Departure and Arrival

"Rocket" by Brad Phillips

Still called 'em tin cans when we found 'em

Gleaming in the grass, sly as the future, hot & bright.

We brought the aluminum home, crushed it

Traded it in just like those half-wild people

Who lived on grasslands in the far stellar reaches

Of the theater along with the lizards and moths

And daydreamed about survival.

City lights and stars, pop that shoots you

On a sugar and sentiment montage into the night;

I've told everyone about all that crashes

So fast solid ground liquefies and leaps 

With burning film reminding us light is bleach

Dreams are cleaned by waking thought

And all rubble falls just like arrival.

We called 'em dreams when we found 'em...

Don't give me dimes, give me fireworks

There's no river like the horizon.

Sharing this morning with The Sunday Muse and with Poets and Storytellers United. I've reached that stage of staying-at-home-as-a-lifestyle-choice where attempting to edit a short story ends in me Godzilla-stomping-without-the-suit through the house and growling. And then deciding to make a quarantine diary instead. Which led to me realizing why I was stomping around the house and looking for model cities to devour--months have gone by. And a story begun in March is bumping gently against the edge of June while my brain struggles to catch up, still somewhere in the middle of April. 

Hoping your week has been calmer and that this finds us all on the edge of a better week. :) 

-- Chrissa

OTC Butterflies

Windy moments where you swallow the breeze

Quick, like diving,

Yesterdays ballooning inside you; the places

Oh, the places you went.

Gone, then, the cupcake shops and restaurants

Quick as shadows

Where footsteps speak memories of  your space

Within crowds

Swallow the daylight, take it against this,

A prophylactic 

That reminds you that places end, doors lock,

Glass gives back sky.

So, yeah...here is the butterfly pill poem. 

-- Chrissa

Look Out! the Window

It's another chance to go to Oz but I don't have the fare.
Whatever coin it takes, the wind just shoves the patio furniture
Across the concrete, beneath the grill, into the yard
Where it would be an emerald jungle except for the always-organized
Ants.
They don't have time for the fantasy and they don't care
For this explanation of the flooding, that there are doors that open
With a twist and if you have the bravery to run right
Into the storm so that it wrings the sunlight out of you, brighter.

Inspired by the wild weather yesterday and by Carrie's Wednesday WordCrafters prompt (either look at the window where you are OR a photo of a woman taking a pill containing butterflies). Maybe tomorrow I'll tackle the pill full of butterflies? 

-- Chrissa

When the Blossoms Open

"Snow White & Rose Red" art by Kerry Darlington

When the blossoms open, everyone falls to her knees

Briar forests breathe a subtle poison dream--

Sleep in the waves of sunlight like a sea-drowned skull

Wind curls fairy knots alike in hair and fur

While the bees and the dragonflies and the butterflies

Drift above you, as fae and fish alike 

Dream of salmon leaping upon plates of poetry, honey

Skirls from the fairies' wands like enameling;

Dream of men shifting fur to leather, their kisses cast  

Careless to the forest floor, where you rest

While water rises to run drowning into other valleys

Crowned with damp petals and fairies

Greetings and salutations, hope that this finds you well and welcome to the Moon Pool. :) It's full summer here (also, first mosquitoes of the season--ick) and so one feels lightly poached after an hour of reading or writing outside and conjuring up dreams of fairy tale forests and fall (cool and dark, like a mantra). Love the image chosen by the Sunday Muse and sharing with both the Muse and Poets and Storytellers United. Happy poetry day! 

-- Chrissa

Campground

There is no need for a tent, anymore.

Haunt the entire house, if you want.

We’ve polished the floors, dusted the lintels,

Hung screens, trimmed the branches;

When the storms come at summer’s apex

Rain won’t touch the glass.

There is no need to air your sheets

Before you sleep in the slanted hammock

Moving as the light does, across the boards.

Perform, if you wish.

There is no one here who will fear

Or shut the doors you’ve opened

Or flinch at your touch

Or cry out as you waver

Between the here, the now, and afterward.

There is no need to, anymore.

So...the theoretical prompt for this was an image (of a window in a room with a wooden floor) and a suggestion to think about shelter in these times of sheltering in place. But...empty rooms and bright windows give me that floaty feeling, the sense that I'd rather be in a pool, drifting. And being restricted to the house makes me feel twelve. Wooden floors make me think of camping...and what are the best type of stories for camp? Ghost stories. Trust me. Now...perhaps s'mores? Popcorn? A giant pot of Campfire Stew? A chill just as the nape of your neck...?

Lost Time

Roses that smelled of plastic stems and flocking
Come-ons that were half-heard, half-smelled; brilliant
Glass cleaned antiseptic, floral.
The garden was remade of the sticky bones
And we wore it, not like silk and cotton, but hot
As only thin-spun oil can be.
I'll tell you how it used to be.
Where we used to go, before they scraped
Every memory from the land, amnesiac and weedy,
It used to smell of books and popcorn.
We used to walk down the aisles and gather
Every kind of growth and blossom; silver, ceramic,
Lost time strapped to your wrist.

Thanks to Shay at The Sunday Muse for this brilliant image and a thousand apologies for the way it sparked something not quite perfectly referential. My writing brain is still working at half-capacity.

-- Chrissa

Tigers. :)

Image Source

A Response is Born

Are you sure you've cleaned it,

Removed all the dirt that clings 

To fur and skin?

Are you sure I've cleaned it,

Removed all the dirt that clings

To you?

My warning fills the spaces

Where the new might be

Keeping it safe. Are you

Brave enough to take it?

Can you smell the blood

Needed to keep all the pieces

Knit together, moving

From the air and through 

The thicker places, washing

Behind the eyes and 

Within the walls of the ears?

Have you considered 

That I could crush you

Before you spoke?

Everything that vibrates, amplifies.

Keep it warm in the warning,

If you can't keep it small,

Silent.

It's one of the last cool weekends of the season and, in between airing out the house, there's always the temptation to start a new project...which will promptly eat the previous one. It's a bit of an ouroboros, but there's nothing like a hoop of snakes to keep you moving. Right? Anyway, hoping this begins a great week for everyone! :) 

Happy Mother's Day! 

-- Chrissa

An American Spider

Freckle spider fastens web to my arm hairs, weaving a hungry hope.

Several weeks ago, a tiny spider was sharing my outside perch, crawling over my arm and book, tacking a slight webbing between body and book. The webbing made my arm more sensitive to the breeze and my skin to the spider's passage.

I found myself wanting to will myself patient enough to await a web, a labyrinth catching the light (and bugs) as I read. I wasn't--even small spiders eventually trip my shudder/slap response, especially if they prefer to investigate my head. 

Before this, however, it hunched itself into stillness on the edge of the lapdesk. The pose reminded me of the spider on the dollar bill and, in these torn apart times, of the incomprehensible balance of society, money, and man.  Every connection makes us more sensitive...but it doesn't always bring us together. Patience is finite; fear is sudden and fierce.

Home Away

Follow the ants up the ginger stem
Dissolve in the mixed-drink afternoon air
Thick, salty, and sweet
They leave no prints on carpet
Or curtain in this golden catalogue shot--
Parlor? Bloom's throat?
Brief above the green, steaming,
No holes or drops or rabbits, too heavy
To breathe.

It's the prompt provided...but the prompt did ask for what you miss from outside. That, of course, is all the things that won't surprise you, the deer and the words that come easier on the concrete benches than they do, here, where all the concrete tasks murmur just over your shoulder. And the flowers you're missing as the seasons turn. 

-- Chrissa

The Mask, The Mirror, and The Past

"A distant future" photography by Raluca Caragea

On the squirrel-grey highway where they run 

Fleet as deer, a scrabble and a puff of fur,

All the  boards beneath their paws 

Are dreaming wolves

Dreaming shadows and the hunt

With knothole eyes and rain-stain paws--

On that fence-line highway hangs the glass.

I'll conjure, yes, I'll lay the glass for you

You'll see what came before you

All the echoes where you live will swim

Like monstrous bones from the blind underneath

Swim through stone and clay and silver

All the way to the watery glass.

You've displaced all this. 

It was here, they were here

And now you're here.

See the forest and the machines and the fire

See the years burning the forest into thickness

Watch the bulldozers putting the green flame out

It was here, they were here

And now you're here.

You want cards and fortune and hope

But the only face I wear is the mask

And the mirror and the past.

Good morning! Still keeping a list of all the creatures that visit the yard--mostly birds (which, given the fact I'm kinda hopeless at identification are, mostly, mockingbirds and  probably sparrows...lots and lots of sparrows), lizards (basic anoles) and garden spiders. Last night I had a terrible dream about snakes invading the house (someone has turned the weather to pre-heat summer broil) and yesterday I did see a squirrel on the fence...it's both fascinating in the idea of a miniature habitat (it's a small yard) and weirdly barren. I mean, nothing larger than a squirrel could live in the midst of the people and dogs and cats here; the neighborhood is a mass of land that doesn't actually support but, in a sense, drains resources from those who live there...

*blank screen, interstitial music, technical difficulties notice*

And the roses are lovely, aren't they?

Hope the week to come brims with creative awareness! Stay safe, everyone.

-- Chrissa

...In The Room

It likes me, I think. Lies to honey, maybe.
I've come home to straighten up all the crosswords
File the daily prayers and dust the cupboards
There's only so many ways to be kept
Away, like a pet, from the scene of the crime.
I'm sure it likes me. I feed it silence.
Husks. All the little secrets pulled up,
Dried, and salted. Behind the silk,
Under the tented laundry, tied back
With drape cord. We're dancing today,
Pondering our feet and the floor.
Thump and whisper, spin and stumble.
It keeps close. It likes me.