Bitter Fruits (a Golden Shovel)

Another try at a Golden Shovel. I was able to relax with these words a bit more. (See below.)

Marbles Were a Fun Game, Once

Bitter Fruits
after “Mountain” by Clifton Gachagua

            (line used: grief saddled in my back like a bag of marbles)

In the garden where I once pressed tomato seeds into dirt, grief
flourishes, sprouting up with open arms, saddled
onto this stiff body carrying me from bed to bed. In
barren lands, I hunt for my former self—before tears bullied my
desires, saturated my confidence, forced me back
to sodden sighs that confiscate my days. Like
a rabid fruit bat, fooling me into believing a
lie, you flitted from one innocent bug to the next, displaying your bag
of trophies dangling like a fig tree, pulsing of
seduction. Me, a game you play like that old forgotten game of marbles.

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Last Dance with You (a Golden Shovel)

Still digging through words for a Golden Shovel I will love. Not quite there yet. (See my poem below.)

Still Dancing in the Shadows

Last Dance with You
after “Dancing Toward Bethlehem” by Billy Collins

I have expired like discarded minutes
passing by, never to be held onto, like the death of
words that wouldn’t come out, the
way I waded through the twentieth
relationship trying to find my way back to that century
where minutes ticked longer than sixty seconds, for
a chance to have one
more hour that we could last
in another destiny where broken hearts and minutes dance.

(This poem uses the original line "minutes of the twentieth century for one last dance" by Billy Collins to make up the end words.)

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Not That Man's Best Friend (a Golden Shovel Poem)

Tonight I am playing with a form I haven't written before—a golden shovel. Read more about it on Poetic Asides. Or just go straight to my poem below. 

That Man's Best Friend

Not That Man’s Best Friend

        after Billy Collins

Why couldn’t you have stayed, like a good boy? Nobody
came fetching for me yesterday (or any day before that). Here,
by the door I wait, desperate to touch upon the likes
of love, the likes of liking, feel a stroke down my back. But a
few years have passed now and my love has turned wet
like the fishy-breathed tongue of a neglected dog.

(Line used: “Nobody here likes a wet dog” from “To a Stranger Born in Some Distant Country Hundreds of Years From Now” by Billy Collins.)

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Poetic Asides PAD Challenge Results for April 2014

In the midst of, among other things, pursuing my editing career—leaving me with little time for poetry writing—I have received a nudge of inspiration.

Write Poetry Wherever You Can

Something I look forward to twice a year since I learned of it is Robert Lee Brewer's Poetic Asides Poem-a-Day Challenge. It's a period to give myself permission to put in whatever time I need to write a poem each day, something I often find difficult during my busy life the rest of the year. So this past April when I participated in the challenge, I looked at is a way to indulge myself in playing with words, but without worrying about contest results. 

Robert has just announced the top ten poems for some of the days and I was humbled to see my name in two of the lists—for days seven and nine. (The links go to my blog post version of the poems.)

Standing at the bottom of the writing ride and looking upwards, I am grateful for the encouragement. 

Thank you to Robert, who not only runs this challenge, but also encourages so many poets and is a wonderful poet himself.  

Congratulations to the winners, to the rest of the writers who made it to the Top Ten, and to those who participated in the challenge!

And thanks to you, my blog readers as well. Your support means a lot to me.

Enjoy your day! 


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