24 Poems ~ 24 Hours
Wedding rings easily rotate around
Old fingers on wrinkled hands
Mornings they are knuckle trapped
By dusk slip and slide right off
White hairs are found flown about
Gathering in corners squared
Under quilt with patches mended
Growing longer as each day passes
Skin still soft but flakes appear
Now getting closer to the source
She is aging from the outside in
Preferred to the other way round
The first rule of Detection Club: play fair
Rather, the zeroth rule because rule one
Is introduce the criminal early on
And keep their thoughts off-air
The next three rules restrain the gothic trend
No ghosts, no made-up drugs, no high-tech tools
No more than one mysterious hidden room
To get you to “the end”
The fifth rule reads as racist in our day,
Though written to confront it at the time.
Let’s say: Do not use “foreign” to mean “crime”
Or “danger” in that way.
Rule six rules out the lucky guess to win
Rules seven, eight and nine forbid the ruse
Of ever purposefully withholding clues.
And ten: no secret twins.
So if you swear detection tales to tell,
Shall Knox, GK, and Christie wish you well.
The Indian takeout intended for lunch is missing from the fridge.
The son, reclining satiated on the sofa with fingers stained red,
says he didn’t eat it. He owes his satisfaction to Doritos.
Tell him that you know that it was him even if you’re not sure.
Lingering disgrace builds character.
The youngest daughter, lips the color of paan, storms by smelling of spices and states that
Though she didn’t eat it, she wishes she had
because you are a horrible mother
and deserve every calamity that befalls you.
Trip her for her insolence.
The eldest daughter, washing an oily bowl, is a known nibbler.
Her recent conversion to veganism means your chicken vindaloo should have been safe, but she’s a backslider by nature.
Smell her breath. Suspiciously minty.
The husband is chewing something quietly in the corner.
He would admit taking it if he had because he’s brazen and reckless.
Simply roll your eyes at this formidable opponent.
Let him know that if it was him, Hell itself will open her mouth to rain fire on his head.
Make a beautiful turkey sandwich instead.
Make sure that it’s envy inducing.
Use the last of the spicy salsalito turkey (everyone’s favorite), but withhold one slice from your masterpiece.
Place the meat on sweet Hawaiian bread.
Blanket it in provolone, artistically arrange the avocado, make money green lettuce and tangy garden tomato slices rain on that thing, and smear the aioli like you’re Michelangelo painting the Sistine Chapel ceiling.
And as you saunter outside to eat on the porch
Passing the drooling ingrates that you call family,
share a piece of the meat with the dog, the only friend
you have in this den of thieves.
When we suffer
alone
our cries
fueled by our own
misery
are the only
balm
for out pains
and this limits
its ability to
dissipate
to healimg
we bound our moans
encapsulating them in
silos of consciousness
feeding each bounce the
energy necessary to
sustain proper
inertia
we must crack
and prop open our lids
and allow the fresh air
of others
to inject
life giving
progress
Where did I go?
What did I see?
there’s no name for this place
no way to return
the road just dead ends in a cul de sac
of regret and now who is that
approaching and leaving by the same door?
a lost glove, a misplaced hat
clues to nowhere and nothing
what lies under the decay is something only time will tell
in a voice of wind and rain and erosion.
Is anyone missing this hat?
somewhere, gloveless?
You never could not be lovely.
It’s just your nature.
Whether holding up the globe or
or ensuring the kids are all right,
you’ve always been a force of nature.
That’s why I’ll love you the best I can
& deservedly so.
It’s a way of life;
anything else would just be unthinkable.
& long after the sun burns out, it’ll be irrelevant
because you light up the world.
That’s just your nature
& you never could not be lovely.
Life has been mostly good
berries growing wild
and free to all
who took the time to pick them.
My childhood home had them
at the end of our dead-end street,
just a short bike ride
or childish adventure away.
The first home of married life
in the nearest town to the
Military base. No berries there.
Not that I ever looked for any.
The next home, where children
became abundant and grew strong
with love and a garden, but no easy to find berries.
The parents grew in different directions.
More years of not finding berries
except at the roadside stands;
children grew into young adults.
Divorce did not hurt too much.
A first grandchild, and a teaching degree,
and a budding compulsion to write.
Sons and daughters became busier and wiser.
Life flowed in good directions.
A fellow writer became more than a friend,
as I learned how many similarities existed
in my Catholicism and his Buddhism.
Writing and teaching filled the half-empty nest.
Twenty years with a philosopher
who seeks my opinion on many topics.
Flying through time till his health told us to slow down.
There are berries to pick at the back of the lot.
Hour Five: A Mystery Poem: Utilizing both text and photograph prompts.
She, almost, wished for springtime again.
So, she bought flowers and planted them, reminding her of the season.
Now that the boughs are bare, they starkly remind of stripping bare.
The stripping bare as the police strip bare her wooden door with their knocking, knocking as she tries to escape. Tries to escape within the bare trees echoing the baring of her soul. She knows they saw her.
The flowers dormant now will bloom her naivete as they were evident witnesses to what she did.
The police now have their witnesses.
Nature bared her as they grew evidence, as squirrels found the evidence, as fake flowers add to the evidence. There is nowhere to hide.
Just ask the birds that remained to chirp and follow her, not south, but her and reveal through their conversations about what she buried in the Spring. DMW
Poem #5 | Meet me in the Grave
Like the sin of humans,
One could be right to say,
”it has been caused from the onset!.”
Without the knowledge of the “WHOs.” involved.
The Sherif had asked “has anyone entered since he arrived today?.” with all professional smiles on leaving the room,
The room, now marked, crime scene.
The room, where Mr Locke my Boss, had used as office for almost a decade now.
Shaking my head this way and that, I said, NO.
The firmed locked from the inside window said same thing, same way do the calmed environment/making it a puzzle how its occupant made the journey to the great beyond on the lift of a supposed murderer without a runway of hassle.
Autopsy said he was strangled to death, the camera sees nothing of such, nor does the bodyguard of the vicinity, I.
After weeks of futile investigation, he was buried alongside all hopes to finding the killer and I lived to worry no more about a bossy Boss with eyes for their subordinates’ wives.
NB: Meet me in my grave to share how the murder happened, for I had sworn to take the secret to my grave if God will help me keep the mind of the Dectatives from checking the gloves in the Waste bin at the office.
If Einstein is right,
then the Earth rises up to catch us
because we live in a curved spacetime.
And I also know
that it is no small matter
that legs are my lineage