Exercises in Perspective

I see through many other eyes
And feelings share as though inside
The heads and hearts of beasts and men
I am when dreaming, now and then.
I walked in Tudor times again
As someone’s loyal and trusted friend.
A family of monstrous men
And women, I was one of them.
I dream in vivid stories when
I walk in the shoes of other men
These stories have just one down-side:
They never end before I rise!

Form: Duo-rhyme

Prompt: Be inspired by a dream, without saying it’s a dream.
Not strictly followed, but acted as a starting place.

Salty Address

There it stood, as finally,

What I always hoped would be–

The mailbox showing clear, my name,

At my cottage beside the sea.

 

The box reveals the strange one there–

The one who holds the deed,

Who never thought she’d ever live

In a home washed by sea breeze.

 

But there, it stands, in sunshine hot

Just waiting there, in time

For new ones coming through the door

Who love bright rays and brine.

 

The rooms will fill with laughter;

The floors will creak with cheer;

The air will smell of happy times

When friends and family gather here.

 

And though storms will come raging

Against its quiet, calm façade,

It will shelter well from gales

That blow and tempests dodge.

Enigma (A Shadorma, Hour Five)

Enigma

Who are you?

I still have no clue.

Together

for five years,

I should know you by now but

you’re my enigma.

 

 

(A shadorma consists of six lines with the syllable count of 3/5/3/3/7/5 respectively for each line.)

Hour five: Apology: Taco Bell

My father preferred a crunchwrap
double-shelled taco or a Mexican pizza

to whatever my mother had left for us
in the crock pot. On the nights he didn’t eat,

there was no question of where he’d been.
It was the dietary equivalent of cheating,

the home-grown vegetables left to simmer
into mush as he gorged himself on tortillas

white as bleach, but sweet as the empty
space inside a cavity. His body was a plant

rooted in the wrong soil, withered at
the edges. Death coiled around him

like a taproot trying to find nutrients
in clay, his pale fingers turning black

as they wrapped around another
soft taco. Even in the nursing home,

where he was the youngest by at least
thirty years, he asked his friends to bring

chalupas, bean burritos, Baha blasts,
not caring how long he lived, not wondering

if life could be more than a greasy stop
on a long stretch of road, an empty wrapper.

Hour 5. (2019)

Warm, clouded windows

On wooden shacks

Arranged like a misassembled puzzle

Beckon me inside.

I must cross the lake between us,

One stroke at a time.

Each stroke tears like a whiplash into my frosted skin

But suffering alone is not an option

When it can be shared over cups of sake

A daydream

Along the stony trails of the garden,
counting every step,
picking the fallen leaves,
looking at the birds,
her winters nearing.
she walked,once again.

She took in the same fragrance,
walked the same road,
got wet in the same rain…

Sitting on the rusted swing,
her eyes closed,
her mind mused on a missing,now a longing,

A man who held her little finger then,only in her memories now!

In the Fields – Hour 3

Walking down the street
Left and right is only field
Corn is growing there
Houses are away

Stop and listen close
Can you hear the wind?
Softly blowing through the trees
Gently touching skin

Walk, then stop and listen
Can you hear the birds?
Tweeting in the trees
Sing the latest melodies

Walk 5 metres further
Can you hear machines?
Working far away
Caring for the crops

FIVE

(more…)

Flowers (Prompt 5)

If you love them as they are

leave them alone

Don’t pull them from the earth

When you do, they die

 

Don’t place them in vases

let them exist in soil

let them breathe in life

let them live in light

not in water

 

Fill your gardens

not your countertops

I hear your store bought flowers screaming

give me back what’s mine

demanding life to be returned to their lungs

until their last breath

then you replace them with more…

 

Visions, Hour 5

The lights flash
Dull red flares of a dying sun
One last power surge before it all shuts down
Acid tears flow, eroding structures of the past,
Etching rivulets in cracked, graffiti-stained concrete
Cold desolation under blackened clouds

These are after-images when I blink my eyes
The insomniac hallucinations at 5 a.m.
These are visions…

Abandoned freeways littered with rusty metal skeletons
Broken storefront windows howl through jagged glass teeth
Fiber optic cables snake their way through cracked blacktop
Electric lines coiled on shattered sidewalk like cobras, waiting to strike
Waiting on a dead grid
A decaying city
A dying sun

A newspaper, yellowed with age, dances through the streets
A solo post-apocalyptic tango until the end of time
It catches a thermal and rises, climbs to disappear into smoggy black

These are after-images when I blink my eyes
These are the fozen stares of abandoned tech plants
These are documents in briefcases of war profiteers
These are the corroded stainless steel memories of a not-so-distant place and time
These the shadows of a world over-civilized
These are the bombs dropped on my subconscious
These are visions, arrested in early morning word form,
Before the sun starts to rise