#11

This is prompt #178 for One Single Impression. The topic this week was "need". Enjoy, my darlings.

-

it is in desire
for the softest flesh
that i sit beneath this
tree, the wind surging
through its leaves
like a stampede of ghosts
the stars blinking
in silent fatigue

and i imagine its flavor
as my teeth break through
the papery skin, its sweetness
flowing against my tongue.
i beg gravity to grant me this wish -
the rubyred glittering
apple that sits atop the highest branch,
like a crown.



SJ

#10

This was the 45th prompt for Jingle Poetry's Poetry Potluck. The theme was nature and life. In a lot of places in Newfoundland the trees have grown into strange, savage shapes because of the wind sculpting them over time. I think they're incredibly beautiful, and for some reason this is the first thing I thought of when I saw this prompt.

-

i recognize the sounds
of the world waking up,
the sun yawning whisps of
foamy clouds across the infant sky

and my feet touch the world's heart
as they move with me, crawling over
the detritus of summer like ants
weaving between the white trees

who stand solitary, their slender bodies
leaning back in rapture as they have done
since they were first ravaged by our winds -
fierce lovers, abstract artists

who on quiet days, gently kiss their masterpieces
admire their tender quills like tiny hands
reaching out to catch the rain, to hold
the sun like a warm stone in emerald palms



SJ

#9

This is prompt #177 for One Single Impression! The theme is "phantom".

-

death has made a voyeur of me,
seating me here behind reality's thin curtain - 
this fate is not a pleasant one,
doomed to watch as life
continues on like waves crashing
ceaselessly, watching those
who are born die, and life
begin anew, seeing the microscopic
details of disease and the macroscopic
of people, like insects across blue satin

and each time you peel
aside the curtain
all they hear is the rattling
of chains; which they ignore,
blaming it on the wind, hoping
nobody notices the goosebumps
rising along their spine
like raindrops dotting a
skyscraper, glowing in
the lights of traffic.


SJ

#8

July 18th, 2011

I was thinking about abstract art, about dreams, about lust, about confusion, and my brain shat this out. Imagine you're trapped in a lucid dream where everything is a painting. Imagine whatever you want.

-

i cannot comprehend why it is only now
that the occupying crimsons and azures
have chosen to fade to muted violet
while the clock's hands echo and click
in the corner, like tapshoes
like a loose hinge

our pale skin falls to the floor
perpetually, mechanically,
only to grow back as the sun rises again
the room's scent growing faint and trembling
as the air staggers home to bloom again
and our bodies are reborn

knowing they are watched by constellations
who recline, lazily wrapped in morning's silver veil,
waiting like ballerinas in velvet-lined wings
to dance forward across a dead sky
to correlate the freckles on our hands
into maps

to pull us across the glowing desert
of the mind, fearing the eruption of storms
each time our snow globe skulls begin to shake
ferociously, the sky falling down in exhaustion
as thin light pirouettes across our landscape
and we drop once more into sleep

#7

July 13th, 2011

boys larger than the sunset's magnitude of shadow
clear dust and gravel along the pavement,
playfully creating storms of pale grit
carried lazily by the small afternoon breeze

but they are mindful of me
buried under my mismatched layers
of old press board and tobacco leaves
in the earth, sending up smoke signals as i watch

with worn glassy eyes thin golden arms
laced with blue veins, and recall jackets
sinking slowly into filthy puddles of water,
soaking up an entire day and turning from

black to brown, wondering if a day was just
twenty-four long hours, condensed to a puddle
on a downtown street in autumn, lights turning red,
and tiny feet carrying me into tomorrow.


-

SJ

#6

2008, entitled "gravity is not your friend". I'm still digging up the fresh ground. Sorry to my four readers for not posting for awhile, I'm a busy little bee.

-


clusters of cold human faces
set into frowning, crackled molds
are hovering like marionettes on invisible wire
over the sky-painted streets.

the bus stops are filled with smoke,
magician's disappearing acts
which leave only ashes
and transparent ghosts of words on flaking benches.

the sour taste of cold metal keys
at the back of everybody's throats;
the spark of dying bulbs as they flicker
like dim signals of distress over oil-steeped water.

girls in plaid and steel observe the stars
melting into dawn like mints under their own tongues,
raise their arms longer than sentences,
shorter than silence,
until they could be waving aside the gray
coiling clouds like golden giants,
wanting to feel that moisture against their fingertips,
to feel it snaking down thin white wrists,
serpentine and acidic.

Robert Frost.

At my good friend Daniel's request, I will be writing this post about Robert Frost, who is his favorite.

Mr. Frost was born in 1874 in San Francisco, California. His parents were both teachers, and his father also worked as a journalist. This may have been an inspiration for the young Frost, who knows. His father died when he was about 10 years old, and he & his family relocated to Massachusetts.

While much of Frost's poetry depicts rural life, he grew up primarily in the city. He attended Dartmouth University, where he was a member of a fraternity. After two years there, he left to return home to teach. He later went on to do liberal arts classes at Harvard. After publishing his first poem (which earned him $15), he got married.

Frost's life was frequently struck by tragedy. When his father died, his family was left with just $8. His mother died from cancer in 1900. He had to have both his sister and one of his daughter's committed to a mental hospital - mental illness ran pretty heavily in his family. He himself occasionally suffered from severe bouts of depression. Of his 6 children, only 2 outlived him. One of them committed suicide. And his wife died of heart failure after they were married for about 40 years. Pretty disheartening, but it only made him grow stronger as both a man and a writer. As he once said:

"I can sum up in three words everything I've learned about life -- it goes on."

After World War I, he purchased a farm in New Hampshire, where he spent much of his life and which inspired much of his poetry. The wall he described in his poem "Mending Wall" has been a favorite feature of his farm for many decades, as today this farmhouse is a museum known as The Frost Place. 

At the age of 86, two years before the end of his life, Frost read one of his poems at the inauguration of President Kennedy. When he died, his tombstone was engraved with the epitaph:

"I had a lover's quarrel with the world."

A beautiful line from one of his poems.

So why is Frost such an important poet?

Because of his extremely realistic poetry. He wrote about rural life as it had never been written about in his day, and he did it superbly well. Not only that, but he often used these settings and images to portray the much deeper philosophy surrounding them, and used a lot of heavy metaphors. He was awarded 4 Pulitzer Prizes for his writing, and inspired millions of poets both young and old across America for decades. An inspiring man, all in all.

Here he is one of his most famous poems. If you've never read this, you must've attended high school in a crater on Mars. Its called "The Road Not Taken".

Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth;

Then took the other, as just as fair,
And having perhaps the better claim,
Because it was grassy and wanted wear;
Though as for that the passing there
Had worn them really about the same,

And both that morning equally lay
In leaves no step had trodden black.
Oh, I kept the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads on to way,
I doubted if I should ever come back.

I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.

SJ