ready then?

if i share with you 
my dreams
(and you reciprocate,
i invite)
we will have lots 
to talk about.

sweet dreams

just a shout to you
til tomorrow as i draw
the blinds on today.

also humid

hell, it's so sultry
slide & melt that ice cube down
the nape of my neck.

global warming

new england april
sweltering already, oh
for a tall iced tea.

skipper too

i was skipping
up my street
with my daughter
under the dusk
moonlight
& it made my heart
race.
or at least flutter.

hearty

you want to know
about my Heart?
i invite you 
to dive deep inside there 
and stay.
you will learn.

raise up your face 
and let me see you.
when i put 
my mouth on yours 
and pull you in
you will take my Heart inside you.

complicit

when the unknown
come in legions
shouting their alphabets
throwing their signs
  like HELP
  DANGER
  and AFRAID
we'll observe them
study their language
take down some notes
and drink another beer.

high as a kite

thisness & thatness
s'all goodness if you're tripping
way up aboveness

one year

runaway sentence

is 

one year old

raise a cheer!

assateague

let me drift
to the horsey dunes
vast virgin beach
unrelenting sun
coffee from the campfire
my novel
retreating to the tent
repeatedly
even in the beating sun
sand everywhere
the mighty ocean
and you.

"one inch tall"

whisper the green dream
write the true sweet rain tonight
i love you, friend. dance.

(This haiku is in response to Brian Miller's Friday Poetically at One Stop Poetry, in the spirit of Shel Silverstein's One Inch Tall.)

the good death

i can take it
start with my feet
give me your weight

when you are done
rains like brushes
ritching my temples

i will expire
in a flushy flurry

carry on.

the R word

all bewildering
don't speak unless spoken to
i'm no good at this.

pain & sun

i dreamed i was living in constant pain
until a southern smile came along
   and took my pain away.

i awoke thinking that was likely
pretty insulting
   to those who live with constant pain.

red-tailed hawk

what am i supposed to do with this love
  the one that moves me all fierce at night
           cleans up after me by day
             with its darkness
                      brilliance
                      & tears
  all its grimacy clouds never baring its teeth
           its quiet    soaring
                           stillness
           what am i supposed to do with this love?

ay em evidence

my hair is a nest

tangled enough for babies

to take refuge in.

candyland

get me outta here
funhouse mirrors cotton candy
  warped empty
               sugar.

flugeling

Licking my wounds so gingerly and thoroughly one wing broken on my last soar through the clouds to the volcano's edge. Splintered bone and crumpled feathers the pain radiates down my spine to the tip of my tailfeathers through my legs and busted talons. Struck by a mighty hammer I had tumbled down the side grasping for any toehold any traction but finding none just crashed

Now nestled here by the water I must see daylight once more just once more. If I can make it to morning Sedonis will come oh how I need him here to send me off

I remember oh I remember calling him trumpeting wailing across the water and through the air so perfect and so open he could not resist but came from long away he came to me hearing my call a short dance as we locked eyes and soon enough his plumage ah you my darling all on display like that my love all of that is for me? Oh I knew I knew it was for me all of that fancy was all for me all for me

oh can I make it till morning
he cannot be here I need him here
to nurse me kiss me mother me
I cannot go off to the next life
without putting to rest this one
oh I must be strong til dawn

He raised himself on his sinewy man-legs straight tall and erect his wings unfurled his head held high holding my gaze and I knew better than to resist. I turned my back and sunk my talons into the trunk of my tree. Waiting. Every feather I possessed tweaked one by slow one until finally my last tailfeather pitched toward the sky opening me and exposing my want. Waiting dizzy wanting losing ah holding on holding on and then aaaiiiiiiieeeeeeeeee he pounced I pitched forward my head hard against the trunk as the blood dripped he folded me in his giant wings pulled me back hard like fire he entered me his great beak crushing my mantle as I shrieked

Shifting to conserve warmth let me wrap my good wing as far as it can stretch around my brokenness oh it's so cold so cold here in the dark. I will make it and he will come. I will call him and he will come. My love oh as we are bound together Sedonis I will last til morning so you can come to me

And our progeny our child my love you will be required my Sedonis to inform him of his mother's fate. Oh my baby my baby, ah be gentle with him for he is young and in his element

I held him tight and did not want to let go oh please please stay my little one. Ah but somewhere deep inside I found the strength to say Go my child go forth use your power for good and keep your head on straight. Stay lucid. (but mother why do you worry?) Because my babylove your power is intoxicating. Beware of those who will try to play you. Stay strong and beautiful, my love. Fly high and stay good

Ah the wisp of light beyond the volcano just a glimmer but I am still here. Ah my love Sedonis I am calling you here flugeling across the water for you to come and call me home

Call me home, Sedonis my love. Call me home

In this, my ninth (can you believe it!) week of the Indie Ink Writing Challenge, my friend Mandy of MyPlaidPants very nicely challenged me thusly: "Invent your own mythological creature. What does it look like? How does it interact with or view the world? How does it mate? How many offspring? What is its lifespan?" After a spate of juvenile giggling about mythological mating, this is what I conjured.

eyes on the prize

blinders on
don't glance left or right
look ahead
keep your stride
keep it steady baby, breathe
it all in. just row.

growing zones

ah so fragile
heavy words
like blows
embracing
leads to
evaporating
nighttime tears
in greenest morning
& oh! forsythia blooms.

no contest

what happened? we climbed
  battled frayed suffered, but we
       never reached the end.

thursday night lights

hot damn

i'm a firecracker

cracking & buzzing

reading my words out loud

ready now?

snap!

you came like

rolling thunderheads
cracking bursting deluging
  then dissipating.

los straightjackets

what can i even
do with these heady feelings?

  (certifiable)

royal anthem

words
floaty chanty
like the ocean

spring sun
like sea foam
washing over me

in every quiet moment
i return to my head

in your lap

your fingers twined in my hair.

i write because

Oh, my lord, it is actually week *eight* of the Indie Ink weekly writing challenge! In the challenge, participants are randomly challenged by our peers with a writing prompt. 

I write because I have not the strength to speak with you directly 

His heart flipped and he sat right down, right there, and realized he was holding his breath and so he exhaled, whoosh.

and I need to be strong now, for myself. In conversation with you, I know I would falter. 

His eyes brimmed, as though he already knew what was to come next. 

What I have to say, to write, is just that important. 

No. Please, don't say it. His eyes searched the page, flitted across the screen. Please please no, ah please 

You know how important it is. You know. 

Yes, I know. I know oh please no I know, ah if you don't go oh I can change oh I can I will oh no oh no please I know how important it is to you please no please oh please don't go 

I have to tell you 

Oh please oh please baby please, oh don't go oh I can change oh ohhh no don't do it please don't go 

first, that I love you, like I have never loved another. 

Noooooooooooo 

But because I know you do not feel the same way about me 

Ohhh but I do baby I do I do you are my world oh you oh you are oh don't please don't do this oh no please don't leave what will I do without you? 

I am leaving. Don't follow me, don't try to save me. I am going to the ocean and that is that. By the time you read this, I will be free. 

NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO (gasp)

I write because I do not want you to talk me out of it.
Please, don't save me. This is me saving myself. 

My prompt this week was from Flaming Nyx, who challenged me to address my writing. She said, write this: "I write because..."

baby girl

my baby, in your
last night of four, i hope you
will stay in my arms.

pica

he cleans
unspeakable
  barking
  gnashing
  until

i am dirty

he cleans after me
silent
  growling
  glowering

he cleans

i crawl 
across the floor
to reach the dirt.

limey

younz gotta problem
when squeezing a lime makes yeh
wanna die for gin.

girlytime

little girl
in a sea of boys
how come mama
can't figure that out
for you?

little progress

what is this flight
  and 
        who are you
                my muse?
please
       oh baby please
stay here stay & ah stay
    because i
    want to stay
    on this
    particular
    bender
    forever
this must last forever
       & i plan never to die
hey?
     this is me
                taking risks &

shoes #9

smoke
like a soundtrack
washing up
   over
      inside
  whispering
     infiltrating
  everything
gone and lost forever
all the world's
    camp
         fire song.

flotation device

ah man what am i even doing pretending to write in a sea of nothing
or mostly nothing
but for the something the everything the big and full and total
that is you and your story
ah you and your story
i know it's you not a story
where is me
what's my story
i am all whatever
who the
what!
oh what the fuck
please toss a line before i drown in the sea of whatever the not

moonlight &

  high
star morning
   trixish taking
      shining
    breaking
can you hear me
          shaking?

just testing

updating my blog
from my kindle? comin' at
ya on all platforms.

"prose"

lolling around
on my tongue
trying to form a word
and escape my lips
  pleasing you, i hope.

love-pile

Christ almighty resistance is futile. That's what they say and I am here to tell you that yes indeed it's so, and why resist anyway when all the Love and Whatever Else is pouring pounding climbing all over up inside you? 

Inside out and limp is how you'll find me, having crash landed following some kind of unbridled flight, oohhh so high and mighty full and plenty and oh please do that again yes oh yes THAT. Again. 

All the Love and Whatever Else? I would be crazy to resist that.

pernicious concatenation

Week *seven* of the Indie Ink weekly writing challenge! In the challenge, participants are randomly challenged by our peers with a writing prompt.

Concatenation. Like a daisy chain, one action causes a reaction spawning consequences setting in motion yet another action and reaction and so on. All interconnected and shit, like a chain link fence. And so it was, and so it started, when I allowed myself to cross a line.

Of course, in my world, the line was bogus anyway. What's up with that, some kind of limits imposed on me, like I'm a dog being housetrained? I rejected the line. I wanted what I wanted, and what I wanted was all good and right. Some kinda pernicious self-fulfilling propaganda, that was.

So gentle was that night, so soft was the air that the creaking of the cellar door rang out like a warning shot. Sharp. Staccato. Doomed. What was I thinking? I could never get away with this. But I pushed forward, all bravado. Resorting to pusillanimous retreat was unthinkable.

She was such a beautiful girl. Like a teen magazine cover, her fresh-scrubbed skin and luscious lips beckoned me. I could eat her like a cupcake. I rifled through the photos in my precious shoebox until I found the one, the perfect one, the very one that would release me from my distressed state.

On the prowl then, I travelled block to block searching for her, wanting her, seeking her in every strange girl's eyes. In dark alleys where the rats and coatimundi outnumbered humans sleeping huddled in the shadows. Fervently I scurried beneath streetlights and along the aquaduct until ah! At last! I found her.

Arms akimbo, her fresh eyes gazing forever northward to that star on which her dreams were hitched. Her photo fluttered into a puddle as I was reduced to the same, a deliquescent disaster there on the pavement by my love's side. What happened? I was too late. Someone had already claimed my prize.

Next morning, I awoke in a lonely cell. Not knowing whether I would plead my case to the attache or to the archon, I strove to remain lucid and present. Flights of fancy and crossing of lines? Fuck that. Now I knew. Now I could see.

Alyssa of sputterbugg challenged me thusly: "You used to be __________ but you're not anymore. Why not; how did this change come?"

For help in addressing this prompt, I asked my TwitterFolk to tweet me their favorite nouns and adjectives in MadLibs fashion. I have used every one of their words in this story!

stupefied

sulky
strolled

smacked
smooooooth
smelling
    spring

suddenly
seeing.

inquisitive

all kinds of fast
   all sorts of slow

are you so pretty to lie on?

   i want to know.

ode to polly jean

wobbling thru morning
i'd like to live inside a
p j harvey song.

what she wants

what happens if i say what i really want? what i want? you know, all that really realness up in here what the fuck i really wantness?
ah
what i want?
really?
well what i want is
ah what i want is all big and all true. and has to do with all of us and oh you too,
like you, and you and you
won't you
come
and play and laugh and sing and fuck and be and skip and
ah
be free
a flower and a little girl and what she wants
is just so simply so to play to dance to spin and laugh to throw her head back ah do it again again! aw in the end
pay attention to me mama
pay attention to me
what she wants? ah love on love on love for sure
all she wants all the wantness all she wants is love.

breathe already

sunday
night's whining child
sets my sights on running
meet me at the sunflower field
let's go.

adjustment

cradle me 
       to your bosom
    squeeze me 
          tighter than
              tight
          chin up
    head back
              let go
        ah i 
     think i
              might,

blink

don't
  close your eyes

      focus now

  in the next moment
          
               i may be
                   on the wind.

thank you

your light shining on
my dark moment? all the world
open to me now.