“This morning I’m just . . .”

PAD Day 23.

Write a morning poem.
Every attempt I made to write/wax/scribe beauty
just sounded quixotic because—

“This morning I’m just. . . ”

 A silly millimeter closer to either the
bounty or perhaps the blizzard of your
cursory hug or was it an intentional stab,
dang, they feel the same–

 this bedlam of pleasure and pain.

(This is an ABC form: The first four lines are in alphabetical order,
the fifth line isn’t. The poet creates a mood, picture, or feeling with the
first four lines and ends with a bang.)

(photo: stock.xchng:michilina)

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“Backpacking in the Mark Twain National Forest”

DAY 16 PAD

Write a mixed-up poem. I wrote one last week. That was the poem I didn’t post but I wasn’t feeling it today so I wrote a new one. This one is about mixed up feelings. She thinks she’s in love and she thinks he is, too, but from his actions it’s obviously he is more in love with himself than her. Mixed up love all around.

“Backpacking in the Mark Twain National Forest”

I thought it was love
at the trail when the katydids fell on our heads
like hail,

clawing down our shirts, between the clefts
of every secret body space that left us laughing
and grabbing and stripping to shake them off.

We stopped
for lunch under the persimmon tree, its fruit fresh
and gushy stabbing our eyes and my world was
hazed

in purple
flirty words that drizzled down our chins to the
soles of our feet.

I remember
you saved your dog’s hair in a bag so your grandma
could card the fur to knit a scarf and I thought that
was love

in every which way and I thought you proved it
when we slid into our sleeping bags, you even
sprinkled garlic in my hair to ward off the creatures
of the night

almost as if you had known that an animal disguised
as a man would speak with a knife in the wee
hours, stealing your tongue and robbing you of
your chivalry.

I thought when the visible scars faded, so would the
memory, but the invisible scars hurt even more.

I think I finally figured out what I really needed that
night—

I needed you to cry for me.

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“He had a blond Martin”

PAD Challenge Day 8

Sunday’s prompt was to write a rejection poem. Too many tired cliches came to my mind but in poetry, love and rejection go together like bread and . . . .
I’m not going there. Cliche, cliche, cliche. They are kind of like six-letter, four-letter words. Stear clear of them in poetry.

“He had a blond Martin”

He had a blond Martin with a pick-up,
I fell in love

with its mahogany aroma,
just thinking of it makes me kind of
warm and mellow all over again.

He used to chew a Fender guitar pick
until it snapped.

He played Stairway to Heaven with a broken
Gibson bronze high E and it sounded like
the Gilligan theme song.

He had a blond Martin with a pick-up.

He was dynamite and lemon, me guessing
at him–one day ruckus, the next bitter,

I fell in love with its mahogany aroma.

He bathed in musky sweat of blues and rock
blending hoarse vocals with reverb and bass.

they amplified a used Guild tight and lady-like making
me sound like a cross between leather and a gazelle.

He kept me guessing as to which he thought
I was.

I fell in love.

He didn’t.

(photo courtesy stock.xchng)

“I’ll believe it when I hear . . . ”

I admit it. I was stumped for last week’s prompt from Poetic Asides. We were suppose to write a poem with this title:
“I’ll believe it when . . . ”

Everything I thought of was incredibly boring or simply dumb. Just like that last sentence. There are imaginings that are brilliant and there are those that belong in the trash. I blame it all on my toothache. So, five days and one dentist appointment later, here it is:

“I’ll believe it when I hear . . . ”

your footprints recede
in the sand;

when your final steps fade
like evening,

then I’ll believe
you have finally heard me,
then I’ll believe that letting go
has become your new passion
of control;

and only then will I be free
to bask in my solitude

without fear.