lust–dVerse Quadrille

lust

my thoughts stream in
and out like water—
free, cascading,
life-sustaining. I dance in droplets
(a creative thrust) such
love-making in a pool
of misty water-want

thirst for more and more
until, satiated, I paint
in words or water-color
swirling about to mix beauty.

It has been so long since I’ve posted or even written a poem. Though I’m still in a caregiver mode, I caught Dee’s Quadrille post and felt compelled to write to it. WordPress has me confused. Since it’s been such a long time, they are treating me as a new user and I couldn’t find my post to edit. It’s good to be here, to hang around with old friends and meet some new ones.

dVerse Quadrille–Alternative Poetry

Photo: V. Slotto
English Peas

Alternative Poetry

Our garden is my poem
and my prayer.
I wander through bright colors,
aroma-filled joy.
For now, my pen, abandoned,
lies in wait.
I hurry to the one
needing my care,
and leave behind lavender-
scented air.
Love blooms this moment,
here or there.

Photo: V. Slotto

Today I am guest-hosting for dVerse Quadrille. The word for this prompt is GARDEN, reflecting one of the joys of summer. In August, the harvest begins to reach its peak. Farmers and backyard growers rejoice in the fruits (and veggies and flowers) of their labor. I hope to see many of you at the pub, sipping and sharing your word-gardens. Victoria

dVerse Poetics–Independence

Photo: V. Slotto

 

Independence–a Haibun

Last year I gawked for hours as mother robin sat in the messy nest she and her mate constructed with care in the tree outside my office window. After a while, three hungry beaks appeared above the rim of their security—scrawny maws gapping, twittering, waiting to be sated. The biggest one bullied, grasped in greed for tender morsels and twitching insects. He fledged first and quickly left for good. A few days later, always watching, I saw the smaller ones, carefully coached, dare tentative leaps into the ether of their tiny cosmos. And finally they flew, abandoning the known for our back yard.

summer sings freedom
quaking aspen sheltering
life’s risky moments

The second day, broken hearted, I scooped up a tiny body. I couldn’t really scold my Jack Russell as she only followed her instincts. I wept inside, considering the cost of being free.

Joining my friends at dVerse Poets Pub Poetics where we are asked to write about what we see or have seen out the window. 

The End–dVerse Prosery

The End

She glanced out the window and saw the sun easing behind the horizon. An exhausting day left her feeling emotionally bereft, empty. The glorious colors of autumn had begun to fade and leaves hopped off the trees into oblivion, much as he had as he slammed the doors behind himself, leaving her in utter darkness. She crumpled the paper and laid it in the fireplace that he had stacked with dry wood as he told her of his plans to divorce her.

Then she went to the garage and grabbed the can of gasoline they kept on hand for the snow-blower and lawn-mower. She spilled it throughout the house they had shared together. If it’s darkness we’re having, let it be extravagant, she thought. She wondered if she should stay or leave before tossing the lighted match into the fireplace.

Flicker–labeled for non-commercial reuse.

Written and posted for my prompt at dVerse Poets’ Prosery, using a line from the poetry of Jane Kenyon (in italics). Please join in. It is open all week.

Innocence, Lost–Crispina’s Creative Challenge #48

This is the first time I’ve been able to link to Crispina’s Creative Challenge. I’ve penned a bit of Flash Fiction–a wee bit dark:

Innocence, LostFlash Fiction—67 Words

They found the body halfway in the tunnel, halfway out.

He was afraid to return to the scene until the investigators had finished their thing. At night, under the new moon, he stood by the bank and tossed in a few rose petals that were quickly covered with slime. So symbolic of his no-longer innocent childhood.

Bye, Dad, he whispered, before moving on to a new life. After all, no one even knew he existed.

 

Warhol–Pop Art in Words

Wikipedia Commons
Labeled for Non-commercial reuse

Warhol

Maybe Andy was on
to something.
One-after-another
screen-printed cans—
Campbell’s soup:
red and white,
silver and gray,
navy blue with a gold seal.
An icon of comfort in
the midst of so much dismay.
Tomato, Chicken Noodle,
Split Pea,
Bean with Bacon, Pepper Pot.
Mother’s Milk, Mother’s Comfort.
Bring it on.

Did you ever stop?
Really look at art?
I mean art in a grocery store?
“Wake up!”
Andy would say.
“Look.
Listen closely.”

I pick up a navel orange.
Its dimpled skin
leaves a scent-mark
on my fingers.

“If you want to know me,
look at my art,”
“I’m a deeply superficial person.”

So I stare at him,
but he doesn’t glance back.
Eyes drifting to some
far-away place where
wholeness waits,
or to a party where
touching never held room
for emptiness.
The pull of gravity so great
the Mass collapses in
on itself,
Black Hole. Black Whole.

All that sparkles is
not diamond dust.
Even that wouldn’t adhere.
Your world
became glittered in so
much plastic.

Redemption plays in
pink and yellow
electric chairs.

Curl up,
snuggle in its lap
and die alone
while the nurse who
was there for you,
wasn’t.

Oh my God,
I am heartily sorry,
hardly,
heartily.
So much pain.
I repeat, I repeat.
Marilyn in
black and gray
and brown,
blue and pink.
We are heartily sorry
who we aren’t,
what we are
and what they made us.

The woman handed
the boy
a piece of dense bread.
“It’s dry,” he said.
“Dunk it in your soup,”
she answered.

I wrote this poem way back in 2010, around the time the Nevada Museum of Art hosted a Warhol exhibit. Many, perhaps unknown details underlie this writing. Here are a few of them.

  • As a child, Andy was sick a lot. His mother sustained him on Campbells soup.
  • He surrounded himself with celebrities, but never found self confidence or the ability to fill that empty space within himself.
  • He pursued adding diamond dust to his work, but had problems with making it stick.
  • He painted a rather grim series of electric chairs.
  • He died at a young age of complications from gallbladder surgery. The private nurse who was supposed to be with him had left the room.

Wikipedia Commons
Labeled for Non-commercial reuse

I would love to have you join us for dVerse MTB where I’m hosting. The theme is Pop Art.

 

Abundant Love–dVerse Prosery #3

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Abundant Love

A ray of light broke through the blinds in the motel room, awakening Jasmine, who found herself alone with the scent of cheap alcohol and smoke. Twenty-five ones were piled on the nightstand beside her. A note, written on a napkin, said, simply: “Thanks. It was okay.”

Jasmine dressed and fled into the early morning light. Shades of pink awakened the horizon. Down the street the bells of her childhood parish sounded 6:00AM Mass. Tears streaked her face as she snuck into the back pew, hating herself for who she had become in order to raise her baby.

Father Patrick, the old priest who had baptized her, came and placed a gentle hand on her shoulder. Surprising herself, she poured out her pain, telling herself, “You will love again the stranger who was your self.” Once again, God’s love held her so very close.

Linked to dVerse Prosery #3–a Flash Fiction of exactly 144 word. The prompt, however, requires not more than 144 words.

Rembrandt: The Prodigal Son. Public Domain.

Blue Skies Tinged with Gray

Image: pixabay
Labeled for non-commercial reuse.
Lake Tahoe

Blue Skies Tinged with Gray
a Sestina
Iambic Tetrameter
Revised 8/19

This morning I painted my world in blue,
new days in a dream beneath clear azure skies.
I floated in mem’ries of life borne on waves—
the summer we spent making love by the lake,
when our love sang so sweetly of hours in the sun
and clear water soothed pain that I saw in your eyes.

More often was hope gleaming in those deep eyes,
clear mirrors of mys’try—not silver, not blue,
reflecting the brilliance of summer’s lush sun
this faith that I found in those cloudless, pure skies.
We washed away fear in our bay at the lake,
floating hand within hand on her cool, gentle waves.

Sometimes we are crushed by the force of life’s waves
and excitement can wane, dull the spark in your eyes.
Then return to those days of our love by the lake
to renew what we knew when we dreamt dreams of blue,
streaked with hues of Payne’s Gray as we looked to the skies,
adding depth to those moments of light in the sun.

Summer’s end soon drew near and our time in the sun
gave way to the wind, to the chill in the waves.
Autumn clouds came too soon, hiding blue of the skies,
cast long shadows on joy, dimmed the glow in your eyes.
Succumbing to dark, nature cast off her blue.
Thus we tasted the close of our days at the lake.

Arid sands took you far from our love by the lake.
In Iraq you would know desert dry, scorching sun.
Did that world of brown erase recall of blue?
Did you dream of the days we had shared in the waves?
Or did you forget, horror blinding your eyes
to all of the plans that we held ‘neath blue skies?

For my part, I still hope for the day when the skies
shall return you to me, to our love by the lake.
When you rush to my arms will the tears in your eyes
still be there as they were on that day in the sun
when you told me they called to you over the waves
and you walked from my life for the red, white and blue?

I still look to the skies, shield my eyes from the sun,
wait for days at the lake, for the calming of waves,
lose myself in your eyes, wrapped in dreams painted blue.

For dVerse Poetry Form Challenge–this month the form is the SESTINA. This is my second entry for which I did some revisions on a poem I had written a while back when De Jackson gave us a “blue” prompt. The sestina is a complex form but give it a whirl and link to dVerse where this will be open for one month.

 

In Her Library, the Day Before She Dies–dVerse Poetry Forms, Sestina

Image: Pixabay
Labeled for non-commercial reuse.

In Her Library the Day Before She Dies
a Sestina

i.
I enter, hear the ticking of a clock.
The room is dim; drawn shades withhold the light.
Tick, tock, tick, tock—the thunderous passing time,
a slant of sun showcases motes of dust.
How many months since she has entered here?
Crushing mementos of the years long past.

ii.
Each shelf embraces mem’ries of her past.
Too many are the num’rous raucous clocks.
That one says twelve, but two o’eight this here,
and one that’s stopped is shrouded from the light
(so like her mind, unused beneath the dust
of years now gone, of unrelenting time.)

iii.
Photos of kin that mark an older time,
when she had naught with which to mark her past.
Piles of books, themselves becoming dust:
a lusty novel cached behind a clock,
and one, more recent, titled “See the Light,”
inviting her to grasp each moment here.

iv.
A cordless phone, askew, I find right here.
The musty air, oppressive, scents of time
elapsed. Let’s open windows, let in light,
diffuse the moldy taste of all that’s past,
quiet the ceaseless marking of the clock,
breathe deeply air that’s fresh and free of dust.

v.
I cannot shake that cringy feel of dust,
the peering stares of generations here,
the constant toll of years, the ticking clock,
reminding me of my own fleeting time,
that days creep onward, leave behind the past.
I cannot silence dread of dimming light.

vi.
I search within to find the source of light,
to free my spirit of malignant dust,
discover there abundant joy. The past
is gone and beauty dwells right here.
How gifted I have been through boundless time,
not measured by the menace of a clock.

Envoi
I view the past through eyes of sacred light,
eschew the nagging clock, the grimy dust.
Embrace grace here and in this hallowed time.

The poetry form challenge at dVerse today is the challenging SESTINA and I am pleased to be hosting it. I have attempted to write this in iambic pentameter. I’d be grateful for any critique you have to offer.

Please don’t be afraid to give it a whirl. It’s quite fun.