Tag Archives: free verse

Swept up (Cento)

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Negation, all fulfilled desire
gold with a heart of cinder.

Everything suggests something else.

When the weeds sprawl
it is not what you think.

The dust motes float
and swerve in the sunbeam
because I say we rather than they;

They change the color of your dream:
We is whiplash
and backhanded ways of settling grief.

Very present like a dark poem,
far and unreadable just out
at the edge of this poem floating.

And it is this rocking back and forth

to take in to sate the mouths

of humid heavy air and the wing music
of bees and flies.
Only, of course, they can’t sustain the part.
Tomorrow waits with a big broom.

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This Cento contains lines from the following poets:

Shirley Geok-Lin Lim, Robert Frost, AF Moritz, Muna Lee, Carl Sandburg, Karen Volkman, Lee Herrick, WS Graham, Susan Donnelly, Alison C Rollins, Ha Jin, Jean Garrigue, Jacob Saenz

Potential

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I’ve seen where the snow melts to rivers,
passing over the cusp of terrain.

Poured lonely and loved into vessels pressed
by eons, it froths and drives.
Pulling and pushing the raw,
Filling and turning the wanton mutation
of these bends and falls to impatience
and hurried decline.

Cold and clear – this water, 
a gypsy surge
bathed with benevolent favor
and no time on its journey
for deliberation.
Embraced at its finish
and swirled among the pools
of a quintillion bonded kindred souls.

Disbelief ( a Cento)

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Time does have mercy. But it doesn’t enumerate or wait.
A mother of course goes on setting the table, even if it’s with broken plate
lit with the fire of sighs, casts spells, burns sage,
sweats in a lodge, her own prayers flaming,

afraid to demand the right
to be afraid.
You’re trying very hard.
the sensation of anticipated
hearing close inside the ear
and the incipient murmur or cry

Ask and ask until nothing’s left to ask.

A hundred Cheerios, one by one, thinking,
bearing a slender cord for unseen hands.
The rims of wounds have wounds as well.
The memory- as the sole miracle hovering in the air-
Dreams. Time. Horizon. Farther from home than belief
of how your mother laid roses.

 

This Cento is comprised of lines from the following poets.

Chen Chen, Barbara Ras, Sheryl Luna, Robin Morgan, Ko Un, Alice B. Fogel, Carry Fountain, Edwin Markham, Lucie Brock-Broido, Arthur Davison Ficke, Simon J. Ortiz.

Metathesis

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Raw material
thought unneeded and defective
on snows of paper-
Coloring the outlook in real pigments,
a gradient in between the
two-tone coloration anchored
by the evil absence of light.
It must be a bitch
or at least alien logic
to walk thru or wear on
in such complications.

On the timing,
don’t rush or force the ending.
Science waits-
wins out over time and darkness-
increasing the demand for
beautiful poems.

Choice words (Cento)

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Under the wordless sky, come
with loveliness and the icy drouth
of hate –

The diverse forms of things, how can we learn?
Such is life’s trial, as old earth smiles and knows
We call things beautiful, not as such, but because of what they mean.

One moment rests my heart, to rend the next
with words alert and bold,
betrayals so long repeated
that they are taken for granted.

And passing on, smiled like a singing rainbow,
the sky too soon shall witness on your winter hill
as atoms dissipate, as chance sorts life.

*********
A Cento is a poem comprised of lines borrowed from other poets. This one owes is origins to the following poets:
Edward Albert Clements, Margaret Fraser,V.N. Wylde,John Creagh, Kathryn Worth, Joseph Stanley Pennell, John Davies, Robert Browning, Anthony Madrid, and W.S. Merwin.

Hidden

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In praise of pewter and braids –
and time that fills the empty spaces,
my songs carry with them
faces of blue, confiscated from clouds.

I imagine them as downcast-
bent as the newly emerged jonquils
under a storm.
Forlorn, as an abandoned
patch of last season’s snowmound.
And roiling with the murk
of runaway rainfall and laced
with mud.

Somewhere, burgeoning
behind the surging somber
lies her bronzing sun, polished
and rose umber, attempting to gleam
during the hidden moments of today.

Openings

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The picket fence between me
and the road blends and
culminates with symmetry of
scenery. Not a barrier like
doors – those of different
colors and woodgrains – openings
with stone thresholds, inviting
and structurally restrained.
Fences with alternating slat/space
continuums – so observation is not completely obscured
but the breach of us and them is there.
I focus on the panels and their monochromaticity,
accompanied by sun-glare and
it makes me move to the open space.
Here are changing things –
blades of sawgrass moving,
birds that appear and disappear
while rolling in the sky,
the maundering of a single
cloud. My mind follows.

Thoughts on epiphany

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I have decided that music
bears witness to the scenery around us.

A woman wearing a bunny eared winter cap
can listen to “Wild Thing” and “Always a Woman”
and still be focused on serious world issues.

The sounds of Professor Longhair and Dr. John
refresh a winter day of Epiphany just as well as Kings College
at Christmastide.

A conversation with a beautiful soul
can ignite a fire – for warming a dulled
and calloused heart.

Walking on salted sidewalks
leaves a rhythmic pulse in your brain
with bodhran and guiro contributions.

The sparkle of lights in the darkness
of early morning never grows old. The silence
makes them shine.

The end of the day lingers when you drag out
the last light from inside.

Is she

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It is hollow sounding
once struck-
then resonant, tones
that lean and carry
into the next.

Suppressed by pedal
at breathing points,
only to fly in phrasing
and surround-
taking us in.

Suppose we were
to stay, encompassed by
the echo, inside the billow
of the melody
improvised.

How would we know?
After the first note
we breathe its air-
sway in a joined jive
inside the song.

Even led among
the staves, turning
and taking our time
for crescendos
and kisses.

spirals

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I followed the twisting branch
of the hazel tree, from the end
contorting me through its bends and corkscrew
wrench. I noticed the blue sky
just beyond and lingered there
for just moments and lost my try.

I traced a tangled shoot
from its tip, well into the
mangled form, and noticed a single
leaf – waiting- and watched
it live, forgetting how I traveled
there and where I was destined.

I chased the crooked lines
that overlapped and twined,
becoming one in the matted vines
where sky and sun are dim
and all is mangled and confined.
My words were caught in creviced splines.

I let the torsions lead me in
and angled, changing me instead
remained on a path of helix.
With new braids and spirals wed,
the path led somewhere new ahead
among the hazel twists and treks.