February Daily Poetry Challenge 2022

1

It was so easy to allow my voice to exist outside my body

Now everyday it winds its roots deeper into a fleshy body

I did not even know was fertile enough to bring forth such a sound

Stone and flame mingle in the sound

A vein of water

2

I love rainy days over the River

Water and sky dressed in the same hue

The sun and shore smile at one another

A sad smile, as if recalling

3

A decision lands as a coin at the bottom of a well

Tumbling over itself as it sinks slowly down

Flipping and flopping in the motionless water

When it strikes the ground

The disturbed sediment plumes

When it settles, you look at the upturned face

And finally breathe out

4

Adulthood is as taking your pills with coffee

Ill advised

5

The sky is stitched with yellow thread

And night splits the seams to bleed across the azure firmament

Staining the great expanse inky to then be pierced by starlight

I hold those blue memories when the lake was hazy in our eyes

Our voices quiet and mouths filled with soft cheese

6

I would live a myriad

To see one gilded day with you

You tasted like a hot toddy

You tasted like curiosity

I curl around the memory

In the sheets of a bed that is not mine

Of burnished summer days

Of buildings with crumbling plaster

The cracks filled in and stoppered up

With the little pieces of self that careened away

Two celestial bodies, insensate

In a room with no air conditioning

7

My hatred was in my hair

The hatred was -in- it, not for it

So I cut it away

Thus shorn, I cried

At war with follicle, I stood in the face of my loathing

Beating back the enemy with scissor and razor

“I will not have any means behind which to hide,” I said in a child’s voice

For it was a child’s mind that hated

When I finally said enough and made the choice

I let my hair grow

I did not hide behind it, as I had feared I would

The time for hiding ended when I made the choice

8

The indefinite you that could be anyone

And anywhere in the gummy batter

The aimless you that wanders in and out of the light

Memories of you are like spearing fish

I sharpen myself and hurl myself towards you

Only to be stuck again in a mixture that has too much flour

I have a mealy mass that squats on the floured counter

My hand might slip as I add water

And make it into soup and then where would I be

Again

Looking to add more flour

Sacrificing grain after grain to the mill

Barren stalks that bend to a passing wind

Until there is nothing else to be plucked during the harvest

9

To have watched you grow from lithe limbed youth

Into a body limned with the golden gilt of womanhood

Has been the greatest gift

To have watched those eyes sharpen

And your tongue loosen

Hurling incantations into a world

More inclined to burn you

Than be healed by the magic inherent in you

To watch you continue to sing, sometimes in spite

Has been the greatest joy

10

Today, the dark day

Only a ghost light watches

Loving sentinel

11

I do not often get to sit in the pit

Feeling like a part of the orchestra

Instead of standing 10 feet above them

My voice is another instrument

Flesh amongst brass, timber, and reed

I can hear our voices continue to hum

Caught in the timpani behind us

My stand light burns my fingers

12

Community is a rare and wonderful thing

One enters a community as a stranger

By some act of alchemy

A stranger is transformed into someone familiar

Scent and sight congeal into a shape

A fixture on the couch near the window

Strangeness is shaken out and hung up

To be donned again at the closing of the day following

13

The onion I grew in a mug

Smells too bad to take in the car

Life is a brutal

And fleeting thing

So is novelty

14

The well has run dry of deep thoughts

On this the day of St Valentines murder

I feel a still sort of peace

Knowing I am beholden to none

That none are beholden to me

I can careen around in my chaos

A cosmic pinball game

Launching me from one part of the world to another

Maybe there was a final bucketful of deep thoughts left

15

Wanting

Beats the war drums

Wanting

Sounds the bugle call

Wanting

Is the rifles snarl

Wanting

Is the sheet pulled over the eyes

Wanting

Does not care

Does not feel

There is only the wanting

And the never getting enough

16

All I want to do is sit real still

And drink pickle juice

Pickle juice, pickle juice

I might be iron deficient

17

There once was a girl in a flat

She made lots of stew and she sat

Alone in her room

She used a vacuum

To clean the turds flung by her cat

18

Put your memory of me to death

For I have not been her in a long while

Give the dark your recollections of my body

There is no longer a cell in it that you have touched

I have cleared out the tombs of remembering

Not a cobweb remains that was stirred in the wake of your passing

In the catacombs, there is only silence where you once echoed

A void that smells like you

Buried deeper and deeper in an unmarked grave

All the better for me to dance on

19

One feels small

In the seats of a concert hall

Only the rafters and beams

Tuned so finely as to soften our screams

For what is singing if not a great shout

A tempest of feeling that fights to get out

20

Transience is a word I turn over in my mind

Careful not to leave one side down for too long

It might stick, or worse

Burn

I keep turning it over and over

Transience is a choice that I make

Knowing one’s fate and experiencing it

Are two very different things

Suddenly I am a pancake

21

The day falls at my feet

I pick it up and tuck it into bed

The night curls up around it like a cat

22

I have far too much time to sit with her

She’s gonna get used to it again

Constantly being held against my chest

Breathing me in

Feeling the rumble of my voice when I talk on the phone

I’ll have to leave her again

Only for a while

But “a while” is not a measurable thing for her

There is only gone and not gone

Scent and memory

Why do I break my heart over this little creature?

In other news, my transformation into a cat lady is nearly complete

23

Snow in the street lamps

Purple grey dusk speckled white

Cold silver beamed light

24

I read a poem called Calamity Again

By a poet whose friends bought his freedom from serfdom

Not long after his ransomed independence

He was forced into hiding by a cowardly regime

Certain that his words could rally his people

Proving yet again

Liberty dies on the lips of silenced artists

25

I walk into a quarter of of my century

For it is the time that has been given

Looking over my shoulder I see

I am armed with good people

The best people

Who reach out their hands to hold me

But know precisely when to let me go

I harken to their voices raised in chorus behind me

Around me and within me

The holy host of those that I love

The she who belongs to them

The I who belongs to me

The self that we give to each

other

In our lives, there is only we

We know, we strive, we lose, we find

The love in us does not yield

26

I cried in the sitzprobe because I am a big old baby. They only played one chord and there I was

Blubbering into my score.

It’s Pisces season, bitches

27

When I sit alone for too long

My little lizard brain conjures ghosts

And I have to sit here with them

Talking my ear off

Intrusive thoughts or terminal extroversion?

Jury is still out

28

A beginning, ends

As I pin-curl all my hair

I slowly breathe out