Prompt for Hour Two

How do we share yearnings when we cannot speak of them? For additional context and inspiration you can listen to Leonard Cohen’s song “Take this Longing”.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FqVvNpcX5HQ&feature=youtu.be

Prompt contributed by Ramona Elke

I Bet

You see my precious heart, and loving personality that captured your mind and love you over time after time. I bet you see my sadness, happiness, and realness beyond any x-ray eyes searching for appreciation. I bet you see me honest and loyal yet, with gifted qualities you can cherish but, you don’t because of YOU…I bet.

Poem by: JGOMEZ

Come Together

Best friends walk along the sea,
If they continue long enough, they will arrive at the start.
But can they make it? For it has been 11 days since their arrival,
And none know how they ended up on such vacant land,
With trees as the iris, a mysterious chest its pupil.

Oh, they shall make it.
Such vacant land is no match,
For they are true and humble in their abilities.

Arms raised, her brown spiraling hair, messy and mobile,
Indicative of the gusts she brings forth to the coconut tree,
And they all run over, collecting those that fell into small piles,
Cracking them on knees and rocks, gulping its sweet water.

It is not enough, and they walk to the sea with their coconut halves,
Filling them with salty water, placing them on the ground all together as one,
So she, with the short, blonde hair that sparkles like champagne glasses,
Can dance around the bowls of life giving juice, making it pure and clean,
And they drink and drink until smiles cross their faces.

They walk on until hunger is too much,
And he, with the dark skin like leather takes to the forest,
Bringing back berries and a rabbit to roast.
And he, with hair like orange embers, blows and brings fire to life,
Where they all crouch with their drooling mouths,
Until they devour the succulent meat like animals.

They complete their circle,
Feeling comfortable with their perimeter,
And to the forest they go and go until they reach that pupil,
Gasping at the stone chest before them,
And they all try to open it, one at a time, for there must be magic inside,
But they fail.

Until they all try together,
She gusts,
She dances,
He watches and listens,
He blows,
And the top slowly opens.

With fire

I love thee

Conspire

For wealthy

Retire

Be healthy

And while

We beat feet

Entirely

Hell free

And tires

Which pop me

Can’t tire

My bellfree

It’s funny

And healthy

I missed my

First hour

Of poetry

😅

@KateJannuzzi

 

Hour one – Earth Wind and Fire

Here I sit  upon the earth, humble homeland of my birth.

Awed by forces old as time, the fire that warms and gathers friends or when pushed by wind has disastrous ends.

Necessary evils that are instrumental, the basis of all, so elemental.

Poem #1

I said already,
Staring quietly at the sun,
‘Raising my own adaptation of otters
A procession that incalculably owns up to
Its relationships
And whether down the Brixton lanes
Or Oregon, or on the border of Nairobi
Or over Walt Witma’s graves
It will provide
It won’t abide
This is my employment plan’
‘But sir’
‘But do not strain it like a cloth map
Testing coffee
I just wouldn’t advise it.’

I don’t say in public spaces
More
For such impoliteness draws the tanks
The thinking and the military,
And the angelic choirs of unethical naive loyalists
Who know no better but the nice side of the perpetual tragedy
But I whisper it here
Who searches for the material in metaphor
And finds one when in truth
Its no metaphor
But nonsense
Yes, the absurdity of dignity
The treasure of disreputable comraderie
And the sumptuous curvatures of insanity
Derived and contented to be derived
They will lead a procession
Just as original as I succeed in being
Just as representative too
And it will be so simple
And so nice
And it won’t be for the record
It will be unobservable
Proud as raking

Let’s not measure
The storms in the teacups of each other’s lives
Windspeed like a cliff dive
Five point seven
Richter’s dead
And every angle is at eleven
And protractors fail
We come together
To reform our god-forsaken pact

Labyrinth

Walking the labyrinth of dried lava

Pele’s braids

Feet on the edge of burning.

 

The head meditates

while the waves crash in

trying to wake the sleepwalker.

I

a random speck on the edge of a crater.

When there is nothing left to plunder,

nothing left to analyze, pick apart, objectify, report, gossip upon,

I

a fading voice calling above the crater,

I

Like Pompeii, falling into the wind,

I

ashen, silent.

Before the End

He is an earthy fool of morning—

makes the uphill trek of five leagues

and gathers anemones.

 

He is a fiery child of dusk—

arrives in the quietness beyond fatigue

and knocks at the door.

 

She is a flighty girl of night—

wears an anemone in her hair

and opens the door.

 

It is a deranged river of dawn

breaks the shackles that tamed it once

and rears its hood to strike.