I Saw It Coming

Do not embrace

the days we had.
Those days have
vanished like
an apparition
of a lost
loved one at twilight.
Those days we tread
over famous landscape
paintings, traded
bits of that
which we shared
with no one else,
those days we cannot
cash in
for change.
Those days we’ve
lost; they’ve been
replaced.

Do not embrace
the days we had.
Do not embrace
my face, it’s different
now—like cedar
bark worn &
chiseled from a wood-
pecker’s beak,
worn from twigs
snapped underfoot.

No, do not embrace
the days we had.
We’ve been gifted
with new days.
Embrace
the days you have,
embrace your new faces.
And forget me.

I've Flown Away

Here is the prompt for Day Fifteen (copied from Writer's Digest):

For today’s prompt, write a prediction poem. Make a prediction. Write about another person’s correct or incorrect prediction. Or, you know, be unpredictable.

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I Am a Mermaid (A Poem for Day Fifteen of PAD)

Here is the prompt (for day fifteen) copied from Poetic Asides: For today’s prompt, write a metaphor poem. That is, write a poem built around a metaphor. Remember: Metaphors actually take on another object (like “I am a Tree” or “I am a Rock“). This is not to be confused with similes, which are like metaphors (for instance, “I am like a tree” or “I am like a rock”), but not quite. Dig? If so, then you are a shovel or spade or bulldozer. Now poem the heck out of metaphors today.

Hold Me in Your Heart

I Am a Mermaid

But I don’t live
in the sea.
I flower from May
to September
when I add
a sweet touch
of color
to your garden.
Those who've
cultivated me
call me
a forget-me-not.
I’m easy to grow,
reliable, too—
you can count on me
to bloom and add cheer
to your life
when you’re feeling blue.

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Haste Makes Waste - a Poem for Day Fifteen of PAD

Here is the prompt for day fifteen of PAD:

For today’s prompt, write a “one time” poem. This poem could be about a once in a lifetime experience. Or it could be about something a person wants to try just one time (good or bad). Or take it where you will–as always.

Always Use the Trash Can

Haste Makes Waste

Although I can’t say

I recognize
most of my fellow
power walkers,
I can imagine
most of those
who make
waste in their haste
around here.

They are
someone who eats Pez candy,
someone who shops at Big 5,
someone who throws away
     homework, and
someone who doesn't mind
     contributing
to nature’s demise.

They are
someone who drinks just half
     a McCafe,
someone who keeps no receipts,
someone who uses no coupons,
and someone who buys
     extra treats
to leave for wildlife
on the street.

I declare this,
without
reservation,
just one time,
I'd rather meet
and greet
those draggletails
than feast
my eyes
on their
scattered,
tattered
goods
and food-
stuff
they
never
consumed.

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Histrionic (a Poem for Day Fifteen of PAD)

The prompt for today, day fifteen, is to pick an adjective to use for the title and then write a poem to go with it. Mine is below. 

 

No Longer My Apollo

Histrionic

How does it feel to pose on top 

of that ladder like a Greek statue
the masses come to admire? Only
there are no masses here. Just me,
and from this angle, I see fissures
running through from one
side of your stone
limbs to the other. Your curls
have thinned right along with your
arguments—you try to rearrange
them to make yourself feel
better, but you’re not fooling
any of the visitors who paid
admission fees for a peek
of your majesty. You’re not fooling
yourself and you’re not fooling
me. Still, you stay perched
right on top while I take a stroll
along the ridges of our rocky
getaway, keeping my focus
outwards on a horizon
I can’t yet see.
You can have what you want.
Just hold your own hands
and release me.

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What Love Wants (a Poem for Day Fifteen of PAD)

Once again I'm writing at midnight. And I'm tired, so I'm sticking to just one. My poem for Day Fifteen is below.

Today's prompt is a Two-for-Tuesday:

• Write a love poem. Love, it’s such a big 4-letter word that can mean so much to so many for a variety of interpretations. Friendly love, sexual love, dorky love, all-encompassing love, jealous love, anxious love, love beaten with a baseball bat, hot love, big love, blues love, greeting card love, forgiving love, greedy love, love in a music video, and so on and so forth.
• Write an anti-love poem. Well, kinda like love, but take it back the other way.

Finding Peace in Love

What Love Wants

Love does not sag to jowly depths,
criticize dusty shelves or scowl
at speckled, mud-spattered floors walked
one thousand miles upon.
Love sees only Sunday morning
misty hikes in those sharp and chiseled
cracks around your weary eyes.
And in wobbly legs, stiff with age’s routines
and boredoms, she sees only moonlit runs
on oceanfront property you both stole
from the serpentine sea. Love wants someone
to see through her skin and bones,
someone to expose her soul, to call
her home, someone to bring heaven
to her earth. That’s all she wants.

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