Roses have faded
Petals fallen
Blackberries picked
And jam’d
Youths garden becomes
Maturities briar patch
Rent-thorns. Bill prickers
Obligation stickers scratch and tear
Leather gloves, sickles, clippers
Keep the weedy world at bay,
There is a sadness in the cutting
And a deep joy in the tending
20171021, after Blake
The mini-challenge at Real Toads is to leverage blakes last line of the garden of love: “to bind with briars my joys and desires”, and to keep it short, 12 lines or less.
Whoever came up with this is a fucking artist
And an artist unlike any other
Whose paints are our souls
Whose canvas is society.
This is a work that has completely and fundamentally
Changed
The
World.
There is no going back from this.
What a terrible gift. Are we ready for this?
We must be or it would not be present.
How will Shame survive this upheaval?
Or what will take it’s place? Was that
Conceived, or did this uberartist just
Plow ahead, like lesser artists, who simply
Must
Release their findings? Ah this then
Is one of the most glorious things to happen!
And if the sheeple can be coaxed to cast off
The cloak of silence around their shame,
Then oh what magic is now possible!
What songs these souls will sing!
20171018
Posted on DVerse Open link night.
I do not know who started it, or what the news item was that prompted it, but there is currently a meme on Facebook where you are to post the words “me too” if you have been the victim of unwanted sexual advance, abuse or such. It is heavy, and rampant. Almost all women and many men that i’m connected to have admitted this. It is huge, in many ways. First, it’s appaling how common this is. This has never happened to me, but there’s no feeling of good fortune associated with that fact. I’m fairly sure i’ve perpetrated this at times in the past. There are no excuses.
Second, and more important, is that people are brave enough to admit this and bring it forward. That takes an incredible strength, and shows that these people who can do this might be stronger and braver than they’ve thought. I hope they can see it this way. This kind of awareness changes the world.
An october day is winding down,
This is the evening of the year.
Summer’s campfire is behind me,
winter darkens the road ahead.
The trees pull in blankets of leaves,
My feet beneath the sheets.
The trees are talking to each other
In moon beams round reflection,
Like children in slumber-party torchlight circles
Excited for the winter night.
Author laying up phrases, images,
and pieces of trees, sawn and split,
in sheds and notebooks.
Standing in the door, watching
November darken To night.
She turns, tucks in, and snuffs the light
Or,
like Jesus,
offer my flesh to the world
And they eat and are sated.
Briefly.
But they throw away the core.
They are not yet ready for that.
For that is where the truth lies.
The kernel, the seed. Children.
The future.
Hope.
20171009
A quadrille on hope, for the prompt at dVerse poets, come, join. The Quadrille is a poem of 44 words.
By the time Augusts heat has begun to fade, I am very glad for that relief. And though the gardener in me loathes his coming, that first night of real cold is exhilarating. I was born in November, they tell me. This is how the world was, when I came into it.
The old man winter whispers his welcoming, a lullaby that brings the world to her annual rest. He speaks of the warm hearth, and coming yule, hot toddys and apple pies, but also something darker. And in the morning, The magic of his song lies glittering on the grass.
What could he have said
To chill them to their very core
Tomato’s demise
How can i not be two-faced?
Worthlessly I somehow think I deserve respect
So I bring those two attitudes to the world
Perhaps I think that respect would salve my worthlessness
So I bully my way through the door marked Deserve
Then wonder why my deserved doesn’t come.
Would you bring me respect when I bring you ridicule?
So these actions, selfish, self-serving, rooted
In my worthlessness, sown with bitterness,
Bear only rotten fruit. And I, so oblivious to others
Was surprised by this! Thus instead of salve,
To that primal wound
I was applying salt.
Now Eric, what will you do from here? This respect
Must start first in you, if it is to find you.
