Today is a Tuesday

Today is a Tuesday,
Not just ‘TUESDAY’,
which implies it’s the Tuesday,
and it’s not, it’s
just a Tuesday

(I know that Wednesday is Odin’s day, and that Thursday
belongs to Thor, and it seems that
Tuesday is named for Tiw, or Tyr, who is the God of War,
and Law, and in Old English it was Tiwesdaeg)

And the funny thing is, that it’s a day
Like any other,
but also
it’s unlike any that have come before,
and it will never come again

This Tuesday,
I fell over in headstand and drank my coffee
while I watched the cats
watch the birds

This Tuesday,
I climbed the Fort Hill Stairs in a misting rain
and stood atop the cliffside,
overseeing the growing spread of green in my kingdom,
looking at a speckled landscape through
the rain splattered on my glasses

This Tuesday,
as I walked out of the Nature Center
to rejoin the enforced reality of earning a paycheck
I saw a Peregrine Falcon,
sitting pretty as you please,
on a branch not five feet above my head
and I had never seen one before in real life
so I had to do an Image Search to verify my assumption of species

This Tuesday,
is just a Tuesday,
but it is unlike any that I have had before,
or will ever have again

I am Perfect(ly Imperfect)

I am perfect(ly imperfect)

My kitchen floor, you could eat off it (if you’re current on your tetanus)

The dinners I deliver, delightful (if you consider mayo and cardiac arrest a side dish)

My appearance is impeccable (I forgot about that stain, shut up)

And my feet, my lovely feet, so pampered and feminine (for a Hobbit)

I awake every morning with a proper attitude (a wonderful day starts with the thought, what the fuck, this shit again)

And always think to myself what can I do for the world today (that will not involve too much actual humanity)

I take excellent care of my cats (telling them I will murder them and make coin purses out of their ears if they steal food off my plate one more time is tough love)

And as a mother I know no equal (every time he leaves, my parting line is ‘No hospitals, No cops, anything else we can deal with’)

I think you will agree.

I am perfect(ly imperfect).

Shine a light

Shine a light,
a penlight, a flashlight, a torch,
over all your jaggedy edges and ugly corners,

Let them have their moment in the sun.

Illuminate, illumine,
give weight to the scrawny and underdeveloped,
stretch your muscles
and test your resolve,

widen the cracks of consumption.

Rubble

there are things worth saving, if

you scrabble through the rubble. Stones, strong stones, upon which to rebuild the foundation, cracked stones,

for fissures make interesting ornamentation, and add character where flaws once were. 

blurred boundaries

slip-slide into dreams
roughshod into the light,
popping stitches and bursting seams.

one doesn’t end, one doesn’t begin,
Ouroboros waking,
rising, consuming, without to within.

edges blending into light,
particles dancing,
panicked with delight.

one moment to ponder,
if meaning, then life,
if not, to wander.

What’s Left

I want to rage but you want to cry,
and so I whimper.
I want to sing but you want to sleep,
and so I whisper.

You win by default, never warning me
your compromises are comprised
of a hundred tiny deaths.

Courage

With my halcyon days so far behind me that
they no longer even cast a shadow,
as what I know to be my last years begin
to climb out of the depths,
wrapping their ropes around my ankles to
slow my steps, hunch my back,
eke the marrow from my bones,

I find myself wandering the cemetery
in the sunshine,
under fluffy clouds and winging birds,
to visit a plot that for a decade,
I pretended did not exist.

I stray from the path, because really,
why not, when there’s no one on guard;
I doubt there’s much market for broad-daylight
grave pilfering,
but I wouldn’t know much about such things,
myself

I had heard you were gone; even in introversion,
news travels as fast as the speed of a click
and there’s always some who
can’t seem to wait
to start a conversation with the words ‘oh hey, have you heard?’

I still thought about you all the time,
even then, so many years from
when I had last seen your face,
my own eyes shimmering tears, doubled
the sheen of those gleaming in yours
and then, pfft, never again

would I have looked longer,
I wonder,
if I had known that I would
never see you face to face again?
It didn’t seem like a thing that could be,
a truth that still made no sense,
when reality sits in your lap
and you don’t even realize you have company

And so here I am now,
shuffle stepping to your marker,
stooped and angry,
still mad, still furious, that you
couldn’t manage to be that man,
the one that I saw the first time that I met you,
that was leaps and bounds ahead
of the one that I left behind,
even though I loved you

i’m not here to say goodbye,
I’ve talked to you so often in my head
and doing it when you’re alive and not near
is even more pointless than doing it
when you’re already dead.

If my epitaph stood next to yours,
these many crumpled years later,
Yours, I think, would say goodbye.
And mine, mine would only say I tried.

***

So, I used to join in at The Speakeasy (which I really loved) with Suzanne, and it was brought back into the fold of the Yeah Write community – so I figured I’d give it a try over here.

I pretty much wrote the whole thing around the optional prompt that was given:
What is written in the stone?

As soon as I pound some more words out for NaNo, I very much look forward to reading the other stories. Click on the badge at the top of the post if you’d like to check out all of the other cool stuff going on.

Slumbering Heart

I have fallen off the edge of the world
and seen what lays beneath,
I have flown over the desolate void
and thrown flowers in supplication to that which sleeps beneath

Drawn forth by whispering vines that crept,
slithering, across my skin,
my bones fell apart my false face slid off
and I painted on a happy grin

I danced beneath that blood red sky,
and dreamt I never left,
I skipped a stone and went
from blissful to bereft

I lost my place,
I was lost in time,
no compass to my marker
no harkening to call me home,
no shouting carnival barker

I dreamed my way back into my heart

I slumber even now,
wrapped amongst the loveliest dreams,
without the soundtrack of screams
and backdrop of broken vow.

Once more, my love

We must come to the conclusion,
my dear,
that the bustle and joy
are no longer here

Days have passed
and nights so long,
comfort is nil,
affection all wrong

Every word uttered
ends only in spite
there is no longer a path
to lead to well, and right

Once more, my love,
come into my arms
so as to remember
only my charms

To taste only laughter
and not a salty tear,
we have reached our journey’s end
and must part soon, my dear

* * *

I’ve been away from writing for awhile, but have wanted to join the Light and Shade challenge since I saw it pop on Thomas Marlowe’s blog, Marlowe Manor
http://thomas-marlowe.blogspot.com.
For this challenge, in 100 words or less, you write whatever comes to mind in regards to either a text prompt, a photo prompt, or both. I am a fan of the lack of restrictions for this, I admit. http://lightandshadechallenge.blogspot.com/2014/08/light-and-shade-challenge-friday-29th.html

I wrote this based on the quote prompt for this round:

True is it that we have seen better days.
-As You Like It, Shakespeare

The Plunge

~posted as free flow poetry on my tumblr blog~

Some days,

She climbed the ladder and

Padded to the end of the

Diving board,

Bounced to her toes

And a did a swan dive

Into

The Melancholy Ocean.

She swam through the

Swamp of Empathy,

Where every rescue animal

That needed a home,

And every child

That needed a hope,

Every man who ever felt less than,

And every woman who

Ever feared,

Poked leaks through

Her wetsuit and flooded in,

And the weight of the world

Almost bore her to the bottom.

She sliced through the Sea of the Sad,

What am I

Where am I

Why am I

Who am I

Whisked in alternating ears

With every breaststroke,

And barely broke the surface

To gasp in a gulp of air.

She dove under,

Kicked towards the bottom,

The dreck and the dark,

The muddy cloud,

Kicking up dirt,

The Sea Floor of all that was,

Those that had given up,

Dreams that had petered out

And sunk,

Books unwritten

Songs unsung

Dancers who remained stationary.

She faces the waves and the swells,

With tearful equanimity,

Because she always knows,

That once she clambers

Onto the far bank,

The pains and the hurts and the ideas,

Rush gushing from a

Fountain of Gratitude

And the sky is bluer,

The trees are greener,

The laughter brighter and

The love more fierce,

Because she can feel both sides of the coin.