Spots

Before you capture
words as they slip
From weary lips

Before you surmise
The story you hear
In your dull ear

Before you justify
With fettered senses
Your splintered fences

Look me in the eye
Before you judge
Let me help wipe your smudge

Dversepoets.com Quadrille Monday. I am on a break, but I peeked and couldn’t resist. The word is smudge and this was fun.

Mosaic

Broken yet complete
Unyielding while resilient
Shattered in place
I’m in a glass case of emotion
Like raindrops on fallen petals
I cling and glisten in the sun
Every piece unique
More beautiful than the whole

dversepoets.com Tuesday “movie lines” i chose “I’m in a glass case of emotion.” -Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgundy, 2004 –

Floral Moon

My daughter had the audacity to remind me Christmas is only six months away. Everything in me cringed. Didn’t that just happen, like yesterday? Yes, Christmas is great when it’s in front of me. She already is complaining about the heat. She loves three seasons out of four, and I slog through three seasons to get here. Can she just let me enjoy my one fleeting moment?

I look forward to a floral moon. I had no idea of its name, or any of it’s names. So many flowers in May last only a moment and then they are gone. Last week I had a little extra time. I wish I had helped my farmer friend milk his cows.

Floral moon blooms once
Live a moment at a time
Inhale every scent

Dversepoets.com A haibun for Monday. One to three paragraphs of prose with a haiku to follow. Prompt is to allude to May’s floral moon which is this Wednesday. Also called March moon or milk moon, when farmers milk three times a day instead of two.

Teach What You Can’t Do

He asked me to dance, ma
But I’ve two left feet
We swayed in a trance, ma
I couldn’t count the beat
He wouldn’t take a no, ma
I was too shy to retreat
Now I’m caught in his spell, ma
My private hell, ma
Followed and fell, ma
So who can I tell, ma
I didn’t listen, but now
I can teach to lead

Dversepoets.com and Bjorn wants us to dance a poem. 1-2-3, A waltz.

Labor and Birth of a Poet

Silent syllables  
Buried deep 
Rot under impervious 
Ace bandages

Hope ferreted 
Gently unwound those rags

Bleeding words 
Splattered everywhere 
Like red flags

Blood dried to ink 
Wounds breathed 
Life to share

Of Him whose 
Hands and feet still bear 
Scars that set her free 
 

Linking to http://www.dversepoets.com. A quadrille consists of exactly 44 words, including a prompt word, and excluding the title. The prompt word in this poem is “wound” a homograph. The challenge is to use the word, or derivation) in both of its pronunciations and meanings.

True Colors

The scarlet letter is an A
Morals–an ever-changing scene
Hush! Cover everything with jade
Carefully word your next tirade
God’s grace alone makes a heart clean

Linking with Linda Kruschke paint chip poetry.

QUINTILLA (quin-teé-yuh) Spanish five-line stanza containing eight syllables per line and rhyming ababa, abbab, abaab, aabab, or aabba. Each stanza must have two rhymes (a and b) and the last two lines may not be a couplet. Originally the quintilla was called a redondilla.
Your challenge is to write at least one stanza in the quintilla form. You can certainly write more if you like, but one well-crafted quintilla is all I’m asking.

Those words and phrases are robin’s egg, jade, The Scarlet Letter, slow, and goldfish. I would like you to use at least two of these in your quintilla. If you can use them as your rhyme words, all the better. But you could also pick one to be your title but not use it in the actual poem. The possibilities aren’t endless, but there are more than a few.

Proud Mama

Dusk waits longer in spring
Showing off new life
Mother earth’s babies

Dversepoets.com open link night. Poem of choice.

My Eyes See Blue

An innocent blue sky canopies the earth
Gray clouds infiltrate, silently taking all captive
A covert operation

Blue ice sparkles in sunlight
Bait for the unsuspecting
Stunning yet dangerous

Beware blue eyes most of all
They burn hotter than flames of red
Searing every side

Forget-me-nots lift their heads every year
A gentle thaw in spring

Dversepoets.com “Blue Tuesday” or poems about blue.

Image out my window before spring cleanup.

Persuasion

Outside her window a Mockingbird chatters, from staccato, to one long even note, and then even a piercing screech. At first she finds it musical, then amusing. Soon she finds it distracting and annoying. She slams the window shut, craving silence. Mockingbirds use every voice they have to attract a mate.

She listens to her voice mail. Her boyfriend explains his actions and pleads forgiveness. She deletes the message. She removes one of the roses from the vase. She notices its frailty. Its petals, worn and brown along the rim. Flowers never last long. The way she laughed at his coy smile when he gave them now mocks her.

Only mouths are we. Who sings the distant heart which safely exists in the center of all things? It takes for focus and faith to hear the right voice, away, outside her perimeter.

Dversepoets.com prosery is the prompt. The line is “Only mouths are we. Who sings the distant heart which safely exists in the center of all things?” – from Rainer Maria Rilke, “Heartbeat.”

The Poet in Me

Must we contend
Word to word
Rhyme to rhyme
Sword to sword

Can we be friends
End this game
Confess a candle
Needs a flame
Without either
No one would see

A pigment of imagination
Is your denial of reality
I need you
As you need me

Dversepoets.com Tuesday prompt Ingrid wants us to write in narrative Voice using a fictional character. Not sure if this is quite what she means. More what I keep calling a fictional character? You decide.