that's mrs. mediocrity to you

i remember when romance and hope were the same thing
he loves me, he loves me not
tattooed in a circle round my ankle

an ink drawn fresh dried forever shackle
offered in exchange for the customary key

but a young girl’s heart is always moving forward
ready to burst into star-struck song and
a brief exchange of whiskey serenade

until she learns with a crone’s bold eye
love is not the flower, but the root

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Linking in over at
Imaginary Garden with Real Toads for July’s Word List prompt.
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all the memories
become a jumble
of forgotten chances

paint peels
and the sky
blinks

clouding birds
with gun flint
steel

a southern hurricane
whispers blindly
through the poplars
i planted

one day long ago
when i could not
say your name

now those same trees
shade our bedroom
telling secrets to a
clear clown canvas

and i paint circles
on your chest
with knobby-edged
fingers

wondering
if the rings
at the heart of those
tall twin trunks
are made of time
or gold

or if it matters

shadows dance
as leaves shimmy shake
across the surface of a lake
we never managed
to explore

and we watch the sun
set down color
like a promise

or a platter
filled with food
from a picnic
never taken

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half is half and whole is whole
and open is never closed

the sky is unconcerned with your welfare
even as it paints your evening red

silence is impossible to silence

full or empty
black or gold

drink it in with your pessimist’s stare
pour it out with an optimist’s grin

overflow

and the earth will take your offering
run it downhill to the pool of purpose

gather
mingle
transmogrify

despair and hope and courage

and puddle them all
at the feet of fortitude

an elixir of entropy
reflecting

cirrus clouds
and broken blue

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some days
my heart breaks four thousand times
and that’s all before
i open my eyes

heartache is the farmer of contentment
planting seeds he knows have little chance
of bearing fruit

if you want 40 plants you sow 68 seeds
and if you’re lucky you’ll end up with 50

think too much and you’ll always have just enough

but no one ever said happiness
was a permanent state
and no one ever said
survival was a given

we stand in a field of black soil
and cry when our feet get muddy

the rain will wash you clean
as long as you don’t run
and sometimes the sky has to cry
just the same way a mother
has to worry

have you ever tallied the scars
on the tree that shades
your bedroom?

missing limbs
broken branches, gashes
peeling bark

sap runs slowly through the veins
of existence

but every spring
green
new growth
insists on piercing the cloud
blocking your view
of the sun

and four thousand leaves
never seem
overwhelming

until tomorrow
when they’ll fuel the flame
you find impossible
to douse

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Linking in over at dVersePoets for Open Link Night.
Join us!

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keeps me tethered to the anarchy of fortitude
and i am calm most days
as long
as no one looks behind the curtain

the robin sings at dawn and dusk
celebrating light and darkness
with the very same song

and i wonder
how any of us make it
through a night
that lets us

slip

through the grasp
of reality’s fingers

even dogs dream and
no one
ever told them they couldn’t

every morning
bird call becomes bell or music or
shrill-strapped screaming

but i always wake up

to this tree
this red breasted thrush
this half-hearted thrashing
against the weight
of a twisted
damp-mouthed

sheet

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here is the hardest word

not sorry

nor forgiveness

though both are solid rocks
in the shoe of living

but

here

you cannot stay
you cannot leave

you cannot sing yourself away

or back again

from the eternal sunset
of lavender libation

all you can do really

is open

your eyes
your heart
your arms
your mouth

drink it in

inhale

exist beneath this ever

changing

umbrella of now

here

listen

hear it

raining down

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(title is from the song “Stand” by R.E.M.)

because

each moment holds its own redemption

each sunrise is a dare

each drop of rain was once a cloud

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yesterday

this flower slept in a bed of mud

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but look how pretty it wears

today

.

i stood in the sun
and watched a storm
circle north
around me

pulling clouds in directions
impossible to follow

thunder rolled beneath my feet
as i stood

still

planted in a world
refusing to acknowledge

bolts of lightning
ripping through the grey blue steel
of sky’s lost eye

there was no rainbow

but off in the distance

rain reached down
in gauzy
worn-through sheets

someone else’s
dirty laundry

left hung out
to rinse

dry

and petrify

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is contemplation

e x  a   g    g    e     r     a  t  ion

the epic fail of epic

on a trip to Misnomer

any other name gets you to the same place

a beginning (seed)

a middle (flower)

an end (pod)

and you can’t separate any one of them from the other

without breathing in someone else’s perfume

crushing stem and spilling life

but you try anyway

again and again and again

and all the words you cannot say

(because i said so)

take root

in the cracks of cement

that line the path you’ve chosen

to pave with your rules

and your yeses and your nos

no!

but all you see is your own

vision

through those rose-colored glasses

of derision

mocking  the singsong silence

of the empty vowel left raining

from the mud-caked corner

of your tongue

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Linking in over at dVersePoets for Poetics today,
where Shanyn has us imagining poetry as seed.
Join us!

quenching the thirst you have for impossible rivers
carving hunger from hand-picked bones

runner roots spread beneath the blanket you wear
when you can’t bear to see stars touch your skin

earth’s heart beats slowly below your body
bleeding echoes of discarded remembrance

as you press an ear to the pulse of antipathy’s vein
singing softly for razor or retribution

or just one answer in a galaxy of question

dawn always feels like a reprieve of silence
the last inhale of guilt holding on to lost breath

but these tears of tree sap and mountain
climb your sleeve with the tread of expertise

rivulets run rapid in the canyon of clavicle
flooding sound from the cave of the voice you carried

washing stone and pounding words into the stream
of every moment and hour in between