24 Poems ~ 24 Hours
We were so young,
little pups ready to begin the rest of their lives
huddled under a bridge for comfort.
Then one day, the hurricane came &
cast us all asunder,
something no one could have foreseen.
It took years to come to terms with the schism
but it made it all the more cathartic in the end.
I didn’t know how to live.
It just seemed so foreign
& then she came along & gave me
a refresher
& now I think I’m ready to get back to those
old blue jeans
wherever they make take me.
A woman sings and you will die
without her song. Her voice brings you
back to life and it’s intoxicating.
She sings, turning into thin air,
the breath of the woman you love
escaping you. You must find her to breathe,
you must give her
mouth to mouth,
you must breathe her song
back to her through her
open lips. A woman sings
and you’re so in love,
her soft mellow tone
becomes a melody.
I have two clocks that chime on the hour, but they disagree about the time.
They have almost a 5 minute interlude in between their separate clangs.
I’ve never bothered to changed those clocks. I just like to embrace the space.
Do I take that 5 mionutes and call it free time, lucky time, payback time for the time that life has stolen
or do i look at the difference as a penalty that i have to pay. I always feel five minutes behind.
Does anything that i do in that 5 minutes really exist? or does everything that happens stay in my living room.
The humming growl looms
Consuming all in its path
Vacuuming the floor
And the land holds promise
A whole new landscape of what can be
What should be
And the land is green
When it is yet uncultivated
Fresh, open to new ideas and ideals
And the land is green
A virgin land like no other
And the land is green
Freshly ploughed, smelling of sweet, soft upturned soil
The land is green
Twists
of
fate
rotate around
poles of
established
traditions and
volumes of life
work
motivated by
goals rooted
in the ethics
of the strong armed one
squeezing all
the water
out of the
towel
cw: none
One morning, the curtains were thrown open wide,
and the canary blinked and felt like its retinas were burning.
In the color of the morning light,
it saw itself for the first time:
it had become so dirty, so grey,
a shadowed facsimile of its former self.
And then it realized:
there was no former self.
It had been born without a voice,
and therefore rejected,
since it could not save the lives
of those who had purchased it.
It marveled at the light from the window,
but it was so strange –
so strange to see something
so bright,
when it was used to darkness.
It saw the world outside,
the trees and the grass,
and it yearned to touch it.
(Not yet.)
Saline swept, dreams bed,
Nightmares approach, utter dread
Hungry, you’ll be dead.
To fall off the edge of the Earth is to fall into a never-ending beginning.
First, you’ll hear God whisper muspell,
and a big bang will echo off the chests of the other gods into void ripping one apart.
From his pieces a fruit-bearing tree will form and a lotus will bloom.
From the lotus will crawl a spider woman, and
she will drool onto a raven’s black egg causing it to crack.
Out from that egg a corn-chewing tortoise will waddle, but his fraternal twin, a snake, will refuse to leave the shell and rest until a more opportune time.
The tortoise will rub against the base of the fruit-bearing tree and so will a pregnant white mare.
The mare will give birth to a woman who will dance and fight with the now intrigued snake.
The woman and snake will kick up enough dust
to mix with the vomit of an onlooking god which will always create a mudslide.
Humans, oblivious to the strong winds quickly trying them, will form in the mud and war with each other.
Suddenly and persistently, the bang of man’s cracking and shattering will echo off the chests of the gods.
A stillness more solemn than a tomb will close all around you.
Darkness will cover the face of the deep,
and from the deep,
אֹ֑ור.
Text Prompt:
Every year I made sure to include at least one formal poem. The viator is a poetic form invented by Robin Skelton. I first encountered it as part of Robert Lee Brewer’s Writer’s Digest Poetic Forms Friday series.
It’s a pretty simple form where the first line is used again as refrain in the second line of the second stanza, and the third line of the third stanza, and so on and so forth depending on how many stanzas you include.
The last line of the final stanza must be the refrain, so you start and end on it.
To learn more about this form, and read a sample poem, go here.
Image Prompt:
Photo by Martin Torrez