Patchwork Prose and Verse
when we came home
from our camping
weekend, there he was
hanging out in the
pine trees slated for
clear cutting
in these trees he’s loved
for years, where I too
have loved watching him
soon his mate appears
and they swoop
from tree to tree
and I hope to God
there is no little
owlet tucked away
in the safety of
a doomed tree
a honeybee
took a liking
to my Cayman Jack
margarita
climbing into
the bottle
taking a long swig
then a dip
then a plunge
then a swirl
and died
a senseless
death as I
tried to help
her back
to a better life
but she
refused to
admit her
problem ~
she’s buried
at campsite 301
by the fire pit
a pollinator
extraordinare
her life cut
short by
the delusional
pleasures of
this world
next time he
goes to a
storytelling night
he will time his
cliffhanger at
exactly two and
one half minutes
and then when
they tap that
ridiculous spoon
on the coffee cup
to signal thirty
more seconds
he will smile
return to his seat
leave everyone
hanging
and sit down
somebody woke up
grumbling, growling
snarling over space
scrapping, snapping,
licked my sleeping face
tussling, pulling, beckoned
me to play
early morning
Schnoodles
greet the day
getting a grip on
her future starts with
burning the Christmas tree
boxes one decade now in
her attic
buying enough hummingbird
nectar to last through October
and watering the string of pearls
cascading from the porch table
getting a grip is festooned with
saying goodbyes to too much
long held hostage from living
new lives in better spaces
like all those music boxes
of childhood and sad, stained
table linens frayed with holes ~
gaps in the timelines of
lineage like broken branches
on that cross-stitched tree
of names and thread strands
of who goes where and how
pre-affair, divorce, remarriage,
cousins once-removed now
fully removed and never coming
back because they did the
same thing with their goodbyes ~
they burned the Christmas tree
boxes and all that’s left is
the cooling ash of
what once was
before their birds
left the nest for the skies
I got home with one
size 7 shoe, one size 9
it was all so odd.
Today at http://www.ethicalela.com, Linda is our host for The Open Write. She inspires us to write Clunker Exchange Poems, intentionally exchanging a line (I chose into another world to use in my poem and offer all of my lines as clunkers today). You can read her full prompt here.
Sunday Morning Scrambled
all hell breaks loose
here on this peaceful
Sunday morning as I
sip coffee, write
a clunker exchange ~
sudden frantic barking
of my three vicious
Schnoodles bounces
and echoes through
the house as they
slo-mo scramble
from window to window
no-traction toenails
on the rugless wood
floors, looking like
Saturday morning
Flintstone cartoon
pets running for all
they’re worth but
going nowhere fast
when I look out and see
mama D-E-E-R
(no need to spell it
now – besides, our one
speller alerts the
other two anyway)
streaking into the woods
her two spotteds
stumbling along behind
her, pausing at the edge
to look back at this
house of horrors
where hell hath unleashed
its fury on this holy morning
then disappear
into another world
with dangers all its own
far from here (here~
where I want to exchange
all the clunked-up lines
for world peace
on the Funny Farm)
Today at http://www.ethicalela.com for the August Open Write, Wendy Everard of New York is our host for Dadaist poems. You can read her full prompt here. This form is fun – it involves finding an article and cutting out words, then pulling them out in random order to use them to form a new poem.
I took a copy of the July 22, 2024 The New Yorker and wrote down the lines of the cartoons, then cut them up on swatches of a page of a yellow legal pad. Here’s what I dada’ed:
the heat
his ashes
he didn’t want
I’ve enjoyed
smash open the pinata
while you wait
hold on –
as it became clear that
for me to
see you in
the requisite strength
are we sure
same pirate
I don’t love
no, that bird
wasn’t fake
but it wasn’t
alive either
it was frozen
this Belted Kingfisher
posed for the
painting in all its
grays, blues, and blacks
fresh from the freezer
thawed in the eyes
of the artist
captured in each
stroke of her
brush on the
blank canvas
waiting to
take flight
only the stars are
visible when
the trees close their
eyes and lift
their leaves
in prayer
when this
pinhole light
of heaven
seeps down
breathing song
into leaf
into branch
into trunk
into forest
when shimmery
halo glitter
of ancestral
angels
cascades down
swaying waves
into oceans
into lakes
into streams
and creeks
for all the world
to hear
the music
of hope
for all those
still here
who listen
**first lines inspired by words photographed at The Immersive Titanic Exhibit in Atlanta, Georgia last weekend
Common Threads 