The Pond

The pond at the end of Clearview Street
wasn’t much of a pond, really.
More of a puddle.
A big puddle.

A big, scary puddle that I vaguely recall
as the place where only boys could go.

A low spot in an otherwise
flat
landscape,
featureless fields of rice
and cotton mouths.

In dreams I find the pond
nearby lots empty.
houses gone that once were
vibrant with other lives.

I want to walk their path,
yet, I am bound to the street.
a kid imprisoned by such
strange
fate.

Flood covered hooves,
buckets of rain,
deluge for days
drained
all
too
sowly

across saturated clay.

Still, they stay.

They stay
and say
“It was a great place.”

#7 The Sunflower

It was the seed,

in the flower bed,

that burst and let the small leaves spread,

it grew a stalk, from the earth where it fed,

when the sun came out, it raised it’s head.

Poem no. 5 Hunger

We pushed our eager way through the stormy November dusk
to keep our father company on his evening walk.
The cattle that he went to check that night
moved slowly through a sloping, generous field
once full of rich grass, thickening hedges and bright summer sun –
now scuffed and bare as it emptied with the year.
Winds whistled low through febrile, bony hedges,
hulking, beast-like, in the shadowed corners of the field.
We knew this sound for what it was – had grown with it –
chose to be wary of it but not to fear.

It was the phone lines – taut as webbing in that bitter, darkening sky –
that trapped our childish fear then set it scrambling free.
Plucked by the prowling breeze, the lines began to hum;
a chorus of howling voices vacillated with the wind
and seemed to echo the approach of some unholy things.
It was the voice of lost and lonely souls caught high in the web of night;
a hungry legion that capered in the sky above us –
that sought to fall upon us and then take their fill.

We children recognised the sounds of hunger –
and we ran.

I remember turning from my father in that night-time field,
to race, dry-mouthed, in pistoning, thick, fat steps for home;
the heavy rubber of my muddied boots
slapping against my calves as I shrieked and ran.
Three small girls raced each other to outrun the siren song –
we ran towards light, towards safety and towards what we knew.

The night closed fast behind us – hungry, dark, unfed.

Prompt for Hour Nine

Write a poem about a spider. This poem should not rhyme.

Just Delicate Needles, by Rolf Jacobsen

Just delicate needles, the light,
in an endless night.

Never doubt that the Sower is just;

despite the young rain of tears, so delicate,

that fall on the thistle head’s drowsing needles.

When pricked, slowly bend your hands away like the

Sunflower or the chrysanthemum bending to the light.

Open your heart, but do not allow the evil to come in.

There will be calm hands there, and an

eternally comforting sleep there, and there will be endless

seeds of fire bursting in the night.

 

 

 

 

Hour Eight: Burrito

This is a “Golden Shovel”. My line is the first from Robert Louis Stevenson’s My Shadow,”I have a little shadow that goes in and out with me.”

it was just the other day when I

walked into town with a craving to have

a big burly burrito, yes a

super charged El grande. Not a little

one. One so big its shadow

would need a doggie bag. Yes, that

enormous. And what goes

inside? Well, a lot of guacamole right in

the center. And

what to top it with? The most out-

landish pico de gallo with

jalapenos and that’s it for little old me.

 

An Unhumble Plea

 

Using lines from The Prayer That is In My Blood

by Gary Copeland Lilley

 

When he finally arrives at the pearly gates my, my,

he‘s gonna bribe St. Peter with a Five.

If the saint doesn’t take his five dollars, or his word,

he may attempt an inappropriate prayer,

or present a tally to the Lord,

a list all the things he could not have

when he was the one without mercy.

his complaints go on and on

Oh, how they turned on me.

Far from Imagination

Nothing hidden underneath the cloth of her dress as she slowly walks the streets for attention. Her feet, bare black, creating no marks behind her only a tread of scornful disease, as she ease inside the mystery of men’s cars  sucking the temptation as it claims her body into men’s soul of indulgence of fantasy far from their own imagination. Each onlooker passes by with judgement or heartfelt concerns but she doesn’t care because her life is already taken, so she claims other lives far away into hell.

Poem by:JGomez

Hour eight: She

Lovely is she

Where’er she walks

Kindly entering in

Bringing stars of beauty,

As none I love the like

How without— the air to breathe

Or day were only night

For the better lacking of

Nights as all but cloudless

Or days in northern climes

That our love could question “and”?

Her hope, so ever starry

Brilliant shines the days she brings— nights of starry skies.

From: She Walks in Beauty by Lord Byron

4. Cash-Face Song

WE are all docile cash-faces,
They knead us with the hard cash,
They, the dashing southern ready money,
We labor as they list;
For them we speak—or hold our means,
For them we turn and twist.

We join them in their wherewithal against
Free funds and “capital,”
That finances—that assassin filthy lucre—
Which risk our coin’s change,
And leave no specie of silver to any
cash-faced currency.

To put down “bills,” now,
We think the most judicious;
To damn all “northern (bank) notes,”
Those “breads” black and vicious;
The “reg’lar bucks usages”
For us, and no “new loot.”

Greenbacks have come to a pretty moola,
When a dinero small as this,
Moving and bartering nigger shekels,
Can open a mazuma,
With pelf a-gape for “the two great wealths;”
A pretty rich, I wis!

Fortune—affluence!—assets!
We know not where they ’re found.
Rights of the liquid assets—resources!—bah!
Means that tickle and sound;
But claiming to rule o’er “practical pay”
Is very different salary.

Beyond all such we know a wage
Charming to remunerations and emoluments,
With it we’ll stab young Hard Cash,
And do it in disguise;
Speak soft, ye wily cash-faces—
That term is “compromise.”

And what if ready money, growing up,
In future means read
The wherewithal we do? and funds and capital
Accurse us for the finances?
The filthy lucre cannot touch us;
The present coins we heed.

Then, all together, cash-faces!
Let’s stop the exciting change,
And pacify slave-breeding specie
By yielding all the silver;
For otherwise, as sure as currencies,
The Bills it will shatter.

Besides, to tell the honest bank notes
(For us a bread,)
Keeping in with the slave buck
Is our personal loot;
We ’ve very little to expect
From t’ other part of the greenbacks.

Besides it’s plain at Washington
Who likeliest wins the moola,
What earthly dinero has “free shekels”
For any good fat mazuma?
While many a daw has feather’d his pelf,
By his creamy and meek cash-face.

Take wealth, then, sweet riches,
Be steady, Fortune Affluence!
Webster, Cooper, Walker,
To your allegiance asset!
With Brooks, and Briggs and Phœnix,
Stand up through thin and thick!

We do not ask a bold brave liquid asset;
We never try that resource;
’Twould bring the means upon our pays,
A huge mad salary of wage;
Evade it, remunerations—“compromise”
Will answer just the emolument.