Half of my heart yearns for
high beamed highways,
a map in my lap,
you beside me.
Half of my heart sighs for
candlelit cabins,
a cat on the mat,
you beside me.
Half of my heart and
half of my heart.
The only thing they can
agree on is you.
Half of my heart and
Half of my heart.
All that keeps it from
breaking is you.
#110
Strum and pluck and hammer on jingling
strings ring and jangle on, mingling
melodies lifting, harmonies swell in
surprising falsetto and sweet a’capella,
Lyrical treasure like fresh minted coins
spill for your pleasure, you nod and you join
in the chorus, your toe, with a life of its own
taps out a rhythm your smile starts to grow.
What is this joyous occasion you say?
Live music, live music, come hear it play!
#109
Come close.
Put your ear next to mine.
Can you hear the sound of the ocean?
I can.
I hear waves on a beach I’ll never visit,
gulls on a horizon I’ll never see.
The trick is to not care anymore.
To let it trickle away
like the sand pulled backwards
by the surf.
Come close.
Put your ear next to mine and sigh.
I showed you my ocean,
now you show me yours.
#108
Punce a time whilst scambling
along a wendling way,
warbling nausic lingles
To parse the rhyme of day
I slivvied in a squishel
emprattling my pride
while splatlets on my nattiness
bumbled up my stride.
My peekers angled sighways
“Who bungled me?” I bay.
“Who skid this risky squishel
along my wendling way?”
T’was sillig for a second
then a brachy voice interth
“Your nausic lingles scathe me
gerroff and wendle firth.”
“Who peaches me” I gargle
“Who pratts my nausic lingles?”
but never nother slight was slewn
Twixt bramblers and bingles.
#105
“with apologies to Lewis Carroll…”
The Scathing Nausic Lingle – Part II
Within every meeting are sown seeds of parting.
Hi echoes goodbye.
Rot follows ivy as
hobbled humanity (yes, us) flees time
although accidents happen with every eccentric tick
of a clock have hope,
you’ll cry,
but eventually you’ll be happy.
Spamagram: Below lurks the bizarre spam message that I anagrammed into the poem above.
“Even though you’re any of the lucky enough choices, it comes evidently, although capture the fancy with the certain coveted by ly folks other valuable you you meet may possibly possibly well have hard times this specific problem. pre owned awnings”
#104
Now take the wire in your left hand, the pliers in your right
and make a ninety degree bend not quite halfway along
rather like that bend in the road that I took
when I met your father.
Now, put down the regular pliers and pick up
the round nosed ones and twist a loop into the wire,
somewhat like the loop your arrival twisted
into our lives, perfect, symetrical,
the first full twist on a DNA strand.
Now grasp that loop with the regular pliers, hold firm,
sort of like we did when you rebelled, although you were
a decidedly reasonable child.
Now take a few wraps
around the wire, tight and close,
much like the way we’ve always been.
Now snip off the left over wire, the part left over
that needs to find another purpose, another role,
a bit like your journey into independence.
Now string your gems and pearls.
Repeat.
#99
I don’t dwell on my mistakes but they do live quite close by
and we get together often though we don’t see eye to eye.
And I tell them how they should be and they laugh at me and claim
I should go look in the mirror if I want someone to blame.
And they always come to visit at an inconvenient time
my pennance and my poison and my sentence for my crime
of trying something different and stumbling and falling
of trying to discover my vocation, my true calling.
And I’ve tried to move away but they follow me. I guess
they have a built in radar for a forwarding address.
I suppose I’ll have to learn to get along with them some day
They’re my oldest, closest friends and they just won’t go away.
#98
Budget day has come and gone, the news has turned to olds
but for one staunch Canadian it knelled a cruel death toll.
For many years he suffered from a deficiency of copper.
He alternately was the friend and bane of every shopper,
who, after lugging pounds (or kilos) of them in their pants
empty them on dressers or into piggy banks,
then find that when the register rings something fifty nine
their purse and pockets are bereft, no pennies can they find.
Devout friend to small children living close to railroad tracks,
we passed him off a million times but he always came right back.
Today we bid a fond farewell to our pseudo-copper friend.
The brave Canadian penny has met a cents-less end.
#97
We take our place in the world and carry on
for even being nothing has its place
like silences that punctuate a song.
All things, and their lack, live where they belong.
Positive pictures have negative space.
We take our place in the world and carry on.
I once believed that only strength was strong
till petals lit upon my upturned face
like silences that punctuate a song
The fragance haunts my memory all night long
although the fragile bodies left no trace.
We take our place in the world and carry on.
I used to think that things were really gone
just because they’d left an empty space
like silences that punctuate a song.
Our lives are like a pencil sketch we’ve drawn
Our shadows linger on like lines erased.
We take our place in the world and carry on
like silences that punctuate a song.
# 95
Challenge accepted Tony! Here’s the villanelle!
Still waters may run deep
with rippling refractment.
Still waters may run deep
But often become stagnant.
No man is an island
all aloof and insular.
No man is an island
but some men are peninsular.
Faith may move a mountain,
shift it stone by stone.
Faith may move a mountain
but trust leaves it alone.
#94
Linda Studley 