Reluctantly I select one.
Meaningless; set it down.
Bored, I ponder others.
These to the left; those up top.
Angry, I’m seeing red.
To the right with those.
Puzzled, I look up.
“It’s forming a picture.”
“Yes,” smiles the therapist.
“That’s how this works.”
I saw it coming from the start.
It all just sounded too good to be true.
Later it seemed too bad to be true, but it was.
When you tell enough lies, they start to sound true.
Truth hurts sometimes, but only if you believe it.
Lies hurt, too, because truth always prevails.
I never saw it coming.
I am greedy for your charity.
I lust after your chastity.
While some may call me slothful,
I prefer “procrastinatory.”
I admit I’m green with envy at
your temperate humility.
and yet I take great pride in times
my wrath yields to civility.
I’m a glutton for your kindness.
You’re impatient with my pride.
I am sinful, you are virtuous.
You’re Jekyll, I am Hyde.
If you offered me an apple,
in the garden we could hide
With your heavenly companionship,
it’d be one hell of a ride.
Inspired by the dVerse Poetics challenge to write a poem based on the seven virtues (charity, chastity, kindness, temperance, diligence, patience and humility), and the seven deadly sins (greed, lust, envy, gluttony, sloth, wrath and pride).
Like an itch in my psyche,
your insults taunt me.
In truth, am I that abhorrent?
Niggling accusations,
crippling judgments,
peripheral flashes of
forgotten shame…
That and more, you say.
We’ve only scratched the surface.
I really hate the sound of
my own voice.
I began April’s National Poetry Writing Month (NaPoWriMo) with a poem about “Waking the Muse.” Now thirty days later (and 30 poems, though not all were posted), I will bookend the month with a sequel to the first poem. Hence:
Slaking the Muse
“Good morning!” I called as I came through the door.
“It’s time to learn what our next poem has in store.”
My muse gave a snort. “I’ve got ideas galore.
But haven’t you heard? I don’t work here no more.”
“What gives?” I inquired, with mounting distress.
“Your pen is not inked and your grammar’s a mess.”
“It’s over,” muse sighed, “perhaps all for the best.”
“But we’ve only just started!” I rushed to protest.
“No more NaPoWriMo, since April is gone.
No challenge, no prompt, so it’s time to move on.
To the bookcase I’ll go, with my Greek lexicon.
‘Midst these two huge thesauri you’ll find me anon.”
“Please don’t leave me now,” I implored with a cry.
“There will be no more poems without you at my side.”
“Indeed,” said my muse, looking ever so sly.
“Under better conditions, I’d perhaps longer bide.”
“What is it you want?” I knew I’d been had,
having first felt so glum, and now equally mad.
“I will double your pay, if you think it’s so bad.”
“Twice nothing is nothing.” Muse knows how to add.
“You can take some days off to relax and repose.”
“That serves as a start,” muse begrudgingly supposed.
“These dealings between us are still far from closed.
But we’d best start composing while I’m yet rhyme-disposed.”
Her thoughts so profound that in awe I must gasp,
at times muse’s musings I struggle to grasp.
My pen moves as fast as the strike of an asp,
and the rest will be history (once time has elapsed).
Forty scientists and engineers and
computer programmers toil each year,
a million bucks per annum spent,
a decade now, with price so dear.
Another study of fifty years,
such value held in answers sought,
in labs where winged subjects die,
though scientists claim it’s not for aught.
The topic: vast data processed in flight,
motion and movement sensitivity;
the interconnections of brain nerve cells
that exceed computer capabilities.
Complex, for sure, but fifty years?
Such lengthy studies in part explained;
the task of handling small electrodes
when attaching them to house fly brains.
Now, I may not a scientist be,
but the question I would like explored
is why flies crash into window panes
instead of flying out open doors.
NaPoWriMo Challenge, Day 30 (final day): write a poem that engages with a strange and fascinating fact.
“The moon is merciless,” she writes.
Cruel and scathing, she tells us.
Is this the same moon under which
lovers swoon?
The same moon toward which
canids tilt sharp-muzzled heads and
sing ballads torn from the depths of
ancient heritage?
Seer of harvests, bountiful and ripe.
Sometimes new,
sometimes blue,
sometimes erased by crumbling clouds,
sometimes agleam like a new gold tooth.
How can it be merciless, suspended
beyond mortal hands? Out of reach,
out of touch,
timelessly same as the day it was born.
“I know the bottom,” she writes.
“I do not fear it; I have been there.”
Moon-stricken poet, no longer a pawn
to the beacon of night,
where is this bottom you speak of, and
where are you now?
NaPoWriMo Challenge, Day 29: pick a poem written by Sylvia Plath, and then write a poem that responds or engages with your chosen Plath poem in some way.
I chose the poem “Elm,” written on April 19, 1962.
NaPoWriMo Challenge, Day 28: “Draft a prose poem in the form/style of a postcard.” Okay, maybe I took it a little too literal 🙂
I am Capricorn,
the sign of the goat.
Stubborn, hairy, smells bad?
Not very auspicious.
Born in the Year of the Rat.
Twitchy, gnawing,
no sense of fine cuisine?
My tarot card is The Devil.
Need I say more about that one?
“You are a star seed,” said the psychic.
“A star feed?”
“Yes, a star seed. Didn’t you know?”
No, no I didn’t. I’ll have to look that up.
Star feed…
I was born on the fourth of the month.
Compassionate, nature-loving, highly ethical.
Okay, a little boring, but I like it much better than
goats, rats and devils.
Zodiac, Chinese calendars, Tarot,
feeding stars…
I think I’ll take up numerology.
NaPoWriMo Challenge, Day 27: pick a card (any card) from [an] online guide to the tarot, and then to write a poem inspired either by the card or by the images or ideas that are associated with it.
NaPoWriMo Challenge, Day 26: “write a poem that includes images that engage all five senses. Try to be as concrete and exact as possible with the “feel” of what the poem invites the reader to see, smell, touch, taste and hear.”
Seventy-two steps down Hall B,
to mute doors with blank-stare windows.
Don’t touch the handles. Fingers would
scorch to ash. Or freeze so hard they’d shatter.
Eyes recoil from chlorine-glazed floor.
Salt water soothes the nose.
Slick. Sticky. Squeaky rubber soles,
but no one ever trips
over absent laces.
Turn around at the door.
Seventy-two steps back. Always the same distance,
though the walls expand and deflate in
fallow-breathed rhythm.
At forty steps back he’s there.
You feel him like a sweat-soaked wall.
The door at forty is no blank stare.
The darkened window rages in razor-orange furnace blasts.
Involuntary flinch. Voluntary cower
to the far wall as you pass by.
He feels you, too,
like a limp, soiled napkin.
He wants to crush you with his fury, until
your soul oozes out and seeps under
his cell door.
He screams. He flings insults and curses
like hot excrement at the walls. At you.
The orderlies will come soon,
syringe locked and loaded.
At the station, turn right.
Fifty-five steps down Hall A.
What Rhymes with Stanza? 