collage

Fairy Tale World 2022

1
Once upon a time, wonder.  Inside narrative, it becomes lost, leaves only invisible tracks.  Who will see them, find them, save them?  Always a long journey to the center of the spiral.

where
is happily?
nowhere to be

seen–
and after?
suddenly it engulfs

2
Over rainbows, they said, somewhere, lies the road to Nirvana.  Don’t be fooled, they said, by the enticing Road to Ruin.  But where to begin?  Where, even, is the rainbow?  I appeal to the mystery hidden inside darkness.

track
my journey
by the moon

Two quadrilles for dVerse, where Merril provided the word track. I was inspired to write these by Lisa at Tao Talk, who used “once upon a time” as the beginning of one of her troikus for her poetry postcards this year. I’ve illustrated the quadrilles with some of my own poetry postcards from 2021, where I printed some of my moon photos and gave them words.

gifts

Nina, my old friend of 40+ years, and blogmate from methodtwomadness, came into the city with her husband yesterday for a visit and lunch. It’s only the second time we’ve seen each other since the beginning of Covid.

She brought me one of her beautiful paintings. The Oracle knows how much this lifted my spirits. Thanks Nina

time

is what we can always give–
listening with the language
of the heart

happy to be

remembering all the rivers
of song shared
in the between

Poetry Postcard Fest 2022

For POPO 2022 I used postcards with buttons and altered them with text. I sent out the full 31 from my list, plus a few to friends, and received 23 list postcards and 4 from friends. My poems were all in shadorma form, taking clues from the front of the card.

There was a nice assortment of both images and poems. But the best part is making the cards themselves, and each day spontaneously composing a poem for each one, and then putting on the stamp and mailing them.

wandering
through lost synapses
thought journeys
dreamspiral
into narratives that end
open, unsequenced

you sought 1 special story
and after two years of psychic wandering
the boy said: 3 is my lucky number—what’s yours?

You can read more about the Poetry Postcard Fest, which takes place in August of every year, here. I’ve already signed up for 2023, but you have until July to register. I highly recommend it.

Night Journey/passages

I submit most months to Visual Verse, and have had many poems published (thank you!). But some I like better than others. This month’s poem, “Night Journey”, is one of them. You can read it here.

My poem “passages”, written to Jo Zider’s artwork, is also up at The Ekphrastic Review. My thanks to guest editor Sandi Stromberg, and to Lorette C. Luzajic for her continued support. You can read it here.

I think the poems complement each other. Which only highlights how I return to the same themes again and again…

Marinating

I am aged, but still raw, uncooked, unfinished.  I steep myself in cinnamon, ginger, nutmeg, preparing for winter.  But still I fail to render more than a rough uncertain embodiment of what will satiate my continued thirst.  For what?  With what mural of flavor do I wish to paint the days, the seasons, the years?

I never expected to find the perfect recipe—only to be somewhat clarified.  Not cured, but blended into the essences of a Tuscan sunset, infused with the richness of the bouquet of approaching night.

waiting for the moon–
new, it opens the cosmos–
full, it whispers “time”

A haibun for Merril’s dVerse prompt of spices. The grids are from a 100-day project I did in 2015 combining colors and grids. In my final post for the project, I included some quotes from poet Sara C. Harwell. This one seems eerily prescient of what I wrote today.

It looks like a painting by someone I can’t remember.  How have I reached the point, is it age?
When the sky resembles a painting more than the sky?

–Sarah C. Harwell, “Cloud Cover”

embryonic

she constructed herself out of symbols–
wings of air, pearls of fire and water,
darkness flowing through light on
foliage ships sailing empyrean tides—

wings of air, pearls of fire and water,
cast like a talisman amid waves of
foliage ships sailing empyrean tides–
stars swimming through sea and sky

cast like a talisman amid waves of
vast infinite whispers—blooming, listening to
stars swimming through sea and sky–
shapeshifting in cosmic reflection

of vast infinite whispers—blooming, listening to
the chimeric form of quintessence
shapeshifting in cosmic reflection–
the wheel turns through moons, dancing,

a chimeric form of quintessence,
crossing the rainbow bridge of between–
the wheel turns through moons, dancing–
female, fertile, fiercely bathed in blood—

crossing the rainbow bridge of between,
like darkness flowing through light–
female, fertile, fiercely bathed in blood–
she constructed herself out of symbols

Another pantoum, for earthweal where Brendan asks us to consider how we can fit well into the land–how do history and mystery intersect?

No Harbor

impossible to recall
exactly how it began
within disconnected walls
of days too narrow, thin

exactly how it began–
no entrance, no way out
of days too narrow, thin–
like land-encrusted boats

no entrance, no way out–
unplaced and yet confined
like land-encrusted boats–
this fog inside my mind

unplaced and yet confined,
an echo on repeat–
like fog inside my mind,
these lines that never meet

an echo on repeat
within disconnected walls–
these lines that never meet–
impossible to recall

A pantoum, inspired by the paintings of Lee Madgwick, which were provided by Sarah at dVerse. The pantoum form is for the W3 prompt, where Aditi asks for something dreamlike.

The Melting of Time

Snowfall.  Night.
The shore is distant.
I dream of
flying—but
I remain enclosed within
ice blue, glittering.

North seems far–
where I am has no
direction.
The landscape
retreats until almost all
is trapped within dreams.

Barren seas
echo with silence.
The world cracks.
Wind weeps in
side chasms of solitude–
the melting of time.

Sherry’s heartbreaking photo, above, that accompanied her prompt at earthweal to talk about the connections between life and the melting ice of the arctic, inspired the dreamscape of my shadorma chain, written also for Colleen’s #TankaTuesday, where Jules selected shadorma as this month’s form.

night whispers

My message this morning from the Oracle, with some moon photos. Taking a photo through a window often results in interesting reflections.

These two photos were taken a few minutes apart as the moon was setting in the very early morning. I have no idea what that blue light is.

beneath the language of the wind
sings the shadowed sky–
sea dreams in need of moonshine

show me the ship that lights
the way through this timestorm
she said

who will sit with me after
and recall how and why
we fiddled away our garden
with the honeyed music of lies?

Crow on the Cradle

They had collapsed into an empty cave of nowness, replacing a past of empyrean wonder with the unceasing presence of burning flesh, condemning the contagious and aliferous joy of birds to smoke-filled air hanging heavy over stone landscapes that had lost all green.  What they called life, the promise of continuity, was at an impasse.

They had forgotten to build an ark.

They had forgotten to build an ark, and so they were left standing between a raging wall of flame and an infestation of endlessly rising waters.  A fierce susurrus rose from the spirits of the ancestors–an oddly wordless murmur riding on the howling wind, carrying the silent but distinct rattle of bones.

what happens when where
we were going is gone?–crows
seize the winter sky

For earthweal, where Brendan asked us to fill your poem’s sails with a blast of something akin to the hurl of atmospheric plumes, and dVerse, where Mish has given us a list of uncommon words to incorporate in our poem. I’ve also taken inspiration from Jane’s Oracle 2 wordlist.