Haiku heights prompt: Breeze

Posted on March 2, 2013 by Susan L Daniels

what will nod daisies
scatters snow like confetti
winter’s white flowers

Posted in Haiku and Related Forms, haiku heights prompt | Tagged , | 42 Comments

For Marek, After Bypass

Posted on March 1, 2013 by Susan L Daniels

This should be a bouquet
arranged and fragrant
for your hospital room,
saying something simple
but true, like get well soon,
or best wishes for a speedy recovery,
and those will come later
when we sit in your room
and listen to tired jokes
from the television,

all the while thinking
that heart, what pained you
25 years, was finally known,
but by microscope eyes
and gloved hands;
free of the protections you strung
so carefully around the perimeter;
razor-wire humor
cut neatly through by a bone saw
with your other defenses.

Once, I wanted you open
and raw, no secrets
separating us.

Not like this.  Not everything
laid open under clean light
and that heart stopped,
even for a moment.

I want you whole.

I need to ask your surgeon
if, the moment that caged chest was open
did he hear you heart sing
the pure tones you hide so well?

Posted in New Free Verse | Tagged , , | 16 Comments

This is what we do every day, people.

Posted on February 28, 2013 by Susan L Daniels

Love this group of musicians who collaborate globally.

 

Posted in New Free Verse | 12 Comments

Renegades

Posted on February 28, 2013 by Susan L Daniels

Art is not owned by nations,
And can never be
Soviet enough,
Uzbek enough

Though the artists
Might be chained to times
Or movements

The images, painted
Breathe, stretch oiled wings
And own themselves
Before flight.

***Fragment of something larger, inspired by this:  http://www.pbs.org/independentlens/desert-of-forbidden-art/gallery.html

Posted in New Free Verse | Tagged , , | 11 Comments

Not a Ruth and Naomi Story (a sonnet)

Posted on February 28, 2013 by Susan L Daniels

I never promised to go where you led
With the blind belief of a burdened beast,
My feet following any path you made.

We are not a fated twining, our threads
Spun and woven to oneness, west and east
Meeting and weaving seamless in a braid.

You, unfit to bridle wildness to tread
Steady and smooth enough to press its feet
Into unbroken ground;  ask me to wait,

And I will,  forever, and leave unsaid
My resistance to following your lead
Down any road, no matter how well-paved.

I never promised to go where you led;
I will find you, love, my own way, instead.

Posted in New Free Verse | Tagged , | 50 Comments

behemoth (rework)

Posted on February 26, 2013 by Susan L Daniels

They are what swim, what fly, what run;
they are the eyes holding firelight
in fear-touched hunger.
They are the plural as single and the one as many;
striped and spotted, feathered and furred,
scaled or catching hair against brambles.
It is what we are, the upright in the bestiary.

We are no more and no less
than these.  Amber intelligence
blinks back at me as the eagle
strips her catch from its bones,
daring me closer to wingspan,
hooked talons, razor beak.

I have memorized the calculations
of a great horned owl skimming night silent,
adding the scrape of claw on gravel
and grass to rodent squeaks
into his sum and swallowing it whole.
I sing coyote inked in packs
and running down prey
through woods I say I own.

If I say truth is elemental
then it is:  I am no more and no less
than this thing that bleeds and gasps,
caught in the jaws of something larger,
a link in the chain that tethers.

Posted in New Free Verse | Tagged , , , , , | 46 Comments

Manic Pixie Dream Girl

Posted on February 25, 2013 by Susan L Daniels

Tinker me pink
because I will never
wear serious red

because my hair
is tangerine
some days

cotton-candy blue
others

to draw  your mouth happy

I am spun sugar
stuck to your tongue,
sweet that never
grows up or out
completely

unclaimed sunshine
breaking the clouds
of your brooding

Posted in New Free Verse | Tagged , , | 9 Comments