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Archive for the ‘Poetry’ Category

Belong – Five Minute Friday

Posted in Andilit, Five Minute Friday, Poetry, Story Sessions on July 11, 2014| 2 Comments »

This week has been a cornucopia of madness, so today’s post is accomplishing several goals.

  1. Last week’s assignment from Story 101 was to write something out of your comfort zone. I chose form poetry, because my poetry doesn’t generally like to follow the rules. My sonnet is giving me fits.  So hello, haiku.
  2. One of my goals made with the online writing group with Andilit was to post two blog posts this week.  This makes two.  Done!
  3. And I am linking up with Lisa-Jo Baker’s Five Minute Friday, hosted this week by Crystal Stine.  Join us and add your two cents (or rather, five minutes). The prompt is “belong.”

And go:

You belong with me

Like cats curled together warm

Even in summer

photo (6)

Sky plummets to earth

Horizon fights off the wind

Somehow they belong

 

A sea of people

Often I wonder – will I

Ever belong here?

 

Clouds burst; rain comes; lush

I breathe in the rooted ground,

Belonging to it.

 

And because I just can’t help myself…

Whirr, boil, brew, inhale

My heart belongs to coffee.

Bearable morning

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Sarah Laughed

Posted in Poetry on February 26, 2014| 4 Comments »

“I will make you a great nation.  Sarah will bear you a son!”

The Visitor always did like to make an entrance.

None of the standards –

No, “How have you been?”

Or, “Friend, that was a long journey!”

Only a big announcement would do.

She heard while she was minding the supper dishes.

And Sarah laughed.

 

The Visitor was perplexed.

“Why is Sarah laughing? What – does she think I can’t?!”

Abraham, sweet man, tried

To act like it was nothing

To deflect the sound coming from the other room

“Probably just thinking about something funny that happened today.”

She stood in the kitchen, listening to men make plans,

And Sarah laughed.

 

Wouldn’t this have made more sense, Sarah wondered,

To have told me this Himself?

Abraham’s a good husband,

But there’s only so much even a good husband can do to bring a child.

I guess I should be flattered, she thought.

They’re throwing me a surprise party.

In my womb.

And Sarah laughed.

 

She remembered elusive promises and hopes stirred.

How long had the story been told?

Around tables and fires, shrouded in wonder and awe.

Descendants outnumbering the sand.

It need only start with one.

But the one was nowhere to be found.

She had been told of His perfect timing,

So Sarah laughed.

 

She remembered elusive sleep and garments rent.

How many tears had she shed?

Surrounded by a sea of children, but always on the other side of the door.

Skinned knee unbandaged, wedding unattended, grandchildren unheld.

Age showing her what it was capable of

As the bleeding stopped, and the book closed.

She had already cried,

So Sarah laughed.

 

Is this how promises are fulfilled?

To wait until all hope, desire, and ability are gone?

To finally bring her what she always wanted

But only after it was too late for her to enjoy it fully?

Just to make Himself look more special than everyone already knew He was.

Maybe what she wanted to do was punch Him

But she couldn’t

So Sarah laughed.

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How It Begins and Ends – Guest Post

Posted in Poetry, Story Sessions on February 19, 2014| Leave a Comment »

(Originally written during the 40 Days of Poetry and featured on the Story Sessions blog)

[Possible trigger alert: inexplicit rape theme]

I

It begins…

And it is summer sunrise
A new day with dew-kissed air
And the juicy promise of the first peach of the season.
When the weather is warm, not hot
Breezy, not gusty.

There is heat,
And there is sunshine.

The gaze holds…

And it is rain –
The lovely kind that’s cool, not cold
Or warm, not clammy.
And you have no place to be but dancing in the puddle,
Curls plastered to your face
In a way that’s cute, not messy
Quirky, not weird.

There is laughter,
And there is thunder.

You go out…

And he orders your coffee before you arrive
Because he knows how you like it –
Strong, but smooth,
Sweet, but not fluffy,
Hot, not cold.
And you know that you’re a song he hears –
His favorite one
That he plays over and over.

There is melody,
And there is harmony.

II

He calls one day…

And he is sad, not happy
Worried, not carefree.
And he says, “I just got raped by that test.”
And the words are brown and rotting fruit,
Thrown to the ground by a careless wind.

You want to listen,
But you’re baffled and speechless
On the outside

On the inside, however,
You’re hissing…

No.
No, you did not.

No, you weren’t invaded
To your depths
To your soul

Despite your pleas
Despite your no
Despite your fists
And elbows
And knees.

Despite throwing everything you could think to throw
But still being marked
Helpless, not powerful
And weak, not strong.

You failed because you failed.

Not because something was inflicted upon you that you
Did not deserve
Did not ask for
Could not have foreseen or prevented

III

Or maybe the hiss slips out
Makes its way
Across the line of your lips
Across the line between you
Receiver to ear
Without a face to keep it company.

And it’s his turn to be baffled
And he says, “Where the fuck did that come from?”

And you know he’s hurt, not angry
And confused, not insensitive
(not intentionally, anyway)

YOU KNOW.

But you can’t hear what you know right now over the blaring trumpet solo the patriarchy is playing in your head.

All you can do is spit out…

It comes from
Be a good girl
And mind your manners
And nice girls don’t say things like that
And ladies don’t wear things like that

It comes from
You’re such a goody-goody
You’re such a slut
You’re such a tease
And how talented you must be to be all three.

It comes from
I know what’s best for you
You don’t know what you want
You know you want it
You knew what you were doing when you
Said that
Did that
Were that.

It comes from all the lies that you have ever been told
That you are second in command
Yet responsible for all
And utterly powerless to do anything
Except watch it all fall on top of you.

And no one will help you
Because we all think the whole mess is just one big joke.

IV

So it ends…

And it doesn’t occur to either of you
That there is a response that exists
Between baffled and furious
A way that reaches
Beyond livid and bewildered
Because in that moment, there isn’t.
Because when something fragile shatters
The instinct is
To stand very still
Or to sweep it all away.

No one thinks
To walk barefoot through it.

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Introducing…Brave!

Posted in Poetry, Story Sessions on January 20, 2014| 4 Comments »

The stage is ready.

The wobbly chair has been replaced.
The burned-out bulb has been changed.
Everything is set.

The audience is humming with social niceties and anticipation.
The announcer quiets them –
“And now – what you’ve all been waiting for – introducing….Brave!”

The curtains roll back, and the stage is empty.

The audience laughs.
“That’s clever,” they say.
“Brave wants us to think she has stage fright.”

They think it is all part of the act.

The laughter turns nervous as minutes pass and nothing changes.

Where is she?
The one who was up for anything
Who would try on any hat

Who was the first to step up to the mic
To step into the spotlight
To step out on the dance floor

Whose costume was see-through
In the right light
Who found that thrilling instead of terrifying

Who would have left the stage bare
So that she could choose her own entrance
And not leave it up to the curtain.

The joke of the faux-shy star would have been merely an afterthought.

Where is she?

She’s in her dressing room, throwing up.

She’s not sure if she’s sick from worrying whether she toned it down enough,
Or sick from what it says about the person she’s become that she toned it down at all.

This was my response to the prompt “Show me your brave” during tonight’s Story Sessions write-in. Show us your brave.  Join us.

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Beauty

Posted in Beauty, Hope, Poetry on January 1, 2014| Leave a Comment »

Image

Beauty is my one word for 2014. As soon as I knew that beauty was what I was dealing with, it started popping up everywhere. I shouldn’t be surprised. It’s no mystery why poets and writers and lovers and prophets and dreamers are obsessed with beauty – she is fragile and elusive and strong and everywhere. There’s such a wealth of words to say about this one word, beauty. So I chose a few beloved others to help me start my year of saying it.

“She walks in beauty, like the night
Of cloudless climes and starry skies,
And all that’s best of dark and bright
Meets in her aspect and her eyes;
Thus mellow’d to that tender light
Which Heaven to gaudy day denies.”
– Lord Byron –

Beauty hidden
The most beautiful aspect of a scene or person is rarely what’s out in front – what sees the light of day. It’s usually something that takes a little time and a measure of gentleness to find. I hope this year teaches me to slow down enough to see beauty.

“Beauty – be not caused – It Is –
Chase it, and it ceases –
Chase it not, and it abides -”
– Emily Dickinson –

Beauty found
Beauty is hard (impossible?) to manufacture. Oh, but we try. Our culture spends billions of dollars a year, chasing beauty, trying to force her hand. Trying to make her show herself to us. Trying to make her happen. And when something we make is beautiful, we think we’ve succeeded, but the truth is that we just uncovered the beauty that was there all along. I hope this year teaches me to find beauty.

“To appoint unto them that mourn in Zion, to give unto them beauty for ashes, the oil of joy for mourning, the garment of praise for the spirit of heaviness; that they might be called trees of righteousness, the planting of the Lord, that he might be glorified.”
– Isaiah 61:3 (KJV) –

Beauty redeemed
I sort of cheated last year. I didn’t figure out my one word until May. And it was not really one word. It was more a set of various words within a theme. Bravery. Courage. Risk. And looking back, that’s what the year was. It was a good year. It was a year when I took back my life (still not clear from whom or from what, but I am sure that now it is MINE). It was a year of making hard and scary choices. And I learned that scary choices are exhilarating and exhausting. Scary choices taught me that they are worth it – they will always teach you something – but that sometimes, the best choice isn’t the scary one. Sometimes what feels like fear is your brain saying, “Hey – that’s actually a bad idea.” Burning bridges and burning out will teach you where that line is. It will also leave you with a lot of ashes. Somewhere in those ashes, there is beauty. And I’m past ready to see her emerge from them.

“…it was a forbidden object…a useless and therefore a self-indulgent one. I asked her what purpose it served, and she told me, It doesn’t do anything obvious. But it might be able to do something in here. Then she touched her hand to her heart. Beautiful things sometimes do.”
– Veronica Roth, Allegient –

Beauty transforms
This is the hardest part to articulate. How will beauty change me? And please, oh please, let it do so. But how? What will it look like? Will I even recognize it? I hope so.

“Let the beauty we love be what we do.”
– Rumi –

Beauty does
There is a push inside of me to be more than an observer. To be the catalyst. To stop waiting for what I do to be noticed. To do the things (good things – no nefarious plots afoot, just to be clear) that cannot be ignored.

“Let the beauty we love be what we do.” YES.

This is the year of beauty.

Some of the most beautiful people I know, I met here – Story Sessions.

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Found Poetry: Year in Review via Blog Titles

Posted in Hope, Poetry on January 1, 2014| Leave a Comment »

Resolved:
Wanting Delicious Straight Male
What I Need
Why It Matters
What To Do

Happy Lazy Love Story,
Changing What I’m Into –
Wine, Bikini, Pie, and…
Unholy Longing
Happy Little Minute

I am From
Days of No Welcome
Excess Feminist Ramblings
Running Out
Too Much
Irritability
Ordinary Myth
Southern Talk
Visiting Phase

Not Eating
Not Planning Together

Sugar Saints
Perfect Food
Making Peace
Going Home
Unpopular Questions

Freedom.

[If you can’t tell, I’m having a lot of fun with my Story Sessions sisters in 40 Days of Poetry.]

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What I’m Into – December 2013

Posted in Books, Food, Poetry, TV, What I'm Into, Writing on December 31, 2013| 5 Comments »

This was a weird month.  It’s the first time I’ve been at a church that observes the liturgical year.  It’s the first time I’ve really “done” Advent (does one do Advent?  Is that something that’s done?  Or experienced?  Or watched?  I’m not sure which verb goes there.).

I’ve also been sick most of the month, so food choices have been limited.  It also limited my coffee consumption – I went completely without for a week and a half – which, as you might imagine, put me in a fantastic mood.

And let’s not forget North Texas’s little Icetember adventure. Because large quantities of ice are so rare in Texas, it’s not really cost effective to keep the resources to deal with it.  It’s cheaper to just shut everything down until it passes.  So we did.  Happy 4-day Icecation to me! I got home at about 4:00 on Thursday, and I did not even walk out the door to get the mail until the following Wednesday morning. Ah, introvert bliss.

One might think that, between being iced in and having to stay home sick and getting two weeks off from work for regular holiday vacation, I would have gotten a lot of writing/reading/TV watching done.

Heh. Not really.  Not any more than usual.  My house is pretty clean, though.

Here’s what I was into this month, besides deep, leisurely cleaning.

To write:

I wrote a lot of poetry this month.  I participated in Story Sessions’s 40 Days of Poetry. I guess it wouldn’t be a lot to people who usually write poetry, but for me, the nine or ten poems I wrote is more poetry than I wrote the rest of the year combined.  So for me, that’s a lot.

I also ranted about freedom of speech, which a couple of friends picked up and shared on Facebook without my sharing it first.  I didn’t have to point it out to them.  Translation: my friends read my blog and like what I write.  Sweet!  Thanks, friends.  That made my week.

To read:

As inspiration, I also read a lot of poetry this month.  I reacquainted myself with the likes of Neruda and Donne, and I reread Adrienne Rich’s Fox collection.

I mentioned last month that I jumped on the Divergent bandwagon, and during Christmas, I finished the last two of the trilogy.   In a day and a half.  I haven’t been sucked into something that completely in a while.  I have a confession, though.  Unpopular opinion #427 – I liked the ending.  I’ll try to tell you why without giving anything away to anyone who inexplicably has not read it yet.  Any other ending would have been, at best, a contrived mess.  I would even go so far as to say that the ending that a lot of people wanted would have been a betrayal of the craft, because when an author foreshadows something so blatantly, she ought to make good on it.  I mean, I read a lot of YA fiction, so I have a pretty high tolerance for teenage angst, but if I had sat through three books of it and ended up with no learning curve or subsequent resolution, that might have merited a nice, healthy tossing of the book across the room.  And that would have been problematic, as the book was large (hardback), and I was at my mother’s house, and she has many breakable knick-knacks.  So, for knick-knack’s sake, I am glad that it ended the way it did.

To watch:

This month that has meant reruns of Gilmore Girls, How I Met Your Mother, and The Office.  This month has also meant made-for-TV Christmas movies, because that’s what Mom likes, and Pawn Stars, because that’s what Dad likes.  I’m not opposed to either choice, but the hours upon hours spent…let’s just say that, while the trip to their house was lovely in many ways, I’m really happy to be home, where I’ve spent the last two days watching the second season of Castle.

To hear:

I have been obsessed with The Bangles this month.  You know how you wake up with a song in your head every day, and it stays with you for most of the day (no?  Just me?  Okay, then)?  At least half the month, that song for me has been a Bangles song.  You’d think I would be sick of it, but no.  I blame Lorelai Gilmore and growing up in the 80s.

To taste:

The Sickness put a bit of a damper on my meal choices this month.  I’ve apparently been really into vegetable broth, potatoes, applesauce, and peppermint tea.  I had to cancel Supper Club one night, because I wasn’t sure I could even take the smell of the meal I had planned.

But around the 20th, I started to feel better, so I got brave and had some toast, then some peaches, and by the 25th, I was able to enjoy my dad’s crock-pot turkey, roasted in a citrus gravy, which was either the most delicious thing I’ve eaten all year, or I was just really happy that it wasn’t broth.

So that’s how 2013 ends for me.  What are you into?

I’m linking up with Leigh Kramer – follow me over there!

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40 Days of Poetry – Questions

Posted in Church, Hope, Poetry on December 8, 2013| 2 Comments »

My question for you…
I’ll get to that.
First things first –
Your church and I?
We don’t like each other.
We “love” each other.
I love them like I love the prim biddy with corseted heart who preempts every hello with an are-you-seeing-anyone and looks down her highway of a nose when I talk of Those People.
They love me like they love their drunken, cantankerous uncle who embarrasses them at Grandma’s funeral by saying, “shit,” in front of the preacher.
But that’s not liking.
And that’s not enough.

How is it my fault?
That question is neither
“Tell me how wretched I am so I can wallow in my filth…”
nor
“Strip me of unpopular conviction so I can baa in tune with the rest of your sheep.”
If you require those responses
I’m not your girl for the job.
I am a dissenter.
I am a peacemaker.
If everything is possible for you,
How will you reform my soul to make it so?

I dreamed of a wall.
I cried.
I softened the mud between the bricks with my tears.
I planted seeds there.
I woke too soon,
But not before I saw the strongest root begin to nudge one of the bricks out of place.

I think you have begun.
I want in.

My Story Sessions sisters and I are doing 40 Days of Poetry.  Hopefully there will be more that I want to share.

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