Tag: Poetry

Home Repair

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How many times
Can a body be cut open?
How many times
Can that body bounce back?
What is the limit—six times? Seven, eight?

A body is so much more than just a body—
It’s a home.
It can grow other bodies,
Shelter them from harm,
Sustain them.
A body is a temple,
Made sacred by the presence of a soul.

But a body cannot be
Continuously sliced, sampled,
Diced, drilled into.
There is always pain attendant.
A body can only withstand so much.

Some pain never goes entirely away.

(c) 2022. All rights reserved.

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Sleep Away

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Sleepytime buds. 🙂

It’s a beautiful day to be curled
Up beneath a cozy blanket with a
Good book in hand
And a mug of tea at my side.

But it’s been the same
Every day this week,
And I am so very tired.

I slip so easily into
Morpheus’ arms,
Regardless of hour,
Regardless of obligations,
And I linger much longer
Than I ought.

I cannot help it.
No matter how long I sleep,
It’s never enough.
Morpheus is impossible to resist,
And I would prefer not to most of the time.

(c) 2022. All rights reserved.

Time to Change

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March might feel more like
Spring if it didn’t cram four
Seasons into one.

I miss the April
Showers of my youth, but not
The more recent floods.

Will these new April
Showers bring Mayflowers? Or
Will they bring more mud?

I long to witness
Springtime fieldwork once again.
Impossible now.

(c) 2022. All rights reserved.

The Zephyr

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Well, it sure has been a while, hasn’t it? I can’t believe I’ve taken this long a break from blogging, but it feels like I’ve had so much on my plate lately, whether or not I actually have. Pero, así es la vida, cariño.

So in order to help me get my blogging habit back on track, I’m going to start NaPoWriMo off right with a free verse poem on one of my favorite topics: Iowa’s crazy weather. I hope you like it!

Dying evergreens stand
Tall in the gale outside
My windows, but
Their remaining needles
Pay the price
For decades of fortitude.

Will I have the strength
To withstand the coming storms?
Or will I,
Like my home’s failing windbreak,
One day bow to the Zephyr,
Exhausted and broken-backed
From my struggle?

(c) 2022. All rights reserved.

It’s the climb

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Well, November sure was a blur, wasn’t it? I think this is the first year I’ve failed at NaBloPoMo. Well, the first year I’ve signed up to do it and failed – the college years don’t count. 😉😄

It bothers me to start things and then not finish them, but I think I just needed to focus on other things in November, like catching up on the sleep I haven’t been getting. Not that focusing on my sleep deprivation improved things any. It probably made them worse. On the bright side, I’ve been doing a lot of writing… 🙃

I used to love the holidays, but it seems like the older I get, the harder it is to find that Christmas spirit. This year, for whatever reason, it’s been unusually difficult. Maybe it’s because this whole year has been unusually difficult, maybe it’s because I’m once again in the midst of a writerly crisis of confidence – I don’t know.

I do know that I’ve had “The Christmas Waltz” stuck in my head most of the day and I am super sick of it. Maybe that’ll be the next Christmas song I parody…

My post editor has assured me that the last time I edited this post was at 11:40 p.m. on December 7 (“a date which will live in infamy”), 2020. Clearly, not finishing things I’ve started bothers me less than I want to admit, or I’d have posted this already.

Can I just blame it on 2020? I think I’ll just blame it on 2020.

😁😁😁😁😁😁😁😁😁😁😁😁😁😁😁😁😁😁😁😁😁😁😁😁😁😁😁😁

At any rate, 2021 hasn’t seemed a whole lot better yet, but I’m holding out hope. I mean, things HAVE to get better, right?

Of course they do.

Anyway, I know I’m a little late to the party on this one, but I finally got around to watching this video of Amanda Gorman reading “The Hill We Climb” at President Biden’s inauguration last week, and it gave me chills. This is the sort of writing I aspire to produce: writing that speaks to people, that says something important about who we are and who we want to be. If you haven’t yet seen this reading, do yourself a favor and check it out.

And now, because it’s my birthday and I have the house to myself, I’m going to go and read more poems (and maybe revise a few of my own). Here’s to accomplishing more goals in 2021!

(c) 2021. All rights reserved.

Magic nostalgia time

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I’ve been working on a poem lately about how different this summer was compared to summers past. And as I was pondering exactly what I was trying to get at with my poem, this came to me:

Summer is a magic time, full of nostalgia for the bygone days of my youth. But as summer fades inevitably into fall, I find myself growing wistful, for summer lasts but a short time, and it seems to grow shorter with each passing year.

Covid time has transformed ordinary seasonal longing for carefree summer fun into a yearning of the acutest kind; I crave a true return to normal life, the kind that will not be possible for some time. With fall fading fast into winter and case counts rapidly rising, it’s hard to hang onto hope.

I wish I could cast all my doubts and fears aside as easily as if I were tossing an anchor over the starboard bow; I wish I could pluck hope from the lake as easily as master anglers pull fish from the deep; I wish I could read the world’s future in my cards.

But since I can’t do any of that, I’ll keep writing about it all instead.

(c) 2020. All rights reserved.

Hibernation station

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Like frozen rivers,
I am alive underneath
My own icy shell.

I feel like I’ve been hibernating for the past three years. Or maybe not hibernating – maybe hibernating is what I need to do now after the craziness that was the past three years.

I’m not even sure what I’m trying to say here.

I’ve been cleaning things up lately, trying to get organized. You wouldn’t know it if you peeked in my room, or if you peeked in my office. I’ve been organizing my music, most of which is stored on my computer. But because I’m old-school, I also have about a thousand CDs (which is probably a conservative estimate). I have so many duplicate songs as a result that it’s not good if my iPod malfunctions and just starts playing every song on it in order.

I don’t know what its beef with my car is, but it needs to get over its pretentious self.

I’m also cleaning out my email. I’m a bit of an email hoarder, but mostly I think my current lack of Gmail storage has more to do with the ridiculous number of pictures I have stored in my Drive than the equally ridiculous number of emails I don’t want to delete.

I’d love to just stop moving, to hibernate, to let my everything rest. But instead, here I am – calm on the surface and paddling like hell underneath.

I’m not sure if any of this makes any sense because I’m really tired, but maybe the making-sense part is less important than the having-written part. Since I’ve done at least one of those things, I’m going to call this a win.

(c) 2020. All rights reserved.

Pink

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Pink looks better
On fingernails and roses
Than it does on my eyes.

Pink feels better on
Fingers and toesies
Than it does on my lips or my nose.

But pink is the best
In the sky at sunset
When it softens the day into night.

(c) 2020. All rights reserved.

What’s up?

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Well, my video diary idea rapidly crashed and burned, and with it, my plan to write a new poem (and blog post) every day.

Whoops.

I guess that’s about par for the course, though. Lately it seems that I plan and God laughs (hysterically). So what have I been up to so far in 2020? Well, let’s see. I’ve been:

  • Revising The Lokana Chronicles (again);
  • Writing poetry (but sadly, not every day);
  • Workshopping my poems (yay feedback!);
  • Trying to keep up with the kids;
  • Working;
  • Getting older;
  • Saying goodbye to relatives;
  • Capturing Iowa’s natural beauty with my camera;
  • Playing a ridiculous amount of Harry Potter Wizards Unite and Harry Potter Hogwarts Mystery;
  • Stress eating;
  • Catching up with friends, both old and new; and
  • Submitting poems for publication (not that it’s gone well).

I suppose that’s actually quite a lot, given that the new year is only just a couple of months old. And January was definitely crazy – almost as crazy as December, if you can believe it (I know I can’t).

Also, show of hands: Who’s ready to be done with winter?

So how about you? What’s new in your world? Have you been able to stick to your New Year’s resolutions?

(c) 2020. All rights reserved.

What a beautiful morning

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I got today’s video knocked out a bit earlier than yesterday’s. There was a beautiful sunrise this morning, and I couldn’t help shooting it:

Mornings are so pretty in Iowa. But it would be even more peaceful if the boys didn’t argue about every little thing.

Of course, since I’m me, I decided to add to the challenge by writing a poem to go with each day’s video. Yesterday I wrote a haiku about two of my kitties; today I wrote another one about how nice it would be if my kids did’t spend each morning’s wait for the bus in an argument over something. They argue about everything lately.

I’m excited about the poem aspect of this challenge. I’ve gotten back to work on The Lokana Chronicles, but I don’t want my poetry  to fall to the wayside, and this will be a great opportunity to keep those poetic muscles in shape.

Well, that and the two poetry groups I’ve joined in the last six months. 😄

What about you – have you set any new year’s resolutions?

(c) 2020. All rights reserved.