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I have been dwelling quite a bit on death lately, haven't I?

NaPoWriMo day 9! All comments welcome!

"Pygmalion's Bride"

We're all fixated on death—
arrows, all, streaking towards our targets.

Ovid understood it,
understood the metamorphosis
of sinew and bone to soil.

A one hundred foot long
pink lightning smear stretched
along the highway
where the reaper reached out his hand
and plucked a rabbit from the side of the road.

The day when target, arrow, bow and hand become
one and the same—
transformed to something more than stone
and less than flesh—
for now is small,
a mayfly I may swat away
     with a complaint about the open window.  

Boundaries

NaPoWriMo day 7! One week in!!!
Completed based on the prompt from the official blog today. I did a purple poem :)


"Figs"


We dragged ourselves from the earth's
purpurous hollows,
with pomegranate seeds in our bellies,
the violet light of dusk blinding us.

Marked, we were.
Purple as death—
slathered with mulberry juice,
fresh as the womb.
We pressed potpourri to our eyelids,
crushed lavender in our fists
and drowned our fingers
in the quiet amaranthine soil.
Our fingernails came up
        dyed indigo.

And one day we blossomed figs
and cried
when we split them open and realized
we still had pomegranate seeds inside.

We are barely a shallow line in the sand
between here and never-been-born.

Weaving

So far this piece is untitled. NAPOWRIMO DAY 6. Spending the weekend down at Wrightsville beach with my partner's family :)

All comments appreciated!

"Untitled"

Grandmother used to sit me in her lap and tell me
the story of how Momma Moon taught our ancestors to weave,
how she sent her drop-spindle down to us like spider's silk.

And I imagined Momma Moon climbing her way back home
        across Appalachian pine trees.

Vincent Van Gogh

NaPoWriMo day 5! I am off to Wrightsville beach this afternoon. Looking forward to chilling out a bit (more) :)

Had some fun with this one!

All comments welcome.

"When I am Old I Shall be Like Vincent Van Gogh"

When I am old
I shall go about in an old straw hat
with my ears bandaged, for I will not need to hear.

I will lie in hayfields
and watch the crows fly into a sky so blue
it reflects the hell that is waiting for me.

And I will cackle to myself
and wait to become an ornery old scarecrow
with a stick so far up my ass it keeps my aging spine from slipping.

At last,
when the darkness comes for me, I will put on my purple funeral dress
and lay out tea and cakes for the reaper, for I can't see a reason
not to be civil about the whole thing.

Down to Earth

NAPOWRIMO DAY 3!!! :) (For day 2's poem, look here.)

WOO HOO! MORE ORAL LITERATURE!

I created my own fable :) This was fun. I was inspired by today's NaPoWriMo prompt, and by Peter Gabriel's Down to Earth (from the end credits of Wall-e!).

I had fun creating an Aesop-esque fable, but I tried turning it on its head a little bit. See if you can figure out how ;)

Not entirely sure about how smoothly this reads. Oral literature is so different from simply prose or poetry, but I was still definitely trying to write a poem. Any comments to this effect are greatly appreciated.

I'm also worried about the flow in general, in terms of the balance of story and imagery. Thoughts?

All comments welcome!

PS. YES, SPARROW AND FOX ARE BOTH MALE. The point of the story isn't their sexuality.

"The Wedding of Sparrow and Fox"

One morning,
Fox left his den in search of food.
He searched the ground and found nothing,
and searched the trees and found nothing,
and finally looked to the sky,
where he saw a sparrow with lovely, shining feathers.

For a while, Fox simply watched, gathering his courage,
then finally he stepped forward and called out,
"Hello!
What are you doing up there?"
Sparrow whirled and wheeled and called back,
"I am enjoying the feel of the wind in my feathers
and the sun on my back."

Then Fox asked, "Won't you come down to earth and speak to me?"
Sparrow looked at Fox's lustrous, russet fur
and thought of Fox's kind, soothing voice.
But Sparrow remembered the stories Grandfather Aesop told,
and so he also saw Fox's gleaming teeth.
"No thank you," Sparrow replied,
"For the breeze is too lovely and the sky too blue."

So Fox thought for a moment, and then said,
"Then why don't you sit on the top-most branch of that tree?
Then you can enjoy the blue sky, and still talk to me."
And Sparrow couldn't see why not,
so he flew down to the highest branch of the tree
and together Fox and Sparrow laughed and talked.

---

And from then on,
every morning Fox left his den and went to the tree
and Sparrow came down from the sky.
And every day,
Fox would say to Sparrow, "Why don't you
come down one more branch? The sky is just as blue
and we will be able to hear each other better."
So every day, Sparrow hopped one branch lower.

And things went on as some things do,
and as Sparrow moved closer to the earth
he also grew closer to Fox,
until one day Fox asked Sparrow to marry him.
Sparrow ruffled his feathers with pleasure and embarrassment
and said yes.

Then on one fine spring day,
all the woodland creatures came together to celebrate.
The ceremony took place beneath garlands of
Queen Anne's Lace and Black Eyed Susans,
dandelions and daisy chains.
Choirs of birds sang hymns,
Great Horned Owl performed the union,
and Grandmother Grizzly prepared a wedding feast
of salmon and honey.

After the ceremony was over,
Fox and Sparrow met by their tree.
Sparrow perched in the lowest branch,
and Fox looked up at him adoringly, and said,
"Now that we are going to live together,
won't you come down to the earth
and join me?"
And with a smile, Sparrow did.

Fox went home happy to his den that day,
with new feathers for his pillow
and new bones to pick clean his teeth.

And the question we must ask ourselves is not,
"Why did Sparrow leave his branch?"
but rather,
"Why did Fox wait so long for his meal?"

Gothic Style

Woot! NaPoWriMo poem 1!!!

Written for my 100 Poem Project, for the topic "Gothic Style." I played off Edgar Allen Poe's poem "<a href="http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/annabel-lee/">Annabel Lee,</a>" generally considered to be a pretty creepy poem...

Poor Ed. :(

Anyway, I'm not entirely satisfied with this. That last sentence: oh, my, it goes on FOREVER. And I'm not QUITE sure about some of the imagery....hmmm....

All comments appreciated!

"Oh, Ed: I am not Your Annabel Lee Anymore"

You have learned to move
with the silence of ghosts,
the tense noiselessness
of bricked-up walls
—shut out the night, and
shut out the night.

I, too, have changed.
I am a mausoleum,
my darling Poe—
you curl up inside me like a child.

But there is hardly anything left to hold;
all that is left of me
is a house of moth-eaten lace,
green as arsenic,
collapsing amidst purple lightning flowers,

falling wingless over cliffs
that crash like waves against a dark sea.

Heirloom

Oooh, I am pleased with this :)

Semi-autobiographical, but also sort of messed-around with.

PREPARE YOURSELVES! Starting Saturday, I'll be composing 1 poem a day! I probably won't post them all, but I'll be doing a lot of writing.

"Heirloom"

I was born
beautiful as a potato.

Grandfather grew heirloom tomatoes
when he still had the energy to love
the arrival of earthworms in spring.
He sliced the juicy tomato insides open
and I ate them raw
with ground sea-salt.

Grandfather left one of his tomatoes in my hands,
one of his tomatoes like the saints he sought in church,
saints who stood over him when he became
naught but a candle
that Grandmother lit with the match bought
with a sacred quarter
rattling to the bottom of a little tin box,
rattling like the lid of a mason jar.

I hate the prickling fear-sound of my spinal chord
when I twist my neck too sharply—
the sound that makes me think I am a tomato vine
with a spot of darker green where someone's thumbnail has slipped
and I am now slowly dying.

I still love to watch the sea-salt catalyzed dehydration
of tomato-red flesh as it shrivels up,
just as I will watch my hands
become slowly lined and dry like corn husks.
One day I will be naught but a straw-haired scarecrow
and my sweet little grandbabies
will collect heirloom tomatoes around my feet.

Death, finally, is like lilies.
It is like the sickly butter of cannabis smoke
as it slithers down my esophagus to my stomach
and fills me like a mason jar.
I dread the taste of strawberry jam
as it slides too slowly
down my throat.