Greedy Hearts
Greedy hearts ignore her pleas
Only to increase their foul disease
Listen carefully to her call to hear
A weary wanderer’s voice most clear
Dare to listen to her tale of woe
Avoid her fate and let your heart grow
Turtle Reveals
the turtle pecks at her new grown shell.
a reptile does what she needs to do to grow,
retracts her head,
cracks the small encasement,
reveals her legs
and walks onto the sand
to find her way along the beach.
the turtle ensures her destiny, becoming
the slow moving, leathered apparition
who emerges when the egg grows up.
Hour One- Elements of Me
The fire of grit in my
pulsating veins,
the winds of passion
with their ebbs and tide,
the calmness of pure
serenely flowing
breath of river,
All unite in me
to a creation of the earth
from the dust, into the birth
Naming me, welcoming me,
As a part of their cradle.
Here I stand incomplete,
without the presence of any.
Copyright © Snigdha Shaw
Remember when . Poem 5
Remember When:
Remember when we moved into the little house on the corner of the street,
Where people would walk by and some we would get to meet,
When smiling and laughing happened more than anger and crying,
When people seemed more honest and not always lying.
I remember when we were safe and sound,
Then at the safest place in the would it all around,
Evil entered where we thought we were safe,
Life went dim, the day that I was raped.
My home, my safe place , I hated it there,
Noone could see through me to know or to care ,
I had to run , the streets became home,
Noone understood why I wanted to be alone.
Running away until my legs got sore,
I got pregnant , couldn’t run anymore.
It was time to find a new place to remember when,
To watch my child grow with his little friends.
3 kids now , two adults as they say,
We have had many homes along the way,
Now we are waiting to find the last place to call home,
So everyone will have a safe place with a promise to never be alone.
A million ways to die
Here we are for better or worse.
We take it all as it comes and
Roll with the tide as it washes out to shore.
A million ways to die but only one way to survive
You’re not a victim of circumstance.
We all are. Whether you try and play the hero or drop to your death at Nakatomi Plaza,
It doesn’t change the fact that there are still
A million ways to die but only one way to survive.
We try so hard,
Never questioning our own existence, at least not as much as we should be
But at the end of the day, the fact remains as such:
A million ways to die but only one way to survive.
You can die hard, die another day,
Live and let die, die young.
Just make sure it was worth it.
A million ways to die but only one way to survive.
Nowy Dwor Gdanski Once Known as Tiegenhof
The scythed grass in the field has dried
and an old woman now rakes it into piles.
She smiles and calls, Gruess Gott, greet God, as I pass.
I stop to catch my breath beneath an ancient linden tree
its split trunk held together with wire mesh,
mesh grown to wood, wood grown to flesh,
this struggle to stand upright within oneself,
to staunch the heartwood’s weeping
here where my family lived for over two hundred years.
Tasseled blossoms dangle from pale yellow bracts,
their perfume the scent of honey stirred in tea,
the scent of home. Bee trees my mother called them.
Prompt 1
“Bongs”
Pack me tight into a bowl
And light my soul ablaze
Inhale, exhale, smoke me up
Don’t forget the way I taste.
Something silly for hour 1. I showed up to this party 5 hours late. It was too early for anything serious and when I first read the prompt, marijuana was the first thing that came to mind. Love it, hate it. Enjoy.
The Brown House
It’s not a children’s book title, even though that’s what it sounds like.
But it was where I lived as a kid. At least, some of the time.
When other people are asked about their childhood or family home,
Most have story after story to share,
Happy, sad, hilarious, or any other tinge of emotion aside, they’re there.
But while others remember clearly their favorite and worst memories alike,
There are very few clear pictures that emerge from my mind when I think about my childhood.
The few that do appear, are usually the ones that make my heart pound, hands shake, and consciousness flee.
Not all, but most.
Those are the clear ones.
The others are thin films of emotions and circumstances barely recalled,
Like home videos that have been faded and scratched so much they’ll barely play,
But because you’ve seen them and heard them described so many times,
You remember the plots and cues to laugh perfectly.
The Brown House should have been a place where years of treasured memories were made,
And remembered as my treasured childhood home.
But instead, those memories are haunted and tainted by the sounds of angry screaming and blows.
The me who lived there would crawl into bed, or put my back into a corner, and throw a blanket over my head, clapping fists over my ears to drown it out. Anything to stop the yelling.
Now, I know that I’m no longer that little girl.
I’m not defenseless. Not trapped. Not subject to the whims of an angry father.
But sometimes I still feel like I am.
When I hear a loud noise, or people arguing, or even just feel someone annoyed nearby,
I feel like I’m trapped within my own head again, or back at the Brown House.
Every word I say, feels like it could bring down fire and brimstone upon my head,
And I have to fight myself to say anything at all,
Let alone what I actually think.
So when I start crying for no reason in the middle of a semi-serious conversation, or I stutter, or I need to scribble my words down before I say them, please understand that I’m not breaking down,
I just had to go back to the Brown House.
Birth
Birth
I remember the long summers,
The short winters and days that passed in a blur.
What seemed like an ending was actually the birth of something new.
Death signifies the start of something new.
The entire universe is a mass of energy —
Energy that flows in you and me.
We are the light years and the black holes,
We are the undiscovered planets and, shattered stars.
Our emotions, our movements, our words,
Are all,predetermined by the energy flowing
Between the different worlds.
They took birth inside us at the beginning of time.
Oceans move according to the pull of the moon.
Beings are influenced by the movement of planets.
We are all connected more than we think
So why this idea that life only exists on earth?
Energy can take birth anywhere in the universe.
Life exists in all shapes and sizes.
What matters is how we plant the seeds
That give birth to the future.
Prompt Five
playing ‘kick the can’ at thirteen
under a perse sky
as twilight curtains
the city –
our townhouses rowed
together like people
(huddled against the cold
we corner the same space)
our lips pursed
as heat actuates
our senses –
reaching out to each other
before our bodies link
(cuddled against the wall
lips fuse as our fingers lace)
a first kiss, pressed
into the album
of memory –
my playlist near full
but this song persists
(shuttled back to that night
with each new embrace)