Poems for Days 23 & 24 of the May 30/30 Challenge are up at Tupelo Press!

plants in moonlightI got #24 in last night at about 10 pm, so count it! It’s coming down to the wire here, and I may very well have dug as deep as deep goes, but who knows? No one’s singing just yet… Thanks so much for following along with me this month, everyone!

Psychedelic (Day 23)

in a substance-less trip
to the universe yet to be
uncovered
where atoms infused with
one and a half teaspoons of photons…

Osmosis, and the Willingness of Light to Participate (Day 24)

With thanks to Ken Gierke* for supplying the title!

When     at the behest of a word
light—as in     Let there be…—was parsed
apart from her swirling enmeshment in shadow
such that stultified yang stretched out
into a borderless     yin-less orphan
only to be instructed to believe it was good
was the day she dissociated from her true self
somewhere in spacetime…

Continue reading both pieces (& catch up on Days 1-22) here!

*Check out Ken’s lovely work on WordPress at rivrvlogr !

Day 20 Poem of the May 30/30 Challenge is up at Tupelo Press!

Belladonna

Les Belladones sans Merci

What ails you, Keyboard Warrior,
alone & typing in your room?
No nightshades blossom on my screen
     to face our doom…

What ails you, Keyboard Warrior,
with swollen eyes & bearing rough?
That tawny succor in your mug
won’t be enough…

Continue reading here!

Facebook flower

My Day 17 Poem for the May 30/30 Challenge is up at Tupelo Press!

funny-dalai-lama-cartoon-birthday

Things I Cannot Say 

With reverence for His Holiness the Dalai Lama, and with special thanks to Robert Okaji for supplying the title that breathed life into this poem 

Even when you are a one-year-old jumping out of your crib
(you have no reason for having jumped, but once it’s done,
and the thud you’ve made that was loud but didn’t hurt…

Continue reading here!

My Day 16 Poem for the May 30/30 Challenge is up at Tupelo Press

Heavy Downpour --- Image by © Anthony Redpath/Corbis

Ode on Mayuary

With apologies to John Keats

You know, you shouldn’t go to Cannon Beach

To brace for a flood in the parking lot,

Nor in optimism attempt to reach

On foot the corner store…

Continue reading here!

Support my efforts on behalf of Tupelo Press here.

My Day 7 poem for the May 30/30 Challenge is up at Tupelo Press!

crocodile_above_the_water_044013_

Crocodile

Sly for a six-footer     you are
a briny guy     stretched out     & chill

as in     literally    a cold-blooded
dinosaur with a killer instinct

When the tide flows in     your heart slows…

Continue reading here…

 

Find out how you can participate here!

 

My Day 5 Poem for the 30/30 Challenge is up at Tupelo Press!

badger

Hypochondria Blues

With gratitude to Crow at Words and Feathers for choosing the words, badger, thrombosis, and erectile

What you’ve got is only a touch of neurosis,
so don’t get your knickers all bunched in a twist—
your worries will give you a deep vein thrombosis!

Do you think there’s a prize for a self-diagnosis? (…) 

Continue reading here…

Learn more about the Tupelo Press 30/30 Project here…

Come join the fun!

My Day 4 Poem for the 30/30 Challenge is up at Tupelo Press!

Because I Said So

Because I Said So

With Thanks to Clyde Long for Naming That Title & 3 Words!

It’s been the same, old thing, year after year:
You mope around, all gloomy and convective,
grow turbulent with variable shear…

Continue reading here…

These interactive challenges have been great fun so far, and extremely helpful and rewarding to me! Please keep ’em coming!

Learn more about the Tupelo Press 30/30 Project here

 

Alabaster

 

alabaster

I am a pink rose petal’s pale glow

black ash tamped in furrows
between the breath of the living
& the souls of the dead

the dawn’s blush unfurling over sand dunes

& seagulls soaring on thermal spirits
of iodine      salt     & shellfish

& sometimes     scattering in the wind
I can’t find where everything else ends     & I begin

Now rising from the morning hush     this cloud of me
speaks to the red tail hawk perched on a streetlamp
& tells her I’m fine     because I’m still not sure
how to talk about not being fine

I am an instar     trying to be
the clearest version of myself     to sculpt
a final skin of lucent crystal

so that when you come to see my cinder eyes
glinting diamond dust     I will be
the embered dusk bleeding into the sea

& you will know the truth of me

embered-dusk

A previous version of this poem first appeared in Sixfold magazine, winter 2014.