It is like trying to explain a breeze, the mechanics get in the way of it.  To try to give word to the beauty of a particular phrase or grouping of words is to make that very beauty somehow less.

How do you explain the attraction, the magnetic power of the Mona Lisa?  People have spent countless hours trying to and still fail miserably.  It is the same with trying to define poetry.

Poetry simply is.

I make poetry because I can.  And not to make poetry would be to deny a part of what makes me who I am.  It flows in my inner being like warm syrup, which probably goes a long way towards explaining why some dies on the paper.  No matter.  It needs to flow.

Poetry simply is.

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I leave it to you to determine how successful I was with this weeks prompt or not.  In the meantime, you can see how others responded by looking here. 

———–

The Lizard King

Would you still be peddling the leather clad
Dionysus shaman act, with hairline in retreat
Your shirt still unbuttoned down to there?

Would your sulky eyes be tightened up
from trips to the plastic supplier?  Would
you still wake up in the morning and

Get yourself a beer or love her madly?
Even though you walked on out that
door, eternally young?

Would you still be selling yourself as a guide
through the labyrinth or still dreaming of killing
your father?

Are you now living in the company of
gods or are you just gone?

Would you still be daring infinity to answer
your knock or drowning in the new wine
you were searching for?

Where are you now?  Where were you
then?  No one here gets out alive
is a book; though some thought you did.

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Thom G’s words this week are: abuse, cramp and hatred.   They conspire to bring forth dark, sordid thoughts…and they did.  Thanks, Thom!

—–

Michael awoke with a leg cramp screaming in his left calf. He tried to make his foot move, but the pull of the muscles was too strong. He had no choice but to get out of bed, putting his full weight on the left leg and forcing his muscles to relax. That short flood of relief was quickly followed by a shot of anger at his leg muscles for betraying him, waking him up in the middle of the night when he had to get up earlier than usual the following morning (just a few short hours away, actually) and he needed all the sleep he could muster.

Since he was awake, Michael went to the bathroom to get a drink of water and take a leak. Between his bladder and his calf muscles, Michael felt his body conspired against him. He hated it when it seemed to happen. Even though rational thought told him that his feelings were unreasonable, he couldn’t help feeling the way he did.

He slumped back into bed, dreading the abuse that his dreams would bring him, praying that he didn’t dream at all. His smoldering hatred had slowly been eating him alive since Alison left him, but he seemed to be the only one who didn’t realize it. It ate him like a cancer because Alison no longer gave a damn what Michael thought or felt. Hatred with no place to go only afflicted the hater, not the hated.

Maybe one day Michael would get it, but not this night. No sooner had Michael returned to sleep than his left calf cramped up and he was once again vaulting out of bed trying to stretch out muscles conspiring against him.

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——-

blend them with just out of reach
ocean rhythms and

time breaks singing in a resurgent
hiss and lap ebb

and flow as the songs we know
sliding off the sandbar

slowly float out to sea only to
return with the tides

—

I read the first line of this on a Last.fm page, and was inspired…Who knew it was a song by The Cure?  This is another in the Tender Mercy series which is growing sort of like poetic kudzu.

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—-

Summer as a kid wasn’t full
of hassles like paying bills
and taxes and car repair but

with the pesky problems of
mosquito’s that inject their
itchy poison into your pieces
parts leading to a wealth

of itchy scratchy places and
we didn’t seem to mind it so
much when we had summers
as a kid now did we?