Questions

"After the Rain" by Cyril Rolando

What I want to ask is why my jasmine has turned brown
Where the green
Blooming
Reaching became sallow

What I want to ask is why my ideas are infestations
Why what if
Marred,
De-sanctified,
Then stunted these fairy hills and trees

What I want to ask
Is why should I
Take your word
For any of it?

Sharing today with The Sunday Muse and Poets United. So...this week finds me a little burnt out. The NaNo novel was drafted--but I find myself souring on it, feeling guilty about that, and then remembering that this is why I seldom finish NaNo anymore. How many unfinished novels will safely fit under one bed?

-- Chrissa

It's Just a Short Walk to the Post

She knows things that I should know--she's generous
There's an offer; she can feel my fear beneath her arms
While she calms horse and passenger at once.
Calls the motion, tells me to breathe.

But there are things I don't want to know.

I prefer the image to the motion; prefer to live
In the kind of harness that stables never keep polished
A dream that broke some years ago
That I've taped carefully together.

There are things that I don't want to know.

Greetings and good wishes, fellow poets/poetry readers. So...hoofed animals and my fear thereof. Let's call it the irrationality of the contagiously anxious. I'm generally happy to see cows, horses, donkeys, deer as I'm driving by, preferably well away from the road. Once we're in close proximity, I'm convinced a {{{Stampede of Epic Proportions}}} is about to begin. Probably with me. 

-- Chrissa (currently not stampeding)

P.S. -- NaNo updates next Sunday, after the Festival of  Lights. On a totally unrelated note: Is the rider a wizard? Is she contemplating the creeping developments she can hear beyond the edge of the frame?  Also, sharing with The Sunday Muse and with Poets United, both of which are excellent places to find more poetry and stories and to see what other writers have discovered in the past week. Come, share. Poetry stampede!!!!!!

Conjure Path

Photography by Sarolta Ban

View website HERE

A master's garbled voice uprooting the thinner stumps
Music swells like acorns in the crackle of the leaves
Let the deer be silent as the old rebirth squeals.

Beneath the waxy spirals we have found the conjure path
Slip up, down, contrary; wake the boars by the nose
Or settle anxious hooves upon the softer grass.

You can't see the land or the slope spun underneath.

Thanks to Carrie & The Sunday Muse for the wonderful prompt for this week's poem which I am also linking to Poets United Pantry of Poetry and Prose #3.  And it's Sunday, so it's time to take stock of the previous week's writing. I am on track for my NaNoWriMo project and yet...completely frustrated. Although I enjoy the community of writers that NaNo brings, I'm not competing for a word count or intending upon something that is immediately consumed at the end of the month. This story is something that has to grow steadily, as makes sense for my longer writing in general. As a result, I'm finding the emphasis on word count and on working faster than I normally do is getting under my skin. This is far from a bad thing--it lets me know that my writing has changed over the years as I've started a more consistent practice. While I'm always up for a small group of friends meeting to reinforce each other's productivity, I'm not social enough for large gatherings and competition over extreme word count. Looking forward to seeing where I am toward the end of November--will there be a beginning, middle, and end to rework?

-- Chrissa

Nothing Through Me

 Photography by Oladios

"I can't see the end of me."

Photo source

Fear is a sight, the sight--the one that scans horizons
Where the monsters lurk in the brightest depths of day's end
Where I will sail, where I am going, where I fade
On that line where the day cascades so deep you see the rays
Flatten and melt, render the water unswimmable,
Thin.

I've been sitting on this edge until I can't feel myself!

Fear is a sight, the one you catch of yourself, gone
Down, into the pool of ended days from a cotton bedspread
Legs hanging over the sides as if into that water
Feeling the cataract of all that light, splaying out heavy,
Shaving me away, rays gaping wide, cloaking,
Bent.

Sharing today with The Sunday Muse. Also, using this space to vent--NaNo didn't start all that well for me. My characters and I don't get along and they're not all that confident that I am capable of handling their story. And unlike most of my other drafts, this feels uncomfortably close to Not My Story To Tell. Which is totally weird, because I would have told you before I started that it wasn't based on anything in particular save for some oddball YouTube obsessions of mine. Seriously, someone needs to convince me that dead malls aren't something you need hours of content about. Or, someone in the Houston area needs to point me in the direction of a group of the nearest local enthusiasts. Anyway, I'm also trying to read The Library of the Unwritten to guilt myself into stop creating yet more unfinished manuscripts. And if writing and reading aren't provoking, there's always the need to  keep Arthur from chewing all Merlin's tail ruff off.  Not that he's the type of dog to do that...see totally innocent face, at right. That dog takes a better author photo than I ever will. :)  

On the very, very plus side, cool weather has finally arrived in our part of Texas! Open windows! Candles! 

As you can tell, I'm a little scattered this morning. Hope this is a beginning to a lovely week of writing for you! 

-- Chrissa