oracle 2

silk lace

silk lace
madly ungloved
ballooning as if umbrellaed

I spent several fruitless hours attempting the NaPoWriMo prompt of a love sonnet.

So I turned to the Oracle 2 words from this morning and Muri’s Scavenger Hunt nonce poem list, composing a Mouse poem.

The Mouse by Michael “Mouse” Murdoch – a 3 line poem with a title written all in lower case. The title is the same as the first line. L1: 2 single syllable words having the same number of letters per word. L2: 4 syllables in 2 words. L3: 8 syllables in 4 words. No restriction or prohibition of subject or rhyme. BONUS: Just do this one please!

It follows yesterday’s surrealism if nothing else. The illustration is one of my Postcard Fictions from a few years ago.

When I returned, the scene had darkened.  Underneath layers of rain, the curtain was already falling over my head.
The clouds, no longer hidden, now speak for themselves.  We were united under an umbrella of overpowering landscape.
I just stood there, lost, watching it all unfold in front of me.

thunder owl river acorn fog song

What is thunder?
a rolling skydrum that pauses time

What is an owl?
the heart dreaming inside feathered air

What is a river?
a muscle memory of intense longing

What is an acorn?
the foolish need to open into existence

What is fog?
a spinning echo of crowded evaporation

What is a song?
the radiant imperfection of laughter

The NaPoWriMo prompt for today was to choose one of a list of words, and write a question and answer for each one, based on a series of surrealist questions and answers by poet Paul Celan. My title gives my chosen words, and my answers were inspired by this week’s words from the Random Word Generator.

Of Eden, or: Paradise Lost

Once rampant with color, its fragrance long gone,
the paint has dried into textured lines–
afternoons of melodic stillness now mourned–
decorative traces lost inside frozen time.

The paint has dried into textured lines,
ringed by the noise of questions unasked–
decorative traces lost inside frozen time
bleeding destruction we haven’t yet grasped,

Ringed by the noise of questions unasked
life is tenuous, scattered, emotions removed–
bleeding destruction we haven’t yet grasped,
as over and over we bandage the wounds.

Life is tenuous, scattered, emotions removed,
following roads that only disappear–
over and over we bandage the wounds–
the darkness rises, overwhelming with fear.

Following roads that only disappear,
like the garden once bursting with growth—
the darkness rises, overwhelming with fear–
sky is silent, empty, brittle as bones

We lived in a garden bursting with growth,
afternoons of melodic stillness, now mourned–
sky is silent now, empty, brittle as bones–
once rampant with color, its fragrance long gone.

I love pantoums, but I usually don’t rhyme them, so this proved challenging to me. It still could use some revision, but I need to let it sit for awhile. Punam asked for a pantoum on the theme of abandonment for her W3 prompt this week. I had also been thinking about Sherry’s prompt at earthweal, asking us to write about all the species vanishing around us. And Colleen’s prompt for Tanka Tuesday, a painting by Monet (below), had me thinking about what we’ve lost since Monet painted all his overflowing gardens at Giverny. Will we one day only know such beauty as a digital image?

I also started out with a lot of words from this week’s Random Word Generator, but some of them dropped out during revisions.

Soundscape

Of course I always notice the birds.

I’m waiting for the robins to begin my morning–the cardinal, the flicker, the mockingbird.  Then I will be certain spring has arrived.  But the crows are back, as opinionated as always, and the crowds of blue jays and sparrows never left.  A mourning dove croons from a nearby roof outside my kitchen window as the sun rises.

I habitually tune out the sirens, garbage trucks, helicopters, low-flying planes, motorcycles, cars and buses, construction—all the normal background noise of city living.

But the air itself has gotten louder lately.  Sometimes when I wake up in the middle of the night I can barely hear myself think over its whisper-hum.  My head is completely emptied of dreams; I am conscious only of my body in bed, surrounded by a constant movement murmuring in my ears.

Daylight does not mute the stormy sounds that show up suddenly and randomly, demanding attention, interrupting thought.  The nonstop intersection of voices, layered in a language I don’t understand, drowns out all other discourse.

It reminds me of the ocean–unbroken, all-encompassing, alive.  A presence much larger than my own.  To be inside of it is perhaps all the translation, the guidance, that is necessary.

on the street dogs bark–
the sky darkens—lights turn on–
I breathe in, then out

I’m a little late with Sherry’s prompt from last week at earthweal of Soundscapes–I’m squeezing it in at the last minute for the weekend open link. I’ve also used some of this week’s random word generator oracle words, which you can find here.

All art is from the archives.