30 Poems in 30 Days (Redux)

[Lyricalli]

1-17

Twenty(ish) years have come and gone
since my fingers knew these keys
intimately
if not expertly
maybe intermediately

That's what my lesson book says

Now, it's back to almost the beginning
discovering what's still in my memory
plunking out a few notes of Für Elise
I knew it well long ago
(it was a recital piece)

Lean on Me is more my speed these days

We've been getting reacquainted
these last several weeks
and I don't mind when it seems
that while I tickle the ivories
sometimes they laugh at me

 

[GuiltyPleasure]

1 - 10

Ghazal for A Dying Love

Tonight I speak my thoughts holding nothing back in the dark,
unburdened I hear your dissonant whispers hiss in the dark.

There are faded flowers and frozen corpses of thoughts discarded
here and I want to know why you are so cold to me in the dark.

Offers of sweet tea and sandesh, singing love songs as overtures,
not only children weep, diminished in stature, small in the dark.

Each word chosen with care, strung fragile, dew on gossamer,
I wait for you, white nothingness holding our thrall in the dark,

to reveal that place, vulnerable and open, you have offered before now
empty and echoing with memories – a theater’s fourth wall in the dark.

Melted ice will find a river and my arms will be your tributary
so let me warm you in my waiting arms once and for all after dark.

Inspired by an earlier challenge
​

 

[Angeline]

1-6

Joy Spring

Teeth and the slick reed, lips, the embouchure.
Blow wind blow. Cakewalk the keys, the bass.
Unlock it all, hammer those strings so they ring
bells bells. Steady ride steady four four rip rap
and presently and pleasantly a melody is born
loose-limbed as any breeze that settles bubbling
on the trees and drifts across the ground coaxing
greenly leaf, blade, flower come forth Welcome
Home Persephone. Listen to those bees bop.


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dnK6OHPQZbA

 

[Remec]

8 - 3 Adventurers

We approached from the east, through a stand
of cypress and swamp ferns. Such was the life
we had as adventurers. Mere beginners, no cast

bronze statues or even simple busts cast
from cheap molds that they sell at an artist's stand
in the village where we spent most of our life.

Until the band of heroes passed through with their life
of glory, fame, and fortune...no mention of the cast
they had borne for weeks, unable to stand.

But we chose to stand as Richard: setting our life upon a cast.

 

[Lyricalli]

1-18 Fibonacci Poem / Borrow a Song Lyric

One
brief
hello
followed by
a welcoming smile
beginning a friendship that shapes
months and years of laughter and tears that blend together
our lives are made in these small hours
feelings unique yet
familiar
onward
shall
we?




Little Wonders - Rob Thomas
"our lives are made in these small hours"

 

[Remec]

8 - 4 Perpetual Toasts

I
drink
to you,
and to me,
who better than we?
Could include all the absentees,
although we would be
having whole
bottles
of
drink.

 

[GuiltyPleasure]

1 - 11

Intimate

He likes her to take control,
feeling the surrender of will
is an aphrodisiac and he is
erect in seconds.

She lies him back, gentle pressure,
no words, just a hand
on his chest that lingers
to tweak the hair teasingly.

Next a silky blindfold,
then the stretch above his head
and metallic-click-closure of cuffs.
Each little loss of control
excites them both.

She never asks him what he’d like
which makes each encounter
all the more exciting, she reads his mind.
Tonight he gasps as her soft, wet lips
kiss the transuding tip. She lets him
arch, enter the warm humidity
of her mouth unimpeded, the light
graze of her teeth astonishing.

He can only think of her as
an artist so adept is she at
finding The Perfect Spot,
applying intricate pressure
and drawing out his orgasm
deliciously.

 

[Angeline]

1-7

Lucinda Tinder

You
say
she sings
like she's wet,
like her pussy can't
wait; she can't wait to climb on you.
She's an animal with that voice.
Your eyes are sparking
desire.
I say
Oh
yes.


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6Kd3Y-anRlM

 

[Lyricalli]

1-19

You play on my mind
dance through unbidden
draw me into the bittersweet
that is you

Left to wonder, once again
if I ever crossed yours
in the end you neglected to mention

 

[GuiltyPleasure]

1 -12

Ice

The elders,
squandering our future,
bequeathed us a dying earth.

To help the healing
she sealed herself
in a cloak of ice and snow.
We became winter people,
living where we could,
wrapped in fur from birth to burial.

Our newborn swaddled,
still slick and the dead
stripped naked before burial
so valuable were furs.

Long weeks wandering
over featureless frozen flats,
hunched into wind
and blowing snow, numb or pain
much the same.

After the frigid wilderness years
rumours came
of a warm place and green
they called spring,
ice that ran making its own way.

We listened,
left in hope
expecting nothing,
everything,
anything.

But spring was warm
and green.
Ice did run liquid in pools,
cascading in torrents,
gentled in brooks edged by reeds.

One by one
we bare-toed the still cold,
gasping laughter
until adults, children, the elders,
as one, we stripped away the reeking skins
from our crusted flesh and plunged.

 

[Lyricalli]

1-20

I hear that song
and that one
and that one
and those two albums
and anything by that one singer
and I'm with you again

loving you again
hurting you again
healing with you again

and losing you

again

A beautifully broken record
this soundtrack of us
that lets me skip back in time
when you showed me how much
I could be loved

 

[Remec]

8 - 5 Snowfall

White-blue glistens under streetlamps, even prettier through the window.

 

[Angeline]

1-8

Ghazal for the Aether

1. In Florida it was a sluggish thing blown from the sea, damp and choking through the rusty fan. I can still hear it chug.

2. Who says she has stormy eyes? Maybe they were just a little moody. Maybe she just looked that way. Maybe she flashed at the sound of her own damn lies.

3. Those t-shirt boys, those slick head boys on the corner filled their lungs and thought it was Kool.

4. My funeral is scheduled for a blustery November day. I want to chill out of town, blow whooshing all the way.

5. Sometimes you're there: the ghost of a voice stirred in a breeze. So many voices, so few words.


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EyhDf5Irmpc

 

[GuiltyPleasure]

1 - 13

One leaf

As
you
revealed
your face to
spring sun and danced with
your sisters all the long summer,
rain bathed you, hail tore your skin and high winds tested you,
your strength, but you held fast and now
from my window I
see you blush
as fall
draws
on.

 

[Lyricalli]

1-21

Strumming guitar, captivating voice, hushed audience: spirit renewed.

 

[Angeline]

1-9

Inexplicable Diatelle

I
don't need
to exceed
the number four,
although I must take heed
for syllables add up and more
rain now on us as if we were in store
for Wordageddon crashing, smashing down. Oh my!
If only I'd said something, had rapport
with some thought, something great to floor
you, dear reader. I need
to end this snore;
a sad weed
indeed.
Sigh.


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k2Lx3n10fkc​

 

[Remec]

8 - 6 Synergy

Zilch,
none,
nada,
no meaning
is what she had said
was contained in what
she had left
behind.
I
shrugged.​

 

[Angeline]

1-10

Valentine for Terry

How many late nights with the moon
low and edging to the horizon did we
listen? Tom's gravelly wisdom is just

right at 3am. Omelettes, books open
to Blake or Jack, sublime words fall:
theirs, yours. We're scholars of the blues,

small change, but we know how
to brighten each others' skies as dawn
is breaking, bread baking below and

not a millimeter between us, warm
in our cotton cocoon, still listening
to the songs hearts make together.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V9U9uQSxPDE

 

[GuiltyPleasure]

1 - 14

Rainy season

This morning something
is different. The family
is scattered, agitated,
shuffling dustily, not eating
the sparse, dry grass.

Often, rumbling messages
received from miles away
create more unease, ears flare
and flap, trunks are restless.

The matriarch stands alert,
her latest baby safe under
her massive bulk but the
little bull is aware of the
tension around him.

Somewhere, to the north,
a sorority sends news
of rain, fresh green and,
oh heaven, mud wallow.

By nightfall the sky is alive
with lightening dancing among
towering clouds and thunder
disrupts sleep. All night long
drops the size of dung balls kick up
the dusty soil to mud. By morning
the dried up water hole is brimming
and the search for life is over
for another season.

 

[Remec]

8 - 7 Lackluster Valentine's

Cupid's aim is off again,
I find myself grazed by
half-shot arrows, no
full-on piercings of my heart
leading to a rush
to buy flowers and candy
by the armful,
or making dinner reservations
for quiet meals of polite
flirtations and the promise of
more physical forms
of dessert afterwards.
You'd think he was a better
archer after all these
years, but it's clear,
to me, anyway,
he pretty much just
sucks.

 

[Lyricalli]

1-21 Rictameter

Lover
Your intimate
Whispers travel through my
Bloodstream inciting nerve endings
To riot, disturbing my peace of mind
This quiet chaos of craving
Rises before your touch
Claims me as your
Lover

 

[GuiltyPleasure]

1 - 15

Lessons in Love

Shy
at
the start
she preferred
candlelight, fire glow,
kind light to mask imagined flaws
and he taught her that love, even with imperfection,
was the ultimate gift for him.
She accepted that
he was right,
shyness
left
her.

Fibonacci, a distillation of Best

 

[Remec]

8 - 8 Witness

My love
can no longer
be held within my heart,
but must be released to the world;
no matter how cold, cruel, and uncaring.
I will show the terrible world
just what you mean to me,
why I call you,
my Love.

 

[Angeline]

1-11

Jazzometer

Jazz is
my happy place.
When it's quiet I'm calm
and we're cerebral together,
but when it blows into the blue and gold
stratosphere I must go there too,
an untethered balloon
pulled wherever
jazz is.



https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wlsq6sGmsRA

 

[Lyricalli]

1-23 Borrow a Song Lyric

Sarah

It was her voice
that called to me
like a siren's song
and drew me into the
depths of her

Song after song
I sank deeper
her yearning serenade
reaching out and reaching in
to darkened spaces
compelling lyrical illumination

Twenty years have passed
since she first summoned me
just a hook, a phrase
and I'm captive again
to crystallized memories



Sarah McLachlan, Elsewhere
"reaching out and reaching in"