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Printed from https://www.writing.com/main/books/item_id/757065-Green-Peas-at-Stake/sort_by/entry_order DESC, entry_creation_time DESC/page/3
by Joy
Rated: 13+ · Book · Personal · #757065
A poetry journal of everyday clippings
Free Photo


"The astonished muse finds thousands at her side." *Laugh**Laugh*
R. W. Emerson

I made this poetry journal because I like to play with words and lines and I wanted to put somewhere some of my practice work (or first draft) in verse, written--within a very short time, probably daily on the spur of the moment, with the idea to work on the entries later--with or without the help of the astonished (should I say shocked?) muse. *Laugh**Laugh*


Some of the haiku I have mixed with senryu, not only because I am not a purist, but also because I like to do what I like to do given what I feel at the moment.

Previous ... 1 2 -3- 4 5 6 7 ... Next
July 2, 2008 at 11:49pm
July 2, 2008 at 11:49pm
#594343
He stands at the podium and lectures:
“Follow the poem; let the poem lead.
Love it so, with awe, so it becomes you.”

Then, he asks: “Are you all strangers or ghosts
that you don’t know who murdered poetry?"
And he points with his index finger:
"Was it you? You? Or you?"

His gaze rests on me and I cringe.



June 27, 2008 at 3:56pm
June 27, 2008 at 3:56pm
#593417
Summer mountains,
wild flowers circling their necks
like glittering gems,
conjure up splendor
and my aspirations.
While sunbeams ripple
in clear light strains,
I sense a mountain's soft breath
surrounding me, for I never
lost the wonder
for the mountain winds' songs
chiming against the blue patches of sky
when the peaks, with rhythm,
whisper revelations to
something deep inside me:
“Take nothing with you;
come to me as you are,
uncluttered and complete
in your aloneness.”
June 24, 2008 at 12:46pm
June 24, 2008 at 12:46pm
#592857
You were there with me
when we started, so strong and insistent,
but, now, you are nowhere in sight.
I search for you under rocks,
wear bones and feathers, and do the dance
so you come down again like the rains
or like the light that shines through the clouds.
Yet, you have the shape of the wind
and the grit to run away
and leave me stranded, locking
my fingers on the keys.
There is nothing I can do now, but let you go
for I don’t know how to trap speed.
So I collapse and inflate with distaste
as if I am hanging from my feet,
unseen against the pages.



Prompt from "Poets' Practice Pad : Write a poem about a good idea getting away from you.



June 20, 2008 at 12:06am
June 20, 2008 at 12:06am
#592047
Two beasts allege my dreams are their territory.
One howls, the other horrifies.
One runs after me with its revolting pleas,
the other whines with unrelenting complaints.
They darken my nights with their neediness,
one with inexplicable desires,
the other with rowdy demands.
One beast is my ego,
the other my expectations,
both stark and sturdy
with no justification.

May 6, 2008 at 7:21pm
May 6, 2008 at 7:21pm
#583674
          "The streets of heaven are far too crowded with angels"

Angels left, clicking
their bones,
their smiles dancing
in the memory,
angels ignored far too long
like the disease with no mercy,
like an oily turpentine spill,
instead of the cheer they
attempted to paint.
Angels tall and thin,
angels with yellowed skin
angels of patience,
looking for the moon, but
finding heaven in
music's colors,
angels sculpting
a strange art of sparks
that coalesce into
stars with long
hyacinth wings.
Angels gave me
magic ears, so I
can still hear them
singing.



Prompt 48 from "Poets' Practice Pad
May 1, 2008 at 10:37am
May 1, 2008 at 10:37am
#582654
Roaming

What is it that makes us
leap into adventures when
our legs refuse to move and
our bodies have long given up?
Is it because we still like
to duel with life and deal with
eerie, elusive things like
getting lost in countless
upstate highways when
the setting sun blurs
the highway sign and
we miss the only exit?
What is it in us that
makes the heart follow
the feet and then clamor
with the tongue of gypsies?

May 1, 2008 at 10:29am
May 1, 2008 at 10:29am
#582650
Down below

From just under the clouds,
the scenery on the ground
is full of tiny playthings:
toy roads, toy houses,
toy cars, toy trees,
like Lionel train-towns.
Everything is so small
you don't see the people
the weeds, the garbage,
the apathy, the foolishness.
Looking from the top,
from your window seat in
US Air, flight 1868,
you wonder who plays
with all those toys
down below.



April 28, 2008 at 2:13pm
April 28, 2008 at 2:13pm
#582067
Synchronization

Today, spring intones in
a soft soprano voice.
There's singing inside
the new grass, in sprouting
happy green, and in the rhythm
of rivulets meandering
on the window pane.
The tune of the first rose,
so perfect, one can hardly believe
it was hiding inside the bud,
and I am too afraid
to move away from the window,
lest I lose the song.

April 28, 2008 at 12:49pm
April 28, 2008 at 12:49pm
#582049
The Pain of Packing

To conjure up happy unions
between unmatched pieces,
I go through my closet
my eyes like searchlights.
          Will it rain, will it shine?
          Darn this season of changes!
          I cannot be hot; I cannot be cold.

You'd think I'm getting ready
for the end of the earth or
a trip to Neptune. Folding this,
wrapping that, my body twitches
in anticipation, and I'm
a sniveling worm, which cannot
conceive there's a life
out of its cocoon. Disgusted
with indecision, just anything
I dump in the bag as if
fingering amulets that strip
my fingers. Finally!
I am a woman,
and this is not death.
April 26, 2008 at 5:46pm
April 26, 2008 at 5:46pm
#581686
When Old Friends Call

Their voices rearrange me,
invasive with long arms
but not counterfeit,
so I open my shutters
to drag in their freshness.
They spoon me up like honey
like the tonic they thought
I was, galaxies away, but now
I hide me. I hide how dried up,
how spread-too-thin I am,
and I hope, beating around
the inflections, my tone
will go unnoticed. My palm
sweats with the taste of
the receiver, and chitchat fills
empty spaces, trickling in
juicy morsels, healing
what eyes don't see,
following me into good-byes.
A temporary merger, yet
what's derailed is
back on track.
April 25, 2008 at 11:06pm
April 25, 2008 at 11:06pm
#581592
Watching the Current

The riverbank has swollen
to drown the wayward vine,
creeping into its territory,
as the end of spring
renovates the skin of the earth.
A brown scaly branch
bounces downstream to meet
its insignificant decay,
taking with it a memory
of the mother tree, and I,
with a book on my lap,
watch the water pour
over the boulders, savoring
the flow without an attitude
or a yearning. If there could be
a moment in life in which
I could stay forever,
this would be it.
.
April 24, 2008 at 7:18pm
April 24, 2008 at 7:18pm
#581398
Snapshots

Bedazzled, I took a few snapshots
of a dignified queen palm today,
thinking, come late fall, it may
not be here, for lack of roots
causes tall things to fall when
hurricanes arrive, leaving
only shadows to tuck away grief
for what is lost, inside the eyes.
So, in this accidental world,
a well-tended tree waving its arms
to the golden sun
deserved my faint awareness and
lukewarm clicks of the camera, even if
a storm is a wind in vain
like an ephemeral madness and
one may assume some things
can be replaced afterwards.
April 23, 2008 at 8:31pm
April 23, 2008 at 8:31pm
#581219
In the Office

For no sentimental reason,
clichés hang on tongues' clothesline,
and deals begin with
a phone call for "moneys to be made."
The boss, a walking talking gunner
with a blind bat's shot in the dark. Still,
his romance with greed and
rhythm--cool as lemonade on a hot day,
he calls it-- is feeding on a small scale,
while the steno, cracking her knuckles,
wonders who started the jam sessions
for the management or if the experience
of the tar-dipped character was ever tested.
A message obscure: "Don't allude
to what‘s there; play your hand right."
Familiar faces stacked behind
computer screens wish to unravel
duplicity's skein, but they can only shift,
drift, and dream of five o'clock, hoping
the ogre does not short their wiring as
the steno grieves the waste of
her thirty-sixth summer.
April 22, 2008 at 1:59pm
April 22, 2008 at 1:59pm
#580924
In the Kitchen

In the kitchen, Mira
--my friend from India--
soaks tamarind,
balancing homesickness
with cooking and poetry.
Hard working, efficient,
she rises and falls again
like the dough or the pain
of searching for the best
paprika in the market, beating
the eggs and simmering her opinions.
Her cravings widen the dance
of my thoughts and send them
spiraling to other people like
my grandmother, aunts, women
from all over the globe
who
distill memories in
cups, spoons, torte pans, gadgets,
Pyrex pans, non-stick roasters
that stick to recall as they
are towed to the island
in the middle of the kitchen.
They interpret recipes and
trying moments
they've allowed to marinate,
and I fluff up to take in
all their aches and memories,
tasting, trusting
the soft, wise voices
gifted with metaphor.

April 21, 2008 at 5:19pm
April 21, 2008 at 5:19pm
#580706
Jensen Beach, April 21

Crowded at the beach today,
--on a Monday, no less--
sun building webs of light
for pieces of dreams
jobs in the offing,
world's untreated scars,
and ripples of sea like butter knives
spreading salt on the sand
and on the wounds of people
who try to connect with
the birds overlapping the sky
as if in a drifting trance,
studiously ignoring
the sad face of the economy.

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

Revised version:

Jensen Beach

Crowded at the beach today...
The sun's building webs of light
to add to the drama of sloth,
jobs in the offing, and
world's untreated scars
as ripples like butter knives
spread salt on the sand,
the wounds of people, and pelicans
in a drifting trance, ignoring
the sad face of the economy.
April 20, 2008 at 12:08pm
April 20, 2008 at 12:08pm
#580445
The People before Us

In the summer of
the World's Fair, 1939,
when the "compass rose
pointing in all directions,"
the people before us
danced the rumba,
extending the conga line
from the docks to
Manhattan for the unknown
to be discovered; the sea
of people, in wide parades,
reached the pavilions
that promised world peace
for the umpteenth time,
like the end of a long,
miserable drought.

Useless!
Now, the rain
spits down our shame,
tasting of ashes.
The splitting ice,
the ebbing earth
the missing sky
bind us to guilt
of shortened time.
This vile display
from the brink of yesterday,
can it hit upon a spiral
to uncoil again from
the "Futurama Ride"?


April 19, 2008 at 6:17pm
April 19, 2008 at 6:17pm
#580361
His Handwriting

Not on tablets
or in charcoal,
but with ink on paper,
unleashed I thought
his attention to detail
through patchiness.
In the way his letters curved
faithful to high loops
on top of the lines
like hands clapping and
the deep dark ink
-a symbol of strength-
could be hooking for
someone to hold,
but then, I got
the whole thing wrong,
not noticing the distribution
of empty spaces or the
flair of smudges and streaks.
Maybe because I am
a speed reader, and I
never could read in
between the lines.

April 18, 2008 at 1:50pm
April 18, 2008 at 1:50pm
#580093
Sunset Beach

The surf comes in like a train
with soft choo choo sounds,
swelling first, far over the ocean,
where sunset begins.
The sun burns its spinning wheel,
to sweep later the ashes
into gliding clouds as its light
pulls up anchor,
and sea foam fizzles down
to dampness on sand.
Then comes my refusal
to walk barefoot on
this beach, for
particles of far-away sands
are already glued
under my toes.
April 17, 2008 at 12:45pm
April 17, 2008 at 12:45pm
#579916
Ye Olde Yarn Shoppe (prose-poem)

Fixation, Merino, Worsted, Alpaca, hand-dyed Sierra. I could sing the poetry of yarns on Open-Mic Night at Bulls and Frogs. That might have been before Debbie Macomber's passionate books and you bought me a set of crochet hooks. Then they burned down Grace's Ye Olde Yarn Shoppe on Revelation Avenue, and you sent her red roses for comfort. Her consolation, you said. Her consolation, my demise; for I was never worldly wise. So I named all the savage weeds in my yard after the two of you, and yanked them out of the soil one by one: Poison ivy, Knotweed, Crabgrass, Sodom's Apples, Carrot Wood, Buckthorn, Fire Tree, Goosefoot, all tangled up together, held down by the crochet hooks in a thrash bag. Now, I buy all knitted things, ready-made, from Macy's.


April 16, 2008 at 3:59pm
April 16, 2008 at 3:59pm
#579770
Art

                    For a painting a friend sent me. *Smile*

Old friend, you paint, so sad and sweet...
Why, those colors say everything, like silent reminders
on canvas, engraving my life, brushstroke by brushstroke,
to hint at what is lost, what no one sees.

If only your colors had a body I could dwell in...
one you could touch with your eyes as if
our skins could touch, like the day when I told you
I woke up from untamed dreams of childhood.

Yet, what came out of my lips has vanished
in the murky rush of years, and now, I find
my way with half-blinded eyes through your art,
and you hold my hand in remembrance.

When the real you reaches through in understanding,
I detect, in this icy life, some instrumentalist
drove us together to huddle around the only flame left,
not to chant nonsense but to pray for deeper perception.





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Printed from https://www.writing.com/main/books/item_id/757065-Green-Peas-at-Stake/sort_by/entry_order DESC, entry_creation_time DESC/page/3