Hour 19
Someone once told me
There’s other fish
In the sea
But you know what else
There’s a ton of?
Garbage
At World’s Ending
When the world comes crashing down
You know where I’ll be,
We’ll have Irish scones
And wash it down with some tea.
How would you like your scones, my love-
Jam? Clotted cream?
I hope the tea isn’t too hot, my love
I hope it isn’t too sweet.
We’ll have a lovely chat for old times sake
Like Ol’ friends that we’d been,
As if time didn’t wear our spirits out,
As if we’d never parted ways.
Let the world go to hell, my love,
And burn in hellfire
We’ll exchange sugar-coated pleasantries
In my secret garden outside.
We’ll talk about the weather, my love
We’ll talk about life.
Maybe Fated, hour 19
Single cell of this parasitic organism
A cancer to this healthy planet
Dissonance personified
Infection in a healthy system
Imbalanced and off-beat
Skewing rhythms with our arrogance
No matter how hard we try
Wish we could act to make a difference
But momentum seems to be so strong we can’t avoid destruction
Malfunctioning as a species in the web of life we’re living in
Hope we leave the biosphere with more than nothing
Is it misanthropic to decry our role in greater context?
Seems the road we’re headed down just can’t allow a peaceful outcome
Were we always fated to destroy all that the elements have created?
Or is it something we’ve become,
A course that can be corrected ?
Sometimes I feel numb to the evils we’ve allowed to perpetrate
The fools that we’ve elected,
The ignorance that’s gestated
Hatred cultivated over so many generations
Seems impossible to overcome at times
But still I cling to something
Some kind of hope
That if collectively we recognize
The error of our ways
Our fate can shift into the thing we make it…
Poem 7, Prompt 19
blue blue spaghetti tendrils, squidlike, bluebottle, apolemia (apparently)
wide eyes, the thing can see, stingray vision, popeye traversing the ocean
a voyager, a hunter, a predator, a pirate, captain tentacle
alien of the ocean, stranger of the seas, siphon of the deep
it’s real and it’s out there
Siphonophore Ode…
you camera snatch
krill and mysids
stem zones
mirror colonies
bases loaded your
medusae locomotive
you know
snow on thorns
may memoir
an undead battery
dancing
you drift
daffodils near
prayer flags
across blinds
you taste
coffee grinds
on the sea floor
you might
miss a spot
pelagic not pandemic
you squint
sheets of eels
you gleam
beside shoal
facing flesh
you whisk
threads brine
lift bucket needles
westward ho
you lean in my
dream a cat
breathing sleeve
cuffs worn white
push delight
you stripe blue
that part thinking
shifts that one
this bit creating
more of your
jelly reed thin
Hour 19 — Many Parts, One Body
Beth A. Fleisher
Hour 19
Prompt 19: … or you can write about what it’s like to be one small part of something bigger.
Many Parts, One Body
We humans like to fancy ourselves as independent,
Able to handle our own problems,
Capable of doing good deeds without prompting.
When we become a follower of The Way,
However, that independent streak becomes problematic.
We are called by Creator to lay down our independence
and learn to be interdependent on one another.
That was the original plan.
That we, though many, would become one body,
one living organism, serving each other
and the greater community around us.
That still is the plan. Creator does not have a Plan B.
And neither do we.
Is it hard to change our mindset? Yes.
Do we hate the process it takes to get us there? Yes.
Do our egos get battered when everyone gets credit
for the wonderful event we planned and executed? Oh, yes.
But Creator’s plan is more important
than my bruised ego.
prompt 19 hour 19 doing what i can
the teachings tell us we all have gifts to share with our relatives.
parts of a greater whole only complete upon our contributions.
even the hummingbird put out a forest fire,
one drop of water at a time,
holding the words taught to her by her Elders:
“I am doing what I can.”
Even in the smallest ways,
we bring what only we can –
and that is so much more than enough.
© r. l. elke
Poem 19
Back to the cart.
To meet a final end.
I think about this body. I was never its friend.
This body wantes food. I did what I could to eat.
But a body needs a touch not paid for or on demand.
Bodies need fresh air. Air you can’t get lockwd into the crib.
Bodies need to feel safe. But mine I let be punched, burnt, kicked, forced
Mine bled
Mine leak3d tears
Til it lost its voice.
When a body lives like this, food becomea a choice.
Death Claws
The nightlong passage
Of a jolly good fellow
Into oblivion
Reverberates
Loud and clear…
Of a saintly soul
Who suddenly yielded to the summons of home call
A glorious exit to the other side of life
Your radiant face
An innocent charm that exuded the passion of an ageless wingman
You were a lively lot
With a heart of gold
Of the purest kind…
Dust to dust!
May the earth replenish your very kind…