24 Poems ~ 24 Hours
Here comes the monsoon to Mumbai in the west coast/
It comes down in torrents and sheets/
Out come the umbrellas of various hues/
Women in colorful ones matching their raincoats/
Men in sombre black umbrellas befitting their stature/
Umbrella is status blind, indispensable to rich and poor alike.
How do I freeze time
The days are long but the years are short
And I don’t want to miss a moment
Even when I’m tired, I never really tire
Of keeping you safe and warm and happy
I know you need me
But I may need you more
Words of Mass Destruction
Marching
into battle,
armed with pen and paper,
my words are my weapons. Prepare
to die!
**** A cinquain consists of five lines with the syllabic count of 2/4/6/8/2.****
My wings are bare swan bones
grotesquely sprouting from
between my shoulder blades.
I cannot fly.
They are bloody with strips of
burst flesh clinging
to cartilage, splintered
at the tips from spearing
loose ends.
Stay with it.
Keep going.
No down or contour or flight
feathers. Nowhere to hide.
I clench to spread them
fan them out over my head
now dripping and sticky
with pieces of my back
falling into my curls.
Nowhere to hide.
Hideous and joyful and terror
embracing what I cannot.
Turn me over slowly in your mind.
I cannot cartwheel for you.
My red wing bones scar my shoulders.
I cannot flap. I am not broken.
Fifty words Exactly
Utter madness
Too tired to count
On the home-stretch
But it’ll all be over soon
Giving way to sadness
Triumph and delight
Free to sleep all day and maybe even all night
But hang-on what were those words again
Almond or umbrella
Well that’s a-hell-of-a ask
I think I’ll pass
[Prompt: use no more than 50 words, but one of those words must be either umbrella, or almond.]
The Rainbow Umbrella
A lot of things happen
under the rainbow colored
giant umbrella
put up by the one-eyed fruit vendor
upon the tiled pavement
beside the central public building
Hour 21
@varenyas
Just like that-
you were done
fed up with this life
no room for anything else
You must have been depressed
I heard so many people say
to take a gun, end it all
with no chance for turning back
you were so many things:
disturbed
selfish
pathetic
over and over, oh I heard them all
I remember you as I saw you-
unselfish
freely giving
doing without
just so those you cared about
could go further
maybe you were bullied
maybe you liked to drink
or do drugs
I don’t know
People who knew nothing about
you, made judgments
so many judgments
what right did they have?
Just like that
you left
there’s a hold that never fills up
time didn’t make it easier either
Rivers Flow to the Ocean
Rivers.
It flows downstream.
Very near the end of the line.
Every tributary feeds from the source,
Racing along, you can’t slow the course.
So close to the battle we can almost taste it.
Front the lower level there was a stirring.
Left of the dish we saw a signal
Our time had come and we left to mating.
With brilliant wings all marked with pigments,
They were green, yellow and brown
on back and the crown.
The courses that we flew,
heralded the war cries of the few and many,
everyone did their part.
One said they saw us on the radar.
Cause doppler had picked us up that day.
Everyone was happy when we smelled the salt
and felt the sand. We knew we were home.
Now, you know the rest of the story.
Hour twenty one, 5 am
Rivers Flow to the Ocean
(form Acrostic/Free Verse)
Charlie the Mayfly.
v.j.calone
Nesting
to bed by the sea with you,
a curtain of palm fronds
shielding us from prying birds’ eyes,
ocean’s rhythmic whisper at our feet.
nestled among the blooming flower-heads,
here we will sleep, our weary bodies and our heavy souls
sinking into clean white linens,
as the rising sun dances its light upon the waves.
you, whisper in my ear, sleeping
beyond all the possible words and phrases
to come into the silence
that is the center of our being.
Text Prompt
Write a poem that’s no more than 50 words, but one of those words must be either umbrella, or almond.
Photo by Rhett Wesley on Unsplash
Leading lights – I follow.
I meet her gaze,
with almond shaped eyes,
bright as amber,
dazzling and mysterious.
Beneath the surface
-a forest of secrets.
I could get lost.
Gaze replaces communication
-the language of soul.
A map to my destiny
-long and winding…
Can I communicate in her frequency?