24 Poems ~ 24 Hours
What lurks in corners of the mind,
No doubt will one day rise,
And in the coloured photograph,
I’ll redden both my eyes.
For time and night and sleep-slick-stalls,
I pass another test.
And in the working waiting grip,
I’ll deny myself what’s best.
It’s a great picture
It really is
Tall gray-stoned wall
Reaching around a sweet meadow scene
A happy tree waving at you
But the picture is over exposed
Really, the sun did not cooperate
It just shows up there
Ruining the whole scene
The sun is like that
You go to a beach
Lying in the soft sand
playing peek-a-boo with a sand crab
Who watches you warily shifting
side to side to side
When bam the the sun shows up
peeking out from behind a soft cloud
All narcissistic and hot
The sweat rolls into your eyes
The crab is disappointed because you stop playing
Suddenly you have to get wet or go home
Melting isn’t your thing
But you were having fun, the crab was having fun.
WTF?
Or maybe you’re out driving
swirling around the mountain
Trying to keep your lane and enjoy the scenery
When the sun decides to come down
right into your line of vision
and the visor and your special tinted glasses,
even your trusty ever present
hand shield just aren’t enough
You should pull over or risk killing someone
But you drive anyway, squinting until you resemble
a big gerbil with wrinkles
You try your wipers, you adjust that visor
You look for an out and as soon as you get one
There it is again.
The sun just laughs and shines away
It likes you to cower under its power.
Oh sure it gives way to the moon,
the darkness takes over
The sun runs off to bother other people,
Other sandcrabs and other witless drivers
But it’s memory stays with you so much so
That you almost look forward to dawn
But that damned sun decides it owns everything
Just like that overbearing lover
you wish had just stayed away
It pushes itself back everyday like well,
that overbearing lover you wish had stayed away
We do have air conditioning and
our nicely built structures built around that coolness
But the sun just sits and waits. Always waiting
It knows you have to come out sometime
And when you do, well you know the rest.
Say you really need it though,
Dead of winter where it has been
cloaked by deep gray clouds for weeks
It just stays out of reach
Won’t even peek at you
It won’t warm you
it won’t come out to ease your frostbite
or to help you scrape that windshield.
No the sun is a bastard like that. It’s manipulative.
I know the sun is necessary, like taxes or death or jobs
I do wish had back all those nice over-exposed pictures its ruined,
If I could get back those nice cool beach days
Maybe sit and bask in a rain-shower just a few minutes longer
I wouldn’t mind so much
You know if it would just cooperate
Work with us
Nope, the sun isn’t like that
It just sits there shining and expects you to revolve around it.
Rocking into the dimly fading light
Confusion swirling like falling powder
Soft etherial haze of coming night
The chiffon grey of each passing hour
Clouding the sedulous plans promise made
Before the fog endeavored to devour
by Karen Sullivan
Form: Terza Rima
Read it once,
Read it twice,
Read it thrice,
You will find..
Why the birds sing,
Whose phone did ring
The guy who cried,
Why are you so shy..
The questions,
not asked,
could be answered
really fast..
Keep going,
Have patience,
The things will
will find a way..
Not easy
but true..
Blue, blue summer sky touched by rocky mountain peaks with blankets of green
Breezes, constant and cooling
Piled against the mountains; tall, taller, tallest sand dunes
Sunshine and sharp-edged shadows
Giant curving shadows ripple the dune field
Mimicked in miniature in the creek bed
Cold mountain snow-fed creek, endlessly wide but ankle deep
Water reflecting the blue sky, mountain peaks,and the dunes
Cooled by the constant breezes
It’s my turn to speak and I’m beginning to sweat
A quick read of my notes and I try not to fret
I say something sweet to my aunts; they’re old.
Thank the catering staff, my two grans, the Welsh fold.
My parents in law can’t be in the same room, I’ve been told.
The speech before mine was beginning to grind
It was unfunny, untrue, too long and unkind
I smile as I have all day been smiling
I tidy my speech cards for the millionth time.
Welcoming my guests as expected to is best
This is the easy part and I start to warm up.
It’s like acting,
Where I tell a joke and it’s witty because it has a fact in.
Brides don’t do speeches, but I have to, for my boys
Brides don’t do speeches but the groom’s left no choice.
Now, the punch line:
The silence is mine.
And I grip my cards harder because now it is time.
I mention the space below each chair.
“…In each space is an envelope that you need to tear open
because inside, there is proof.
It’s a gift to you all. I give you the truth.”
The cards fall from my hands and I leave the hall.
Now I am free.
Good luck to them all.
The nights were almost unbearable the first week
It was the quiet
So quiet
I measured time in heartbeats
Listening for the telltale lub-dub; lub-dub…
The dead do not suffer the silence
In this new found void, I tumbled
I learned to cherish that quiet, though
Partly because, I realized I didn’t miss the nightly language of home
Random gunfire from across town
The sirens that followed
Or lack thereof, depending on the mood of that night
The bikers and their language of revving
They do like to hear themselves talk
Here, though, the only wail was that of the coyote’s
Singing to each other, or just to the night
The odd semi on the state highway a mile and a half away
Making that low rumble sound as they down shifted in a hurry
The language of Jake and his miraculous brake
It was the third week of my stay in Gainesville
When I realized that it wasn’t the silence that harried me so
It was me
For the first time in 13 years, I was alone with my own thoughts
I was alone with a stranger, whom I looked in the eye not a month before
Declaring that I needed to learn how to be by myself
Never considering the terror I would endure
Those first three weeks
In Gainesville, Texas.
It was then that I cherished the silence for what it was
A respite from the cacophony of society
So that I could finally address the cacophony
Within myself
Learn the language of me
You don’t care about me
I give and give and give
You take and take and take
Poisoned my flesh with your selfish ways
I can’t breathe
I’m weak, I’m tired
Need my honey, my elixir, my life
One day you will wakeup and I’ll bee gone
– Sincerely, The Honey Bee.
Invisible filaments
Connect invisibly
All visible beings
Very tiny hooks
Everywhere
On all surfaces
Connect all dots
On all stuffs
Without being seen
What are you doing
Behind the scene
That grows you
Why don’t you show it all
To the light of the sun
Nothing to hide
Nothing to be ashamed of
Nothing to hold back
But I sense you are frightened
Do you know what frightens you?
Growing, my dear friend,
Growing
When I see what they call being grown up,
I don’t want to be one of them
I am like Peter Pan
I don’t want to grow
Better as a child
In this cruel world
Growing doesn’t have to be
What they told you it is
Growing like anything else
Can be whatever you chose or want it to be,
Even if you don’t believe it
You’re doing it anyway
Invisible filaments
Connect invisibly
All visible beings
Very tiny hooks
Everywhere
On all surfaces
Connect all dots
On all stuffs
Without being seen
I hate it when the month is mad at me
Furious February, Antagonistic April
Months when days spiral into darkness
even before dusk
when the pileup of wreckage serves
only to hide the carnage of failure
of every time I tried & tried again
and fell over the cliff
into desperation
It might be August
heat shimmering
and I flinch from the icy barb
of knowing I’m inadequate
to anything & everything
this month will bring
Its four weeks huddle
lay plans to tangle me in snarls
of barbed wire that once were words
my beloved offered me in anger
They draw maps of the places in my own
dark centre that are vulnerable
to light places that need secrecy
to survive
The 30 days of June conspire
whisper to the ruins of my May
that now will be no better
And I have done nothing
nothing to ignite this retribution
nothing to deserve this streak
of anger
I have done nothing at all