The Mimosa Effect 2

ancient matters

elephant cousins
creating bastions
in the damp loam
weaving shrouds
to cover their dead
slide themselves through
the ebb and flow
of the long grass
they can be silent
when they choose to be
respect for the ancestors
no misconceptions here
only history

——

prophet

the bees are gathering
in the honey kitchen 
up on the roof
the buzzing hum of it
fills her ears like sand
she shudders in her sleep
dreams of drowning in sweetness

meanwhile, in Elysium,
snow-covered streets
claim the ocean floor
a submerged amber flash

they are coming
cutting through snowdrifts
scattering nests and tiny bones

pink skeins twine
around her outstretched fingers
cognizant only
of what the future holds
the present forgotten
subsumed
in the elephant’s graveyard

some say she waits for
the end of the world
but I know she waits only
for you

- T.H.

The final two for April, using a prompt from PoeFusion.   I took my seed words from this month’s National Geographic and a couple of fridge magnets. 

Thanks to ReadWritePoem for helping to keep the momentum going.  A month immersed in poetry was just what I needed.  May will see a return to prose for me, with a focus on novel editing, both of which will hopefully be suffused with a re-awakened poetic sensibility – or at the very least, a renewed appreciation for the beauty of language.  Reading other people’s poetry has also been a great way to spend some of those little crumbs of spare time each day.  If you get the chance, I highly recommend it.  Especially if words have become dull, heavy things of late - I guarantee it will breathe life back into them again.

…think I can?

write with the TV on have a day without pain lose my
most painful memories (should be) doing what I can
I’m going to get to be okay with
losing people is all it’s cracked up to be
if people will stop hating each other anything can
keep going on like this only skin deep
we’ll take much more of this (it will)
keep doing this right now keep going
can’t sit here much longer
accept the inevitable change everything but
it might kill to live the death of irony stay funny
forever what people are thinking things I secretly
want what I really need writing about beauty is
what I can’t do going anywhere interesting
sleep before midnight tonight do this any more
we need we can people will ever
be what they are

- T.H. 

For the RWP prompt “I don’t think I can…”.  The idea was to start writing a list where every entry began with “I don’t think I can..”.  (Naturally mine immediately strayed into a myriad variations: “I don’t think I’ll ever/people will/we can/it will/this is…” ).  Then you take away the “I don’t think I can” part of each line, and start messing with the words that are left over.  This is one of the quasi-poetic results.  Fun with word clouds can be had at www.wordle.net

I’ll paint a picture
of a girl named Eve
hair like strawberries
eyes like the sea
She walks through doors
without opening
  (she knows
   where the tigers are)
goes from here to there
without travelling
  (she says life’s too short
   for traffic lights)
I’ll sing a story
of a girl named Eve
hair like autumn leaves
eyes like a summer breeze
She swims in the ocean
without needing to breathe
  (she likes to go deep
   where the light can’t go)
she coasts uphill
without pedalling
  (she tells me it’s easy
   she’s such a tease)
I’ll write a song someday
of a girl named Eve
hair like a memory
eyes like a dream
the little girl
who walks through walls
  (there she goes
   again)

-T.H.

Café writing #3, for NaPoWriMo. One of the phrases (coasting uphill) made it into 2 out of the 5 poems written in this particular café writing session. The other poem is here. Inspired by one of the main characters in my current novel-in-progress.

The first in a series of patchwork poems.  This one is a variation on found poetry.  The lines used in the poems were taken from writings by Hesse, Kafka and H.G. Wells.

I.

Enhaloed now in birds,
how mockingly bright the day seemed
bells borne back and forth
by the drifting of the tide
a film about Palestine in the afternoon.
He spent two days in pursuit of her,
days of impatient happiness
  (one always suspected some ingenuity
  in ambush, behind his lucid frankness);
Vast, indeed, was the change that we beheld.
Were we crazy? We ran through the park
at night, swinging branches;
what might appear when that hazy curtain
was altogether withdrawn?
What evenings, walks, despair
are still before me?
Nothing, nothing.  This is the way
I raise up ghosts before me,
the profounder grew the stillness.

II.

Dim and wonderful is the vision
I have conjured in my mind:
Seven girls, one of them short,
a sweet look, a white rabbit
on her shoulder,
the cat is playing with the goats;
These things are mere abstractions,
remnant of a faith.
That is just where the whole
world has gone wrong:
we are always getting away
from the present moment;
in peacetime, you don’t get anywhere,
in wartime you bleed to death.
Then open yourself
let the human person come forth
breathe in the air and the silence:
My life is only
a hesitation before birth.

  —-

All of the lines in the preceding poems were borrowed from the following works (with some very slight tweaking):

• Narziss and Goldmund by Herman Hesse (all about pursuit of self)
• Franz Kafka’s Diaries (the last few lines are from Kafka; who knew he could be so Zen?)
• The Time Machine & War of the Worlds by H.G. Wells (a secret poet; the very first line is his.  In my memory, the pioneers of science fiction were much more formal and matter-of-fact in their writing style than many writers are today.  But on re-reading, I realized that Wells’ writing was full of unexpected passion and poetry, wonderful lines that shone out in the midst of the grimmest of scenes.)

Thanks to Sweet Talking Guy for the old fashioned cut-and-paste idea. (Once I’d thumbed through books picking out lines and writing them down, I then cut all the lines out with scissors and taped them together to form poetry).

Part 2 of the Twinned Poetry project. These can be read as two separate poems or as one connected poem. You can read Part 1 here (“little voices”).

- T.H.
Cafe writing /Twin Poems #2, for NaPoWriMo
(Title borrowed from a song by Death Cab for Cutie)

These can be read as two separate poems or as one connected poem. I’m not sure what this technique is called, but I think of it as twinning – twin poems, related but apart.

- T.H.
Cafe writing /Twin Poems #1, for NaPoWriMo
(music at the time: Romeo + Juliet soundtrack; Stars – Set Yourself on Fire)

The result of insomnia finally catching up with me. Last few poems written very late at night, in dim light, with heavy hand and bleary eyes. These are, believe it or not, significantly cleaned up from the original half-asleep ramblings. The first part reflects that lovely nails-on-blackboard level of irritability any sleep-deprived person is intimately familiar with, which then eases into the more surreal, trippy relaxed state just before passing into unconsciousness.

time slips sideways: dream to sleep

been awake too long, way too long
 too tight, taut, strung, wired
   (what is desire)
 fraught , frazzled, torn, dazzled
   (everything we want and can never have)
gone too far, yet not far enough
deep pits opening under my feet
 as I walk, steps crumble beneath
  my toes, arches bending to flat
 a high pitched screaming whine
follows me everywhere, invades
the silence, scrapes nerves raw
 little irritations stick, sting, crawl
  under my skin, through my brain
  my skin has betrayed me, called
 a mutiny, flaking off, falling
into the midnight sea, muscles
 screaming right back at the
  maddening hum, the endless buzz
 can’t get away from modern machinery
  always running, always static, bright white haze
   everything breaking, dying, falling
    apart, missing the mark, banging its shins
  I stumble scraped, raw, bleeding & bruised
  but all they see is what’s on
  the outside: rumpled, wrinkled,
   sun-burned, tousled,
  cat-scratched, pummelled
 I suck it in so no one can see
what’s really underneath

      ——

time slips back & forth
  across the slick wet ice
  it laughs at thrown
   snowballs in June
  flowers sprouting from
    December snow
  red leaves falling
   in the April rain
 in the end time does make
   fools of us all; might
  as well enjoy it
   while it lasts

      ——–

green, black, yellow, white
 blue, purple, orange, red
  handfuls of jelly-beans
    dyed happy party colours
    it wasn’t a happy party
   for the ghosts
 (they just wanted to go home)
   so we opened the doors
    and let the sunlight in
     burnt it all away
      dust into sparkles
       light on the air
      home to sleep
     and dream sweet dreams
      home at last
     to dream and sleep
      sweet dreams

- T.H.
(for NaPoWriMo)

I.

listen
the books are singing
dead leaves humming
chords struck from sunset’s last light
follow the sound
you’ll find me
transcribing lines in the sand
transposing the ocean’s waves
fingers plucking strings of air
listen
the dead leaves whisper
sighs plucked from secret fountains
the rain’s heart thumping
in time with the pheasant’s feet
drumming against the deadwood fence

II.

she places eggshells
in the bowl like
flower petals
interpreting
the jagged edges
with bitter fingers
it is snowing outside
the crocuses scream
purple against white
she cannot hear them
in her mind there is only
an endless beach, curving
into the morning fog
footprints leading
to the ocean’s fickle edge
licked clean by the water’s
greedy tongue
she’d cut its jealous heart out
if she could

III.

after the overture
(a sampling of themes
 once tasted, you must
 spit them out lest they
 make you tipsy)
he finds her
in the interim
strumming absently
the admiration of
the talentless
he wonders where
she went, the girl
that he once knew
who blew across
empty bottles,
blades of grass
the girl who
played spring
like every note
was a surprise

- T.H.

for PoeFusion (nouns + verbs*), Saturday Scribes, and NaPoWriMo

* The PF challenge for this week was to combine random nouns with verbs that pertained to a favourite activity; the verbs I chose were (not suprisingly) ones relating to music

move, wake up, don’t worry
that you’ve got nowhere to go
jump in the old blue call box
spin some random dials
you might catch a young girl’s eye
on a crowded Monday street
or find a hole to China
opened up beneath your feet
if everything’s on fire
you can always swim to Spain
or hitch some wings up on your back
and fly away to somewhere new
somewhere you’ve never been
just move, wake up, don’t worry
that you’ve got nowhere to be
you can find your destination
on the way if you just
keep your conscience clean
tie your shoelaces up tight
trade the day in for the night
just move, wake up, don’t hurry
everything will be all right

-T.H.

(My feel good pop song for the day: a little bit of Counting Crows, + a little bit of Dr. Who, + a little bit of wishful thinking.  I’m not really this far behind for NaPoWriMo; technically I’m on poem #16 for the month, but there were a couple that really weren’t worth the effort of posting; I’ll aim for a couple of extra poems tomorrow)

12.
thin fingers pull the curtain aside
metal rings stutter along metal pole
a sound like drunken rusty bells
rung by tiny mice with iron toothpicks
slit yellow eyes peer out and down
onto concrete washed in fluorescent glare
the briny green square of the hotel pool
not cleaned since last year, its surface
a scum of old dead leaves, bugs,
and drowned grass clippings
flung by the hapless mower
long thin toes curl over the windowsill
the creature pushes off, with a yelp of glee
a whistling dive, a splash in the dark
another water rat loses the lottery

By sheer poetic coincidence, this is my second changeling poem for April. The first one was #3: dead country.

13.
While musing upon the singularity of my fate*…

lately, the old man has become
acutely aware of time’s passing
he made the mistake of trusting
one of the quick ones, the small
dark flashes of light that used to
circle his head like insects
he’d slapped at one in anger once
left a small dark stain on the wall
he’d forgotten that long ago, but they,
they, he suspected, had not
he was supposed to be young
for as long as the sun burned
and the rain fell upon the earth
he’d made them promise
(he had power, back then)
he used to stride the canopy of air
easy as ducks and water, bees and honey
the gods had made him out of parts
but only he had made himself whole
now he stares at knuckles oak-gnarled
at veins like thick black tree roots
feels the ages settling into his bones
looks up at the coloured moths circling
jubilant, ecstatic, above his head, and thinks
how he might have spent his final hour
with another gnarled hand held fast in his
instead he ponders, his body
shivering, withering away
how he was overcome at last
on the one day the sun did not shine
on the one day the rain did not fall
and of all the days he spent alone, with his
smooth young skin, his fine young smile
and never another soft young hand in his

-T.H.

RWP & Saturday Scribes prompts used as a jumping off point: green, briny, changeling, hotel, pool, room; acute, singularity, jubilant, overcome, chimera, canopy, air
*Title of #13 taken from a line in Edgar Allen Poe’s “MS. Found in a Bottle”