30 Poems in 30 Days (Redux)

[Tsotha]

1-30

Too raw for my taste; even I can tell when a poem wasn't well cooked.

 

[Angeline]

2-2

The sea slurps the beach and swallows sand. The scattering pipers don't care.

 

[GuiltyPleasure]

3/25 - Corfe Castle

After the camera-infested Japanese
are sardined back onto their bus
and the dust has settled, when the
parking lot is empty and the con-
cession stand closed, the ghosts
come out and stroll the forbidden
“keep-of-the-grass” manicured
lawns (courtesy of National Trust).

Posing as they’d seen the tourists
pose, teetering on parapets and
running through the ruined rooms.

Before sunrise, in the early dawn
their presence still remains, unseen
but felt, an alien, goose bump
sensation but they are harmless,
lost and longing.

 

[Remec]

2-8 The Chill

The morning opened with an unexpected frost,
laying a chill that would last the entire day
until it ended badly. Such an expensive cost.

But you know how willingly I would pay that cost
if it meant there would be an end to the frost
that had arisen between us since that day

when we parted suddenly. A regrettable day
that carried--carries--an unacceptable cost
changing the frigidness between us to permafrost

A frost I will one day thaw. At any cost.

 

[UnderYourSpell]

1-9

A Brevette

Coffee
m.o.t.i.v.a.t.e.s
mornings.

 

[Remec]

2-9 Housework Cascade

I rose this morning, intending to work
about the house, getting things done
that had piled up upon themselves;

Not that I had meant to be slothful,
but things just seemed to escape my grasp.
I rose this morning, intending to work

more diligently than previous days, so
I puttered here and puttered there
about the house, getting things done

and crossing them of my list, not noticing
as I went all of the new things
that had piled up upon themselves.

 

[GuiltyPleasure]

3/26 - the 7/5 trochee

New Forms

Please don’t mope, there’s always hope
Even when it’s dark
You lose your muse, search for cues
Don’t dare disembark!

Out of the blue it strikes you
An idea or theme
So I was right, sit and write
A consciousness stream

 

[Angeline]

2-3

I used to dial but now I touch. The world sure isn't changing much.

 

[UnderYourSpell]

1-10

A Florette

The rains wash, but as well,
this slosh makes walking hell.

 

[Angeline]

2-4

I carved my name on the Delaware and skated away. It melted.

 

[GuiltyPleasure]

3/27 - Yet another roadside memorial.

The need for speed is greed that bleeds the freedom from youth.

 

[Remec]

2-10

Bermuda shorts and black ankle socks with sandals; tourist's uniform.

 

[UnderYourSpell]

1-11

Dorian was a dream person
invisible in the light of day,
he struggled to stay alive
but slipped from the grasp of night memory
like a time traveler
in a different dimension
where reality was quicksand
beneath his feet.

 

[UnderYourSpell]

1-12 Boudicca

Icene queen of my tribe, I ride beside you throughout history.

 

[Angeline]

2-5

The ghosts are smoky around here and they rattle like ice in crystal.

 

[GuiltyPleasure]

3/28 - Blind date from hell

The wine was corked, the waiter surly, the dude was nasty. I left early.

 

[Remec]

2-11

Ennui

Lust
provokes,
it strokes
everyone
until, at last, it chokes
all of our senses, leaving us numb
and the feeling we wish to succumb
to, that surges forth with the power that we must
acknowledge to ourselves, if to no one
else, is left behind. We're made dumb;
finding all of our hopes
crushed. All come
to just some
mere motes.
Dust​

 

[UnderYourSpell]

1-13

High fever brings it's own unreality
in a place between worlds,
where words mean nothing
on their way through my hearing.
Maybe I'm dreaming, the difference
between nightmares and consciousness
with no reprieve from this black vise
squeezing at my brain enveloped
in grey clouds of pneumonia.

 

[Angeline]

2-6

A sentence like this, where Cohen attempts to write a koan. And fails.

 

[GuiltyPleasure]

3/29 - close to defeat

Feets don’t fail me now
just as the finish grows close,
time is running…..low.
now’s not the time for prose.
Prepare for the race,
trying not to fall behind,
keeping your place
even if it is a grind,
a bit of a bore
and, much to my abject shame
not much fun any more.
But I take all the blame
for such terrible stuff
the poems from Hell
and, strangely enough
the ok ones as well.

 

[UnderYourSpell]

1-14

Well it was an interesting dinner
eaten with a plastic knife and a spoon,
but all is now well after himself
found the right screwdriver
and took the front off the draw!
We tried the shuffle method
(or in his case banging the hell out of it method)
which didn't work as a large spoon
was irreversibly wedged solid.

 

[Remec]

2-12

She walks
through my dreams,
and the path she
takes blossoms in ways
that I wish it would
have done when
she walked through
my life.

 

[Angeline]

2-7

Washington, D.C.

Wide boulevards soaring architecture homeless men gathered like flies.

 

[Remec]

2-13 London, 1992

The sets at the National could have been the shanties we saw en route.

 

[UnderYourSpell]

1-15 Apologies to ....

To fly, or not to fly, that is the question
whether 'tis safer in the long run to suffer
the queues 'n security checks of outrageous airways,
or to take the ferry across a sea of troubles
and by opposing end them? To crash, to sleep
for evermore, and by a sleep, to say we end
the stomach ache and the 1000 unnatural flight dinners
the bargain airways are heir to? Tis a consumption
devoutly to be avoided. To die from diarrhoea,
to sleep, perchance to scream, aye there's the loo!!
For in that walk of death, what calamity may come?