Day 16

I don't know if I have love to give;
The love of stray hairs and chipped fingernails,
Of glances from halfway across the room
Felt as a tickle on the back of the neck
As warming as lemon toddies and,
in its absence, freezer-burn.

Day 15

1.
Oh, the singing of cats in the wee hours
Could warm the cockles of a polar bear
More accurate than the rooster
Shriller than a teakettle
Insistent as the sun itself, in peeking over the horizon!
And a harmony they make in difference;
Lizzie howls
Jack squeaks
Tucker brays
Mindy shrieks.

Day 14

1.
What is birth?
It is the universe saying "hello,"
Life grabbing one by the ankles
and pulling you along the ground
until you've found your footing and run.
It is the old universe
Kicking out everyone who could use
Some innocence
Some time to reflect,
and it is the future universe's time to wait
A magazine in hand, for you to come back round again.
To be born
starts the clock ticking, the hourglass flips, the heart beats
Everything shuffles aside to make room for your potential.
It gives the sun
Something new to warm.

Day 13

1.
Jackrabbits zigzag across the desert
Blurring red with tan and white
Over coyote's tail, and when he snaps --
Dive into the earth
Into the clay
Hot, magma center where everything slows
The heavy heartbeat of the world.
Scrabble on rock and pebble, jackrabbit shoots
Through volcanic tunnels and surges to surface
Popping free in some foreign jungle.
Monkeys swoop at his long ears
He whirls and bares
Fierce yellow incisors
Only the blue butterflies make haste then.

Day 12

1.
Red mud
From mountain blood;
dye washed from fox's tails;
maple leaves and poppy flowers.
All collected in one big puddle
Becoming red clay
In  sunlight.
Frog seedlings
burrow into the red mud,
black tails wriggling, waving, frightened;
nothing to breathe but silt.
We fill buckets
with red mud and black tadpoles
haul them out to safety
all afternoon.
They were saved.
Not all;
some died, but
many lived.

Day 11

1.
I am old and you are new,
because I like rainy Sundays and naps on the couch
and you want to be out riding rollercoasters,
which are fast and furious,
too fast for my taste, I want to stay
surrounded by all the things I love, whereas
you want to leave it all behind,
and we don't understand each other,
not really,
not well,
still there is a time when I invite you into my home
and with you on the threshold and I inside
we are both briefly happy,
holding hands at the edge of something new and old,
but it is too short for me
too long for you
the one who would catch a bullet train to Paris
with nothing but the clothes on your back and
a light in your eye, and I the one waiting
on the couch my mother bought
in the house I'll live the rest of my life,
if luck is kind,
a fate you would call a prison,
full of jailhouse mirrors which would reflect the dust
settling deep in your hair,
turning it gray instead of black, the color
of a moth-eaten vulture
like the one sitting in the attic, biding its time
glass eyes brighter than mine,
you said with cruelty --
"the world passes you by,
bright, beautiful, and you are unchanging stone,
and I cannot be with you,"
who knows which day that was, all the
ones you returned to my doorstep
hungry for permanence
which I have in plenty,
and the funny thing is how you do, too,
perhaps more than I
permanent in your impermanence,
you always come back.

Day 10

Delicious.

1.
8 o' the PM coffee is a dangerous thing
One sip too many, best take out a wallet --
Sheep don't come cheap
and you'll be needing more'n a few tonight.
Baa, baa black sheep - have you any sense?
no sir
not a wink sir
now ring up that latte!
If there ain't a bull to wrassle
cuz bulls don't hang in suburbia, well then
ya gotta live on the edge somehow
and if danger lies at the bottom of the cup
drink up!

Day 8 and Day 9

After the minor meltdown which Day 7 predicted, I am back! with two poems to make up for yesterday.

1.

[nursery rhyme prompt :)]

The dandelion's growling

The dogwood's barking mad

These leafy beasts don't scare me --

(well, maybe just a tad)

2.

Island Cat [rewrite]

August is ended.

One by one, tourists head for cooler climes

Everyone must go.

Yet when the final door is locked

She will curl among the browning pines

To dream of lonely things.

On the sand, their paths uncrossed

Gull, plover, fox and she-cat

Parallel lines, heading deep into winter.

December passes,

And sand blows like snow.

Her footsteps are licked clean by waves;

The trees turn her leavings to mulch,

Her kittens are become sand on the shoreline.

She herself is tossed and tumbled

In a brutal surf.

When winter frosts the whitecaps, she is there:

Small, windswept figure

Dark against the icy sea.

July is begun.

Umbrellas bloom in the hot, sandy soil

Birds fill blue skies with the sounds of living

The summer folk return

To the place of their origin.

Impermanent beings, they do not know

Of her, who tiptoes at the edges. But she knows them.

Her eyes hold the winter

So they don’t have to.

Day 7

Let the records show
This day began two weeks ago.
It was a cold day in Hell; I know this because
I said, "Wake up when? Hah, that'll be a cold day in --"
So there's that.
Breakfast was a hasty banana in the pre-dawn
And a cup of Cheerios; those spilled.
The first week was purely classes
One I skipped, but it still nibbles at my nerves
With guilt-sharp tiny teeth
Since Meredith probably spotted me
Lurking in the hall
Debating the merits of playing hooky.
C'est la vie, I thought and threw my hands in the air.
I'll take the chance.

The second week was the consistency of tapioca
I mean -- it consisted of tapioca. Coconut-smashing, pot stirring,
adding up the Band Aids as hours went by.
By the time it was done
I had to eat it, just to recapture the life-force it had stolen.
Dishes, then,
and I was bushed, beat, shot, stick-a-fork-in weary
lots of other stuff, but thesauruses are heavy. use your imagination.
Ready to roll off to bed
Crash-land in pillow land
But I have to write this poem first.

...@#$%!

Day 6

1.
Gray gradient
Raven rosettes
Fallow-finned
Ebon-eyed
Burnished body
Wonderfully whiskered

Copper-covered
Sable streamers
Broad belly
Little lips
Stately swimmers

Fluttering feelers
Amber abode
Cream chassis
Pedicel'd peepers
Mysterious mollusc.

(fun with fish and thesauri)

Day 5

1.
Drops pummel the window
The storm hollers, "Come out and fight!"
I think I will stay in tonight.
Sure, I know
Rain makes the grass grow
And turn a sightly green.
I don't give a hoot -- those clouds look mean.
Look at those worms on the concrete;
That's me, if I wet my feet
Bedraggled, sorry and puddle un-wonderful
(hey, e.e.cummings is cool)
So go ahead with your boxing gloves
Plant your red rain boots in the ring
While you're busy fighting the champ, Mother Nature
I'll be inside,
sleeping.

Day 4

1.

I stumbled across a funeral
One snowy April evening
High in the clawed branches of a lilac tree
Waited the wedding party, soberly dressed and silent
The cocks wore ebony suits, dusky cravats
The hens in obsidian dress and onyx pearls
Some rubbed beaks on branches as breakable as bone
A rustle, the sound of trees weeping
or a thousand wings lifting skyward.
Loved ones waited in line to offer the deceased
twigs of lilac, held in beaks
As though to furnish him a Heaven of flowers.
He died like this:
Sprawled at the base of the tree, beak open
Tongue dry as gray leather
Mites on exposed skin and feather
One foot clasped around a final thought
I stood and watched
Until they lofted up as one organism;
crisp and dignified, like scattered leaves.
Then I walked home under the streelights
Climbed into bed, kissed her forehead
and lay awake all night.

Day 3

1.
Dresses are joyous to the person
Who does not wear them often;
In the drape of chocolate rayon, I have a hand on the microphone
Into it breathing, with great precision, the notes of a song
Which burrowed into my heart, months ago
and is only now being given its due.
A single strap over a single shoulder
On a ruffled green gown
Is so provocative, I can feel grass under my soles, damp and dirt-gritty
Bare legs folded, smooth against one another
Prickling in the tepid humidity of an evening after rain
Evening dew, above which the fireflies hover
keeping their own feet dry.
Rich cranberry velvet, bound and draped, accompanied always
by the unfamiliar weight of delicate jewelry
sensitive between collar-bones
Could be the companion of a dinner where the menu says
wonderful, exotic words, and the tasting of things is ceremony
sacred, exhilarating, and decadent.
Deep down, a jeans-and-tee kind of girl, I don't wear 'em:
showy
show-too-much
uncomfortable
garments, but to be someone else for a minute, even
someone else standing in a dim and scruddy Boscov's dressing room
is a small, but happy miracle.

---------

2.
quildeer

pwoermd?

Day 2

1.
Zen
is appreciation of a caterpillar,
knowing his green, yellow and black rings
do not bind butterfly wings;
and those brown and black stripes are not telling tales
of winter days to come.
Can't he simply be brown-and-black beautiful?
Of all of us,
these little souls know the true meaning of rebirth,
making and unmaking themselves halfway through their life's amount.
Half a creature from beginning to end;
it is simple kindness to call them whole:
walking, waiting, or winged.

Day 1

1.

The pastel finery

of tulips I planted only a day past

is white with April snow.

Telling them, "This is Mother Nature's fault --"

is useless,

like explaining to my cat, wearing the

Cone of Shame,

how it is for his own good. 

Both accuse me in silence, my involvement

more heinous with each passing second.

Outside, the magnolias are bursting forth.

They will be brown tomorrow

By winter's touch, burned,

but at least I'm not to blame.

------

2.

When I was ten, I followed you

to the edge of a golden wheat field. 

There are bees, you said, but they won't harm us

The fox hides from our footsteps in his den.

Diana, you wrote dreams

From such poor mediums as paper and ink: that was the true magic.

Your stories asked us to make sense from surrender.

If Tolkien was your hero, you were Tolkien doing the tango;

the only person allowed to give adverbs employment.

I loved you.

The words we sorely needed - innocence and hope and joy -

They will be missed.

The footsteps of deer in a tangled green wood;

not the roar of wheels, thundering down a grimly lit highway. 

Testing, testing, 1 2 3...