In common silence
Is often found rare answers
Shhh, listen closely.
The heartbeat you feel
May emmanate from the world
Not just your own chest.
The combined power
Of every dream dreamed is found
In common silence.
#26
Category: A New Poem Every Morning
In a Cave by a Fire
I can’t really distinguish
Between twenty five below
And minus thirty three.
At some point it just feels
Cold and I wonder
If there really is a difference.
Before numbers were invented
was there just cold, colder, damn cold,
and ‘stay in the cave by the fire, Stupid.’
But I don’t have a fire anymore.
Just a looping video of a fire that
I can play on the fifty inch screen.
No hauling wood or ashes but no
actual heat either.
So what if the power goes out one day
and never comes back on?
Back to the cave by the fire, Stupid!
#25
How Many?
How many days have gone?
How many days are left?
Will I be marked on what I’ve accomplished?
Will I get an A for effort?
How many days are left?
How many days are gone?
Will all my poems and pictures still matter
Will anyone sing my songs?
How many hours to go?
How many hours have passed?
Will I wish I had spent them more wisely?
When vision dims a last?
How many hours have passed?
How many hours to go?
Will I care that I could have done more?
Will I even know?
How many minutes before?
How many minutes behind?
Drink my tea before it gets cold
Go to work and find
How many minutes behind
How many minutes before
I start again with a smile in your arms
Then go off to war.
#24
Winter is a Carnivore
It’s twenty three below again.
The sugar frosted world bares its fangs,
gnaws at my window pane, leaving diamond scars
that will not heal till spring.
Its twenty three below again.
The winter wonderland erupts in a howl,
banshees at my door, keening incantations
that only endurance will lift.
It’s twenty three below again.
The fluffy blanket of snow drifts into traps,
wraps me in a carnivourous embrace
that sucks the heat from my marrow.
and I wonder one more time
what the temperature is in Arizona.
#23
The Longer I Live Here (Here being Earth)
The longer I live here
the easier it is to see shades of gray
and the harder it is to see small print on the back of my cereal box.
The longer I live here
the easier it is to give stuff away
and the harder it is is to avoid attracting more stuff.
The longer I live here
the less sense crossword puzzle clues make.
The longer I live here, here being Earth
The more I feel like a visitor waiting to go home.
#22
Doin’ the Limbic Limbo
I hope this ringing in my ears isn’t bothering you
It’s just the residue
of too much thinking at the wrong time.
In the middle of the night my brain builds
Dada poetry out of my life,
cutting and pasting fragments together until
I wake up wondering ‘what the hell was that about?’
Day time finds my brain in relatively sane working order
reasoning and resolving, reasoning and resolving.
But at night it’s like a sixteen year old left alone
in the house. “No parties” I warn as I drift into sleep.
But as soon as my eyes close my brain pops the cork
and the world begins to show up,
in costume,
on unicycles
and ready to party.
Just before I wake, my brain attempts to make
a sketchy clean up but I’m sure those stains on my cerebellum
are from a couple of hippocampus with dirty feet
doing the limbic limbo
while my amygdala debates
flight versus fight.
“Oh my God, she’s waking up! Run!”
Good Morning.
#21
Triskaidekaphobia
Did the builder really skip the thirteenth floor?
Is there really no room 13?
Maybe they exist in an alternate plane of reality
Maybe on Friday the thirteenth the button
for the 13th floor will manifest.
I would push it.
I would get off on the 13th floor and
Open the door to 1313 (I’m sure it won’t be locked)
And discover what all the fuss is about.
Maybe that’s where persecuted pagans hide out
from sanctimony and censure.
Where magic is as natural as breathing and
Nature is as magical as breathing and
Breathing is the only thing that’s mandatory.
Is that where all the missing people live?
Did they get off the elevator on the 13th floor
and forget to get back on again because they
were having too much fun?
I’m riding the elevator today.
But I’m taking you with me
just in case.
#20
Salted
Our lot in life
unlike Lot’s wife,
is to never look behind us
at what chases
as we hasten
to whatever fate resigns us.
The salt that makes
our pillar shapes
itself from tiny grains
of truths that lie
safe in our mind
protected from the rains.
The seasoning
of reason brings
knowledge of salt’s true measure
for wounds it stung
but on the tongue
salt gives to all things pleasure.
#19
Rest in Pieces
She was sad and they said
‘quit while you’re ahead’
‘you’re a long time in the ground’
‘when life gives you lemons, make lemonade’
‘take that frown and turn it upside down’
She was tired and they told her
‘fortune favours the bold’
‘a change is as good as a rest’
‘early to bed, early to rise…’
‘make your good better and your better best’
She was depressed and they declared
‘there’s magic in the air’
‘every cloud has a silver lining’
‘there’s always someone who’s got it worse’
‘want some bread with that wine?’
She was afraid and they answered
‘nothing’s ever left to chance’
nothing ventured, nothing gained’
‘into every life a little rain must fall’
‘it’s always darkest before the dawn’
A patient ear was all she really needed.
She got platitudes and attitudes, and nothing that made sense.
Carved in stone, the last words that we read say…
‘Clubbed to death with clichés, she died in self defense.’
#18
A Poem is a Ponder
A poem is a ponder
An inner thought with wings
The lens through which the poet
Sees her life and other things.
They drift about her conscience
Where ifs and maybes play,
Ethereal dust bunnies
Waiting to be swept away.
And I tease them from my conscience
And I tickle them from dreams
I sweep them onto paper
Or onto my netbook screen.
And I show them to the world
And I give them each a name
And I ask if anyone can
Recognise what they became.
#17
Linda Studley 