nymphomaniac
touch me
please me
my happy ever after
lusty sinner
dripping wet
blood~
crying for love
soft and swollen
heart broken
never felt this high
screaming
through the night
Amanda Potter©: 2019 Poetry Marathon
Cat-Hour 21
The night has become a blanket of quiet
A quilt of solitude
Cat sits next to me
Tail swishing
A warning perhaps
He assists this poetry drivel
By batting my fingers
When they dance across the keyboard
I have insulted him with a kiss
Degraded him with attention
for now he faces away
He puts up with me for food
Yet he does care
Never leaves my side
Follows me out the door in the morning
Greets me at the garage when I come home
He finds me bearable
He knows I am devoted
And cats love being worshipped
He allows me this evening of poetry
For now as long as it doesn’t interfere
with my main duties as cat servant
Charades
A young girl, age seven
maybe eight
ran jovially through rain
splashing in every puddle as she moved
Her mom, trailing behind
smiles for her child, but her eyes betray her.
She is listless.
The world has a way of robbing us
of even the smallest moments.
Stress builds, we find ourselves trapped
underneath the mound, no longer
strong enough to free ourselves,
we succumb, not to the weight of the world,
but the weight of our own worlds
with all of their problems and “little” urgencies.
We are struggling to free ourselves internally,
but our external forms must continue to move
and we go through the motions,
always pretending nothing is wrong
because it is shameful to let someone see us
as weak.
We bury ourselves within and
put on a social mask for our friends,
families, people we love but can’t let in.
And we slowly sink deeper and deeper
drowning in our own charade.
Mirror
Mirror
I caught them watching me, saying I’m slipping
away, just like Aunt Brenda did, 50 years
ago. Sick. I’ll dig in the trash, grab scraps, torn
paper that Mommy threw away. I dig past bones
and grease and clutter of things left behind, to save
what everyone sees as junk. It’s precious.
Should be left untouched. I know they wonder
of what will become of me when I’m old, but
I have it under control. Things are okay. Not
normal but still okay. Healthy. But we’ll watch
the clock hands tick and tick and tick away.
Bird
Black Vail lifts
Light through the cracks make the bars almost invsible
The song sung is but a whisper of a past dream
A door opens, wings spread wider
A shoulder to land on
…..not just a pet.
Think About It
In high school, I played Charlotte in Charlotte’s Web.
I didn’t like spiders at all, they gave me the heeby-jeebies.
Still, I was grateful for the role.
It was small, simple, a kid’s play.
An hours worth of short scenes retelling a beloved children’s story.
That being said, something magical happened.
It was magical in the way that you don’t realize it happened until you look back on it.
I was a scared 17-year-old, trying to navigate the slippery slope of adolescents.
Holding on to my childhood as the sands of times drained in my hourglass.
And here I am playing a stupid spider that dies.
But there was something in the way the kids rushed up to me after the show.
Something in the way that I bowed alongside my humble pig.
Something in the way I could feel my onstage demise caused tears to fall.
I felt important.
And you can get your goosey bottom that I will never kill another spider again.
love song ~erasure
Let us go then, you and I,
evening is spread upon a table;
Let us go,
muttering retreats, Of restless nights
in cheap hotels with oyster-shells:
a tedious argument Of insidious intent
To lead
overwhelming question …
Oh, do not ask, “What is it?”
Let us go
and make the women come
rubs its back upon the -panes,
rubs its muzzle
Licked its tongue
into the corners
the evening, Lingered upon
the pools that fall upon its back
that falls Slipped
the sudden leap,
And seeing
it was a soft October night,
Curled, and fell asleep. indeed
Time: smoke that slides along
Rubbing upon the -panes;
There will be time, there will be time
To face. To meet: the faces
There will be time
to murder and create,
time: for all the works
and days. That lift and drop
a question
Time for you and me,
time for a hundred indecisions,
for visions and revisions,
Before the taking toast and tea.
In the room, women come
indeed
time To wonder, “Do I dare?”
“Do I dare?”
Time turn back and descend the stair,
My morning , mounting firmly
My rich and modest, asserted by a simple pin —
Do I dare
Universe,
In a minute, is there time?
decisions and revisions
a minute will reverse.
I have known
all already, known them all:
the evenings, mornings, afternoons,
measured out my life with coffee spoons;
the voices dying with dying
Beneath the music
should I presume?
I have known the eyes already, known them all—
eyes that fix a formulated phrase,
And when formulated, sprawling on a pin,
pinned and wriggling on the wall,
Then how should I begin
To spit out all the butt-ends of my ways?
And how should I presume?
I have known the arms already, known them all—
Arms white and bare in the lamplight, downed with light brown hair!)
Is it perfume from a dress Arms that lie, or wrap about
And should I then presume?
And how should I begin?
gone at dusk
narrow And watched
the smoke that rises
lonely leaning out of windows? …
I should have a pair , ragged claws
Scuttling across silent seas.
And the afternoon, the evening,
Smoothed by long fingers,
Asleep … tired … or it malingers,
Stretched on the floor,
here you and me.
Should I Have the strength to
force the moment ,its crisis?
I have wept , fasted, prayed,
I have seen my head
brought in upon a platter,
I am no prophet —no great matter;
I have seen the moment
my greatness flicker,
I have seen the eternal hold my coat, and snicker,
And in short, afraid.
would it have been worth it,
you and me,
Would it have been worth while,
bitten off the matter with a smile,
To have squeezed the ball
some overwhelming question,
To say: Come back to tell you, I shall tell all”—
If one, settling her head
“That is not what I meant at all;
not it, at all.”
And would after all,
have been worth while,
After the sunsets the dooryards sprinkled streets,
After the novels, , after the skirts that trail along the floor—
this, and so much more?—
impossible to say just what I mean! as if a magic
threw patterns on a screen:worth while
one, settling And turning
“That is not it at all,
That is not what I meant, at all.”
No! I am not nor meant to be;
attendant lord, will do
To swell, start a scene or two,
the prince; no doubt, an easy tool,
Deferential, be of use,
Politic, cautious, and meticulous;
high but a bit obtuse;
At times, indeed, ridiculous—
Almost, at times, the Fool.
Do I dare to eat a peach?
wear white, and walk upon the beach.
the mermaids singing, sing to me.
I have seen them riding
the waves white
of the waves blown back
the wind blows
white and black.
We lingered, in chambers of sea-girls
red and brown
Till voices wake us, and we drown.
Amanda Potter©: 2019 Poetry Marathon
Mya, our dog
Mya was part of the family
She was easy to figure out
Always ready
idle threats didn’t go under her radar
She was about as kind as I was
Our keeper until her death
reminding us just how unpredictable tomorrow can be
We have changed
unable to replace what she was to us
so we refuse
cause broken hearts don’t repair easily
Homegoing
Response to earlier poem “Homecoming”
The land you know, even when you are lost can return you to a final destination called home.
The road searching for a hard and deep plot of land to lay your weary bones.
The faces gather to watch in awe the last moments of your physical presence upon the earth.
The air no longer felt or taken in to replenish your body.
The seasons will shift from one extreme to the next.
As you lay in internal rest, exempt from fear, pain, and shame.
The water in the distance moves peacefully as the waves begin to replicate notes of an old gospel hymn.
The clouds accumulate into a dark and peculiar pattern above the church.
The scent of loved one’s flowers laid at the end of your feet.
The somber energy of a homegoing as the pallbearers enter the room.
Goodnight!
My pillow caresses my head
Whispering, “It’s time to come to bed.”
I nod sleepily and nozzle in
Creating a cocoon in my blanket
I’m preparing to fall asleep
But there’s a brightness penetrating my eyelids
I peek out of one eye
I’ve forgotten the darn light!
Screw it. It can wait until morning.
I throw my blanket over my head
And let the sleep carry me off
To a place I can drift on the waves of my subconscious.