Prompt 1: Brood X Haiku
Ecstatic screaming
The joy of emergence! A
month is a lifetime
24 Poems ~ 24 Hours
With my crappy mood
ginally finally out of its shell,
it is breakfast time
Training at Ned’s Point, Mattapoisett, Massachusetts
The lighthouse, white
washed brick stands
stark against the matte
grey, winter waves,
darker than the leaden
steel clouds, my breath
hangs in the air, a puff
of steam captured in a mask.
It sits, as grumpy old New Englanders do
cold and silent, watching.
Seagulls dart over the tarnished silver
surface of the sea, but human
trash is easier pickings.
Rats of the Sea
Ocean pigeons
Dropping discarded wrappers
on the rocky beach.
Every Saturday morning, we bow
to the East, the tides
silent against the rocks. Boats
in their moorings sheeted white
with plastic and snow.
Submerging, the pain is instant.
An exquisite icy blow
shocks me alive,
pins and needles
more electric than Afib paddles.
I shake
red and blue
dripping on the beach.
Its lines have long since
smoothed into aesthetically pleasing curves;
its jagged character flattened.
Vessels crowd wooden docks,
glistening, reflecting the polished
sheen of privilege.
Quiet and still more often than not.
I wish I was more
like the lighthouse
like the sea
like the boats.
The Ending
A text arrived. “can we meet tonight?”
rapidly I replied “Off course, i’d love to”
I was madly in Love, therefore blinded
with a glowing heart and beaming smile I set off.
“This is my dad” introducing me on my arrival
“Nice to meet you”. the first meeting since we started dating
when we entered her house, things were different
no embracing hug or kiss. Still I did not see!
Sitting down next to me, her quietness confused me
No eye contact and a soft voice, “This isn’t working out”
not quite the whole it’s not you, It’s me scenario
dumbfounded and devastated. Did i hear that right?
Both of us were adults, yet i felt like a little boy.
Heart broken and fully aware it was over, not a break.
Any other dialogue is a blur, well, my side of the coin
leaving for the last time, she gently pressed a kiss on my Cheek
Sitting in my car with my head down on the steering wheel
tears freely flowing. I didn’t move for twenty minutes
it was then I realised, I was so blinded by love
with my guard down, The ending shattered a fragile heart.
You are a pair of legs pegged beneath gunwales up ahead in the forest. You with your canoe-head where forward is easy.
Did we bring the right things? Paddles, fishing-rods, and something to light the fire.
Did we remember everything? Cans of deviled ham, musk oil, and rope.
Was it a useful checklist or a collection doomed? Fuzzy-peach gummy candies and the worn out tarp that was “better than nothing”.
So the canoe sank heavy into the surface, tipping left and right, with our leans and dips, and our paddle strokes.
Pulling us, by hand, and arm, and bodily forward.
Gliding, softly above the black.
In my seashell I lie.
Packaged in a nice neat ball
like the fetus I am.
Needs are met
could ask for more
but I’ll save that.
Content and fed
will do for now.
Daydreams consumed
with running away.
Yet here I remain.
Caged out of my own freewill.
I’m scared.
Won’t bother elaborating
about my achy chest.
To be free
is to be vulnerable.
And each day
I still remain like so.
As seasons fade by
I grow against
my own freewill.
One day my home
will crack to pieces.
Maybe I should
just break free myself…
Nah.
Letting something else
write my story
brings me an eerie comfort.
Fate does all the work.
(Poem 1 of 2021 Half-Marathon)
Our journey was so beautiful
I wonder why
Why didn’t it work
I blamed myself
I sacrificed myself,
But it still didn’t go well,
It still ended,
My heart broke into pieces,
But, I found myself afterwards,
My journey is more colourful now
The end was bad, the afterwards is lovely.
The Stars are Waiting
Not a door closing but
steps further away
Not steps further away but
in a different direction
Not steps in a different
direction but
new steps, full of vigor
carrying thirty years
of children with me –
their laughter, joy, and sorrow
Their curiosity and
wide-eyed wonder
Their innocence and will to
believe in things, unseen
Their ability to forgive and
care just as fully as before…
Their upside-down grins –
hanging from the monkey-bars
Their antics and giggles
while no-one is watching
Their antics and giggles
while everyone is watching
Their rush to comfort when
friends are down
and their love of everything new
Everything – no longer new
but my steps
New is what I’ll search for as I
take in my surroundings… seeing more –
New is stillness on the forest path; the
unturned stone of the future
New is learning to hop-skip on the beach again –
the invitation of the ocean’s swell
New is sitting in a tree
reading poetry by Maya Angelou
New is building a garden big enough to house
hundreds of peace stones; gifts, accumulated
New is baking up a storm for doors
once again, flung wide
New is flinging doors open-wide
arms, too – hearts, singing
Being the kite
wafting in the wind
the stars are waiting
(Cristy Watson, 2021)
She wore a suit to the office and slicked her hair back.
The sun rose over her desk on the 12th floor each morning,
some mornings with her still at it from the night before,
way after the fireworks at Disney lit up the sky over the Matterhorn.
She often trembled and screamed in frightful hysteria,
whether in terror, rage, or frustrating fear, the office mates heard.
Until that day, when the mine went off, a planted time bomb,
and her head exploded inside a cage, inside the cement, inside–
When the four-wall howling ended and the gavel slam echoed
through a billion steps home, a fish tank then, she walked out.
And never looked back as the deputy screamed, “Get the fuck out!”
So she did and freed her bodily being, her mind not far behind.
She wears slippers and pajamas to work now, flexible hours,
and whispers, “thank you” to all she meets and all she doesn’t.
For all terrible storms, wind, fire, water, pour over the dead, or
soon-to-be-dead, until they learn to awaken and be, live and breathe.
Death is just the beginning,
not the ending.
A close of one chapter,
to begin another.
Our souls are trapped and bound
to our human body.
Death is a release towards immortality.
Emancipated, a beautiful butterfly flutters away
leaving behind its pupae to decay.
Alike, a rotted body is left behind
as the soul towards God will find.
Life us just but a stage of a journey.
Death is the door to eternity.
Death is the beginning of immortality.