girl memories now gulped from too much air
I could not save you from feeling water
may a daughter's ashes be in sea's throb
the Diet Coke days, I knew who you loved
moments for awhile are in ocean fizz
I thought in your arms I would never drown
though not you turned your face from me within
strewn glass shingled there before me, and cut
kissie, kissie, my bare little pinkies
we sifted through sand for a chance above
the sandcastle we made sea fell over
disappointment slows to figure out waves
unknowing was I how you ward off storms
absolved eyes were blue enough together
an asylum's toll reached out, the buoy
I grew my two more feet after you left
salt tears only come when madness is past
your footprints making mine, between we share
may a daughter's ashes be in sea's throb
I cannot save you from feeling water
girl memories now gulped from too much air
a crowded glass bottom
sobbed empty on a vine
flowered look is stopping
pain's time for telling time
Lambrusco's weight mopping
a crowded glass bottom
circles make more circles
another one tastes you
metaphor lies shingled
its pass with my sinew
a crowded glass bottom
part they, my countenance
ruby shadow filling
falling through the chalice
it spills like heart would freak
a crowded glass bottom
when empty your bouquet
the dehydrating drink
in my dripping grape play,
the pressure of seeing
rains anger beats down
on shingled roof
stirring everyone inside
I walk along the slippery shore.
of the shingled beach
that welcomes the inland sea.
The sun rises slowly in the east,
lighting my way amongst
the small rocks and drying seaweeds.
There is a lift inside me
that nurture enthusiasm.
Peace and quiet reign around
disturbed occasionally by the barks
of sprightly dogs that race upon the sand,
the squawks of gulls gliding gluttonously
swooping down for their repast.
I look with sympathy on other walkers
on the beach. Thus, I meditate,
a marvellously therapeutic exercise.
Who am I, Lord, to deserve all this?
The quiet meditation calms my mind.
lowers my blood pressure,
a spiritually potent release.
My mind is tranquil,
I know who I am,
my soul is happy.
I carry a house upon my back,
A fragile frame of dreams and stone.
Its windows cracked, its timbers black,
But still I walk, and still alone.
Each wall is built from words unsaid,
From nights I stitched with fraying thread.
Its roof is shingled with the dread
Of all the tears I never shed.
I pass through valleys, rivers wide,
This house sways gently as I climb.
It holds the ones I left behind,
The echoes trapped in rooms of time.
It shelters me from bitter rain,
Yet weighs me down with silent years.
A monument to love and pain,
A quiet vault of hopes and fears.
I cannot leave it on the shore,
No matter how I long to flee.
It is my burden, evermore,
It is the marrow under me.
And still I rise, though shadows press,
And still I breathe beneath its beams.
I learn to walk with weight and mess,
To carve new roads from broken dreams.
For though I carry walls of glass,
I also carry seeds of spring.
And somewhere deep, beyond the past,
I carry hope. I carry wings.
such artistry, tied to two trees
background of a neighbor’s house
which one is mere majestic
you’d say unhesitatingly, the web
but did you know my neighbor
they shingled and painted
their whole house themselves
it was something else
you’d look at it and think
it’s boring brown, but
I see deeper into their lot
the spider’d disagree
my analysis is persistently
annoying because her web
appears as a soccer net
or football for those nuts
in the UK - don’t disparage
you say - but they are nuts
for football, aren’t they
the world wide web would AI
something achingly intricate
but it needs to mind its own
because we all find in small things
something quite beautiful
case in point, fireworks I couldn’t see
but I could hear the one’s next door
as I sat outdoors (and the only time
this year) I saw, lit up like a gathering
of fairies, in my little woods, fireflies
don’t argue, just nod, nod off
and be human instead
A tin rain ticks between
the scrabble of pigeon claws.
Time drips off a shingled edge.
In moments you can land years behind
as just the shrunken rolling head
of a whole decade.
Eyes open, you watch,
a bushel of owls hooting
as aftershocks shake
a crumbling roof -
one you are no longer under.
Listening as if on a phone,
sliding into the woe-be-gone,
you are now,
back in the backyard of nowhere.
Pigeon wings clatter,
a rain softens,
to a slow
measured splattering.
Red shingled roofs rise and sink,
slickly buoyant with new showers.
Cars drive behind cloud-skyscrapers.
The park is soggy with small dogs,
colorful umbrellas are set aside
beside paddling pigeons.
Dewdrops slide over hanging buds,
while lush leaves
breathe their own green aroma.
By evenings tide, an amber shine,
has walked us through a dripping sky,
we are both empty and full,
beneath the warm spill of moist thimbles.
Above us, the washed-out mural of a rainbow,
remains to fish in low ponds of mist.
Wispy showers spray a disappearing horizon.
A soft falling rain lingers between us and tomorrow,
weeping’s that by the early light are rinsed away
by fresh tree-dancing winds,
and the bright beams of children at play.
Spirit of the Abba Father rested on him -
Perfect wisdom filled his heart and mind to the brim;
Knowledge, like flesh-and-blood, mixed with divinity,
Drew humans into oceans of infinity...!
Power of mysterious godliness entwined,
Beyond mundane; cosmos of compassion combined;
Heaven heralded messianic marvels mingled,
Sacrifice, suffering and salvation shingled...!
Love so tender; love so warm; perpetual; true;
Pure; powerful; beyond mad-love of mother too;
Completion of love's impressions and expressions,
Beyond skies; yet, measures oceanic cessions...!
Amalgamation of these flames kindles mortals,
Conscience and consciousness turn enlightened portals;
Graces fill; flow; shatter every ill behavior,
Physic and psyche turn vessels of the savior...!
26 June 2022
Threefold flame of Christ Poetry Contest
Sponsored by: Unseeking Seeker
Winter winds blustery, keen, and bold
Blast their way across denuded meadow
Ushering in north’s bitter cold
Shaking their fists with much bravado
Bending low the towering sages
Leaving not a trace of phantom shadow
Like summer’s violent thunderstorm rages
Frightening all the furry little creatures
Scurrying about in various stages
Most feared of all the winter features
The scary, howling through a shingled roof
Like a Sunday morning’s manic preachers
Though unseen they need no proof
The winter winds do not remain aloof.
Tinkling sounds of rain falling on shingled roofs
wild winds and chestnut horses galloping with hooves
Spruce trees breathing in the navy sky of June
Shimmering stars of heavenly bliss scintillating view
Rivers gurgling aside the brook as dusk arrives
A solitary lotus floating on the waters of China
Japanese lanterns and crepe paper magic
Night songs of longing and bravelings that cry
May I invite you for a walk across my wish bridge
together we can find the syncronocity of life.
If I write down words
that pour from me like
water rushing from a rusty gutter
carrying my cries in the flood
with decaying leaves and
the smattering off the roof
of droppings from so many
prominently perched pigeons,
is that a poetry of sorts?
If the aged shingled roof leaks
at its eaves (like my eyes)
when wind blows the rain
nearly horizontal and the house
beams creak and sound like
corroded hinges when
seldom-used doors are opened,
has a trope occurred?
And, is anything -- honestly --
more than almost senseless patter?
Does it really even matter?
Sometimes shadows creep across the distant meadow
Casting a pall over the broad field of aster and daisy
Before drifting across the fence row to our bungalow
Where strange apparitions appear on the siding hazy
And float across the shingled roofing and chimney top
Before dissipating from my sight on the other side
Like a kaleidoscope of grays, they dance the hip-hop
Shimmering reflections of sunrays shifting they glide
Yon meadow to a marshy glen awaiting their demise
These light and shadowy mystical ghosts born where
The sun’s slanting rays shine through, to our surprise,
Tall oak and maple trees beyond the lea, over there—
Funny how these shapes and forms make of our eyes
Windows into vaporous distant worlds in faint disguise.
FIRST PLACE WINNER
written June 12, 2021
Brian Strand's "All Yours" Poetry Contest
A lone black crow
sits on a limb of a tree
amongst a crowd of trees
that surround the townhouses.
The trees' silhouettes
are drawn on the brick;
on the shingled roofs;
by the Sun this Late January.
The dark shape of the crow
is starker than the trees' cast
of the night color; it is spectre-like,
within the arms of the spectator-like trees.
The branches are frosted with yesterday's spitting snowflakes.
Their bark is the tint of stones;
or the grains of sand on an Irish shore,
viewed on the one rainy day
of a journey so long ago.
A squirrel scurrying up the tree
is the same color-
of the rough or smooth stone,
bleached by the Sun;
of the wet sand of the shore in Ireland,
whose dunes crouch to watch the tides ebb,
to see the pull of the floating Moon.
The squirrel blends into the mourning dove
tinctures as if he were a captive
of the Winter day..
or brushstroked into an oil painting.
The crow, hue of a cold desert night,
lifts to fly away.
The shadows become new shapes
in the shifting sunlight..
they become charcoal spirits
in her sketch of an agued morn'.
Never spent signs painted hue
Conspiring challenges never proved
Aloft the addicts spreading 2x4 beams
Clouded streams broken dreams
High ceiling roofs attire
Shingled hay and wire clay dirt
In the window pane
a threshold mange panes
we both shingles that closes the eyes
Views of the painted skies
Blue white smoke gray hues yet remain
A muffled haze
12/14/20
Written words by James Edward Lee Sr © 2020
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