Thursday, January 31, 2013

Another Poem and an Original Mockermeme

Improvements

Where rivulets follow ditches,
leaves make dams,
and small boys are moved
to purpose.
Their passage downhill
is slowed by painstaking
excavations
to speed the flow of water.
Never tell a boy
that natural order requires no improvements;
they are not in the least impressed that
water finds its own way.


Wednesday, January 30, 2013

Help! I Can't Stop Myself!

High and Low

The wind, a howling phantom
cannot find me where I hide
just underneath its indrawn breath
at base of this hillside.
Still, the specter seeks to root
me out from in the trees
and roaring, thrashes them about
searching high for me.
If this ghost would only think
of searching high and low,
its passage chills me quickly then
wherever I should go.


Monday, January 28, 2013

Something Rather More Serious

We all know what happened at Newtown, an inconceivable month and a half ago. And what happened at Columbine, and about the others in between. Nickle Mines, Pennsylvania Amish settlement. Virginia Tech. Aurora, Colorado. We probably all know the names of those evil-doers in each case too, but I will not dignify their actions by naming them. When I looked up a timeline of "school shootings" since Columbine, I was astounded by the length of that list. The ones above were just the "big" ones. But every one of them resulted in a mother, a father, a family, missing a key member.
I have a friend, whose story is her own, whose child was stolen suddenly, violently, and permanently. I have other friends who lost children other ways. From this, I have learned that a common thing these parents hear is that "God must have needed another angel" or "another flower for His garden." And I think this phrase has begun to anger me almost as much as it must anger those being offered this "comfort." God is not some orchid thief who takes the rare flowers of lesser mortals to decorate his paradise. Those who choose to gain infamy by mass-murder/suicide are not harvesters for some hateful God. They are just hateful, evil, rabid animals. So, I've been writing. A poet friend woke my brain up, so I'll blame the bout of poecy on her.

Thoughts Regarding Those Who Profess God a Jealous Gardener
(or God Steals No Flowers for his Garden)

In this ravaged paradise,
newly greened shoots are too often trampled
or mown. But God, whose eye
is on the sparrow, knows where His
foot falls. He breaks no bruised reed.

And now, as if the Columbines had not been cut
soon enough in the flower of their youth,
the scythe of garden-variety rage
has cut a swath through a new town.

Those left in a desolate winter
are sure to hear tell of their tender buds
springing new in Elysium.

But the Reaper has been usurped,
his tool stolen by those
who have no right to sow salt.

Do not offer comfort to those left tending empty beds
by painting pictures of God's rare flora, new-sprung.
Though everything is said to have its season,
God does not cultivate His fields by spreading blight.
Those who raze our protected glades seek
not to fruit God's vinyard
but rather to wither vines of men.


Short, Whiny Poetry

 
Thoughts at the End of Most Days

A whole day
up in smoke
but I didn’t
burn it, especially
not at both ends
so why am I smelling
the acrid remains
of the day?

Age's Garden, Youth's Window

Looking out on
my darkened garden
through a glass
lit from within,
shows a slender,
unmarred, graceful  
shade plant self:
a pale caladium
hidden from the withering
heat of time.



Friday, January 25, 2013

A Private Rainstorm

Last night, the sky and rain
contrived
to glaze all the
trees and such:
just a thin, elegant coating of ice.
Today, the sun diamonded everything
as it warmed the ice,
freeing dainty drops:
a hushed conversation between trees
and moss.
I stood outside the fence, listening,
knowing this not to be an affair for me.
This was a private rainstorm.


And now, the many faces of winter in Kentucky

 These are the smiliest faces of winter hereabouts.
 
 



 
This is ice from a week or so ago, which resulted in poetry. 
 Before that, was this.
 Between them, was this, which I think probably resulted in the last post's poetry.


Sunday, January 13, 2013

I Will Now Subject You to My Poetry; Part... I Forget

The kind of day wherein everything roars—
The distant, plosive, tumbling barks of multiple dogs;
The twin engines of a lone, low plane;
The sweeping blades of a helicopter crisscrossing the sky;
But mostly,
          Mostly
Wind
Roars, cresting over the surrounding hills…
Sighs, curling through trees…
Roars, breaking into whispers at the foot of the cliff that overlooks the river…
Its sudden susurrus, an absence,
          Palpable
As thunder.