Gravity Hour #5 9/2/2023
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
Candy Terrorists, Hour Five
Candy Terrorists
The sheriff’s car pulled up on the side of the road, lights flashing and siren wailing, beneath the railroad overpass. Spiced gumdrop candies lined the road, evenly spaced from each other in a ten foot by ten foot square. Two small hooded figures could be seen ducking down in the gravel next to the tracks, silhouetted against the burnished and shimmering summer sky above the road. The sheriff stepped out of his vehicle with dispatch radio in hand, prepared to apprehend the perpetrators responsible for such heinous domestic mayhem. “All right, boys, come on down,” he squawked through his loudspeaker to them, and they reluctantly scrambled down the embankment, knowing resistance was futile, the law would catch up with them one day. He escorted them into the back of his patrol car and delivered them home to their mortified parents. Yes, the candy terrorists, reported by a passing motorist to the sheriff’s office as “two boys throwing rocks at cars” were apprehended and the public safety was upheld, only discovering afterward that the two were me and my best friend, Val, bored on a summer’s day and making color patterns from above with a bag of candy from the local IGA. The worst chastisement I received that day? My indignance at being mistaken for a boy.
H5.P5
In the depths of darkness
You vanished, l lost your smile
It had serstained me
When l was lonely
I remember your hair, our dreams
Hand written notes under my door
Ink stained hands curled together
Giggling
Vanished
Never to return
Never forgiven
Never found
Bones in a shallow grave
A familiar face in a crowded room
Our War
It’s our worth to defect
the tangle that spangle
A word now and forever
it sound so miserable
hearing of such note
good bye ever
we care to be apart
From now till eternity
forever and forever
never we make a path
pathetic but permissive
let me flow while you fly
we care to be part
Two parallels never meet
pick your lane stay apart
this is our terminal point
draw battle and let fight
we care to be part
Every yoke need to break
either to hatch or to crack
your absence is admiration
your presence is abomination
we care to be part
No room for little friendship
no time for minute courtship
no more light form the tunnel
no more cost to see a betrayal
From The Sidelines
HOUR 5
(this is my own prompt based on my years working in nursing homes and then having
my surgery and dealing with having to be waited on and all that comes with a slow recovery. My
family and care giving teams were, and still are, great Just a reflection on things I
have seen some of which I experienced)
FROM THE SIDELINES
Empathy for others came easy for me
Watching how families cope with their loved ones
Now forced to reside in places that will never be home.
Not just the elderly, but those who need special care
Frustrated to have to ask for help, needing help
For the simplest of activities of daily living.
A call light illuminates, the alert sounds.
I need to get dressed, I need something to eat, I have to pee!
You forgot to give me my meds, I dropped my remote. Can I get
Fresh water? I need to pee!
I miss my family, have they called, I’m bored, I need to get into
My chair, I need to pee and
I WANT TO GO HOME!
I need to see my doctor, I want to get out of here
Why does it smell in here, damn it I have to pee.
Why did it take you so long to get to me.
I already peed.
I’m sad, my family hasn’t been to see me, where is the doctor
I’m having trouble trying to pee.
I can’t open my milk or hold my fork, can you help me?
Can you help me? Why did this happen to me, why me, why me?
From the sidelines, it seems easy, just do what they tell you.
Everything will be fine. But it’s not that simple, this life on pause.
Waiting for healing, for better days, independence….home!
What is my fate, will I even get better is this my new normal?
Can I please just go home?
I need to pee!
Upon Moving to a New Home
To you who lived before me in this smallish dwelling place,
I hope you filled it up with love, with happiness and grace.
I hope your days were happy days, and all your ways were loving ways.
I hope that good health paced these halls and friendship hung on all the walls.
I hope it was a happy home; I hope that you could write a tome of all the happy memories you shared. And all the folks who really, truly cared.
I hope it’s not that other kind of room, permeated with a threat of doom from folks whose rage and pain are greater than they can control, who strike and then later grieve for their lives and hate themselves more than whatever they hated someone else for.
For the energy and spirit that we breathe into a place remains until it’s cleansed and clutters up the space.
So I hope the place you’re leaving and the place you’re moving to have the precious kind of spirit to protect and nurture you.
Gena Williams
Hour/Prompt 3
I don’t know what happened but
I am down a red brick well
My school had a fountain the center, a quad called Red Square
because of the red bricks or because of the Red scare
(we were libs at the time and they were libbers back then) Not like now when we’ve turnedo ourselves inside out and upside down in order to claim rightness, lightness, and delightness in setting self apart.
[unfinished]
Conundrums (Prompt 5)
The grandparents I never met
parents of the father I loved
secretive though he was
about them, him and them
Grandma and grandpa died
before I came along
never even met my mother
rarely were spoken of
Mentioned only essentially
names, dates – never
more than conversational
versions of headstones
Enigmas, all.
My father – close as
we were – who never said
mother who never asked
grandparents who . . ?
What would I have called
them, or them me?
Would I have picked up
their native Yiddish?
Knowing nothing I can
only guess; research the
clues I can hardly find
always longing for more
We are enigmas, all.
– Mark L. Lucker
© 2023
http://lrd.to/sxh9jntSbd
Iced Water
Have a seat
What would you like?
Iced water? Iced tea? Ice cream?
Do you have hot chocolate
It is warmth I seek
Mysterious (acrostic) – Hour 5, Hour 5
Mode of operation there
Yet to be found here
Soft cotton and crimson stain
Telltale color of wrongdoing, pain
Exposed digits peek from inside
Right hand clutching something, green
Is it paper? What can it mean?
On the table
Unaware, unseen
Sits a key.
– Sandra Johnson, 9/2/2023