We strolled in the woods
arm in arm, like an offering
of ourselves, kindling
hope to live within
each other's dreams,
until at the clearing
a rusty reddish fur moved,
then twisted about to lock eyes
with you, and the fox,
after wagging its white tipped tail,
fell motionless, dying
upwards into our lives;
next, a phantom glow flashed
from your eyes as if a dart
aiming at the life we could not plan.
The shock piled like the leaves
under my feet; thickening
my prickly blood and I
marveled at your distress,
letting out a sigh so fractional
you could not hear.
That day after the Red Fox,
you left, rolling with
the tide of your transformation,
a lover hovering over your own image,
to stare into the portent in Red Fox eyes,
still bright as if alive.


---------------

For "Poets' Practice Pad" 
Prompt: Write a poem about an animal as if it's an omen of good or bad. (Poe's Raven, for example)
 

To make a madcap mockery
of the full moon, the water ripples
to reflect it back on the hull,
macabre like a dead man's visage
with a ghost's mien, meddling into
the grief of the day, to appeal
for aid from the dark side,
as if in mimesis of
a liquid fallen angel,
while I think of me without you,
tying up the oars.

====================

For Para/Poem using the words:
Macabre
Madcap
Meddle
Mien
Mimesis
Mockery


 

I stagger with a single memory,
dubious now through time's questioning,
while night rains in transit
target the dark crossroads
of the sea town of my birth
and a palmetto leaf's pure hands
reach out to comfort
the tar-stained beach.
Then, as I try to recall an old guitar
that once thrummed an ancient, frisky tune,
someone's laugh collides
into my thoughts.


---------
Written for Para/Poem using 6 words:
Collide, Transit, Dubious, Pure, Target, Single

 

If I stand now in front of you
as daring as the housefly
on a frog's nose,
it is because I have
not done before
what I ought to have done,
for I am not an angel after all,
and to unwrap a happier tomorrow
from these frigid winter hours,
I would like to rearrange the
timetable of an adverse past
to let a tacit scar fade away
into the dead language of myth,
so we both feel blessed
for the warm wind's promise to transform
my prickly image in your heart.


Prompt: Write a poem in which you make an apology to someone without using "I'm sorry" anywhere in the poem.
 

Iron and concrete poles
entwine in a whimsical embrace
while the doves as toppers--perched
on the railing--absorb
the rays of the sun.
Inside twitching seasons,
their days seesaw,
as all life must come and go,
but a dove does not scorn
with a harsh, critical gaze
the railing on the bridge
it roosts on.



(from "Para/Poem Challenge "Open"" )
 

to my son who now has posttraumatic stress syndrome, because during 9/11, he was working near Ground Zero.


You are churning again
like water above the falls, but
I will hold your head in
my hands--as I once did, when
you were just a foot
and a half long--to conjure up your
courage and shoo away that
current of fury, so you'll
sail out of the radiation zone
of one hypodermic radical barb.

Then, somewhere from the dense
memory of structures coming apart,
you'll arise like a supernatural
creature to hold the world aloft
with your kisses.


------------------------------------

Prompt: Magical thinking is the belief that we can somehow cause something to happen in an unscientific but magical way. It's causal reasoning that mistakes correlation for causation. Whether you consider it superstition, magical thinking, or faith, write a poem about magical thinking.


 

Time tick-tocks
at a beach where
I loitered among a thousand
heads, winging shadows, tumbling
into hollows
of damp sand, searching;
then, on the stairway where I first
saw you in shaky heartbeats,
although I had met you
a hundred times before; in
the places where you explored
me, caressing in
the nightlong frenzy of
your game; and at
the exit where you
spun away, dancing into
the cobwebs.



Prompt: We don't always count our time in hours, days and years. T.S. Eliot's Prufrock says "I measured out my life in coffee spoons." Some count by the weeks till vacation, hours classes till the end of a school day, months to summer, regrets, For this prompt, write a poem which addresses the passage of time in an unconventional way.



 

It seems to have been a while since,
trusting my act in the kitchen, I touched
the knife on the wrong edge, sliding
my thumb. The shock of blood, rediscovered
so red when fresh, spun out of the mind--with
the pain and humiliation--other
things that bled, while I blinked to
wave off carelessness, but the pattern
of the warm liquid zigzagged to
fill my perverse temper with
the recall of sharp-edged words that cut
like cutlery when he said I was full
of shit and I should watch out, as he
cast off my human skin and made
me bleed to a peculiar numbness.
Now, I hold my thumb to the light and
think, after the ointment, my blood
will clot again.


Prompt: Write a poem about rediscovering something
 

Easter Egg

Shoved aside by the taller ones,
the tiny girl with the bruised shins
crouches under the stairwell
to hide herself like a secret message;
her eyes wish to simply see
the beauty of one second
resurrected inside
her cold Easter egg,
the only one she could find in the hunt.

The egg's colors throb into patterns,
a twirling medley of purples and blues,
that whisper promises;
stunned, her fingers tighten
and crack the soft shell,
making her wonder if
she could be anything
but human.

Salted with tears, she resolves
she won’t go about blaming herself
for the other eggs she missed
and the shell she shattered
while the world rose and fell,
moments jumping on
a green trampoline,
back and forth,
back and forth,
crushing years into one egg.



 

Cracked Stein and the Cello Missing a String
                                       a haibun

Rust stained driveway stretches in front of the garage door, its brown pain peeling. Discolored clothes on hangers lock eyes with the bric-a-brac on the card table.

Inside disorder,
a spell is cast on huge stains;
you find, you purchase.

An ancient rocking chair establishes a sway with some help from the breeze, knocking down the cello leaning to it. I help the cello lean against the wall. The cello tells me stories of beautiful hands sliding the bow, in rhythmic accompaniment.

My sad confession:
I crooned, pinned to her legs,
half alive half dead.

A furtive glance from the sun illuminates the cello's wood as if it is the moon, ripped from the night sky. My heart beats together with its eerie, distant music.

He left her; she died.
I poured over her body
and broke a string.

On the card table, stands a cracked stein, sidelined, but still inviting. I pick it up instinctively. The cello begs.

Be careful with that;
on the crack, lies his last sip
before he raced off.

I hear the owner coming my way. She tells me: "That was my father's beer stein; you can have it for free." I point to the cello against the wall, standing fragile in open space. "That, too, was my father's. It has a crack in the body and the bow's missing."

Still, mind's brew gives life
to victims of conjecture:
the cello and stein.


 

My kiln is hot;
the pedal under my feet
bounces up and down with ecstasy
as I sit at the potter's wheel
and spin my clay, shaping
what? An urn, a vase, a jar,
an amphora? But no, my container
has to be more.
Not porcelain or fictile,
since I'll fire without
breaking, and I'm still
in the making.

My container
cannot fit to a mold;
it will be handmade,
without a pallet shaped,
nudged, pulled, flattened,
and in patience, tempered.
Never mind the coarse outside;
I fumble more with punching,
pinching, and correcting the inside,
to urge delicacy, smoothness,
and ease; so, the container can
bounce back sturdily after a tumble,
and rock back and forth, in character,
while the world repeats itself
spinning, turning,
churning, spurning
my kneaded clay.



 

When you’ll leap from the deep
obeying nature’s verdict,
you’ll feel the sap
inside your stem,
rushing the season,
and you’ll know where you’re going.

So you’ll open your eyes
to the sun, appealing
for detached rays of light;
inside the vacuum-refreshed
density of your universe,
you, a galaxy of hope
will change hue
to dainty purple petals.

And you’ll bloom,
raising your neck
from the patch
left by the last snow,
like the white space
so important
between the stanzas
of a poem,
welcoming what chance brings.



 

Manhattan

Maraschino cherries,
spare tires in the bottom
of the glass;
a distinct moment of revelation
when long-handled glass stirrers
filter the sunlight, working out
new kinks.

Sweetness, a good foil
though spoils quickly,
as pearly whites anticipate
the crush after the sip.

The heart of the lion
holds the brightest star;
no, not Regulus
but Manhattan, the city
I toast to.

With words like anesthetics
to wounds still bleeding,
here’s to a beginning
renewed
cheers after cheers:
“Let our hearts be wide open!”



 

You and I
(to my reader)

I perch in front of the keyboard,
to the tune of a whiny husband,
and try to maintain the habit of
my ostensible soap opera,
the object of my obsession,
if not the tiresome kind,
while I extract images and shop
in my twenty-four market
for buried subtexts,
inspiring syllables,
and verbal daredevilry.

Predictably, at the first flash
of eye contact with you,
my words, amplified and panicked,
rush to the checkout counter
self-conscious of their own rattling,
their lungs collapsing without hope,
when fantasy worlds end up
stranded
and miracles don't collide.

Though I fear your yawning's trauma,
I imagine you.

With your delicate jaw-line bent,
you pout your lips;
you complain of blurred vision
from the scavenger hunt on screen;
and you shrug your shoulders
at the drama of my obscurity.

Then your eyes catch the ice pinnacles
outside your window,
and you take a sip from your hot tea,
which coats your displeasure
like a warm blanket,
giving you solace
for mocking me.




 

I ate a mango for lunch,
in the park, on a dusty bench.
So sweet that mango was,
like the smile of
the Fed-Ex man
who delivers packages
chanting truisms.

Afterwards, being the gullible
troubadour of platitudes
and banality,
I wondered out loud,
in my singsong voice, if
my sticky fingers
were bad management,
defamation of destiny,
or if the Fed-Ex man
smiled, expecting a tip.

But I never expected to see you
watching me from a distance
for entertainment.


 

With nods and knowing eyes,
the pillow takes over
the opus magnum,
as darkness kills the sounds
and the foundation under me
sags,
threatening to crumble.

On the enormous expanse
of the haunt of dreams
and fantasy worlds
with accidental variations,
where I end up stranded
on an antique kilim
in front of a magical castle
filled with dark wood,
the pillow points to
the tricky winds in spirals
narrowing to a keyhole.

At each toss and turn,
sorting through the crypts
of buried subtexts,
the pillow cuddles the dark head
against its white,
and lets this protagonist
raise a ruckus
to update her plot.


 

You face time in platinum,
the limited edition,
epitome of style,
crafty hands,
back and forward
forward and back,
a perpetual sarcasm
from a single crown
adjusting to the local time
via date’s declaration
--the day, the month, the years--
benefiting short-sightedness
with an oversized calendar
and the seasonal review
changing constantly
as life fine-tunes
to your dateline.

 

Oh, you the pathetic one,
the empty tankard with the unhinged lid,
the lowliest of the teentsy writers!
You’re the slipper the dog
has chewed on.

Though your vocation remains the same
with no wages and no days off,
you tantalize
one subject after another, as if a slave
changing masters, and
while others write tomes
of fancy words,
you check into a dictionary
--bigger than your size—
for not-yet-discovered phrases,
to find yourself tearjerker chores,
mixing experiment with anti-form,
and keeping a close watch
on a few tawdry lines.

Then, during your ridiculous tenure,
to humor the muse,
you call yourself a poet
on a burning impulse,
like a sacrificial lamb
with resignation.



 

You tell me:
What happens to love held back?

Does it effect a cure akin to an ointment
in worldwide renown
or does it turn into an accursed scorn
and dangle with indifference?

Does it croak
like a mutated frog,
then go jump in the lake?

Does it reek out of lazy armpits
not accepting any roll-ons
or does it turn into
a dastardly master
haunting your nightmares?

You tell me,
You should know.


 

Don’t be scared…
Let the mutinous wave
manipulate you inside
the trap of its relentless arms
to keep you alive multiple times
until it explodes on the rocks
to abandon you there
to your maritime fate,
like a martyr,
so you witness a masque
with pantomime and dancing
to the seabirds’ cries
while you feel their beaks
piercing through
your nothingness.

That is when you discover,
the significance
of your bubbly life:
a short-lived emptiness
on one limitless ocean.