falls of a pool, and circling a moment above it

rides over the lip—perfectly beautiful—and is gone.
Death, be not proud.

This is written as a cento in response to the prompt by Sam Peralta over at dVerse Meeting the Bar. The poets I used, with alterations, include Mary Oliver, Jane Kenyon, John McCrae, James Weldon Johnson, Edna St. Vincent Millay, Gerard Manley Hopkins, Oscar Wilde. Some of the lines are blended.

Perfect Family

Photo Credit: Benjamin Kinsland via Google Images

A Perfect Family lived next door—perfect mother and father—three perfect children—two boys and a girl.
They went to church every Sunday as we slept in—Bible Study on Thursday evenings while we drank beer and watched football.
They didn’t yell or curse like we did—like the couple on the other side of us—Their lawn was perfectly manicured.
The oldest son went off to college and was an honor student—my son went to work after high school at an auto repair shop.
The middle daughter was the star of the soccer team—she played the violin and practiced for hours in the evening and on Saturday.
The mother didn’t work because she cared for the toddler—and began home schooling when he was five years old.
On summer evenings the father would come home from work and change into his Ralph Lauren polo shirt and barbecue steaks or ribs.
The aroma invaded the neighborhood as the rest of us sat on our porches eating hot dogs with potato salad and baked beans.
One such evening my son was smoking a Marlboro and drinking a Bud—my daughter was pregnant and I wasn’t sure where my husband had gone.
Fireflies danced in the dusk before the shots rang out – five of them.
My dogs skittered into the house through the dog door as I grabbed the phone to call 911.
They called it a murder-suicide—the weight of perfection—too heavy to bear I guess. Everybody said so.

Today, over at dVerse Poets’ Pub, I have the honor of hosting Meeting the Bar. I’m discussing an important aspect of fiction/non-fiction writing with an eye to how it can be applied to poetry–that is, characterization.

In this poem, written years ago, I’m including snapshots of two families with the hope that the brief descriptions paint a picture of the tenor of both. Please bear in mind that I have the mind of a fiction writer and much of my poetry is fiction, as this one is. Sometimes people in my past (or present), newspaper articles and other snippets of news serve as a source of inspiration, so that something factual may be borrowed and embroidered.

I hope you will join us at the pub to read some incredible poetry and, hopefully, to offer up something of your own.  The doors open in forty-five minutes (1500 EDT). I look forward to reading your work.

Two Twenty-Six

Photo Credit: Google Images/www.last.fm

Two twenty-six
(a new moon night)
I stumble to the kitchen.

My flashlight plays
on unfamiliar surfaces,
creates images,

suggests invasion
by artifacts
unknown to me.

I fumble for the kettle.
Blue flames explode,
lick seductively.

Steeping chamomile
shares soothing
sleep-inducing scents

while I peek through
the blinds.
On the cul-de-sac

behind us
a street light spills
across the pavement.

Aside from that
the world lolls
in darkest stillness.

Alone, I sip my tea.
I sip solitude.

Thank you Claudia, at dVerse Meeting the Bar, for the prompt to write a poem in the manner of the Impressionistic Artists. Quick brush strokes, the play of light, and mood…move over Monet.  I hope you will join us at the Poetry Pub and bring along your own masterpiece.

Remembering Now

Cassin's Finch (Male), Carpodacus cassinii, Cabin Lake Viewing Blinds, Deschutes National Forest, Near Fort Rock, Oregon (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Remembering Now

The way that birdsong bids its welcome to the rising sun,
breaks bonds of night
and shatters silence—

The way the early morning breeze fragments the satin surface of the water,
ruffles the palm fronds,
infuses breaths of dawn with pungent fragrance—

The way the flow of water feels upon my skin,
cleanses the chimera of dreams,
the tastes of kisses—

These are the ways
I shall remember now.

Submitted to dVerse Poets’ Pub, Meeting the Bar   I have the honor of hosting today. The theme is living in the moment. I hope you’ll stop by and share a poem.  I am dealing with a family issue for the next few days, but will do my best to comment when I can. Because of this, I am not able to post Write2Day this week, so I hope the prompt at dVerse will serve that purpose. Thank you, my poet friends.

Photo: Wikipedia. “Copyrighted, but free for any use.”