ALL RESPONSES |
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Response to Lilies
Each second, each minute, each hour
I’m surrounded by God’s gentle power.
Whatever I see
is a blessing to me
for He made each stone and each flower.
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I know something good. So. Listen to this.
Yesterday, four warriors made my meal.
Their arms and legs marinated in mead,
tasted finer than a roasted pheasant.
So. You're here for dinner. You, my hors d'oeuvre.
My long hard tongue moves quickly to take you,
wiggling wildly through my prickly lips,
going straight into this hungry gullet,
washed down with reptile wine, a strong rotgut
known to help with digestion of humans.
In return, you will receive the truth
and I'll be burdened with your blood. |
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We beard the dragon,
Scale the mountains.
Whispers and notations
Blood cold! Warming sun?
Overhead and by inebriating horizons,
Whether on the rocks or in a weathered glass
Cage, we share roots, strange aquariums,
Plights astral in our finite limit
Of drink and chew, providential zones of
Lines, chains, hairs, cable, sinew, muck.
Brothers reptilian gaze and appraise us
Bound to lives of skin clawing, atoms playing,
Mysteries prevailing for all verterbrates
And the spineless oblivious.
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to Tomato
Last evening our neighbor
hears us on the deck
comes over
slaps down her photos
of the fireworks
taken this Fourth of July
at Little Girl Lake.
My husband ooh’s and ahh’s
over all 24 of them,
especially approving of the one
shaped like a tomato (with a short a).
She gives him the negative
then reconsiders and hands him photo #18.
My husband follows her back to her yard
with the photo tucked safely in his top shirt pocket.
He steps into our garden and plucks
three Big Boys, beyond ripe
hands them to the neighbor and
watches her disappear behind her patio door.
Before he comes back he plucks three more Big Boys
juggles them up the deck stairs and rests them in my lap.
Let me see that photo, I say
so he pulls it out of his shirt pocket
to show me. Why would anyone
take pictures of fireworks with black and white film?
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(in response to the whole idea)
I’d be so glad if you would choose the date
I’d buy a peach or pear. Perhaps a date
I’d buy each day...some fruit that’s up to date.
I’d be so glad if you would choose the date
I’d count the days, I would! Each blessed date
I’d gather fruit to share on our first date.
I’d be so glad if you would choose the date
I’d buy a peach, a pear, even a date.
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Britt's Grend(e)l's not your usual liazzard--
he appears to be some slick old wizzard.
Whatever comes near
he makes disappear
by hiding them all...in his gizzard.
* My apologies. I just could not resist this opportunity. |
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Slow means slow, the ease in release
like the green turtle getting from the pond
to the place beneath the house where she
was hatched. Her black shell shivers through
a forest of lawn. Thumb head disappears
at the root level then slogs up an impossible hill.
No hillock - just uneven clods, a wandering trail
that wedge shaped feet negotiate with care,
Halfway there she turns, retraces steps then
in a semi circle comes back looking for
someplace the genes can sink into.
There will be ease in her release.
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sluggish and incomprehensible
clouds porridge themselves
across the sky
not
in a hurry,
on their way
to nowhere
while below,
a grey twitchy cat
sniffs the air
and drags his belly
homeward, long
after the gardner,
with her sagging hat
gave up tisk
tisking him along,
whilst rubbing her distended,
filled with
child belly--
The leaves silver
and shake at the
now yellowing thumbnail sky
and hope to be awake
enough to scratch
the itchy back of
the waylay’d moon |
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The lizard, having stopped briefly to rampage
a suburb of no consequence, moved on.
Its tail flicked a last time and fell below
the horizon. Stunned villagers checked the
rubble's glow and found televisions still
flickering, the wi-fi still broadcasting,
and no one had been injured or killed.
Still, a giant lizard. Wow. There were still
leftovers, and the microwave did fine, so
they ate rewarmed take-out in the open
air like picnickers in the rubble, and --
Cool -- the Xbox wasn't too wacked for Halo.
They called their insurance guy and bitched
about the helicopter noise, chopping
their way toward the saurian menace long gone. |
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For Lilies
My neighbor put a bouquet
in her window that faces mine:
white lilies, violet larkspur
and yellow daffodils.
It’s a glaring statement of some kind,
but I’m not sure of the message or
even if it’s meant for me.
Except for the flowers
vibrant with color against black,
I can’t see into her house
which surely gives the story away.
How did these lovely
cut flowers come to be hers?
Why are each snipped
from green roots of momma
and placed with such care
to best face the afternoon sun
as if she expects all to grow?
Were they given to her
by a penitent husband,
arranged to trumpet his apology
from window to world?
Maybe, she wanted to prove
there lives something
a little beautiful inside.
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to lilies
i cut the daylilies back last fall
laid black fabric over their remains
then buckets of landscape rock
after the ground unfroze
the daylilies pushed past
my careful plan:
a flat space for recycling
now their orange blooms
wave at me and ask
had enough yet?
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to lilies
here in all
the white
breath lilies
can muster
my thoughts
get lost
in their luster
falling
like white veils
over the face
of a slender
woman
like a swollen
berry falling
in falling August
rain, with lines
curving in & out
bending straight
lines in such ways
i sometimes
forget
where
you end
and
i begin |
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This owl in my ear. Never says
who, just tries to beat his wings in water. Feather
carried along the cross-current the last reminder of
air he will ever have.
We all have to forget sometime. I often forget that for half my
life, I thought I was a man.
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when i roll
i roll
when i stop, well
you get the picture
i'm trying to think
but nothing happens
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to: tomato
he’s wearing a yellow t-shirt
soaked with sweat
every year he makes the patio
on the hill a little bigger
work on the pond
will never be done
i’m talking to him about
one of our elderly clients
alta
who lost a thousand dollars
she wants to know if he’s seen it
who’s crazy enough to
carry around
that kind of money these days
i notice another ripe tomato
i love the pungent fragrance
of my patio tomato plant
& the snap when i pluck ripe fruit
he hasn’t seen her money
all we can do is hope
she finds it.
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to lilies
swallowed in emerald green
curtain of hostas
and tiger lilies. |
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“Publish or perish”
the Grendl-master intoned
flame and ash spewing
from his nares
Heat-seeking pursuer
of creative passion
the dragon whips at his prey
with ground-swiping tail
mountainous scales raining
Terrified, I stumble
in desperate haste
to still his appetitive demands
for ars poetica
before he turns
to chew
my poetic ars(e).
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(with apologies, Brit!)
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Yesterday, everyone stopped growing.
The man came out of his closet and told us,
“We’re all of us as old as we’re ever gonna get.”
That was it.
No one asked any questions.
Our organs all kept going,
our lungs expanded
and our blood carried oxygen to our cells.
It was an overcast day.
The cells didn’t get worn out like they used to,
and it was true:
all of us stopped getting older.
This didn’t go over so well with some folks nearby.
They tried and tried to go back to growing,
but they couldn’t remember how to do it.
They didn’t know what had changed to make their bodies freeze in time like that.
The man came back and told them,
“Stop trying to grow. We’re through with all that.”
His beard was already grey,
and that made the people even more upset.
They tried to rip it from his chin,
but he just vanished into the woods.
The people tried to put holes in their bodies.
They stuck pins in their cheeks and ran nails through their limbs.
“Get older!” they shouted into mirrors,
but their wounds simply closed up,
and their bodies remained the same. |
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from tomato
Yesterday I came home
to baked tomatoes;
my husband smiles "hi."
This morning on 85th
in the second before I turn,
I see red, white, and blue-
a swirl of hope.
Husbands and fathers
sons and friends
come forward
to clapping, to color-
to life. And in this second
I hear the sighs, and feel the tears.
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to tomato
all the windows
of my sleepy city
seem to whine
as i sip late evening
red wine. a distant
car radio / two
young men bouncing
to over based speakers.
the colors of things
at night escape
like quark-things
and i wonder
if the large tomato
on my neighbor’s sill
contains the will
to sustain its redness. |
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IN TRIBUTE TO ISSA
Tō-yama-no
Me-dama ni utsuru
Tombo kana
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Still for a moment
the dragonfly rests
on slender grass blade
swaying but slightly
to the breath
of a dying day.
The dragonfly rests,
but where has it been?
Issa once told us
what it has seen.
The sun-gold'S fall
on emerald mountain
as it stretches his arms
to forever keep blue
forever sky.
A moment half-lost
can be remembered
through the colors
etched in
a dragonfly’s eye.
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Lilies
fine lines remind me
to go to my garden
to invest silent time
to slowly see the lilies
intense color fragility
vigorous impermanence
in winter there will be
only fine lines
(to lilies)
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I am ancient
fly on glassine wings
from water lily to lily pad
I am fragile
carry all desires
with my legs
I am grace
the kind nature loves
follow my hunger
I am beauty
I dance with the wind
make love in midair.
I see you watching me
see how you marvel
wish you too could mate
Airborne and weightless,
the reflection of your body
wrapped around your lover’s
on the surface of the pond, mirrored
in the clouds and sky above,
etched forever on a stone’s back.
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Another flower gone to seed.
Her skin splits, oozes juice, thinks
will I be picked? Sliced? Eaten?
Yes. And scalded. Peeled. Swallowed.
We'll see her in spaghetti sauce,
Bloody Marys and beef stew.
Bled into jars that sit on shelves,
awaiting their turn.
Oh, lucky girl. |
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