ALL RESPONSES |
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What is gained when all beautiful things are buried?
Conspiracies to free confession risk failure,
while commas create shelters from shame.
When stimulated by impossible opposites,
who is prepared to compose elegies? Passion
makes deals in daylight. Laughter
breeds logic, planted beneath poppied
fields, joining now to then. The world
is plowed with possibility. We speak
to waltzing mothers and cloistered scholars
who read papers promoting recipe in verse,
chiseled in tight lines on living tombstones. |
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Paper thin
the color of passion
like love
you defy air, gravity.
The eyes
of all who pass by
admire you,
marvel at your presence,
there
by the side of the road
nowhere
special. Still you bloom.
I am torn,
pull each of your petals away
wonder
is such beauty a hollow victory?
or my guiding star?
do you know or care
that all my dreams are found
in fields of you?
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thousands of children,
confined to fields of red life;
see, God understands |
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I sing to you in red,
my numbers beyond counting,
loud and boastful blooms.
Would you question tones of strings,
or the timbre of a choir? This
siren song has shored another,
winning you with color.
Come, take my nectar.
You’ll be back for more. |
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Preening
in sun,
poppies open
the
on hillside,
wait
to catch
next strong
breeze to
spread wings
and fly.
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december elm, dry ravined bark
like the gnarled skin of an old man;
if someone were to whisper he was
handsome, green child come June
**
thousands of field poppies, small
children in bright red hats, crying
red faces feeding redness; child
secrets everyone shares
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brown winter, brushed onto landscape
as an artist might in fits of saturation
madness; browned seasonal meat
meant for the capricious eater
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in the air over the brown winter fields,
geese wheel, scissor light, indecisive,
and later, will land for the truth
**
the moon sheds yellow feathers
into quiet wheat fields like air sleep;
no one hears them land; like me
thinking of you missing from my life
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Somewhere between smoking opium
And learning how to knit,
My soul did a dance with
Darkness and was instantly enamored.
Have you ever danced with
Someone you lived with in the
Womb of the Universe?
I am constantly reminded by the
Opera singers in my head
That the light at the end of
Most people's tunnel is a
Shadow compared to my fire.
Just the other day,
I spent eternity playing with my
Aura--watching the indigo
Flame twist around my fingers,
Knitting a pattern as
Familiar as the lines on my hands.
"Old friend, how I’ve missed you,"
I whispered to the light, and it
Kissed my palm like a long-lost lover.
The Wise Old Woman inside me
Sits for hours in the moonlight
Braiding the hair of her grandchildren
And telling them stories of their mother.
"Once," she said, "when I was as old as the ocean,
A thousand needles pricked my flesh,
And the blood beaded around my
Neck, and my wrists, and my ankles
Like poppy jewelry; and when the air
Turned frigid, the poppies froze
And became rubies,
Glittering darkly in the
Light of my father’s irises."
The plaited hair of the youth
Shone like burnished gold, and
The Wise Old Woman smiled.
"Whenever you see a poppy, or a
Ruby, or a drop of blood,
Remember your origins," she said.
They yearned to ask why,
But knew they’d get no answer.
Somewhere between dying
And being born,
My soul kissed the universe;
Soon after, it was impaled by the
Sword of an unknown god,
And ever since,
We have bled.
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Long-stemmed goblets
brimming with hue
tipped in salute
intoxicating view.
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You’ve made your bed,
now you lie in it.
It’s delicate as petals,
bloody as poppy red under
a cornflower blue sky.
Bees go crazy here.
One has flown, dizzy
with the happiness of pollen,
right into the rear
window of a house.
Everything shifts then,
the story’s line,
the field’s perspective.
Everything was leading
to a small opening
right from the beginning.
The round reds wanted
a square black eye.
Everything wanted movement. |
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“Pretty flower tell me
why did you grow
at the end of my world,
behind my windrow.
Tell me then why
should I not take
your bosom-bright blossom.”
“There’s a price for the break!”
I took the dare,
broke slender stem;
my blood ran crimson
down her green hem.
I bound my hand;
it healed quite soon.
As for loosing my heart?
It was worth the perfume
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It is December now and green and red
do not mean the same as summer poppies.
Green and red are lights strung under duress,
beacons to call back summer and flowers
now a dim memory chipped from the ice
of a light-starved mind. It is winter, and
we are forced once again to traverse the
cold gun-barrel of January toward the flash
of Spring. We resolve in January,
make plans for the future, because there is
nothing else to do. |
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Dusk; red capped tower
stands wide, lilies turn into
nervous poppies; dark |
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Each bud
stems from
the cracks in
cobblestone
each
sways obediently
for the last drop
of sepia November
light, in which
children play like birds
and boy comforts girl
as though she
is a poppy in a cautious
hand of a child,
they grow into
quiet winter
to understand
young love
and the silent death
of childhood. |
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i peer into redness,
searching
for a tiny piece of my soul
but there are so many layers
redness overwhelms me,
interrupting me, one red
moment at a time
it’s so hard traveling
between reds, one foot
softly in front of the other
it’s not the end
of the world,
this search for red,
but sometimes
i think i can see it
from here
does eternity only
go forward
God
been gone so long
why don’t you call
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In Flanders Field poppies still grow
red for remembrance
but no one thinks of WWI anymore,
too many wars since to trumpet
mourning across survivors' chests.
We can do nothing for them. They're already gone.
There’re other ways, not so quick, to die,
much more ordinary,
that drop like soft petals on our hearts:
the way your weight magically
retreats from your bones,
the way you shrivel and droop,
cry out from touch,
the way each hour comes with relief
that it isn’t the final hour
and each moment I grieve
while you still live seems stolen
from my future without you.
It seems wrong to miss
you now as I do
while you’re still here
to pin on a poppy
and remember the fallen ones
who’ll never come home alive.
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(This is a poem I wrote in early October, which gave rise to the idea of poppies as stimulus)
This place, the computers, the people
around me; have become small playing pieces
on a child’s table, seen from a distance.
Friday’s laughter arrives from miles away,
from the other side of a valley
that was once a hallway.
Closer, beneath my turning skin, flesh
transforms with signals sent by a
distant musician, strings tuned tightly
from soul to soul.
Where sadness grew into a field of wildflowers,
her playful trails overgrown by poppies,
dandelions, and obsession, too much
sunlight spoils the lighting of candles in
the forest, too many voices drown out
the cries, planted in place where they fell.
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