Shooting Stars
Shooting Stars
Shoot the moon and miss
Then aim for the firmament
Blow infinity.
10. Finally Finshed
So happy to participate in a 24 hour poetry marathon.
My head is tired.
My heart is happy.
The Gift
I saw a velvet box
in his room and I knew what it was.
I saw it but I did not open it,
for I knew what it was.
I was afraid I to open it,
because then I would definitely know.
Although I had dreamed of it,
now that it seemed to be here,
I dreaded it.
Can You Imagine (Prompt 23)
I didn’t create imaginary friends
My sense of reality far too critical
I once asked the tooth fairy for her picture
To prove that she was real
Somewhere in between I did believe
In magic and intention
More times than can be mentioned
Things occurred which challenged reason
In my loneliness I thought
That if I wanted something hard enough
If I wished for it and pictured it
It would surely come to be
Then I found the bead
Small plastic and purple tucked into the dirt
Overflowing with excitement I felt
I’d found the golden ticket or
Been given magic beans
A bead became a seed
One I planted and I planned to grow
A best friend that would love me
And I believed without a single doubt
She’d have a common name
Easy to spell, unlike my own
Dark hair and pale skin
I wanted the opposites of me
I would know her by her favorite color
She’d love purple and butterflies
Long eyelashes and she’d always laugh
And she’d want to hold my hand
What I planted in the sand
Was just a random piece of plastic
But I still believe in her
And I still believe in magic
Hour 24, Prompt 24 – The Alchemist
In my old apartment
there was a silversmith
who lived on the other side of the wall
I would hear her tapping
hammer on silver and brass
and admire her discipline
Having been moved for some weeks
she reached across neighborhoods
and offered to work a bit of alchemy for me
blending salts and mercury
a game of transmutation
Cu + Zn = a summoning of
a golden sun breaking dawn
with dancing rays
a glory cutting into a silver sky
She asked what spell should be inscribed
what I chose to wear pressed
against the skin just above the knuckle
beside her maker’s mark
a stack of ore and stone reads
“be daring:
fear is boring.”
Gift of Motherhood and Songs
Gift of Motherhood and Songs
I think I was going to wait so long for paradise,
to hold my mother like me at childhood would,
to my doll. But you came as an angel, not fallen.
It was as if mother resurrected into your body,
to teach me how to stay afloat on this sea,
if the ship capsizes by the hands of angry ice,
jealous waves and dark forces beyond us.
God gave me you; he knew there are many
who would push me into the jaws of grief.
The sea seeks to grip a fish to its heart:
how do I tell God I do not want to be robed
of warmth? My childhood lost his mother
and its scars are there still, on my body,
for certain wounds do not disappear quickly;
they fall in love with our flesh, again and again,
and make love to it in the dark, like the grief
hunting you. But there’s another gift: songs
to be sung aloud in seasons of sorrow.
VISIONS DE L’AMOUR DE SOI – Hour 24
VISIONS DE L’AMOUR DE SOI
or, Visions of Self-Love
-for Luba Morsch
on my 21st birthday
for the first time
I became aware my Mama really knew me
it might seem odd but,
to a sensitive soul like me,
advice is indistinguishable from complaint
and I don’t know a single writer who loves the critics
but I held a new notebook in my hands
already the perfect gift for any writer, even the ones who type,
not just the notebooks but the idea of the notebooks
their empty pages patiently awaiting our curiosity
curiosity, not skill, because the best notebooks
don’t like to house any self-serious dribble
this notebook, bound in clean cream cloth,
rivets holding pages and ribbon lace,
with a stylized heart like a watermark at the top of every page
the cover emblazoned with a dress form, a corset
framed perhaps in a mirror donned with heady pink roses
scrawled in the top-right, “Visions D’Amour,”
Kodak captured a perfect freeze-frame of my heart
for a decade I brought it everywhere
painstakingly labelled each page by hand
with a Table of Contents too, although admittedly
if I’d gotten married one of these times
it would have likely been the signature book
and what a mistake that would have been
instead now it’s loved, frayed
falling away without glue, and sparsely filled
but on the very last page,
the jacket page, beyond the last page
but not inside the back cover,
a stranger from my twenties with my handwriting has scrawled:
you have seen now that it is not what you hold onto
that defines your being
only what you give
and how much
and what
and to whom
this and only
this is who you are
so now you see? beauty beckons to our best nature
the work blooms and grows to its own rhythm
what we learn this way cannot be forgotten
Poem 24 | {The Greatest Gift}
By Ajanta Judd All Rights Reserved – 10 pm 28/06/2020 Australian EST
Prompt 24; Hour 24: Write a poem about a gift, real or imagined, fantastical or boring.
_______________________________________________________________
{The Greatest Gift}
The greatest gift I have been given
Is this precious life in which I have striven
to be the best person I possibly can
to enrich and enjoy and be kind to all.
Even when times have been sad
I cherish all that I’ve ever had
and from this life I’ve developed these skills
to play with words and create some form
To express what sometimes cannot be expressed
The ability to envision and invoke
To emotionally move and touch a heart
Merging the internal with the external
All these elements that I so love
When I’m out in nature taking photographs
and writing haiku to merge the spiritual
with the concrete and capture its essence
I’m in my element. What a gift!
But now as I write my twenty-forth poem
I yearn for sleep and struggle for substance
I feel like a marathon runner who has hit the brick wall
at the 20 kilometre mark and I’m all over the place
I’ve got the wobbles but herein lies another gift –
The completion of 24 hours of poetry
and discovering that I can actually survive
on waking up every hour and power napping in between.
I’m feeling empowered and inspired
so thank you my friends. Goodnight xx