knowledge: Cinquain

Posted on November 18, 2012 by Susan L Daniels

knowledge
what raises us
graded soft,  on a curve
since the renaissance, just short of
vision

Posted in New Free Verse | 21 Comments

perspectives

Posted on November 18, 2012 by Susan L Daniels

just before sunset a woman
walking her dog tells me
she was admiring my roses, mostly over
but red in that final frantic blooming
past the first hard freeze

i nod agreement, smile
i don’t tell her
those are not my roses.
that i happen to stand
on a porch i don’t own
because i want to end our talk
before it does anything but
skim the  air between us
lightly

so i can return
to the argument
i was moderating
between my right & left brain–
the 3 of us deciding
if the moon’s thinness
was sharp enough to sliver sky
with mandolin precision

or if,  instead
we should trace that perfect curve
of planet-shadow
arcing a proud silhouette
across the moon’s face
the way that shadow waxes
when moon wanes

or both

Posted in New Free Verse | Tagged , , , | 20 Comments

what lights us

Posted on November 17, 2012 by Susan L Daniels
"into the light" Mobius Faith

“into the light” Mobius Faith. From http://mobiusfaith.wordpress.com/

brighter
than poured concrete
cracking into gravel
underfoot, this door shows

there is light moved toward
& light that finds

today the EXIT
frames the obvious

only path
through dark

the way out

At Dverse today, we are seeking inspiration from photographs taken by Mobius Faith.  Thank you, Terry, for lending us your images today.

Posted in New Free Verse | 33 Comments

the price

Posted on November 17, 2012 by Susan L Daniels

I have seen them, gravid
& walking with the honey heaviness
of mothers round as plums,
ripe & stretched over fullness
& eager to meet what kicks
beneath their hands

they have felt fluttering
in the domes of their bellies,
laughed with those turns
& learned new heartbeats
threading under their own,
a welcome otherness

but here, underneath scars
that tethered us
to our own mothers
a threat blooms alongside hope

this close to life death happens. obscene
how bodies break & empty easy as eggs
even in their fruiting

life is cheap
they say & it must be
if it spends so casually
each lost heartbeat
adds up
counted in pennies

& we keep adding
shiny words explaining loss:
religion, cultural context,
mismanagement

how do you tabulate tears
in actuarial tables

i have numbered the bones

ac-
count-
ability

measured in shoulder shrugs
& head shakes
while a woman
who cradled life
in the bowl of her pelvis

bleeds out
drop by drop
slower than tears

Posted in New Free Verse | Tagged , , , , | 37 Comments

haiku heights prompt: tree

Posted on November 16, 2012 by Susan L Daniels

one starting maple
slender and bending in wind
how twigs become trees

 

Posted in haiku | Tagged , , | 30 Comments

a series of micro-poems

Posted on November 15, 2012 by Susan L Daniels

I.  Growth

each  artist needs media.
i pull mine, invented
& birthed

in this organic stretch
toward speech

& yes, God

II.

we are still animals
with reptile minds & pure
in drive if not intent–
the harm is not in the need
but the consequences

III.  Prayer

these words raw
we cry out

to  emptiness

IV.

don’t rain on the insane parade
that’s marching

it will simply
water what is scattered

& what can grow from madness
but madness

Posted in New Free Verse | 24 Comments

i read job to be reminded

Posted on November 15, 2012 by Susan L Daniels

it is not God i should accuse
but us

we were not there
when You laid the foundation
when You set the cornerstone

we are flawed
with our cracked clay feet
unfit for keeping.

fallen.

i read Job to understand awe

we had no voices, yet
or throats
when the stars sang
and the angels cried out

to learn God answers
questions
with more questions

worship is how we kneel
& admit it was not us
that laid the foundations

that it is angels that shout
not us. our brass tongues clang discord
instead of sounding joy

we have never ordered the morning
or shown the sunrise its place

that smith of mountains
& mammoths
has more patience for us
than we for Him

how we lose that path
over & over
in that hunt for things
we think we need

we have not traveled
to the springs of the sea

how we tear each other
to feed a need more heated
than blood, hungrier than lions

we have not entered
the storehouses of the snow

we are not gods
but we coin them, newly minted
from gold flecks
sifted from lead & hoarded
to pour into familiar molds

gods that cannot ask us
where we were
because they are made
& ask only
for what we can give easily

we do not know the paths to lightning

i read Job to remember
we can be more

but stretch out our hands instead
to grasp this less

***at Dverse, we are exploring allusion.  Yesterday, after several hours of confronting how evil man can be to man, I decided the only allusions I wanted to make were to the book of Job.  All my italicized here are responses to questions in that book, chapters 38-39.

Related Poetry/prose:
George Ellington
Consider the tea cosy
Eboni Sade
Noel 

Posted in New Free Verse, Religion and Spirituality | Tagged , , , , , , | 40 Comments