Common Threads

 

Faith

The journey begins

into the great unknown. Faith

is the guiding light.

 

Van Gogh, Atlanta

Immersive art exhibit 

Inside a painting 

Choose space on the floor 

Watch Vincent’s paintings emerge

On the room canvas

Spectacular lights

Bold, vivid color palette

He was color blind??

Gaze up: Starry Night 

Skeleton skull, cigarette

smokes through eye sockets

The Mulberry Tree,

A Field of Yellow Flowers,

Daubigny’s Garden

Flowerpot with Chives,

Fisherman’s Wife on the Beach,

Farmhouse Among Trees

Sunflowers, Two Crabs

Farmers Planting Potatoes

Potato Eaters

Poppies, Irises,

Enclosed Field with Rising Sun

Field with Two Rabbits

Last? Wheat Field with Crows 

Wheat field represents turmoil

Suicide sadness

Resurrection: crows

Harbingers of pain and death

His depression won 

And about that ear:

Failure with women caused this?

So he lent an ear?

Sealed in envelope

and delivered to brothel 

Was it even signed? 

Much to consider

in the chaotic beauty 

of Vincent Van Gogh

 

Clouds 

Clouds glide across the sky in middle Georgia 

Where here I am – 

Thirteen years into a sweet marriage after the one of twenty failed,

with memory remnants of a full set of Johnson Brothers

Friendly Village, years of piece gifts from both former sides against all of these new moments –

Wine sip paintings, owl and curlicue tree, 

still a nightstand pair and my childhood bed with haint blue underneaths, 

books and photographs

from absent presence days

Contrasting 

true love 

 

Night owl in a tree

Moon behind him, stares at me

Eyes big as can be! 

 

Shot in the Dark Logic Nonet

“The government is out to track me,” 

the non-vaxxer contends, gulping

down a glass of milk approved

safe by the Food and Drug 

Administration…

“…but I’ll show them,”

this genius

tells his

friends 

“God will protect me-I don’t need shots,”

an ignorant Christian preaches, 

cleaning his assault rifle,

exercising his full

second amendment

right to bear arms

yet won’t bare

the right

one

“The scriptures don’t allow the vaccine,”

she with freshly-shaved legs reasons,

swallowing her birth control 

pill and applying 

makeup over

pork sausage

breakfast 

links

“Let everyone else get it – not me,”

the statistician concludes as

he hands the clerk a twenty…

“My lucky Powerball’s

gonna win tonight,”

he announces,

believing

in the

odds

Conservative Welfare   

community ownership of things ~

conservative welfare: how one  

lives life as a socialist 

denouncing those who mooch

yet won’t spend a dime

at his expense

when he can

borrow

free

and 

let the 

“real” owner

bear all the costs 

associated

with the upkeep of the

community property 

while bellyaching the taxes

he pays for shared county services 

 

The Freeloading Leech 

hypothyroidism thinks she’s my boss

she’s parked all crooked in a long black hearse 

but she ain’t nothin’ but an albatross 

if I could evict her, I’d see weight loss she’s living rent-free while I’m unreimbursed 

hypothyroidism thinks she’s my boss 

if she’d signed a lease, her ass out I’d toss

she’s a freeloading leech: a needy curse 

yeah, she ain’t nothin’ but an albatross 

she struts around me like she’s awesome sauce

she thinks that I think things couldn’t be worse

hypothyroidism thinks she’s my boss

like toxic beggar lice, she comes across

she sticks far too close, her attitude terse

but she ain’t nothin’ but an albatross

unlike her, I feel joyful – seldom cross –

‘cause I’ve got friends who’ll gang up in verse

hypothyroidism thinks she’s my boss

but she ain’t nothin’ but an albatross 

 

I took four lines from yesterday’s poets (Margaret Simon, Jennifer Jowett, Allison Berryhill, and Susie Morice) to arrange them vertically and wrote a quadruple today. I have a link to a previous time I attempted this as well, with directions on how I like to vary the golden shovel form: 

https://youtu.be/XEKR5pYlLl0

The Golden Rule Witching Wand 

you giggled from morning sun to stars at twilight 

could our connecting heart threads make us wish for more soul tickling? 

trust the heart, once we know one’s worrisome shadows! 

me? I have lost fear over circumstances I stretched 

to summits, walked unscathed far away and shall long 

keep laughter from becoming tears. Will I allow the 

a in (a) (one) (me) (I) to lead the change? the optimistic 

thing about kinship stitchery is it likeness to golden rule witching

alive to truth, we toss aside the madness and wave the healing wand 

Inspired by Mo Daley to write a decima, a form with ten lines, 8 syllables per line, rhyme scheme ABBAACCDCC on any chosen topic 

A Dinghy Decima

calming lake winds whisper my name 

my heart strings pull toward the shore 

such beckoning I can’t ignore 

(wild inner spirit all but tame)

when gypsy sirens lured, I came 

blue flowered kayak- Hippie Soul

and picnic cooler for the shoal

a backward launch to self propel 

a tranquil paddle my day’s goal

as nature’s virtues I extol