Words that sing

So they were true,
the words you said!
I knew, deep down -
yet still found it
astounding we
could stop grieving
so easily -
once more free, to
just be in love.
Like a dove wings
above the wood
to her good home,
we could nest too,
me and you, with
our wounds now healed.

>>>
This is my first attempt at a Burmese climbing rhyme, an intriguing form that I came across thanks to Michelle at Poefusion, who came across it at The Miss Rumphius Effect. Each line is of four syllables, and uses end and internal rhymes in the following pattern: 

x x x a
x x a x
x a x b
x x b x
x b x c
x x c x
x c x x

(Edit - I’ve just realised it’s possible to go on indefinitely with this form, so have expanded the poem beyond its original seven lines!)

Someone, somewhere is playing a tune
his fingers strumming in the gloom
on the trembling strings. And my heart
echoes the pulse of his subtle art.
Someone, somewhere is playing a tune,
calling to me through the rainswept dark.
In the unknown distance, under the moon
someone, somewhere is playing a tune
on the trembling strings of my heart.

This is a response to the picture above, by newjack at photobucket, the Monday mural at poefusion.  My response came to me as a very complete visual and aural image, though it’s nothing I’ve ever experienced! It started as a triolet but I modified it because I didn’t want the refrain lines to appear together until the final couplet, and because the repetition just seemed to work better this way.

Sometimes I wonder - “Just how we will meet?”
In the elegantly intimate embrace of tango?
Clumsily colliding on some unfamiliar street?
Or both reaching out for the same plump mango?

Voices finding harmony in spontaneous duet?
Or a very civil handshake in an office’s formality?
Wrestling with each other in a martial artist’s sweat?
Arguing about the state of affairs bizarrely called normality?

Defying fear of strangers on the underground at night?
Or comfy on a friend’s introductory settee?
Surfing in the tangled web of true and false bytes?
But there’s no point guessing where and when it will be!

One day it will seem that our souls were born to merge.
But only by chance will our paths at last converge.

A sonnet inspired by Sunday Scribblings’ prompt to write about a chance encounter. It’s both serious and light-hearted, which is very much the way I’m taking my search for a new partner!

She tilts her head and looks at him.

With intent.

He, (nervous as a virgin,
late at night, in a borrowed backseat)
wrings his hands like a priest.

But his prayers are in vain.

Langurously munching his back leg
like a post coital cigarette,
she stares at me,

the alien milkiness of her eyes
arrogantly framed
in the voyeuristic ring
of my magnifying glass.

Such debauchery in a
quiet suburban garden!

This was inspired by the friday five at poefusion - to write a poem using the words backseat, ring, priest, garden, magnifying glass.

I was going to post an image to go with it, but decided it reduced the impact of the poem… here is a link to the picture that was in my mind as I wrote it.

Once upon a date,
There was a story you would not tell.
A story that hid at the back of your conversation,
But that I caught glimpses of, and felt
That this was an important tale.

Once upon a midnight,
You told me that story, and my heart opened
With love and sympathy and feeling trusted.
And seeing more than glimpses, I knew
That this was an important tale.

Once upon a summer,
Our stories entwined in that beautiful story everyone
Always loves to tell. We saw bright sunshine
In long days, not brief glimpses.
A trivial, but beautiful tale.

Once upon an absence,
You learned new tales in which you were
More than human. And returning, your false insight
Allowed you only glimpses of the person I am -
And turned our story into a tragic tale.

Once upon a silence,
You fled me and the grief I could not help
But feel at the breaking of our story’s thread.
Now I cannot glimpse where you have gone.
The pain fragmented our tale.

Once upon a recovery,
I unravelled the threads of my story
From yours - from the myths and pain and self-delusion.
Now I see in hopeful glimpses that the best of
My tale is yet to be told.

This was inspired by readwritepoem’s prompt to write a poem that doesn’t tell a story, but is about a story.

Torn page held tight in his dirty hand
The little boy runs, his eyes intent
Panting with eager delight in his plan.
Until at last, strength almost spent

He bounds happily up the toyshop stair.
A bell announces the entrance of the boy
Into paradise’s market! Finally there….
His breath steadies as he waits, alive with joy,

For his turn. He smooths the crinkled image
Out on the counter, scatters his piggy bank’s bliss
Across the glassy counter’s gleaming mirage.
At last he can ask “do you have this?”

At last the box is lifted from the cart
And he clutches it to his racing heart.

It struck me that many of the poems or texts written for poefusion’s latest friday five (little boy, torn page, market, dirt, cart) including the first one I wrote myself, were rather melancholy in tone. I wondered if this was simply because of what the words suggested, and decided to experiment with the idea of writing a happy poem based around these words. I rather liked the resulting sonnet!

Picture uploaded by the Library of Congress onto Flickr

Someone, possibly more than one
Looks into our living room and the shaded room we sleep in,
at home in our patches and tears.

For years they have watched us, back-lit by the desert -
And we open up…. unchanging, alive
The warmest of greetings I utter,

And with ironic caw, they tell us, “who cares, who cares?”
They – the unjust, those who love, and do not love -
Preoccupied with gender.

Though I’m broody at times, frustrated,
Waving them off… By dogstar
I consistently find

A universe of gold, full of miracles, indestructible
In our living room and the shaded room we sleep in,
at home in our patches and tears.

Another patchwork poem set off by the Patchwork Poems blog, and derived from six amazing poems by five amazing poets. I thoroughly recommend each of them, though they’re all so very different it was very hard to patchwork them!

Running away together, by Maxine Kumin
Video cuisine, by Maxine Kumin
Ode to a Lemon, by Pablo Neruda
Fame is a fickle food, by Emily Dickinson
The clean platter, by Ogden Nash
Wonderbread, by Patrick Corn

Although my poem is entirely built on lines from these poems, which are all about food, I find I have written a poem which doesn’t mention food at all… I was about to say what I think it is about, but instead I’m going to leave it for people to interpret for themselves as I’m intrigued what you will say!

To find out if other patchworkers have developed something more food-related, or to find out more about patchwork poems (the principle is to use complete lines by other poets, with changes to pronouns/tenses permissible but discouraged) click here to visit the Patchwork Poetry blog.

(Photo by pdxnielson at flickr)

Energy levels just crash through the floor.
Queasy stomach tolerates yogurt – but no more.
Gravel rattles in the chest and makes the throat sore.
Tissues streaked with ochre proliferate, abhorred.
And a kettle malfunction is just the last straw!

(Though I do have to say, I love getting to stay,
In my warm cosy bed so much more!)

This little poemlet was inspired by a recent cold and stomach bug - not to mention the very untimely demise of my kettle just when it was most needed for making hot comforting drinks! It was also built around the Friday five at poefusion - a challenge to write a poem including the words crash, yoghurt, gravel, straw and ochre.

It was written aiming to convey humour rather than self pity, though I’m not sure it entirely comes out… it probably needs to be read aloud, with a tone of exaggerated and increasing misery in the first part building almost to tears, then a pause before delivering the last two lines with a large and somewhat smug grin!

Oh, and I’m sorry, but the somewhat disgusting image in the fourth line was both apt and the only way I could find to incorporate the word ochre!

I’m sure you’ll be glad to hear I’m feeling better now and less likely to inflict “poems” like this on innocent readers in future….

Thanks for Mr Rob T at Flickr for providing a much needed cup of hot lemon and honey!

What is it about growing up and liking bitter things? The olive is perhaps the classic example of this… the sort of thing a child would immediately turn up her nose at and start making “yuck” noises. And yet adults politely nibble and derive genuine pleasure. I wonder if our tastebuds change, or whether it’s a shift towards more complex pleasures? A recognition of the sour that goes alongside the sweet in life, and often makes it taste better.

I love olives. I am immediately drawn back in my mind to a sunny day in a market in a small French town, to a stall where wooden tubs and wooden scoops proudly present their wares. From the deepest black olives (wrinkled, tart and intense), to the springlike green set off by flashes of red pepper. Going via the slightly unreal purples of my favourite Kalamata olives, sweet and piquant at once. Even tiny ones, bright as jewels – just a thin covering of flesh over the stone but such an intense flash of flavour. Not to mention the green-gold nectar of virgin olive oils gleaming in the sunlight. Such a pleasure to select a mix of all these different types, run them home, spill out the glistening nuggets on a plate or just munch them from the bag. Nibbling the flesh off the seed, then finding a place to spit it out. Not the politest of food, when properly enjoyed, but all the better for that!

Strange how olives are often quite a social food – in any pizzeria the chances are someone will have olives on their pizza that they don’t want – and the olive vultures at the table circle and pounce to be allowed their taste of the salty goodness.

Beautiful trees, too. So gnarled, and yet with such delicate silvery leaves.

I heard once that the fruit of the olive tree is actually virtually inedible… until it has been pickled and salted and generally run through a complicated process that results in the fruit we enjoy. I wonder how anyone came across the idea of doing that… if you taste a fruit and it is initially vile, it takes persistence, or serious hunger, to devote so much effort to finding a way to make it edible.

Maybe that’s another dimension of adulthood… finding a way to take things that are initially unpalatable and turn them into something rewarding. A determination. A willingness to push through the difficult times and the bad flavours. To make something happen, because you believe that it can. There are sweeter, lower-hanging fruit. But there’s something satisfying in making a bitter fruit into something which is, perhaps not yet sweet, but still profoundly satisfying. Our lives need their olives.

Though I sometimes wonder whether the times we live in are not conducive to creating olives. We’re not hungry enough to need to make the offered fruit into something edible. There is so much low hanging sweet fruit around us that it is easy to become lazy. The opposite of Tantalus, the grapes fall so close to our lips that we become too lazy to reach for different fruit. The routines of contact with the world around us in its most basic form, to draw water, to cultivate the food we eat, to be physically part of the ecosystem… for most of us, this is so far away. And so perhaps it is too easy to stay in a perpetual childhood, eating sherbet lemons rather than real ones. Yet life would be very dull without the piquancy of a fruit as complex and as well-earnt through labour as an olive.

This is a 15 minute writing practice inspired by Red Ravine - to write for 15 minutes about olives, without censoring or correcting.

Photo credit - Olives, originally uploaded to flickr by steve green.

The beast arises from an ocean of riven time,
Jaws agleam with the dust of what was once precious.
Each sinuous movement a reversal of physical law
A murky intelligence in its eyes which nothing can clarify.
Its rising makes our solidest truths seem dim and volatile.

Most terrible because it is silent…
More strange than any fantasy…
In contemplating it the heart flutters
Feels the foundations of its peace tremble

Even to think of it makes the universe feels bent

For this beast of our fantasies devours our souls’ precious time.
Reverses all the clarity we feel we have gained.
Throws us silent and naked into a volatile universe
Where the bent and twisted fragments of our peace flutter sadly.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

This was inspired by two prompts -

Firstly from poetswhoblog - to write a jigsaw poem featuring the following words: time, precious, reversal, clarify, volatile, silent, fantasy, flutter, peace, bent. Having used them all I felt I had more to write, so I ended up using each word twice, changing a few of them the second time.

Secondly, readwritepoem’s challenge to write a poem about something that doesn’t exist. It seems my imagination came up with something rather dark, so I’m glad it doesn’t exist! Though perhaps I should say, it doesn’t exist as a real creature…

The photo is Ocean Deep, originally uploaded to flickr by Julie Elisabeth.