Four years old and short of breath,
in a tented bed at the end of the ward,
the terror of separation in check only
because Mother had told me she would be
there in the morning, first thing.
But she wasn't, and at last I just wailed
across the receding rows of sick children
and they, like sympathetic strings,
howled back in atonal harmonics.
The bulging matron shouted: "SHUT UP!",
and grumbled loudly about “that brat”.
Later, when Mother arrived,
the matron handed me a toy
with a smile,
that did not reach her eyes.
Hey, Sally
I watch our daughters Rebecca
and Rachel browse so like you did.
They scour the stacks in a Rich-
mond book store, trailing big reads
for when they return to their com-
portable places. Home again,
feet up, tea cups steeping.
I came home from afternoon
office hours and found you stretched
out on the couch we bought in
the second-best store in Snowtown
and brought to Washpa. Your tea cup
was by your side and a cat curled
at your feet sleeping.
A significant novel, In-
dian or another latter-day
Dickens was tented half-way through
on your breast. I am filled with joy—
by daughters who continue
to scout out
great big books to accompany
tea cups steeping, cats sleeping,
on lazy afternoons.
In a wintry hollow, atop Mount Crumpit, dwelled Max and The Grinch,
A dog and his master of mischief, whose heart measured an inch,
And beared a soul of zero dimensions, tented by a teardrop physique,
The villainous Who who'd snuck away with Christmas to his frosty peak.
In Pacifica
I despise that portrait of me.
The likeness ends
with the name.
Yes, Jane Seymour, unbeheaded
Queen of England.
No, not of pinched thin lips
and sharp bird-beak nose.
Those hideous wimples
tented on over plucked foreheads
displaying protruding toad eyes....
I was not the smoldering gypsy beauty
of Anne Boleyn
nor the loud, youthful
excess of everything
Katherine Howard
but look what their beauty cost them:
one head apiece.
I was pretty in my watchful, rich-wombed way.
I carried a King in my devoted belly
and a great love for my cousin-husband,
a fondness for estranged young Mary
and a fervent wish for peace.
I carried the scent of my beloved garden
sweet forsythia
nor the harlot’s stink of
Paris and promiscuity.
I was loathe to undergo
a coronation
I did not want to be Queen
and yet here I am,
the only wife to receive a queen’s funeral
and share a tomb
with the Beheader.
Not for nothing
does the light prick my eyes,
a thirst for walking shoes
tightens ankle bones
that parachute out of an inner attic
landing awkwardly into the open throats
of sneakers
still clutching their tendons.
Out from under a dim tented roof
the world is overrun with Asterix's
small confusing marks
that suggest footnotes and disclaimers,
warnings that you should not
take anything as actually actual.
Seriously sober, * I ditch the thought
of turning back,
now the landscape is tripping,
trees are hugging small birds tenderly.
Owls are tugging at dark clouds
moving them through
bright windows of sky.
The world has become a child's coloring book.
It is truly amazing how some mornings*
will keep you insane for a short while
allotting you just enough time
to recall, that you are not yet verified,
that you're n Asterix,
a disclaimer.
never dotting half-open eyes,
never declaring your fixed reality
because
the world keeps editing its meaning,
there are always more footnotes to add. *
Zoom meetings can be educational
giving you the chance to
meet people with exceptional
verses like you
Each person takes their time to read aloud
words written from their heart
enraptured in a tented shroud
steeped in the art
The poetics of your soul soon take aim
and give the reader joy
it may not bring you sudden fame
but you'll enjoy
the company of those who love like you
the gentle words that cling
like vines upon your soul's sinew
you link, they bring....
Sponsor Constance La France
Contest Name Writing Challenge -
December 28, 2022.
Fade city fade
the surf is in from lost town.
It rolls across the sky
it roams the streets as
a blood-splashing mist,
as a whale inside a belly
it churns the fear.
Fade city fade
the gray days are greyer,
faces crowd each window,
victims await their turn
while cinder-blocks burn.
Black is the somnambulant fright.
Fade city fade,
surrender your broken heart.
Your parks are camps in the sprawl,
the tented roam unhinged.
Glock law rules the unarmed.
You are too harmed
We care, but are not there,
and nowhere near
is there hope.
There I see, one of many trees
moving to a bluer breeze beneath the sky.
Bristled branches bending with
the weight of many cones;
a dripping sap of needles
to a lap of many days.
Bluest tented sky above me,
where occasional clouds pose as thoughts,
white-painted smiles on a baby-blue face.
Then, trees of green serene against
that high blue sky, their green-tipped
spears piercing the pillows of white.
One proud curving cloud escapes
outside this birth of green,
lingers above the trees,
whose moments pass for years,
and the world appears to blink
like I, in disbelief.
Each blue hue, each white, each
blinking-winking light of magic
urges retinas to free their water.
What heart cannot devour this,
a honey world of freshness
on the day I share my breakfast
on this porch with Mother Earth.
Turtle saved the world;
rescued from silver waters, deep
earth children cling
to tortoise shell,
sky woman’s
plight made right
upon turtle’s
haven.
Wizened sage
with gentle eyes,
look upon the vessel
recharging life’s cycle,
and imbued with
liquid vision
womb waters,
harmonic,
turtle medicine,
heal this child.
The journey long
the struggle deep
soul revived
in tented sleep
together
we walk the
red path.
We carve our totems
in the log,
singing
turtle’s song.
SPHINX
you silent riddle
of the lion stars
ancient in mystery
staring at omega
in a terrible patience
stone eyes are fixed
at civilization fractures
ground down by hubris
all human history's here
in these stinging sands
stone maned lion
symbol of king solitude
patient as a Bedouin
tending his camel
such appetite for code
unbroken in timeless
stare hinting fury is near
awaiting a new born
generator of myths
even in techno-chaos
you are in our midst
patient as a caravan
tented under stars
Stone Sahara Lion
image cut from ages
his appetite is time
his labor enigma
outlasts the flesh
as grinding sands
hums some meaning
in a stone head dream
of secret revelations
harboring a shadow
cast over our future
by Charles Eastland
from: The Car Has Ears - Selected Poems
by Charles Eastland - Amazon Kindle eBook
The golden sun of yesterday
played out in fields of gold
inside the tarping memory of father, handling LIFE
the joyful whistles that he fluted pruned alongside vines
and mothers pumping heart of song lauding in
loud and STRONG
No treason yet no aging bridge no tented hope
just morning glories,
a baby breath away from here
and all the sunlight we'd afford
inside a little yard of sweet explore,
I see,
the lonely eyes of a young girl longing for a friend
a hand held jar for fireflies or butterflies in toe
Pebbles rolled beneath unpaved paths as
dear together raw as butterflies we scabbed our knees
with swivel, in the morning breeze
Like BUTTERFLIES preluding dawn with shiant colors bold,
the summer sun of yesterday played out in fields of gold;
Inside my hiding place a youthful carefree life
still lingers in my heart's enfold,
without the memory, of growing old.
Jan 19, 2019
Sponsor: Emile Pinet
Contest: Free Verse Style Only
The quiver of pens
stood as the sultan's plumes
in the shady corner
of his earthen desk,
ready to be taken up
to write a poem, a letter
to his love of language,
the queen
of words unspoken,
the fairest
of his silken harem,
that elusive scarab.
As a slave would fan
his royal person
the pen would be taken
in hand
and the ink
would spill forth
onto the page
as a bloodletting
and when all was said and done
he would be free,
his thoughts escaping
from their tented prison.
Thus, the sultan lay
on his pillows
in a cool place
and wrote,
letting his blood
onto the parchment:
O the glory of it!
Sweet blood,
fill my soul with hope,
little feathered angel,
enigma
in this barren wasteland,
pool of purest water
in my heart's desert.....
The trail through the woods seemed all the heartening
as trees that tented crossed unto their side.
Their light seen glowing off them in an ora
to the life felt growing deepening inside.
For the trail went on as long into the hour
where the ground seemed lifting up unto the heart.
while it's fragrance was a stronger smell of flowers
and the air was all of pollen to the art.
When in place to feel belonging to it all
just ahead of and behind it in good time.
Where your comfort is less longing there to be
and your thoughts are moving all along in rhyme.
I open up the fridge and the light flickers.
The immistakable vaporous flatulence of leftover yesterdays slams (back) shut.
Beer cartons with warning labels and horrific mug shots, people gone missing riddle me this.
Dead soldiers they lay, loose tan cigarettes long since forgotten; shattered.
“Coffee”
Gurgling and steam
Followed by an alarm
I think I may have contracted
the clap.
Two skinny necks with sucular eye-like monstrosities parasitically play host tented atop a human form.
Body changes deformatiorically speaking through similar straws.
Left over astray reeking from purgorious infections; indictment soul.
Worldly and words are not so easily irreducible complexities; unalike.
Give thanks to this nex cup of joe.
My new bff…
Nex-Cup of-joe
'To eyes that lay atop differences'
“Cheers”
We drink our voice commanded coffee and prompt cream and sugar to taste; hung over.
Some things never change.
Kind of like when
I open up the fridge and the light flickers.
9-8-16
Contest: TO BOLDLY GO WHERE NO POET HAS GONE BEFORE
Sponsor: The Seeker
Imperfection love scorn, tented, virtue a loose,
Sound board of like if to know of her will is that shackle
A like warm of a Feather tie of a shoe of her might
What make things
So new virtue you
The first walk of the day as one sitting at a desk is
Jealousy more then a catch
Morning of master of day could
One put there live in there hands
Pass the note education the wick it well
train ride into heaven Perspiration to hardness the weather
what is in between the sky that lies between you and I
Is it work or just completion lies.
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