Tag Archives: free verse

How to move through the rain

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Into each life, some rain must fall – H. W. Longfellow

Use an umbrella, preferably compact
and easily stored.

Use an umbrella, preferably full-sized,
with a six foot diameter.

Cover your head:
Use the Plain-Dealer
Or the Times-Picayune
Or an old copy of the Post-Intelligencer

Don’t use the Sun-Times
The Sun-News,
Or the Standard-Examiner

Move like Gene Kelly,
and sing,
sing and tap,
sing,
and tap and sway.

Pirouette,
in comfortable shoes.

Swing at raindrops with a Katana sword.

Be like a petal, opened
and rediscovered
in the spring.

Let the rain kiss you on your head,
as it must,
and even though a-washed in dreary
and cold, silver, liquid drops,
revel in the
-slishity slosh-

Calculate the horizontal velocity and random path
required to pass through a normalized distribution of water drops
falling
at their terminal velocity,
and walk
between
them.

Avoid the puddles.
Dash through the puddles.

Hold hands.

Soak,
and watch the water
drip from your fingers.
Down to the ground
and wash away.

As when dandelions bloom

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four months from now,
the sun will lie in wait,
hanging in the damp,
and the air will be thick
with summer’s late serenades
that twist
and linger,
before a precipitous
lunge. Time will stand still,
before exhaling at its crest
to signal an end
to an effulgent season,
four months from now.

and so will you, soon

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see the world
while walking there, alone;
the sky will open or the wind might blow
and send you forth along
with words and pictures,
clever rhymes and songs.

And the words might fill your soul,
(or send you down a rabbit hole);
or cast your sail into the wind
(then pause in stills, to wait…again)

the song might fill your empty heart
or send you in a deep’ning dark.
a rhyme could tickle, opening up your eyes
(then raise a laugh, with tears not improvised)

While ruminating thoughts echo between
the cascade sounds and tranquil scenes,
this symptomatic curse draws me to a close
and so it will to you,
soon, I suppose.

itinerant

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I’ve progressed beyond that,
                                         and I pack my lunch
                                         now,
every day –
                                        along with a list
                                    of places
                                                     to go;
                  breaking out alone
in full stride
                     or steering within
                                                   currents, and when
                           the sun
                                                   has reached
                                                   the other side
                                                   of the horizon
I know I’m
half way there.

omens of happiness

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they seem to portend
a link,
just as paper clips,
pulled from the cup;
one is removed
another follows,

a chain created.

Or with only one,
compressing a stack
of paper, each page
containing an old poem,
sandwiched between
alighting smiles,
and upside-down songs.

*******************************
Today is the International Day of Happiness (declared by the UN)…

A link below from a blog, with various quotes about happiness.

http://interestingliterature.com/2014/03/20/20-quotations-from-writers-about-happiness/

‘A happy life consists not in the absence, but in the mastery of hardships.’ – Helen Keller

Have a frabjous day!

being, true

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a marionette soldier,
painted apple red
and royal blue,
folded and put away,
piled in what construes
an uncomfortable position.
     His absent expression
     looks more about a wait
     on war,

all parts affected,

loosely strung

     than wishing for
     a gentle hand gesture
     for a moment played and spared
     his need for motion sated.

with threads connected –
though not his wont
   

   thinking that the songs
    and dances were his own,
    and all is right with God.

stretched, strained
and being,
true from time’s perspective.

into the wind

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It was cold when
I heard her singing, but
it was only an interlude,
filled with the remnants
that had dropped in between
an arpeggio’d smile.
still -improvised- it was enough
to wrap me against the wishes
of the wind,
as I chased it over the hill,
and casted fate in a song
of my own,
written in summer’s tongue.

a lonely poem

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this, the dim-light winter brings-
uncertain angst? -between the ease-
hoisted placards for all to see
that neither laugh nor blithely sing.

smudged, it looks out through murky panes,
at reflections flickering in the rain
its fabric stitched, retorn, and sewn
and still would morph it’s blood and bone.

words turn away from darkened doors
quiet clomps on hardwood floors,
with off-slant rhythms felt before.

just awaiting light conceived
in charcoal darkness, that gives reprieve
with slightly onamatopoeic schemes that knock
and awake the patchwork echos here
but deadbolts keep out hope and fear.

************
This was an attempt to describe the dark feeling of not being good enough. Loneliness, especially in winter, can propogate fear. Spend time in the sun!

bonded

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a yawn inside a swirly snowy globe shaken,
then stared upon,
watchful of how the plastic snowflakes
settle in among the quilted covers,
some together, lovers;
others left alone asleep
when winter plunders, slows and crawls.

Seemingly coerced to follow
in the fleeting moments
of traveled icy squalls,
gloom hears a single sigh that calls.
Far below caressing snow,
undermining bitter loneliness,
a beauty-green that sleeps, a wondrous seed:
a genesis to one day rise, accede
with a petal, rediscovered in the spring.
and myths are bonded, converging so-
and make your garden grow.

ffslomo-snowglobe-112712-09[1]

twelve

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I sat down to write and assess a poem of great
inspiration and importance, and when I stopped
I counted all the syllables and found that most
or twelve of them were simple prepositions or
articles, and I relied upon them to string
together phrases, much like threading popcorn or
construction paper chains, and putting a green one
in every twelfth link (so I know how many there
are); this could apply to knitted scarves that could go
on and on and on forever. But then how could
someone even use a scarf that was twenty-four
miles long (a distance that’s really arbitrary).

Continuing, I found myself too obsessed with
the structure and detail of it, (the poem) lacking
any sense of pull with the “normal” sentiments that
inspire: sun, moon, stars, ponds, anyone and no one,
love and death on diverging roads, alas music
not even present and accounted for in this
catenation. Such admiration I hold for
them who check and recheck the number of items
from sun up to sun round in continued amounts,
like counting the grains of sand at the oceanside,
which seems different on each day, but really not,
and you wonder if anyone would notice thirteen.

*********************
This was an experiment in both stream-of-consciousness and attempting to maintain a structural theme of sorts. Also, just some blathering…Creativity should be nutured. Incidentally, I looked up at one point while typing, and WordPress had saved an interim version at 12:12 PM…Oh to have finished this at that point. Thanks for reading.