Shudder

Don't touch that. The fork's sharp
on his wrist. Dean's guarding his pie,
but his look says he felt the touch
like skin to skin same as Sam.

Oh yeah try and stop me.
Twitched fingers and a mischievous grin.
Pressed, the fork breaks skin.
Sonovabitch!
Wait your turn, Dean retorts.

Side by side in the motel mirror, one arm up,
a hand to graze his cheek. Just a gash, he bluffs,
not that bad. He gets a frown. Yes it is.

They are both stripped. Bare souls.
Pink again? How come nothing
ever comes out clean anymore?
It’s so dark right now, Sam. Can’t see. Sammy…?

in the morning he yawns
presses against protracted time
feels the heat of him
whose heart holds them against
the stretch of eternity
in one moment

alarm blare vibrates along the hair of his arm,
attenuated time from the slap of his palm to the
grip on the halo of warmth around his waist

There’s sweetness curling in my chest.
It spirals when you’re safe, twists inside me.
I will keep you safe (for a kiss)
I will keep your soul


I had to share this. It was entirely unintended to turn into a poem. This was an exercise between 5 friends, to try to write a short story about two characters (named Sam and Dean) using only 140 characters, including spaces and punctuation. Only two of the works were intended to compliment each other (the two about pie, and the two about waking up in the morning.)

But I strung them all together, and look what happened. Cool, hmm?

I've been writing poetry again, so I'll try to post some soon. Also, my website is finally back up, here.

Hope all are well.

New Poem

I PRAYED

I prayed for fire and found enough
strength to burn the lies that bound me
to an unforgiving wife.
I prayed for fire and found enough
healing to believe the dawn
does not destroy my dreams.
I prayed for fire and found enough
inspiration to tell you the truth
and the truth and the truth.
I prayed for fire and found enough
passion to hold you naked,
smouldering in my arms.
I prayed for fire.

Back from Alabama

I've been in Alabama taking care of my mother. She had an ovarian cyst removed. It was benign and she has recovered quite well. I stayed until she was able to drive herself around. I really love sitting on her front porch early in the morning. Here are two cutesy poems that came to me there.


BEAUREGARD

Beauregard, the Labrador,
barks at buzzards. Not ground bound
vultures, but the ones circling

in the sky. I remind him
to get them down he should be
less lively. He’d rather bark.

The idea of carrion
he finds offensive. Who knew
dogs can see so far.



SQUIRRELS

All the dogs I know proclaim:
Squirrels! Most evil and devious
creatures in the universe!
Do not let them in your yard!
In my mother’s neighborhood
evil abounds. It searches
for acorns, chases itself
in circles, and flees up trees.
It chatters from a safe height:
All the dogs are fenced or leashed
and no one owns a kitty.

2 Poems

CAUTION

Newly divorced, I wanted
sexy friends and friendly sex.
I found you who knew her heart
was cold; romance, a failed dream.
A perfect match. We wanted
to get laid. Our bodies fit
too well. You advised caution.
But our spirits fit too well.
We tried to stop at respect
and adoration. Our minds
fit too well. We admitted love
and learned the truth of caution.
We whisper the same promise:
I’m as reckless with my heart
as I am careful with yours.



AFTER

After the wisteria
shatters and honeysuckle
becomes a fragrant tangle
at woods edge, it seems the world
has always been this lush green.
The memory of branches
stripped bare brown is powerless
to prevent the moment
from stretching to forever.
And vice versa. The moment,
whether hopeful or helpless,
grows into a destiny.
If it isn’t yours, just seize
the moment after.

Glimpses of Divinity

GLIMPSES OF DIVINITY


1. Beginnings

In the gravel of our drive,
I built roads and rivers, woods
and mountains. I was the force
that animated the trucks
and cars, horses and knights,
cowboys and soldiers. I was
God until Mother called me
for lunch.

I wore a clip-on bow tie
to visit God’s house. There were
so many of them. How could
this fieldstone Methodist one
be His? I didn’t feel a presence
except when sun-lit stained glass
colored floating motes with shafts
of tinted light. Where did God
sleep? Maybe the Baptists
built Him a bedroom.

In the woods I was at home.
Sitting in the cool green fronds
or racing down a rabbit path
through the tangle on the tail
of my dog, I became another
force of nature.

Because my skin was so fair,
Daddy took me to the beach
early. The rising sun cast
a glittering path to Africa.
Before I learned to swim,
I’d claw through the shallow surf
pretending to be a boat
or some newly created
life-form, safely tumbled
on the heaving breast of the sea.



2. Bottoms

As a teenager, I ate enough
psilocybin to see God often.
Shiva danced in oaks. Gaia
blessed Buddha as Raven croaked
a re-creation. Addictions
trumped the divine.

I listened to Pathetique
and I reconsidered God.
My closed-eye-visions resolved
into clear patterns flowing
from Greek keys to paisley
to Celtic knots. Focusing
on space or the denim stretched
on my thigh, I imagined
a force that flows away.

A moment before launching
a sixty thousand ton missile
from the center of a submarine,
I muttered a foxhole prayer.
Don’t let us break in two.

At the bottom, all is brown
or grey or black. A hopeless,
helpless place where I lost all
my answers.



3. Births

In the morning I prayed,
Help me.
At bedtime I prayed,
Thank you,
and, Who are You?
One night She replied,
I am the one who answers
your prayers.
I found faith enough to heal.

At the moment of release
our faces shed all our years.
We rejuvenate. We fly
between the bonfires, maiden
and swain, nymph and faun,
Goddess and God. On our lips
we taste immortality.

An unseen crow caws,
pops its head above the clover
like a black thistle, dances
two hops to the side, and flies
into the woods. She shows me
a dozen paths easily missed.

One day in every twenty,
at sunset I light a lamp.
I honor Her flame all night,
waiting for dawn to bring us
face to face, waiting
for the world to catch fire.

Plink-plonk-plink

Greenman hears a plink in the pond. He peers out of the solid wood and vast stretch of fern-blanketed earth on the verge of being swallowed up by night. "Maybe I'll plink a couple of poems into the pond, too."



BEFORE DADDY DIED

Before Daddy died, I didn’t feel
like an orphan the month between
Father’s day and his birthday.

Before Daddy died, I thought
the ocean safe, the forest
friendly, and life unending.

Before Daddy died, I knew who
to call when the name of a tree
or flower eluded me.

Today I ask him anyway.
Like school vocabulary words,
he says to look it up.



THE LOVE OF CROWS

When you love me, you invite
the crows. I open the door
and they caw good morning.
At each curve, they remind me
of past deaths suffered or caused.
You must hear the whole story.
Seeing them pick some last scrap
from the road and fly into
the woods, I’m guided to tell
a truth. They will follow you.
When I’m away crows will perch
on your mailbox. When we are
together, they’ll dance a jig
of mischief. Raucous laughter
caws at us or with us.
When you love me, you invite
the crows to foretell futures,
black as the space between stars,
filled with dreams. All true.

answer in the wood

This cool green wood that silent waits
guarded, watchful
catching the last clear rays of light
with upturned boughs of verdant trees
before the mist rises to veil the calm-laden valley
It softens the heat, lightens the gloom of evening, and
for brief silver seconds the world seems to shimmer, not really there,
but an intangible thing;
Solid wood and vast stretch of fern-blanketed earth
seems momentarily fragile,
on the verge of being swallowed up by night.
Here is where I played,
I stood in the shadows and watched--
my mind alive,
hearing finely tuned,
straining to catch the essence of the wooded green
in the treasure chest of my imagination.
I could not hold it for more than a moment,
the vibrant pitch of waiting, growing greenery
would filter through when all was silent,
and as quickly, was lost, when I turned away and
answered the call of the outside world.

I must return to the wood,
go back and walk those paths
along which I ran as a child
when I was too busy chasing dreams
to gather in the wonder that lay about me.
To examine bark, and leaf, and twig,
touching needle-strewn beds of moss,
gazing intently at the pattern of life within
each tiny sprout and curling lichen
Something rests here, which helped me
to make peace with my world,
and I need to find that, to once more make it a part of me
the young part, the growing, wondering, reflecting part,
the part of me which accepts,
and believes in the future,
and grows wiser, knowing.


As the wood, we grow tall, stretching forth our branches,
we answer the call of the whippoorwill,
our voices teasing, beckoning,
wanting deep within our hearts to mate,
but always holding something back, something vast,
precious, and green...
...answer, tell, pray, answer, look, tell, answer, answer, tell:
Believe, said the spirit, and isn't it a shame that the
legend is such that the magician had to die before he could
communicate to his wife that one small intelligence?
that love surpasses even Death?

We should know this, and trust in it, and go on,
wiser,
knowing.
What is it that we do not acknowledge?
I think that deeper than Fear, it is our Want,
our need of soulful replenishment
our craving of a concrete essence to re-affirm our own choices,
our own decisions.
Laughing, we mate, we do not think that a lifetime will be so long
to share with another.
Laughing, we were wrong.
So misguided.
We are lost, after a time. Life itself eludes us, we look upon one another as at the door of death itself, and recoil –
aghast, shivering, disgusted.
Depleted, indifferent, yet still tightly nursing the flame of want within our own being.
And so we return to the wood, we look at every tree and branch,
and slowly, we understand.
We grow old, we wither, we die, but
though individually the trees of the wood do just that, the forest remains.
Whole. Vital. Alive.
With every death, a new seed sprouts forth,
to feed upon the old.
Either within the wood, or just outside of it.
Love doesn't die; the men and women do,
so says old Will in the midst of rising waters and thrashing wild palms;
and so right he was.
Love doesn’t die, it outlives us all.
We can hold nothing fast to us
when we are constantly changing, evolving, growing
into someone else ourselves.
The very limbs we use to clasp will wither away to dust,
and grow again, as flowers, new fronds of sun-kissed willow,
and the tiniest of earth-bound leaves.
So. Like the seeds of larch, oak and pine,
we too reach out to grow new roots,
and embrace the Death when we can do no more,
draw from it, extract its nourishment
adding strength to the stand from within ourselves,
expanding our very breadth,
breathing life into death
with new seeds to sow,
ideas and sustenance that we’ve brought in
on winds aloft, from far away.
---Susannah

Note: This is an old version of a poem; the final version was much shorter. Posted in honor of National Poetry Month.

Greenman meets a mermaid?

Greenman thinks he has seen the mermaid gliding just beneath the surface. Or maybe he's heard her sing. Or maybe he's just imagining a reincarnation of . . .


NEFERTITI

When the sky turns deep dawn blue,
I sink in a bath of wild musk
rose petals. Though we proclaim
the One God, we don’t discard
our divinity. A Goddess
must seduce the sun. Daughters
shave my body, anoint me
with cinnamon and myrrh.
Their careful hands keep my nipples
hard. Arousal is my religion.
They dress me in gauze and gold,
bejeweled with chips of hard light.
A choir of blinded men sings
our praises. They hear me jingle,
smell the perfume of my skin,
my sex. Imagination
makes them hard. When the horizon
turns pink and purple, I loosen
the red sash. My gown whispers
to the floor. I weave between
the daughters and the choir,
stalking the altar, waiting
for the luminous moment
to sprawl spread eagle,
to thrust my hips at the red
rim rising above the sands,
to arch my breasts into the sky.
The first sun shaft penetrates me,
turns the slow slick heat to flame.
The blind men raise their voices
to match my cry. We rejoice
together. Blessed. Consumed.

Blurt on Today

Today Jude Fernando explained
why micro lending in Bangladesh
and Sri Lanka
doesn't empower women
or change the infrastructure
to alleviate poverty.
Today the Dalai Lama
said he would resign
if the violence continues
in Lasa.
Today a Black woman
with several sick children
who call her cell phone
when she is trying
to learn history
cheated on my exam
and got caught.
I said please drop the course
and I won't tell.
Today I felt the wind
blow right through me;
there was no one there
to stop it.

Nearly spring

Greenman is amazed. This new cyber-woods has turned him a tarnished coppery color. And more amazing there's activity again at the farm house. It's spring time and his thoughts naturally turn to baseball and nymphs.

OMAHA

Once I dreamed of Omaha
in early summer.
I saved spare change
to finance the trip
to sit in the stands
with my grandson
or in a grander dream
to watch him pitch
at Rosenblatt.
Far fetched dreams.
If they happen,
I will not be there.
Once I believed baseball
diamonds were sacred
geometries. Add sunshine
and grandkids,
and they could soothe
any trouble
like a well turned double play.
Lift the spirit
like a line drive streaking
for the centerfield fence.
Watching the game
is a pale passion
when the invitations stop.
Once my granddaughter
gave me a piggy bank
with the body
of a baseball. She feared
it was a stupid gift.
It was perfect
even with the crack by the slot
that Nana had to point out.
It was our last Christmas.
I still use it when change
jingles with too much loss.




NAIAD

The Shady Lady’s sign
proclaims:
Pool
Spirits
Dancing.
I’m tempted
to discover
what drought or dam
or sewage treatment
spill would drive
a water nymph
to domestication.
Is it chlorine
or gin
that makes her dance?
I don’t go in.
A world so full
of disbelief
condemns her
to a dive.

an introduction

she is sitting there on the surface of the sand
her back to you, gazing out at the promontory of knitted stone
turning, she raises one elegant brow
in quizzical contrast
like a grace note above sparkling eyes
the color of the winter sea
and leaning forward dropping
her chin delicately in acknowledgment
says, 'how-do.'

the long icy fingers tapping the keys
palms resting on the curvature of the spine
where tingles remain from yesterday's tattoo
she only speaks in rhythm
and prefers tactile explorations
tongue
taste
time
to telling
observations noted in the passage of all three
over the sibilant whispers of her mind

she is silent as a mermaid
soaring up out of the dark waves
and disappearing just as you think you see her
iridescent fin shining, a flash and she is gone
but she will tell all eventually
she is a treasure trove of life
like a pearl that evolves from a grain of sand
tender muscles massaging the point of irritation
sharp as bitter glass until it opens and
the oyster reveals a lustrous gift from the sea.


--sophie pie

a dry retribution

he hears the wind ruffling the pines,
soaring up the mountainside
tossing the chickens over the fence
and into the dog's breakfast.

cock and hen alike had always
clucked cheekily between the roughened boards,
refusing to share even a daily ovum,
quibbling merrily over the the latest bug.

fateful diligence spared them not
and it came to pass, in an instant,
that they were merrily consumed
by all who knew them.

and on and on and on
said she, skipping through the grass
skirts lifting, apron cupped and
running smack into bedlam

where she sees the fine sharp
teeth glinting in the sunlight
with the damply clinging feathers of
gold, and white, and green

she whirls, in the swing of time
upward shrieking in a slice of sky
and the errant muddy fiend's appetite
is gone forever, leaving only a trace

of rheumy fleabitten cowering
faintly shadowed by the fall,
into the ready and vacant dust beside
an angry, sodden puff of red-encrusted white.