Best Loosening Poems
Slipping into my silver-gray SUV
Nicknamed " Sly Buster Cruiser”
I speed off down the rocky, off-highway road.
Twisting and reeling like my wired mind,
windows down, sunroof open,
(Annie Lennox groveling on the CD player),
reckless noon rays on my chin,
wind on ticklish, naked nape ...
Damn, who cares? I am 19 again?
Shuffling into the 7-Eleven Store
beside the Shell gas station
(With a free wind shield clean-up),
I draw out some bucks for a Philip Morris pack
and a two bottles of beer, plus a Dorito
( the barbecue flavor , please)…
Ain’t a drinker; a smoker on occasion,
but I feel like being reckless and
slightly rebellious ;
I lock the door prepping up for an untamed ride.
Grabbing a spray of cologne mist
and red-violet lipstick from the tote,
my irises roll from the lane to the side mirror,
as I slowly dunk the beer, icy and bubbly
zooming away with hands laughing on the wheels.
Nobody knows me in this place; my ribs shout silently:
This is just all for me; just now, I’ll be.
This is just between me and the edge of a free road.
This is about my navel breathing fire and ice,
It’s about touching danger fast without reason or fuzz
Because later, all this smooth craziness will soon pass.
Back to the same home trail, I rip the cigarette sticks,
slide the unused bottle in my bag
before wiping the red on lips with the Dorito foil…
“ Mommy, Mommy… where have you been?”
I smile as if my skin had chased a tornado…
Dumping the beer on the back porch,
My hand is cleansed by some kind of holy water,
And I start to hug my mischievous girl...
Then off I start to roll the plates on the sinking sink.
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Celebrating My Faves Contest
For Andrea Dietrich--Faved by Sponsor
Reposted 4/24/2016
Bless your heart — Southern Sugah’
Pecan pies love clouds,
smothered and smothered in peaks
— fresh whipped cream, Darlin’
Sinful recipe —
sweet lil’ hymn.
Ma’am!
7/14/2018
From Wikipedia: The Bible Belt is an informal region in the Southern United States in which socially conservative evangelical Protestantism plays a strong role in society and politics, and Christian church attendance across the denominations is generally higher than the nation's average.
So many of us have been through so much
in these recent years of covid, its been so hard
personally been horrendous with my stammer
so difficult not getting out feeling so barred
It seemed I was stuck in a rut
even when restrictions lifted, words block
but continue to seek the Lord for release
nothing was coming as I continued to knock
When mask wearing was last to go
people didn't make out what you say
it seemed so difficult to be free
crying Lord help me to with you stay
Then in April '22, the Lord came down
in Ireland on holiday touched my tongue
among others there in our hols group
felt ease and calm deep in my lungs
Since then speaking has been nearly new
getting out again to the coffee shop on my own
the gradual loosening of my tongue had came
blessed be my great God, answers my very groan!
(My thoughts on recent personal answered prayer that has turned my life around again by the merciful grace of God.)
I had no voice, I could not speak.
God knew what havoc this could wreak.
He found a way to loose my tongue
For those songs waiting to be sung.
He brought the words from deep somewhere
And poems I didn't know were there.
It took the grief, the trial of fire
And my own acceptance to inspire.
If you should chance to read this rhyme,
Just know God's working overtime
To set me free of inner pain;
To find a life that's whole again.
The frost is on the fodder now, a killing blight of cold.
We have crossed the river—gray, wide—
to reach the place where stories are retold
leaving the iron winter at the door.
Here the bin is full, the fire bright
we shut the night out with a single latch.
Praise the humble things that make a feast
the paper-skinned onion dissolved and gone
the invisible labor—the greatest and the least
the butter loosening into liquid sun.
We praise the sweetness pulled from stubborn ground
the heavy pumpkin, copper-fleshed, profound.
For the world begins and ends upon this wood
this scarred old table where the ghosts draw near.
My grandmother's hands, translucent in the steam
pass the bowl of something not quite here.
We carve the bird, dry, sacrificial meat
and blend our strange new spices with the sweet.
Bless the throat that swallows, the lung's slow tide
the cedar shingles holding back the rain
the kneading hands gone numb with repetition
those small liturgies we gather against the pain.
For even in the shadows or the fear
we set a place for everyone not here.
The Pilgrims crouched beside their starving fires
while Haudenosaunee blessed the Three Sisters' yield
their hungers haunt this feast like iron in the water
undrinkable, essential, in the field.
The mist has lifted. The honest work is done.
We taste the generations in gingered slice.
So praise for what breaks open and stays broken
for sight, for blindness, for the space between
for this abrading, necessary evening
for everyone we've harmed and cannot heal.
The world forgets itself here, then remembers
autumn spills its copper into winter's palms.
We will not wait for loss to teach us dying.
The harvest of the heart, the gathered store
we pay the simple, heavy human price
of loving what we have and asking nothing more.
Not grateful for our goodness, but for breaking
together in this blood-warm, breathing place.
We are the fruit returning earth, becoming sun.
evening’s quiet breath~
a single gull skims the tide
day loosens its hold