Captured moments – Hour 11
Sun drenched fields
The smell of pine in the air
Patches of goldenrod everywhere
Laughing and holding hands
Hour 12-Nonet
I glide in mercilessly unknown
Caught in a scream of circumstance
Obliterating starlight
Beguiling my torment
Stealing from myself
Glad to be free
Lifeless, cold
Dying
Eye
Prompt 12, Poem 12: True self
The forest has a secret world he
visits when the world is asleep
searching for his true self in
the stars and deep in the
ocean, he travels
from tree to tree;
he isn’t
paralyzed
here.
Playground
I’m performing poetry at the Playground.
They say anything goes.
I wonder if they know…
Special K is here to dominate this thing!
What’s above?
Hour 4, Prompt 12, Year 2021
There is a flying thing in the sky
Is it a bird? Is it a plane?
Could it be aliens?
Watching us from above
Not far but not close
Studying us
Waiting for
Us to
End.
Family (prompt 12, 8 pm)
Two cats, one dog, and me, family
united in our shared space as one.
Love, laughter, quiet times shared too.
Better together for
the good and bad days,
they love me always.
Family,
glad.
to my love
you made me a flower press last month
and you took me to the mountains
summer sun warmed our faces
fingers interlocking
our love is in bloom
petal-soft kiss
our season
always
us
Poem 12: An Oasis
An Oasis
Cool Water played on our living room stereo like a distant
desert breeze while we roughhoused and did acrobatics
with Dad. He lifted us up into the air one at a time, our bellies
pressed into his feet while he lay on the carpet on his back.
We held our arms and legs out stiff as we flew. I wondered
how it would feel to go a whole day without the taste of water,
cool water. My brother and I take turns soaring my dad’s legs
above that dry barren land. I know the album by heart.
It’s one of only four or five we had, and it warned us
there’s a devil not a man who wants to hurt us and a desert
where men in white shirts and khakis crawl in their own sweat
toward the minty promise of water. My father lifts me
out of harm’s way, the cells in our mouths bulky with moisture.
I am seven and am learning how to pencil my wants
in a diary. I didn’t know one day I’d have to learn
how to let go of this man who taught me how to fly.
Winding Down
Eight o’clock is at hand
a most productive day has been had
Now as the time winds down I find
tiredness slowly creeping its way in.
My Brain turning into cabbage
I try to manage writing another
creative piece.
Finding solace in the fact
that I have gone the distance
in accomplishing a feat of myself
I thought to be an impossible task
placed before me.
I must prepare to rest
for who knows what great
adventure tomorrow may
yet lie ahead.
Charred Earth
I was a child when I went to school in a building.
Six. My brother, Jake, was ten
just learning science and
long division. I knew how to
read and multiply.
That was the night I knew why Spot ran away.
The crash through the front door
jarred me awake just as Jake
opened my door
carrying the crossbow Santa brought.
He was the best big brother ever in a million years!
“Shh!” his finger to his mouth as he
slid open the wall above my toy box
just as Mommy had taught us.
“Don’t cry,” he whispered.
Those were the last words he spoke before the bullet.
I didn’t cry. I didn’t cry as I
heard my mother screaming
“They’re not here!”
And I stayed for hours
until they left. The soldiers.
Men in crazy hats waved tattered flags seeking the disobedient.
I stayed until I knew
they were gone, and not asleep
in my mother’s bed…
until long after the toilet flushed.
I stayed until the coyotes came close, and there were no more Cheerios.
Strange finding the town so empty
when I rode my bike to the store –
the door wide open and lights still on.
I stole some Velveeta and crackers.
Alone, twenty years in a town of ghosts has no advantage.
I was at least ten years old
before all the food was gone
from all the houses,
and I had to catch little things.
“Stay small and stay alive,” were my mother’s words.
I lived in each of them
from time to time,
eating what they had
sleeping on their beds.
Changing my clothes and catching water from the rain.
So many dead mommies
and dead daddies
still in their beds;
but no children.
They took the children, but they never found me!
I heard about the fires
and the riots and protests
on a radio left playing next door.
And saw the flames nearby.
The wind blew it the other way for me.
Finally, today, I found it
buried in the rubble of my old house
beneath some sand
and my brother’s bones.
His crossbow. I could learn to hunt.
I could hunt soldiers
in crazy hats
waving tattered flags.