Long Bleaches Poems
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Satin Flowers
The desert is a harsh place.
Sometimes life can not keep up the pace.
Others… taunt the heat, wild things between the rocks.
They bring colors, that have no rival anywhere.
Red flame, blue sky, orange-gold…
These are the beginnings of summer, the endings of fall,
and the promise of times ahead.
In the place they lay to rest the ones I cared about,
it is quiet, and there is shade.
There is no water.
Spiny cactus rule, but trees of yellow dust touch everything…
It all feels like grains of sand in a giant time piece.
I have brought five and dime blossoms, perfumed with scent.
They will stay for a while, until the brilliant sun bleaches them white.
I will return, if I can.
I will replace them…
Then.
My thoughts
The bridges in my brain
My memory
My courage
The baggage of a name
Letters scripts projecting all the same
Contacting the central station of my brain
My brain
It holds and release
Messages increases
Para-thesis
Sneezes
Cripple loads paraplegic
Pieces
Brought together whether we need it
Life begins photosynthesis heat bleaches
Turn colors creative catastrophic catastrophes repeated
Who is to see it?
Revolutionized revelation exceeded
Time capsule opened chapel preach it
Believe it
Changes come to set strange hypothesis school history bleeped it
Covered with lies folk made up sheets blanket keep it
Wave pattern memorized hypnosis deleted
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
For over two decades, my husband and I taught in Fabens, Texas, a small border community southeast of El Paso, Texas. Teaching in a border community was hard and required a certain amout of Texas grit. By spring break, we were spent and exhausted. So, a group of us teachers looked for a place where we could escape, gain perspective, and rejuvenate before the final stretch of the school year. We loaded up an SUV and made the three-hour drive from El Paso to Marfa, Texas, calling our journey Pilgrimage to Marfa.
The sun bleaches bones of old Chevys
parked like tombstones
behind the Hotel Paisano~
Marfa doesn’t rush.
Even spring break
is a slow unraveling,
a dust devil spinning
nothing but its own restless heat.
Marfa doesn’t care
that we came here to escape~
only that we did,
barefooted down a gravel road,
dust rising like slow applause.
We wander through town,
the desert swallowing us whole
in its pink-lit throat~
A tumbleweed rolls
through the motel pool,
chlorine-green and half-drained,
while the neon sign blinks:
Vacancy or Mirage?
At dusk, we drive gravel roads
chasing the Marfa lights—
not UFOs, just the desert exhaling
what we can’t explain.
Yet, we half-believe in something out here~
the Marfa Ghost Lights,
the way the highway stretches
like a long, lazy promise
The stars here don’t twinkle.
They stab.
When the wind lifts a skirt of sand
over the highway’s cracked lips,
we all pause, feeling
suddenly holy,
suddenly small.
You want to know its merits?
Very well, then. Daylight slants
deliciously across the boy's
inclined, thoughtful face.
His lace collar, crumpled,
houses valleys of shadow.
Or what about the Water Seller?
Look at that poncho's warm
woven woollen texture:
and isn't the rip in the shoulder fun?
And the dimples on the pot!
They scream "potness" at us.
Or the beads of water
clinging to the larger vessel,
whose horizontal striations
practically smell
of the potter's wheel.
But oh, that drinking-glass!
Does it seem possible to you
that unctuous oils and minerals
of earth, gouged from the soil,
can render the ethereal soul of glass?
It was a winter afternoon.
I'd gone along to the gallery
on the off-chance.
Standing before this marvel,
I found myself entranced.
But even as I gazed, the sun
(though never very confident in London)
stepped out coyly from behind a cloud.
Duck's-egg orange light, resplendent,
now fell aslant the canvas.
Surely this was harmful?
Sunlight bleaches (does it not?)
the colour out of things.
Alarm bells should be ringing.
I summoned a uniform attendant.
He nodded sagely as I explained
- but did nothing.
Why should he care?
Minimum wage is no great motivator.
An hour from now,
he'd be hanging up that peaked cap,
and be a person until Monday.
No point in bursting
a blood-vessel
over a silly painting. Later.
But I couldn't leave it.
If I stood just thus,
my human frame was just enough
to block the sun.
One little skirmish could be won
if I remained here
until the sun’s trajectory was done,
or the gallery closed,
whichever came the sooner.
So I did. On tip-toe,
spine inclined, quiet,
I crowded out the light of day
for more than an hour.
Pointless, you say.
I can't deny it.
The very next day,
And each subsequent foray
of Phoebus would
merely recreate the problem.
That's hardly the point.
Finding myself there,
I beat my ploughshare
into a sword and,
for that tiny slice of time,
I made the sacrifice,
bore the quizzical looks
with equanimity, quirky,
standing like a turkey
on tenterhooks
and saved the painting.
A chameleon basks among the leaves...color me green
he slithers accross a leafless branch ..color me tan
he trips and falls onto the grass ...color me green again.
My mind takes off on a flight of fantasy
color changes sure make me dizzy.
and here's another twist.
Bleaches and creams....color me white
suntan lotion .................color me tan
is there a shade to color me black?
Is it fantasy .......or is it a fact ...
am I ashamed of the skin I'm in?
The chameleon changes color to protect itself ..a safety net one might say
but why do we change the color of our skin
are we ashamed of what we are....afraid that discrimination will wear us thin?
or is it that we do not know
that whatever color change we make
we remain the same underneath.
Marred and minced remnants pile high in a storm’s swarm
Yesterdays, hardened-soft, surface where sea’s warm…
Flotsam found, lays tales around, in frayed traces
Another shattered shell whimpers of graces
vying with the sea-swept sands: gloss embossed fades…
Ocean’s dead! These are castaways of Hades,
rid of depth, stranded upon the dry shallow
Interred where the sun bleaches out the shadows
till whitened ivory fills cavern’s echo:
enmeshed lime, crunching upon errors callow
Jazz died - June’s sun sank into august abyss…
Undertow currents ceased their torments of bliss
Nipped life, silenced like frothing foam vacuum-sealed,
kept smothered in an opaque ocean congealed…
Yard junked, Neptune’s home’s now a derelict mess
and yet he clings to the crap amassed, crownless
Right always, up to the end --------- that no return.
Death will erase the un-sunk bones when they burn
(10/3/2019: '90 Sea Ray DA 350; Discovery Park; ‘my favorite junkyard’)
Written: September 21, 2026, not for contest
**********
What alchemy resides within the heart,
Where every pulse can tincture blood with hue—
Now umbered by wounds of grief's old art,
Now aureate beneath a love made new.
It hoards its red summers, violet nights,
Then bleaches sorrow into winter-white;
A crystal turning grief to fractured lights,
A stained-glass soul transfigured by the night.
Some days it wears the ochre robe of doubt,
Some days the cobalt vestment of despair;
Yet dawn may coax the buried roses out
And scatter molten amber through the air.
For hearts, like skies, are never one fixed blue;
They darken, blaze, and bloom—and start anew.
poem written for an online poetry contest in response to the above image
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
The clock’s hands carve circles
into the air, but time
does not move.
I sit at the edge of a chair
that remembers the shape
of someone else’s body.
Outside, a car engine stutters,
then dies~
not mine.
The phone is a black
mirror. I stare
until my face dissolves.
A fly lands on my wrist,
its legs like tiny prayers,
but I do not flinch.
The sun bleaches the curtains
white. Shadows grow teeth.
Still, nothing arrives.
Somewhere, a train is late.
Somewhere, a door stays shut.
Here, I become the waiting.
The bark peels back like old skin—
Mine, yours, the cinnamon scrolls
Of what we shed to live. August
Bleaches the world to bone, the bark’s faint spice
Rising in the noon glare,
Heat tasting of salt and sand. And still this Crape crowns
Itself with Myrtle fire. Still—
I cannot explain what breaks in me. Still I press my cheek
Against its flaking flesh, feel
The pulse beneath—magenta,
White, pink, the deep red
Of what I've never
Bled for anyone.
Each blossom a small fist
Opening with the muted pop
Of summer rain on dry earth. Each petal, tissue-thin
As the lies I've told myself
About enduring. The Eastern Shore sun
Has made this tree what survival
Looks like: stubborn—
Beautiful, built for the burning
Seasons that strip us
To what we are. Winter comes,
And I am learning
How to be naked—
These mottled limbs
My teachers, conductors' hands
Mid-gesture, never finished
With their fierce music
Of staying alive. Of reaching
Up through the killing
Cold, brittle air ringing
With the clink of frozen twigs toward something
Green promises I cannot fathom—yet still I know
Lives in the light returning.
I am faceless
Tattered by actuality
Heart thrumming in my ears
Blind to prospects
Voiceless ... soundless
Yet I scream, mute
Face to the sky, I wail like a fiend
Hailing the heavens like a forsaken angel
Above, the sucking expanse
A mocking roar of silence that drips, somber
And bleaches my bones black ... indelible.
Of those most dear, I brood
Ever-near, in my visceralities
The joy and regard that but their mention imbues
Sings through my blood like a brand
And buoys my spirit, steadfast.
They ARE my heart, after all
My essence ... my worth
Is this longing, then, but folly?
Should it NOT be the spur of my marrow
To hope for a shard's requital ... in love?
In tender, affectionate intent?
Or even in, dare say, (desperate) ... pity?
Even that, I'd surely embrace ...
Oh, yes ... even that.
* SECOND PLACE in the "Any Poem Won In A Contest In November" Poetry Contest, Laura Loo, Sponsor. *
* FIRST PLACE in the "Contest Number 355" Poetry Contest, Brian Strand, Sponsor. **