Tag Archives: love

Dyad

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It’s careful planning
in open seasons,
speeding on the highway-
none are most enchanting
than sultry evenings.

It’s dampening ground
then freezing compost-
warming to the sunlight,
glint and once again crowned
each day, sol profound.

It’s noisy joy
come silent druthers.
Minus equals pluses
and divisions are ploys
with burnished alloy.

It’s swaying elders
in the blue dimmet.
Twinkle and a glimmer
of days when he held her,
she’d swoon and swelter.

It’s now and tempted
cosset the twilight,
The token now doublet,
a bell sound presented
with geminate thread.

Quench

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Most times it is a crumpled ball,
this sheet of words, intact and small –
wound around and bunched within
my secret thoughts and synonyms.
Folded, once or more, the verbs
bundle but do not deter
the escalating captive theme-
a wish once held inside the dream.
Sometimes, I unwrap the leaf
bending back the freed motif
to see your smile and hold your hand
then I crush it back again –
A crinkled memory, held in close
that now I render in repose.

Glow

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When I’ve lit a warming fire,
the blooming flames go licking higher
engulfing piled up timbers-
In oak and cherry cinder
new sparks,a hope engendered.

The crackling bite from fibres bound
now torn, fragmented in a sound-
pulled apart from stable lengths
betraying links and bonds and strength
new sparks,a hope engendered.

And after time, the flames reside
awaiting what I can provide,
More lumber on the bed of coals
feeding hungry, lonely souls-
new sparks, a hope engendered.

And after flickers fade to glows
and darkness settles, fills and stows
it’s bundles in the cloaking night
ever silent, there alight
new sparks, a hope engendered.

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.

Pastel

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In springtime, when our love was young
as children frollicking, run ’round and sung
wearing orchid dresses or mallow
neckties – to romp in damp grasses
in crayola sunlight.

Late winter of another year
in charcoal black and sinister
veneers of burgundy and brown- our hopes
and passions tread into ground.
And lasting what seems of a full bitter night,
unanswered prayers of a hopeless plight.

Come morning, then, in the orange dawn
a windless chill – almost gone.
An Easter vigil, impassioned rites
borne of blood-red, silver, black and white,
returns a prize bought with a cost-
hope eternal once thought lost.

Unknowns (Cento)

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The wars go on and on,
invading  your dreams.
Everything you saw
                                 you were,
and you saw everything.
Out of the heart of the ineffable
draw the black flecks of matter
and from these the cold, blue fire.
It produced a wavelike pattern.
All this prodding, so that to an outside observer,
we are the gods who can unmake
the world in seven days.
And just as I need every bit
 of what is seen,

even among these
defractions,
visions that witches brew,
spoken with images,
never with you-
There was never any more inception than there is now,
to go into the unknown.
I must enter, and leave, alone,
I know not how,
but knew love and
know it through knowledge.
-The darkness in the open mouth
uttered itself, pushing
aside the light.
Credits:
Jessica Hagedorn, Don Bogen, Diane di Prima, John Beer, Lisel Mueller, Jane Yolen, Michael Anania, Walt Whitman, Edward Thomas, Laura Moriarty, Helen Dudley, Margaret Atwood

Reduction

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He sees her wilting coriander
advancing ice and winter weather
casting eyes on cold and anger
like the wilted coriander.

He runs the lathe and turns the marrow
shaving, shaping without sorrow.
What is left but just tomorrow
piled in dust and bone and marrow.

Boiling down the balm and spirits.
Effortless in tone and lyric
words that weep and sounds elicit-
left with tinctured pome, the spirit.

And inside, while cold and bitter
sparks a flame, staves the shiver.
Waits for songs that he will give her
to warm the heart, and mull the bitter.

eau

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a fragrant voice,
a merging sound
to gather yellow, red and crowned

in a glottal stop
between the soundings
of the clock.

in a fashion, step
betwixt the puddle
stones and ripples, mixed.

lovers with their grasping hands-
arose, then reached at its command
and cleaved the blood-pricked
thorn, alone

in silence
and in clamored tones.

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.

the last

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As it happens, I get lost in the sky
where sunsets stroll away.

A peaking light around a corner
beyond the frontier of yesterday

I look to the last remains
even when the shadows begin
and wrapped from behind in covers
I gaze toward a fading din.

I dream of passion reds
that trail to orange, bleed to pink.
Turning around in silent awe
to indigo in a wink.

And there the fire ignites upon
this early autumn eve,
a lover of the colored sky
embraced without reprieve.