24 Poems ~ 24 Hours
The sweet taste of chocolate and peanut butter on my tongue
Take me back to the days, when I was really young.
I would nibble around the edges first, careful in my quest
Then I would gobble up the middle, it always was the best.
When I was but a child, they came in packs of two
I could never get enough of them, never wanted something new.
Now I am a grown-up, and I still eat them up
The yummy and delicious, one and only Reese’s cup!
Desks protected us
from a Soviet missile
back in the sixties
as much as barricade bars
guard against Americans
— please tell me different
Snug in lamplight
Looking out
There is only the bright snow,
and the long distance,
but home is here, and
I am most at home with you.
Whispering zephyrs secrets reveal
The old village Banyan tries hard to conceal
Underneath the cloak of stygian skies
lay stories concealed from seeing eyes
and floods of tears from forced goodbyes
But time is the keeper of all tales
blind yet partial to some details
When its wheels round do turn
History is repeated and oft churned
Yet, Karma’s eyes fair cards do deal
Whispering zephyrs secrets reveal
But time is the keeper of all tales
And churns to what karma entails
It ain’t blind to true lovers’ wails
Under the Banyan tree, lovers were slayed
The village was cursed, barren it stayed.
lentils and rice
Slow-cooked
Yellow from turmeric
Fragrant with spices
Hot, steaming
Delicious
Dip into memory
and take a large helping of
khichadi
My adult womanly existence is flush with the full moon,
a Super Moon when closest to my earthly focus, my love,
a Micro Moon when distant, tiny and dull in the dark.
Wolves keened my loneliness in the cold Wolf Moon,
the Snow Moon marked my February birth.
A Blood Moon’s rarity radiated red, brought forth little deaths of youth,
shed uterine linings prepared my womb for new life.
Blue Moon, you marked my sons’ entrances into the world,
and the Pink Moon of soft Spring gave both life and death to my twin girls.
Strawberry Moon, I thought I would forever be fertile, vibrant,
my adult womanly existence flush with the full moon.
Blood on the moon radiated red, brought forth the death of first love,
but the Buck Moon gifted a richer love in the full flush of summer,
the Corn Moon’s crop harvest gave me his heart.
Frost Moon, I am waning, my woman’s blood drying.
Long Nights Moon, one night soon, I will lay me down.
Alrighty – hour 9 with the prompt “hold this on your tongue”
Poem 9:
If you hold this on your tongue
and let it dissolve like a fresh fallen
snowflake two days before your birthday
you will engrain this taste into your memory.
The ink will flow from you freely and often,
the story will be your’s to tell any time you like,
and the poetry will morph so flawlessly with the
creatures and art you surround yourself with
that you may even begin to forget who created what.
I like to think that if you hold this idea
on your tongue for long enough you’ll
almost never be able to forget what my
poetry and I tasted like either.
-M. Rene’
SincerelyBlueJay Poetry
Never Home Alone (Anxiety)
By: LuvMiFreely
In my bedroom
Stretched out across my bed
Remote in hand strolling through YouTube
Nothing catching my attention
Until I catch something out the corner of my eye
I stop and stare in that direction
I’m tired, it’s has to be all in my mind
I go back to what I was doing
Rapid tapping on my door
Now I’m fully alert
I know I didn’t make that up
I want to say, “Who’s there?’
But I’ve seen to many horror films to know that’s not a smart idea
I stand still, trying to slow my breath
My heart is beating out of my chest
Should I open the the door,
Or climb right out the window?
Fight or flight is kicking in
I hear the tapping again, this time louder
Followed by scratching
I can’t feel my legs
I think I’m having a panic attack
The doorknob slowly turns
I’m paralyzed in fear
As the door opens the lights go out
Overwhelmed, my eyes fill with tears
I can feel something drawing close to me
I can’t move as it whispers in my ear
You’ll never be alone
Not as long as I reside here
This is a little bit of a story, a little it of a poem
a little bit of my mom’s chai that I can never get right,
a little bit of my dads books, those I always got right,
but sometimes they would have really wobbly pages,
because my mom threw them in the water once because he was home late,
Just a bucket of water, that ate
all the words
she never said anything to us though, her children,
I think she suspected he loved his books more?
So someone must love us more
Except, love is tricky, and muddy,
And dusty, and I’m allergic
To dust
So loving me was never easy
And hiding that was very difficult, I suspect
And if nothing else was hidden, I hid
Under books and musics, and broken container lids
That were always too familiar but never enough
Like pain is when you grow old with it
I could never sit,
And so I sailed myself away, as one does
Trust
The process, it’s so in baking and cooking, and sewing, and sweeping
None of which I ever learnt
I guess then my fingers were almost always burnt
And no other chai tasted like home,
Except ‘home to me is wherever you are’
So home should be, where I am?
But I remembered too late that I never liked chai
Until I left.
Hour – 8
While taking a trip
down the memory lane,
I can easily remember
Those dream of a plane
She decided to end her life
One such night
But There was someone
who Believed she was Right
On Every dark way
Someone showed the light
To chase that dream
She worked diligently,
she did get obstacles in the way
But she battled fearlessly,
she was lost in memories
Of those childhood rain,
someone called her from behind
Its time to fly the plane,
lost her train of thought
Turned back to reality,
She proved that aim should
be always our priority
With time ticking away
She used to desire,
Crossing this realm
earn herself an empire,
She had inside her
a passionate fire,
Keeping her delicate feet on earth
gazing the sky,
She decided One day she will fly.
Aditi Dixit