10k views, 2x BestPoetryCollection. A nothing from nowhere cast words to a world wide wind |
I’m disabled by more than blindness. Writing: Like one of those adventure games where you go off questing in different directions but you don’t advance in life. Pretty medallions sought for words/my soul, slow burnt. Full of misdirects, right back at the start, but still quest with thirst. Life of turmoil produces stuff like this. Not going to call it beautiful agony…it gets a bit uglier. Minced words too pungent. If they take time to notice, must be doing something right. scripturam in hoc non mutamus, quia stultus es et differentiam nescies. (hic) The beautiful mess you made: I had a lover's quarrel with the world - Robert Frost | I'm sorry you got caught in the middle. - me Neurodivergent poet seeks love without that fart in the room between us. Honesty without mincing words has come with a price for those juggling the hot my takes on what’s ‘truth’ (here’s some oven mitts). Best to stay clear of those surrounded by moat rules. Real dialogue is accepted. Wasn’t as open at first about recent diagnosis on spectrum with ADHD (complicated by PTSD, life of brain traumas). Been suggested by doctors of late I might want another brain scan (since 12/4/17…blogged). This poet’s words collect, arrange on a kaleidoscope spectrum. The experience of discovery through writing is the truest reward that has allowed me to grow and learn who/what I am — what other people get naturally, immediately, while I stomp around in it. Been blessed, but pushing it — envelope, world and all inhabitants away. Push buttons, find boundaries to trip traps. No clue why cat curiosity, living in your dark. (Bored, perhaps?) Now and then, push dirt out of this hole; someone/thing/entity might envision me how I need to be viewed (if I knew what that was). Cryptic, yes. Try living in my dark, find comfort amid strange, virtual, wonderful walls that tower above, tempt me to scale. Been more than I could imagine or expect here. But, achievements aren’t going on a LinkedIn wall . I dig deeper than I should, often without forethought. Aimless words, brave or veiled cowardice, flinchingly flung, inadvertently hit targets? Get a ‘back off’ shoulder shot when asking your motivations here. Not fair? No prize to eye; not incentivized. Dealt the worst two cards before the flop, do best with what’s in hand. My Pluggers: You are an icon here. You suffer, but you suffer brilliantly. Wow, what a great writer. It’s like plugging myself, but using other people’s (reviewers) words…Review of "Poetic Referendum(s) On Life" Your poetic muse is on fire! Some great emotion, well-balance(d), lovely lyrical qualities -- even the ones that were written out of sadness or anger came through in a clever cadence…It's obvious you've put a lot of work into each entry and the totality of the blog has eye appeal. Published four times with one a literary journal, including… "The Tender Core (Sedona)" I don’t submit because it’s too much work. Truly alone, know no one cares to show they believe/support me. Lip service feeds delusion. I’ve seen a lot of smoldering and snow. Try not be cynical, work hard at openness and consideration — work, sooo…gut thing. August 28, 2006 this blog opened ▼
No specific aim going forward (2014) ▼ This is old…. What? Oh, this? A rhetorical, self-motivational speech I'm working on. Don't just read the parts to construct your theory, as if to confirm (construed out of context) your opinion, mentally-stunted Neanderthal. Therapist wants me to be less negative toward myself. I see it as attacking, rather than being defensive. Fear I will chomp too many bullets unintentionally sent toward the unsuspecting. If you can be triggered for stupid reasons, then I? …just looked like me rolling around on the floor with myself. What Was NEW Who am I, you ask? My mirror knows that question, repeated daily. Just trying to create a little buzz, not boost my ego. #amwriting #poetry #blog #contest #freeverse #award #bestpoetry #freyaridings #lyrics #music #video #YouTube Can you believe it took this long for someone to put a quarter in me and push the button GET ANGRY? Mud 4 My Eye: Is that you, Poo? 💩 Secret Back Door ▼ |
Out The Bay Window, We Roam Where wildflowers will wander, yet unknown. Sun streams and chills chase a winter room, ending gloom. In recliner, fully cocked, renewal absorbed. A chick yellow-hatched, hides within the white lamb. The good sun seeks another yard. On padded plane, I dream a lad spring clad, weatherproof rubbers, and mad. In a crush, murk-brown vaults eternally splashed. Frozen time glistens a reflection fading fast. Safe signaled, dry eyes toss up the sash. Cardinal and blue jay flit to and fro, feather from feeder, as felines watch below. Screened fragrance flows freely within. Dust-lungs deep inhale, exhale soft memory of the lost, sweet and youthful. A panorama once a haze, now a glint of hued blaze. No clouds clasp a quiet horizon sunken deep. Bones seep in sinew of this quiet regeneration. 16 lines, free-flowing, free verse 3.22.22 3.28.22 major edit Abridged, edited from this month's epic output on Spring: "In The Lamb (spring into inaction)" |
Not out of the woods yet, where birch peel black scrolls, yield novels dream-carved. Ferns snap back, lash my bare thighs. Toads flit further along, trail toward a calling rush. Metaphysical memory visually runs ahead, beneath a canopy. Spry legs hasten to the bank. Tethered crafts of colored rubber heave! ho! Shouting swimmers, splash, cavort to and fro! They hold hued bottles high, like a toast. Finding no footing, black mud guards a creek, raging like a river. Moss stone, cedes a spot to put in my float, tube a rocky, hairy scene. Most play hooky like me, to stream unfettered. Yoke-free in hidden scene, on currents we roll. Happily sprayed, foot navigate jutting stumps. Legs up, or scrape skin. Arms shove, twirling, when we spy that serene opening. Sun smooth settles on glass. Bugs skitter across, fish mouth bubbles, plunge our surface. The gushing gone in a chasm of sunlit dreams, slowing time unseen. I spin my craft, dunk toes, gulp and belch amber. Silent, not a croak, nor whisper, we scan trees, tasseling leaves topsy-turvy. A crow leaps down, swoops from dead branch. Flung again, ears recall a rush calling, beg lonely and forgotten, sail free. Warm, eyes heal. Chest scarcely heaves, when I breathe. Cresting toward the sugar shore, ahead they carry wood for fire. My watery mouth craves smoked meat and whatever else exhumed from styrofoam coolers. Limp, we dry, settle in heaps on sand to sleep, filled. Summer season’s cures never-ending, we regale. Jet black dome, specked bright white, shutters watery eyes. Red skin cools beneath an eve spread. Downy and exhausted, we scale access to gravel lot, load up, fight off insistent mosquitos, shove off. Anchored, I’ll dream my body stream a hurling rush. 3.22.22 36 lines, free verse 2nd place @
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Half Past Moon The Shape of the Mind Does Not Bend Correctly I live in the great green room for years on end, when I paint it dark colors in dead of night. Monsters lurk about my head, do not dine on gray hairs and wrinkles, but lick my wounds warmed by their reptilian flesh. Whiskers tickle, spike shadows against windows, curtains, walls and down the hall -- where a bunny sleeps sound, many years now; not very small, no longer creeps in my bed between my big, snoring head and the silvery woman wearily calling, calling, calling. And I dread morning light will reach before this years-long fight will end with me and the choice of colors streaming through my mind in this bed, where I shed my sweat. No mushy, crusty bowls remain, nor ticking clocks that spell time; no oval drifters float to ceiling, by morning fall. Just refractive error in mediocre light. In ten by eight, dressers stack high, creaky closet door ajar, a mussed-up mattress rests, trapping a worrisome dweller. I see a glint of orange spy through glass, when I begin relax, and the ghosts drift out to meet the moon, not seen for hours on end. On which to depend, my body, in the kitchen leaning, into a cup in hand, half past noon? Not true. I’m dead. 3.22.22 This Blog: Quill Nominated Best Poetry Collection two consecutive years, 2020 and 2021. "Poetic Referendum(s) On Life" Just reading about the author of Goodnight Moon, wondering, if she had just lived past 42. |
Wrote this one month after joining WDC, 15 1/2 years ago. How much have I grown as a writer?
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Brown, smooth as summer sand, should reach my lips, belly flat, on a sun-starved beach swept by eternal evening tides. My shadow marks minutes that last, erase memory of winter white. Warmth of a lamb, spread on the sparkled brown land, nestles as a chick from worrisome egg, finally hatched. Eyes lift to sparse green sprouting under stout oak, spy 'neath a waving willow, while reaching for elder and elm. Wildflower seedlings prepare, popping pesky yellows, purples, orange and pink, poking, clambering about. Inhale sweet silt agleam again. Filmy, foamy bath laps a shore clean. Spring beach brims with casual folk on leashes, treading, sun up to sundown. 20 lines, free verse 3.21.22 3.29.22 edit |
The Perils Of Childhood Freedom I skipped over it. The way a creek bubbled up, blazing my trail in shallow wood, half past spring on weekends outdoors, mounting to summer freedom to explore unguarded, when they wanted you out, didn’t care where you were unless you weren't back for before a dinner yell — and dark insisted to them the sun visited another lost boy past the horizon. You could have fallen. I skipped over it, again and again, learning. And, if the sour truck came rolling up bitter gravel, you crawled from the ravine and skipped over it, until lying in bed, woke by a dream. It wasn’t summer: 13, 14 or 15, but driving his truck into the marsh, hunting and screaming, flashlights playing tag with snoring pine to find myself tethered to the sap… and skipped over it… until 40… bound and gagged… in a trunk of something speeding, fast. Brakes squealed, foot steps reported from telltale gravel. Too black to realize a lid lift, a world gashing silence free… and the struggle… I skip over. Water rush deeper than a creek, when I’m forced up, face a moon’s deflection… reflection on that ledge… a small boy bleeding… thick trails mixed with an eye’s creek… they screamed, ‘I wish you would’! Nope. I didn’t skip over it. I slumped. I didn’t find a ravine or the bottom of a lake. I woke to wake, eventually, skipped over it to teach a small boy the perils from ignorance of early innocence. 3.18.22 We could be traumatized by something our whole life and not know it, but feel it deep in those creeks we explore in dreams. |
my heart is in my head, bleeding black, seeping through sockets of dead flowers that bloomed when I first saw you. golden visions cascaded over slumped shoulders, as you pouted in my general direction. something stabbed me that day. my bloodied shirt dried crisp, removed to bare my chest. but after so much loss, how could I see you undress? not a man anymore, foolish I wept to the night alone, as you drifted from room to dark room, stabbing every victim, dead. Yet somehow, I lived on to retell how a scarred woman stole life from a meager soul, received blood but not the flesh of an observer. You're just a ghost of a woman who I could devour now in one bite. So small and withered in my sight, as I start to glow and shine. For all the pain, from all the years, I grew strong, could not be killed. You're ashen and nearing a mantel urn. I avert my eyes as your body burns. 3.16.22 Listening to Chris Cornell, mainly. |
Honorable Mention ~ Stormy’s Poetry Newsletter 3.23.22 Headstones (We Walk Home) In a sea of headstones, hands clasped, we mark future journey to our destiny, remembering mother and father, on their anniversary. Fires they built to burn our food, teenage years, eternal love, and a roof over our heads, until we graduated from school, and went to work. And when that home came toppling down, from aging and all the love inside, we had an idea to replant their perennials at the grave. We've done about as much for them, as they could do for us, in our early years. Now in tears, shoulder to shoulder, we walk home, too. 3.15.22 12 lines, free verse
Oldest living poetry contest that means a damn at WDC. Keep it alive! |
Rubber zucchini will not do from a supermarket zoo, where I load a basket of ingredients. We've got the blues and a manufactured sleeve of black cookies would not do. Smudged recipe card in her handwriting greets me on a floured counter, amid the grating and grinding. Tablespoons of cinnamon, allspice, powders and salt all need minding. I butter and flour the pan how she taught me. From mixer bowl, I slide in the batch. Two pans even must be. With the proper fire from a faithful oven, hope to get it right. We'll see. Hour later, they marvel crisp, brown perfection. Her aromatic bread, spied through glass, risen. This was her favorite selection. In thick divides, we plate each slice, butter, and gobble Mother's confection. 3.15.22 20 lines, rhyming Second place, April 2022:
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I could feel you near, heart searing my chest. I still cannot rest, when I knew you would be about. Days wasted, watching a Madonna, as you'd pout around that boy. I feel you dressed for nobody, but him who spent too much time flexing in the gym, exercising ego. How could he know, that I was ready to make love to you? You came to me late at nigh, a fit because you had a fight. Comfort in my arms as you whisper what you really wish. It's not me, but for him, who should've known. I told you 'no' when you wanted me, a consolation. In the years since then, in desolation, needing consecration, timing wasn't our thing. Nor were you and button-jeans guy who made you sing. 3.15.22 20 lines, rhyming in free verse. We've all met that one who intimated feelings for another when we were right under their nose. I may hav been on three ends of that. |
my heart throbbed for fire red hair, a cherub who could not conceive her reflection, a devilish grin on pottery-glazed cheeks -- matter of fact ignored blue piercing her green when she openly stared at a crow. and when we hit a smoky lake superior strip with that college clan drinking on land, they dared bare skin. your sweater cast off, revealed pink panties, braved waves hurtling ashore. and alone, I shoved off, defeated. I didn’t want to share you or know if yip, yip, yipping jackals had owned you in our moonlight. just an unknowable, self-protective wall of man, too afraid to go free, naked with a spirited, animal baying. lacking sacrifice of virgin skin in ice black air, flesh I longed entwine never warmed this soul's container. I'm an island of man, not a public spectacle. immoral to project a vision for you I could never embrace as my own. 3.15.22 20 lines, free verse Love Unrequited, it seemed. I wanted irony twist at end to see who really should be condemned. From the much longer: "Not So Much As A Bare Toe " |
Vintage? Perhaps Peering through clearest marble, expanding eye visions, purity of green glass, smooth as a time-worn pebble feet felt in blue bay, summer water on silt, imagined deep brown, murky. yellow eyes, pierced black, peeped amid reeds guarding a blackened, brackish shore; castoffs, sequestered collective, joined us all in senses infinite; until time dies where I wade out to meet the frayed clouds forming, absorbing faded sun-glint horizon on bubbled, frosty-death glistening. I would buy all of you and hold you, wedged in undersized pockets, play on unforgiving sand outside school in snow-melt spring, ceding space with small, prying thumbs marking a place for entry, to be won or lost, gamble to gain more of you to covet, but burst stitching in pants, cast off to echo on floorboards, post recess, collected by the annoyed, ruling man. A child does not yet conceive untimely fate for each of you. And now, my turn to be buried deep in white within a black, grimed corduroy space. But I do not gleam like you, as age burns us all to ash. It takes only one of you to carry one of me to the earthen place. 3.12.22 33 lines we go back and forth through time, making it infinite in our reality, imagined. there's not science to back it up, but even eggheads don't hold all the answers to the mysteries poets explore. remembering what is what like to hold up a pure marble and use imagination to envision, as a poet does with memory to recall what it felt like, where it takes me now and how I relate as a child and an old man with one poem to carry with me to the grave. in fact, a metaphor that implies deep, but it doesn't take much to get past that surface, knowing (if only subconsciously) how close we are to it...D-E-A-T-H You held my nose in it. I said it was just fine, The smell intoxicating, Brute strength divine. Because, I could have fought you, But chose not to care How I was treated By the likes of you, Because, My mother said only love. While I love myself more, It didn't take time to devise How time would even every score. It was no work. No work to be done. We each are judged From only one up above. Tell your mother you love her, even if you think her wrong. Just a lad's spirit guide, not a god damn oracle. and, stop looking for answers. keep eyes open for serendipity. life's about having fun. at least, that's how I'm Told it's done. |
I’ve been expressing myself for a very, very long time now and unnecessarily moot I hear water dripping in the sink. I can’t move. Cats at my feet clean up the plate I put down — licking taking forever. Stuffed animals on a cluttered table, faces cut off, stare blankly, replaced by painted, oven-baked expressions, some kind of art, takes three hours away from overdue schoolwork, with a term nearly ended, one more truant letter to come. Mother at the bar now, after work on Friday, our saving saint, a stalwart, family matron — slides under bar chair. Does not want to act her age among co-workers, and I wonder: how long helium will last, when will Elon Musk move to Mars to get away from us, men deranged with power before the meteor strikes, making this all moot. It seems an eternal drip. Cheers, Mother! from your high school dropout. 3.11.22 |
Can't the world be still? Every babe is crying. This house sags when floorboards depress beneath the weight of a hard shoe. Leave them at the door. Leave whatever you have on that protects you from the weather on the sturdy rack in the parlor. Have tea or lemon-aid. Come out of the hot sun or bitter cold, for shade or heat, the way welcoming is meant to be at home. No radio, no TV blaring. No images on screens and words deflecting a world in conflict while a child is sleeping. Get your rest, babe. You could be summoned tomorrow in the heat or cold, sent to the street or trench from a world ever spinning, but not evolving. Do we hate? Why war? Take your shoes off. Have gin and tonic. It will take the edge off. 3.9.22 Pretty clear once you get past the mehtaphor. I misspelled on purpose. |
What's the reading level of your audience, elitist rag, using student funded dollars to cloak words in riddles and devices to delight and surprise the Sunday crossword composers? I'm taking aim at this mastery to craft the clever ditty that to you looks shitty. I take aim at those words published by others with names not germane to this region and wonder how many of me are left in the woods with our rifles and cheap fifths of something soaked in gray beards as we squint and aim and hope not to kill one another? Your rag would make an outdoorsman shit with spectacular color, take aim at those words not germane. Perhaps ink some words on those bathroom stalls with the deer heads and other antlered things on the walls. And in full orange gear, they do not fear ridicule for not being like the others on those stools. Plenty of interesting stories go around here, not ones examining self-worth to a jellyfish in a coral reef on expedition of inner light, self-glowing a starless night. And where is this all going but down with a yank? I do not share scribbles among your heavenly scholars scribing multi-syllablic words not heard in a century, or composed with such fashion that eyes turn away before the seventeenth comma in elaborate, one sentence ‘graph. I read, compelled, and wonder: should I understand this all? as my words take aim at a shitty web wall, hoping not too small for the audience tripping over this mic cord. 29 lines, free verse 3.7.22 4.3.22 edit maybe, i'll like this, or never at all. Prose-y, rhyme-y, disconnected slam-y free verse. EVERY Shadows & Light Entry Contained Herein ▼ |
I could take that bath but will I feel worse when I wake up? I will feel worse when I wake. I peer through the glass. Waves of amber swirl so light. Yes, I would bathe, now that my soul is naked but I can't and put it back. I dream of you, all hours of the day, of the night black and wonder if these feelings will ever go away. I could hold you to my heart, fully corked, unwilling to spill, as long as your cool magnum chills my bodice corpse. I lay in this cradle like a crypt, unwilling to cry out because they could take it all away, and I need this place to stay. Baptismal waters churn and bubble and gleam, wishing a temptress would beckon to christen me anew, but I wasted all my days. I peer though my night. Waves furl about a false, navigational guide. I can't hide. Let me drown in my sheets this night. 3.7.22 the potential for alcoholism is great. I've been there and back and believe me, I do not want to go there again. I wish I could just keep the temptress without paying a debt. |
in a muddled craft at my core on a lake in my wood ship, hands anchor to oar, light in a fog in my night, slap the water I could fight. am I making progress? do I know where to go or should I sit back, wait for the lift, hope the stars glimpsed dazzle and show? as stationary as me, it seems. is this life, a dream, a scheme to get my arms to row? I’m not lancing windmills. I’m all alone. I make a din ~ too quiet, you know? how’s this end? with time I forget until woozy again, commander of a sturdy tub and no navigational equipment. no desire to man this craft. nothing tugging anymore. 3/5/22 when the internet is down, these thoughts coalesce. |
I hate that hurt that hurt her — that I hate, but love because I need her as much as sun but less than air, because if I don’t breathe, I can’t draw words within my lungs, launched for space but in her face. Puts up with misguided feelings, when I don’t know who or what to hate, when anger gets misplaced, she stands on the edge of my world, and asks, ‘what do you want me to do?’ with attitude, when I know she’s sweet, because it’s sweet. She acknowledges me, when I treat her like my word wall with all the graffiti that could stain, she washes off, and asks, ‘what do you want to do now?’ I say nothing, just lie there in her arms. ‘Stroke my hair, rid me of my own despair.’ Tears fill my eyes, when I realize, I need her as much as air. 3/5/22 30 lines We really don’t mean to hurt the ones we love, really. |
The Drifters Take the lead! Take the lead! Now go this way! Now that! I tumble over you and you and you! Keep up, keep up, keep up! Let’s skitter down this frozen tar together. Hop, skip, jump! I hurdle! You hurdle! Faster with the wind we go! Under those wheels and circle, circle, circle in the middle and STOP! Now, off we go! Tumble, little acrobats! More drifters join our clan! Spun! Spin! Keep spinning! Isn’t this fun? Hey, where’d you all go?! Don’t join that snow! Here I go with another flock that just joined up. Ready to go the block?! Many wheels to bumper us here and there. Let’s dance, have a parade as the old man shoves us down the road. Twirl! Leap! Tumble! Fly! Bye-bye, to the child in the window, laughs so much, he cries. And here comes the bend in the road. See you guys! Time for me to blow, over the bank, up that hill to join an immaculate scene beneath that spindly giant once green. In this yard I’ll wait for the child when it’s time to roll, roll, roll! 3/5/22 37 lines, free verse I know there’s rhymes at times, but free verse can employ it to. Inspiration:
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