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Tag: we write poems

Rust in the Radio Sky

April 28, 2014 • • 5 Comments

Do you see rust in the radio sky?
The laughing truth of the galaxies’ weight
can be borne in the chambers of one heart,
or an insect like that blue dragonfly,
the buzzing one circling your empty plate.
Perhaps the time zones aren’t so far apart.

Do you feel the dust in the shifting wind?
How many crooked roads can you make straight,
organized like some magician’s flowchart?
Did you answer no and no and none, friend?

Here is where we start.

—

NaPoWriMo #26: Curtal Sonnet | We Write Poems: Wordle #16

This is an attempt at a curtal sonnet. Sometimes, the form and the rhyme drive and take you nowhere.

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BIrds Nobody Loves coverReminder: My poetry collection Birds Nobody Loves is on sale through the end of April for National Poetry Month. The Kindle edition is $0.99 and the paperback is $5.18.

Imagining Rain

April 14, 2014 • • 4 Comments

Can you imagine the glory
of the crow, a black spell,
a rippled myth? What goddess
broke the simple spiral shell
and carved its powers
on her belly? Children, do
you see green towers in
your tales of water, sun, and
trees? At what temperature
does dancing turn to liquid?
Can you sing a song of rain
and pay the price to bring the
sleeping goddess from her bed?
Do you smell ozone, brother?
The old timers say it comes
just before the pallid rain.

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NaPoWriMo #14: 20 Questions | We Wordle #14

The Root of All Suffering

April 14, 2014 • • 5 Comments

Desire emerges from the spider’s abdomen. Bright
rust-colored wings advertise desire’s ability

to deliver a powerful sting, described by experts
as blinding, fierce, and shockingly electric, it is

second only to the bullet ant. Desire is most active
in the daytime summer months. Desire flies low

along the ground. Desire’s long legs have hooked
claws for grappling with its victims. Desire feeds

on the flowers of milkweeds, soapberry and mesquite
trees. Very few animals can eat desire. One of the few

that can is the roadrunner. Many experts recommend
desire simply be left alone, but kids go for charismatic

emotions, and the beautiful, powerful and deadly
desire fits the bill nicely. When desire is encountered

do not make sudden rapid movements, but softly quietly
leave the area until it is gone. Head to the low country.

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NaPoWriMo #12: Replacement | We Write Poems #208: Mythology

An interesting experiment from NaPoWriMo Day 12. The idea was to research something tangible, find some sentences and replace the tangible noun with something intangible. I researched tarantula hawks and replaced them with desire. I rewrote some of the sentences for transitions, brevity, and clarity. My sources were: Wikipedia, Mother Nature Network, About.com Pest Control, Insect Identification.org, and Durango Nature Studies.

In addition to the replacement prompt, I wanted something that felt somewhat mythic or that suggested mythic origins for the We Write Poem prompt on mythology.

Since Lonesome Dove

April 4, 2014 • • 7 Comments

Between prairie fires, buffalo
and wind few trees could live
here. The ones that did take root
and survive grew tall over the grass.
We stopped the fires, and the buffalo
are gone. Now fences provide
shelter for saplings to grow.
But when I drive up 183 toward
Abilene sometimes an oak catches
my eye, a tree, hundreds of years
old. Settlers would have known
this tree, Comanches too, I’m sure.
And ever since I read Lonesome
Dove, I can’t help but wonder
what horse rustlers may have been
hanged from its branches, their legs
twitching in the space above
the wildflowers blooming.

—

PAD 2014 #4: Since… | We Write Poems #207

Made or Just Happened

April 2, 2014 • • 2 Comments

They say Voyager crossed the heliopause
last summer with thirty thousand years to go
to clear the sun’s gravity. Our plutonium
spark, a flicker of human warmth returning
to the stars like that first purple martin
returning again in the spring to the place
where he was hatched or the salmon
swimming up blue streams. We are called
home to where our atoms first began,
the water, the sky, the stars. The silent iron
in our blood aches for the supernovae
and so lying on our backs beneath
the wind-swaying oak trees, we hold
hands and watch the stars, imagining that
long journey whose end we’ll never know.

—

PAD 2014 #2 | We Write Poems: We Wordle #12

In Your Voice

March 26, 2014 • • 4 Comments

Tell me how the fog whispers
rivulets of water down your arms,
tell me of the rushes gently
bent beneath the weight of blackbirds,
and the dust and craters written
on the surface of the other planets
and their moons, tell me
of the fishes drowned in air when
the egret pulls them from the pond,
and tell me of the broken clouds
scattered restless across the sky,
tell me all these things again
so I’ll know in your voice all
the wonders that surround us. 

—

OPP #10: Jake Adam York & We Write Poems: We Wordle #11