On your first day under the sun,
burnt too badly by afterbirth pains,
you type away your dreams;
while you could do a zillion other things,
nothing else gets your motor going.

For the petals you scattered,
they say, “God’s Will.”
You ask, “Is it?” when you see the tears
inside rainbows that stain the sky,
which curtains trillions of soiled suns.

Your gypsy hands click clack
on the keyboard
--a sorceress taking refuge
in a place of calm--
where the best in your kind
are now but shadows.


Prompt: “The best in this kind are but shadows.”
Shakespeare --A Midsummer Night’s Dream. Act V. Scene 1.

For "Poets' Practice Pad" 



 

.I.

My words
of glacial drift
meandering,
as if torn apart
from a continent
of artsy people,
homeless,
on their death march
with ashen faces
praying for
grace, so
I may lock them
away inside
my wooden chest
in order not to
mock them.


.II.

Someone said
do not knit
for a lover
until you are
sure of him.
But I knit
and purl,
knit and
purl with
two needles,
using feisty
red illusions
for yarn
and wrap their
strings around
my fingers until
the blush
on my skin
fades to
regret.

 

Not all is of the wind
erasing the sand
when it brings voices
of the past with thorns
blooming, like mistaken tunes.
Thirst torments,
begging for a drop
as I walk by
clouds of silence,
and I stare
at the ominous horizon
where the ocean,
for re-plotting,
surveys its coordinates,
the waters of death ready to charge
at oblivious shores.

 

So difficult those--others--
invading my shoulders
with their weight,
while their rebukes
blind the view,
just when I am about to live…

Their floating mouths
join ghosts with orphans
of dead dreams, and then
they cower and wither
like fallen petals,
but when I search for
their true whereabouts,
I find them hiding in agony
inside the hospice of my heart.

Prompt: “Hell is--other people!” From No Exit by Jean Paul Sartre