Second Breakfast
Breakfast
Oatmeal
Fruit
Egg and cheese burrito
2nds
Coffee
(Hour 20) 17.30pm-18.30pm. VISUAL PROMPT: a mattress bed in a flower bed
mattress bed in a flower bed
catching what i can : sleeping when & where & as i can : the odd dreams continue : this midday : confined to : a double mattress : made up as a bed : white sheets : in the middle of a garden : flowers already dying : wilting palms : providing : ineffective tigerstripe shade : in the distance : soft grey water : reflecting a tiny portion : of our heliorious : sun’s rays
in my dream : i dream : of trying to sleep : lying on this : oddly placed : day lounge : but i can’t : knowing as i do : that 7 & 1/2 : earth minutes ago : the sun somehow : blinked entirely : out of existence : as if an enormous : intergalactic child : picked it up : like a marble : & popped it in : her pocket : before jumping on Einstein’s : beam of light : & riding away : stopping all the clocks : behind her
all except the one : which will : in a little less than 30 seconds : remove all light : & all gravity : from where i lie : on a white-sheeted mattress : in what was once : our solar system
Mr. Beethoven, I ode you one
“Love is the most important thing in the world, but baseball is pretty good, too.” – Yogi Berra
O friends, please more of these sounds!
Let us shout more joyful cheers,
More cheers full of joy!
Joy!
Joy!
Joy, bright spark of these nine innings
Denizens of the baseball field!
Team-inspired we tread
Within thy white-lined diamond.
Baseball’s power re-unites
All that losing has divided,
All fans become brothers,
Under the sway of thy gentle swings.
Whoever has created
An abiding friendship
Or has won
An afternoon alone at a baseball game
– Mark L. Lucker
© 2022
http://lrd.to/sxh9jntSbd
Second Breakfast – a nonet (hour 20)
I shall have a quick second breakfast
after all the words I wrote past
in between five poems last
snooze, yet not oversleep
bagels smeared with cheese
with coffee, take
keep awake
hand and
brain.
– Sandra Johnson, June 26, 2022
Hour 20 : The Watchtower
Soaked by the morning sun
The dark haze of ice
Sat at the watchtower
Not moving my eyes
A maze of days gone by
Not able to place time
Sunk in yesterday’s love
People talking in rhyme
The shadows making portraits
Like an artist’s stoke
Lost hues striking hard
Believe me it’s no joke
Like an eye of the pirate
Many times, many ways
Delirium working full time
The hidden side of my phase
‘Wher’ to go first?
Planning my first move
A need to set myself free
Get into the right groove
Sat at the watchtower
Thinking about life
As I lay my head down
Comes along in the time of strife.
16 The Cello and I
16 The Cello and I
I played the cello for a summer
I lugged it all around
Taking lessons from an expert
I was lucky to have found
Soon I noticed I was rotten
I didn’t practice very far
Instead I bought a ticket
To see virtuoso YoYo Ma
I felt bad for my instructor
She really cared a lot
And wanted all her students
To become talents on the spot
The cello left undaunted
Back to the rental shop it went
Now I listen to the masters play
Precious time well spent
You Sold Your Soul, Not Mine
Take the money and run
Around blocks
Running circles
Around greed
Wasting the fuel of
Your life force
Your destiny
Your integrity
Your fate
Wads of cash
You chase like a carrot
To put in holes like
Nails in a coffin
Trying to stir up fear
Another notch in the headboard
Where sleep does not come soundlessly
From your greed.
You believe me to have
A price on my head
And opted to try and sell my soul
Diminish my worth
But I rise like a Phoenix unafraid
From the ashes of who
Burned me…
But you burned yourselves down
With materialistic explosives.
Karma is my friend
And she will visit me
As she will you.
What you don’t realize, though,
Is that it wasn’t my soul
On the block for slave trade
Up for show on a market
A theater in a strategic
Coreographed play upon my soul
But yours…
Accepting the money from blood
Siphon it out through your veins
And watch, hidden on the sidelines
While lining your pockets
With my botched demise.
It wasn’t my soul used
As poker chips
You gambled away your souls with.
The price was never set
Upon my head
It was on your own.
So I ask you,
How much did your soul cost you?
How much compared to mine?
Loyalty in the eyes of green
Whereas I have accumulated
Riches beyond measure
My soul remains intact
Priceless.
You sold your soul for a pittance
What money doesn’t realize
Is that there is no price to mine
Money can burn holes in pockets
And holes within conscious
As you all have burned me
A wounding upon your heart I pray heals.
All I required was atonement for the wrongs
Honesty
But you chose to keep your darkness
Out of shame and repercussion
but Karma will find you
As she will find me
And when she does
She will know you
By the coals from the G’s
You heaped upon your own heads
By your own hands.
Apology to the Tree People
Apology to the Tree People
Sorry.
Took you for granted.
Enjoyed your shade, birds,
green in spring, splendid colors in fall.
Learned about your xylem and phloem,
photosynthesis and reverse Krebs Cycle.
Didn’t think to get to know you.
Your lifestyles, cultures,
preferences, parenting styles.
Didn’t even bother to learn your names:
Aspen, Cherry, Ash, Fir,
Oak, Maple, Cedar.
I’m old now, trying to learn.
Humans are slow, but not as slow as trees.
Personal Prompt poem #hr 20 – Why I write
Photo by Patrick Fore on Unsplash
Why I write
I find it oddly comforting,
such a sweet release
oh so liberating
to have the courage to pen down my thoughts
my fears and to make sense of it all.
I write cause that is how I process life,
express myself,
it’s in my essence
and if you peeled back the layers
of my toughened exterior
you’d see a beating but bleeding heart
simply pouring itself.
Yearning to understand and to be understood.
I write because it’s the only way I am utterly honest
about the things I desire, things that I am afraid to admit to myself
I end up confessing on paper with a natural ease.
The lies I tell myself,
the encouragement I inspire within myself
my self-determination,
my anxieties and my random bursts of expression
make sense when I sit down to write.
I don’t condemn myself for all the things that make me who I am.
I hate myself a little less,
I can face the person staring back at me in the mirror.
On paper, I can be whoever I want to be,
without the fear of judgement
without any misgivings.
Safe space for expression and manifestation.