Eavesdropping

photo by Rob Hanson

Above this dusty relic phone
Laughter spring sentience
A map of soles
Connects body
Instep…

Movement calling arches;
Come in arches—
Convivial apogees for filigree
Mechanisms fuse wire, ligaments
It’s cliché to say when you least expect it
Like news, dropping bombs without warning
To lose yourself through charged sentiment
Returning to amend again
Biochemical remnants
Stains memory into the glass of years
That should forever
Never
Stand
Your silence…

Five-alarm warnings, imploring, before life ends
Regrets that, meant, honor, discontent, mendicant
More when voices
Distill vibrations…
Rendering whispers…
Most soothing…
Feathered sighs…
Intimate

Do I spy falsies?
Maybe that’s clear
Levity during tears for mortality
Intense, sears carving reality
As tragedy snuffs out waning night
Death pronouncements through the tunneled ear
Cease climbing toward the apex right
When singing bird chirps fill the morning air

Yes, I’m missing sweet words
The ones that we hold dear
Recalling felt a soft smooth face
Even hang ups, wrong numbers
Just wishing love to hear

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Want to listen to Eavesdropping?

The above poem was written for One Stop Poetry’s Sunday Picture Prompt Challenge. Rob Hanson took the fantastic HDR photo. Today, it is Part 2 of Mr. Hanson’s interview with Chris G. at One Stop Poetry. Awesome photographer. Go check out the interview.

“Bermuda Urn”

When is life held in gold russet skies?
Vermilion glows, seagull glides…
Or cremation of muscle pulp
Mortar and pestled brain
Grains of sand trapped
Fevered oasis, metempsychosis
Cuticles and burnt hands
Without explanation as to how
We crawl from water, withstand
Nor why free radicals spread illness
Universal mitosis, for giving, then taking,
Our time…

Your body could not win that fight
Razed to die, its own undoing
Condensed via fire into a “Bermuda Urn”
Calling it that throughout your hurt
One lifetime more than a story…
Prior to sailing north of cancer
Her wit seldom lost then
Leaving me now without her laughter

Ex rays, cat scans, biopsies, skin grafts
Vomit, holding her hair back
Malignant ugly purplish bruising
Red bandanna covering bald head
Still meaning each word, every single thing
When I said that you were beautiful
Won’t forget those long drives
Venting for lest it drain in truth
Trips over The Ambassador Bridge
Both loving Vonnegut
Trying not to go broke dying
PT, OT, loss of limb
Watching her struggle on prosthetic leg
Her arm shook supported by cane
Painfully—self-awareness of living unable
Sadly, cursing fate
And all lifelong “friends”
Who out of convenience
Walked away

Before her fatal conclusion; there was a will
She planned a “Bermuda Urn” in pink ink
That made me squint at the torn spiral page
For herself spread, becoming over ocean
Immunity being without design here
Unlike a box of Wheaties, Shredded Wheat
“So it goes…”  Incomplete
You were my champion
In the throes of cosmic jokes
Left in trade winds of connection
Charred vestiges of insanity
Love, I’ll always miss you
Wishing you would come back to me

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Care for a reading?

Vincent Could Have Told You (Echostains Poetry Challenge)

My friend Lynda over at the wonderful Echostains Blog issued a challenge, which I accepted. If you have not visited Echostains, you’re missing out! It’s one of the most informative and interesting art sites on the Net.

Echostains Poetry Challenge:
“The challenge is to watch the very short video that features all Van Gogh’s self-portrait and imagine what the artist might be trying to convey through these portraits – in other words if he could speak – what do you think he would he want to say to us?  Alternatively you could just write a poem about Van Gogh the man or his work.  The poem can be as profound as you want, or as daft as you like:)  it can be long, short or even a haiku.”

Light stricken, anxious eyes
Painting beautiful expressions sublime
Puddling tears that Starry Night
Too late, my work now recognized

Could not foresee what happened to me
Now millions on sales tags
Downloads to computer screens
Broadcasts of honors in stellar HD
Even documentaries all about me
Scandals, art thieves,
Dedicated museum wings
Sunflower posters
Mass produced grief…

Yet curation now kind
Since I razed my prime
They think priceless being
A tortured mind

Only my faces and work survive
Absinthesizing swirls refined
Depression claimed another life
Still art without end
Beyond my time