I, I, You

Feb 15/12:  So my idea is this:):
you have to complete each of the following 3 lines in the  order they are in.
you have to repeat the process 3 times ( in essence creating 3 verses)
the final 4th verse will have only two lines and these two lines are totally up to you:)

I used to be__________________
but now I am ______________________
If only you could _____________________

I used to be a nymph of the evening tending the western orchard, pollinating golden flowers watching them grow to golden apples, an actor on the earthen stage in orchards of the Hesperides,

but now I am in the agribusiness field, watching monarch butterflies in their mortality, caressing superweeds interbreeding during lawsuits about patent infringements .  Yet, there is still a high wind in the buffer zone. 

If only you could make it better.

I used to be a dominant demi-god in the understory, reaching to touch the sacredness of cedar, breath by breath with the reverence that is animal, staring into eyes of ocean, touching moving glaciers with hands browned by sun, face lightened by moon.

but now I am a pipeline, oblivious, enclosed, encased welded steel, no light, no sound, no taste, no vision, no scent, no touch, defiling and defiled.

if only you could make it all go away.

I used to be entire earth, smooth, solid, curved crescent breathing as one, one sound, one unity, love and dreams together.

but now I am fragmented, shards of colour, sharply defined, hate cutting like a moon-lit scimitar.

if only you could fix it.

what was once can almost never again be as it was

but just after the almost you could draw the dream

window

I know it floats somewhere

like the planet earth

were I an astronomer I would postulate the flatness

the floating

like a dusky brown leaf at twilight in a slow running creek

images provoke the bone

now drugged

now it can’t move

now it can’t feel

but craves drop and drop [Papaver somniferum]  over tongue gums throat other organs

I know this window keeps me in

or is it that like a shoulder to the grindstone it pushes

palms strong

the swirls of air

of breath of people

of words of ringing of bells

I know I won’t let the window be cleaned

it blurs so beautifully

translucent amorphous forms

like diaphanous gowns in a century (but not this one)

dust like petals of poppies rubbing glass

rubbing bone

I know I will untie the cord

let the curtain fall

in place

I know I will not look

at the common

place

leaves of Spring 

water

“It is well to have some water in your neighborhood, to give  buoyancy to and to float the earth"

      Henry David Thoreau

it was my dream to start with

I see swells

see almost silent breaths upward facing mouths

all was water and no one knew what was a shore

so content was the water in smothering earth that not even the rocks had eyes

and I, (in my dream) dangling like a helicopter with nowhere to land

arms like wings of a white bird

nesting in salted dark swells

legs glued like a mermaid and

finally hair like someone who was drowned

I would give my eyes to the rocks, I said (in my dream), but all the priests said no

each rock said yes, though, (in my dream) even knowing that soon and forever even the highest desert would lose its buoyancy

Nov 22/11

thor's well

Dec 28/11:  I would like us to write something about the second picture "Thor's Well" any length, any form

my lips are under the water

(I dare not taste the salt)

but look

at the new moon             moving to waning crescent

speak

through lightning

listen

through thunder

feel the hammer on my bones

ask

will you lift my face toward the sky

the book I read told me truth is there at the bottom of the well

every well, I assumed

but none are gentle, I found

so I walked the ground to every one, laden with oaken bucket

 to slip into it

the truth

to capture it lying there selfishly in silt

letting those dead speak in

hollow echoes

to shimmer the darkened water with

their eyes

to entice us heavily clothed ones, yoked to buckets

to look for that truth which, as we know, comes naked out of the abyss

but only when the moon is full

and the sky silenced

and the hammer stilled

my eyes are underwater

(I taste only salt, but whether it is my blood or the blood of the sea, is hard to tell)

the moon now is full shaped       so large                , so bright I would say

I ask again

this time in silence

will you lift my face to the sky

primavera

Botticelli’s Primavera

___________________________________________________________________

love is scarce

it must, by decree

manifest at

just the exact convergence         of stars and moon of planets and suns of clouds and wind.

at the touch of frigid palms

look up and behind

 voice choked by

his breath,          then

spew

beauty

on garments

diaphanous and flowing and luscious      strewn gaily with

newness              enough                                for a garland.

and so   l think I may be

with child.

just at the moment of

conception

they must dance

the three

must dance with grace

while he, moving the air with beating wings

holds back the cloud

while love will pierce

with bronze-tipped arrow

the most virginal              then blood

will spring

and all reason dissolve in  slurry

while she born of ocean spray, froth, delicate lace-white,

holds eyes downcast

love isn’t too hard to get these days       like

at the club

this guy was so hot          but

my bff didn’t think so

he had on this beat suit

blue       like his skin

he didn’t say much

actually nothing

but blew on my shoulder

after I looked at him from

across a crowded room

he left

real early

before the moon was gone

even before we could dance

forest

by the 12^th century, they had killed all the shells

 

I think I had a dream of trees

tall, maybe but maybe their tops were severed

forest like a watercolour

a poorly mixed one at that

paper kept too long in sun curling itself at the touch of colour

paper (in my dream) washed over too much sopping

a fetid smell could be organic matter rotting

on the brush

I am sure I had a dream of forest ground

where leaves came from somewhere

but where no one in the city could explain

I am sure that in my dream

the ground

was too hard

to dance on

so I paddled their canoe

slipping through water

brackish and hostile to terrestrial plants

so I could touch the fog

fog like those cones of cotton candy

handfuls of them

at the feet of carneys hawking their games

title

My idea for today's poem is choose one of the following titles and write whatever it brings to mind for you.

Immortal Thoughts     Bernward Koch


From Seed to Leaf       Jane H. Newell


The Surprise Picnic      John S. Goodall  

I felt like I was somewhere in the fifties, mid century where

it is dark at three-fifty-two and I am

small and not of English descent

but it seems I still look at time from an iphone

itime

iescape

imemory

ieverything

and I get the luminous walk sign which was so not needed mid century

when we crossed pavement

not outlined

leering mid century men

rolling down car windows

at pre-pubescent chests

making me wanting to

be by the side of a creek

where

dreams can be floated on leaves or on twigs

to a stream with a cold waterfall

to a larger river

to the ocean forever