There was never anything so delicate as the frosting on the cake my mother used to make — hand-whipping the cream in the big metal bowl, the sound of the kitchen tools banging out a birthday song, us watching from the edge of the door opening, hoping for an invitation to taste before anything went to waste
for #openwrite
Tossing the Magic 9 Ball into Poem
We're never quite happy with the word, this slow rolling spontaneity of motion that makes it so hard for us to be heard out here in the noise of electronic ether, digital space where every post is hummingbird, and letters, treasures lost from thought, so that meaning becomes strange and absurd as like stragglers returning starfish to ocean, we poets release these poems, obscured
for #openwrite
Three Poems for Three Lost Days of #OpenWrite
3. How easy has it been for you to turn your head from two hundred thousand dead, and instead, push full steam ahead with your lies?
(Theme: The News)
2. You'd think I'd know what to write when I sit down to write but that isn't nearly ever the case - All I know is that the space before me should be filled with something, and so here I go again, wondering how I found my way to the end.
(Theme: Ego and Homage)
1. It's doubt that I remember the most, the way he huddled in the corner with such silent clenched fury at his own family, but took it out on me, his classroom teacher, and how every single second seemed to last forever in the shadow of his anguish and my own worry about what it is I needed to do and how to get it done.
(theme: Decisions)
All praise to the shortened pencil, the powerless point with which to write, scratching small poems and stories, essays and plays, sticking words on white
All praise to the worn eraser, telling time of thoughts, such lost angles and false prophets of ideas, shifting compass of directions; reconvene, writer, when lost
All praise to the empty page, playground of the possible, and pause before its wonder, for where nothing was now something is, move the rock to find what's under
for #openwrite
It's not too much, unions demand, to review options in the plan, even if we don't understand the twist turns of this fragile land
I am ready/ I'm not ready
of masking up, of space between, of anxious teachers, broken dreams, of quiet fret; we're not machines; the unknown becoming routine
I am ready/ I'm not ready
for #openwrite
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Pareidolia
Power switch conductor brings me 'round, I'm awake again, midnight listening in surround sound
to music from the window fan, such noise in the soft signal of deep summer, around sound
like faint music, and if this were the wire, the Net, the stream, the dream, what found sound
would you be, in the night, with me as my mind's making melody, unbound sound
for #openwrite
Ode to an Empty School Hallway
Hallway, I still remember you as you left me, as I left you, all bustle and chatter, and dropped books and erasers, my door opening into shared space on the lost Friday afternoon
Oh, Hallway, how much silence you have swallowed, since then, since March, when the last of the metal doors slammed shut; there's something close to sound still reverberating
They tell me they've adorned you with arrows, directions, paths, signs for our feet to follow, movement we must take, and in my mind, at times, we're all masked wanderers now, anxious passengers on a train with walls barren of art
Hallway, someday, you will shout again, and I promise to stand at the end, like a fly on the telescope, yelling one thing but holding the other; my heart remembers
for #openwrite http://www.ethicalela.com/july-openwrite-ode/
Someone wrapped me up in Rondeau Told me the rules, then let me go But I'm not a poet like that I see a rule; I break it, for laughs Add a syllable or a line to the old weathered crow and return to the rhyme when I want, like so
But now I think maybe I know the path these words of poem must flow I start at the top and end, last; Words in motion
For what is a poem but a show walker on wire; fallen domino; or a rabbit pulled from a hat form and function and all of that I push myself in, take it slow, consider constraints, let go; Words in motion
for #openwrite https://www.ethicalela.com/july-openwrite-rondeau/
Lethargic
Expended, to the point of exhaustion
Drowsy, near the edge of consciousness
Languid, on the border of liquid
Listless by the boundary of activity
Hopeful with the prospect of rejuvenation
I'll be the first to admit, my feet don't leap like they should; but they've marched when they could
my feet've paused, on pavement, when they rally against injustice paused at the brink but not one step beyond
they've stood, to shout, and broken rules, no doubt, caused us to wonder and worry at the progress not yet coming about
I wonder, at times, if my feet don't come equipped with my mind
for #openwrite