Rhymed and unrhymed, form or free, this is where the poetry lives.
Traffic roars in the dawn.
Vertical blinds rattle like bamboo in the breeze.
I arm myself with keys and cell phone for my trek to the office.
Later I stalk grocery aisles
with my trusty bank card and list by my side.
Successful, I haul home the spoils,
this evening we will feast upon fat free cottage cheese
and whole grain bread.
Darkness descends and we sit
in the flickering light of the 50 inch TV
and dream of other jungles.
The traffic growls us to sleep.
#144
I’m tired and I don’t want to play anymore.
I’m gathering my toys and going home.
I’ll hide in my room for a year and a half
or til the world outside leaves me alone.
Bring advil and you can come in for a while.
Bring tea with you and I will let you stay.
Never mind, you can come in – just ‘cause you’re you
and help me pout my gloomy day away.
#143
Got my grump on this morning, sigh.
Time never backs up
but sometimes, if we’re lucky,
it slows down a bit
in back eddies and calm pools
where reflections can be seen.
But gaze too deeply
or cling to protruding roots
and currents of time
will wrench your fingers free and
toss you in the stream again.
Swim, damn you, just swim.
Don’t look over your shoulder.
It isn’t a race.
If you swim you have a chance
to chart your own course through time.
Time is the river.
You can swim or you can sink.
Hold your nose and dive
and discover hidden depths
or drift and enjoy the view.
If one day we meet
and the stream carries you past
I will laugh and shout
“I’ll meet you at the bottom
of the waterfall, my friend.”
#142
Roughly a multi versed ‘Tanka’ – each verse consisting of 5-7-5-7-7 syllables.
A: Always look both ways before crossing the road.
B: Brush your teeth three times a day.
C: Cross your eyes again and they’ll freeze that way!
D: Don’t talk with your mouth full
E: Eat with your mouth closed.
F: Feed your pets.
G: Give me one good reason not to ground you for life!
H: How do you expect to grow big and strong if you don’t eat your vegetables?
I: I never had one of those when I was your age
J: Just wait till your father comes home.
K: Keep a civil tongue in your head.
L: Little pigs have big ears.
M: Money doesn’t grow on trees.
N: No one ever died from cleaning their room.
O: One more peep out of you and (insert appropriate threat here)
P: Put on clean underwear before you go out in case you get hit by a car and have to go to the hospital.
Q: QUIETLY!
R: Really? You actually think I’m going to believe that?
S: Should have gone before we left.
T: Try it.
U: Unless your homework is done you’re not going anywhere, Buster.
V: Very funny, you’re grounded.
W: What were you thinking?
X: X-rated? No, you’re NOT going to see that movie!
Y: You’ll have children just like you one day.
Z: Zoo, do you hear me? I’m selling you to the zoo!
#141
I suppose technically it’s not a ‘poem’, but it was fun to write and that’s good enough for me!
She was a real person.
She would not have been happy on a pedestal.
She took chances.
“What have you got to lose?” she’d say.
She enjoyed every moment
and knew the time to laugh and sing was now.
She not only smelled the roses
she planted, grew, and tended them lovingly.
Every day in my life I loved my mother.
Every day in my life I always will.
#140
Tall and stately they begin,
row upon row of buds,
cool green with only a blushing hint
of the colours yet to come.
Days grow longer and hotter.
Buds burst upwards in an orgy
of sun worshipping colour.
robin’s egg to midnight,
some with dainty white trim like
gingerbread on the eaves,
and one the colour of chocolate and milky coffee.
Drunk with warm, summer rain,
they gargle bees in their throats and
stagger beneath the weight of their own beauty.
They lean on each other and fall spillikins.
Too late I tie them to their canes
Dry now, their seasonal duty done,
seeds ripen into death rattles
and spill across the pale golden bones,
hollow and brittle.
I collect the remains, inter them
in the compost pile, and wait.
Next spring, when the delphiniums
are born again, I will lay the essence
of their predecessors at their feet.
#139
Lingering like the light on the lilac leaf
in a lacy limbus where it lies.
listening to the lyric of a liquid laugh,
Lilting like a lonely lullaby.
The lady lives in limbo in a long lament
learning lovelorn litanies of lies
from less than lovely letters from her long lost love,
luckless lapses littering her life.
She lets the loathsome letters linger lightly in her lap
then looks at light laid on the lilac limb
then laughs at love and listens to the lazy lullaby
and lets the lilting loose her lock on him.
#138
Life is like a watercolour painting;
lots of pretty colours to play with
but work it too hard and you get mud.
Mud is like love;
soft and fun to play in
but it’s slippery and tends to leave stains.
Stains are like road maps;
clues to who or what we’ve been
but sometimes they smother beauty.
Beauty is like a watercolour;
glowing and capricious
but only a reflection of life.
#137
My mother’s quilt hangs on the wall.
Sometimes I touch it lightly as I walk by
Its softness reminds me of her skin and
the colours remind me of her gardens.
She loved her gardens.
I remember her rose trees,
tall as me and covered with blood red roses.
Come fall she’d loosen the soil around their roots,
lay them in a trench, and bury them.
Spring would bring the resurrection.
The stark, dirty sticks would waken,
leaf out, and bloom again.
A botanist would tell you it was a technique,
a method of wintering roses.
But I think they came back each year
because they loved my mother.
I touch the quilt again.
#136
| A | I dream love’s moonlit hero went for | I |
| L | a swim in the moon, forever rooted | L |
| O | onto waves of terror. Hemmed in | I |
| N | with a foredoom no mere rest | V |
| E | reforms. I woo the dormant | E |
| morrow adrift on moths |
An odd, self imposed torture and I believe, an original form, each line is an anagram of the one previous (first line is anagrammed from the title) with two letters removed. These removed letters form a type of acrostic, as they spell out the first three words in the title.
Since I think I just invented this poetic form, I’ll call it a Lindacs Poem, until someone bursts my inventive bubble and informs me otherwise!
#134
Linda Studley 