Where the Blooms Are Going

photo inspiration hosted by The Sunday Muse

I can hear the water elementals raining a warpath.
Behind me, the wake of my tires drowns yards.

***

Spring has been distracted by a dalliance with the snow
Her toes are softly lacing the ice and frost nearby
A cold beach
Curving over the sidewalks, over the lawns.
She drives her love up against doorways
Leaving the world
Underneath.

Her footprints are tide pools of grass.

My truck could probably run its own tracks
Most nights, third shift to Wal-Mart and back
But that morning it was just light
Catching on the blooms she'd abandoned
And we went astray and I could smell
Through the vents
That yard where I grew up, the house, the street...

I stole her flowers.

They smelled like cut grass and soggy Gulf Coast mornings
They smelled like falling back...like
Fifteen, all the anticipation of the glory to come.
I turned toward it, toward the rising sun.

They say it's the jet stream.

I drive through the rain, avoid the streets I can
Only recognize through the mailboxes
Above water. I feel the wake I leave
In the heavy forward pulse: heart, wrists, engine.
I can still smell the flowers and the old house
It's just a few streets down. It could use
Beauty and I could use
A morning forearm-deep in the beds
Against the brick.

Her footfalls sound like hail.
I'm just a block away.

Hope everyone is having a good week! This is being shared with Poets United and The Sunday Muse. Looking forward to spring planting...

-- Chrissa

Field of Discards

You knew the city would kill you.
What it wants you to know or to steal it provides
Where pigeons cultivate the fields of discards.
What does it need of a raven?

I have overflown it, drenched it, wash it, breathed
With all the rage of the ocean swallowing forests' deaths,
Choking on the bones of myths, overflowing--
Recreating each upside down as knives
Glinting toward its heart in the rain
Shivered from my wings
From my bones.

The last surviving story.

I cannot cleanse the imprint of your feathers
From its streets, scrawled in exhaust and tar
Even with an ocean's fury or sadness.

You knew the city would kill you.
Knowledge chokes you every time.

Sharing with The Sunday Muse.

It's been a grey week here just north of Houston and every day it seems I go out walking wearing sleeves a bit too short for the maybe winter weather. Anyway. It's wild strawberry season here so spring is here, even if my sweater is back at the house.

 Hope everyone is having a good week!

-- chrissa

Gifts that Bite

Hang the palms of the garden against the wall
Watch for me. There are no prohibitions, no shibboleths
Against coming closer...for I have lost that which tests...purity.
I come from the ocean, from the water that created blood
On the first fields I have stained my coat in its creation
While the forest gasps against the scrape that finds the bones...
You'll see me there.

--beat, breath, beat, breath, beat, breath--

What curled from my forehead hardens on my feet
My taste for salt and flesh replaced by limestone light
Pricking on my tongue when I inhale. I smell a flood,
A war; I've become a discorn come to carry the discord;
What shall ride on my crown that once carried a spear?
Do you bring a new blade for me? The creature by the wall
You mistake for woman and approach so softly.

Sharing this week with Poets United and The Sunday Muse. This past week has been a little about rage...it was a little difficult to look even at The Muse's prompt without seeing...well, red. Hoping next week brings a little breathing space. Good writing & reading, all.

-- Chrissa

Hum/Chrissa's Prompt

This evening at WordCrafters, Carrie surprised us with personal prompts...no specific picture, no direction. Here's the eventual page:

And here's the poem:

Sounds like humming--like a song, rotor-sliced, backwashed
Immanent in the war ghosts above, three troop transports
Deep in the suburban blue.
That bad feeling, sub-vocal, that disinclination
To push a button in a box.
We're dreaming emergencies--
Tuneless bees, dying behind the shades
In our pocket apocalypses--
So many of those the shelves themselves drowned.
Blenders grind our anxieties into fuel--
Sounds like humming--
Sounds like something about to start.

You'd think I'd come up with something more cheerful, given the yellow page...and the doodling. :)

Future Gaze

You were a story that my mother told me
You were a story I dreamed above you
You are a story that we all will tell

We have written you into our history
We have written our history onto you
Myths are being born in you

They have begun speaking for you
In my voice, in my mother's,
Among all of us

Even if you are a new myth,
Come and learn this language
Bone by syllable

You were a story that my mother told me
You are the future that watches us
You are the child I told

Thanks to Carrie at The Sunday Muse for this week's image. Also sharing with Poets United for Poetry Pantry #440.  We've been approaching a few milestones in our extended family and I'm on a family story kick...seeing the above image makes me think of the ways we try to prepare for the familiar future, the one contained safely in all the stories we already know...the one that is constantly in tension with the story of tomorrow that we don't know. Hope everyone has an inspiring week and thanks for visiting!

-- Chrissa

Forecast the Eye

Let us begin, hamstrung, between Captain America and Yossarian
Where madness and resolution chime like a haunted octave...
Let us begin there. Let us tune in the news, the weather, truth,
Falsehood, ambiguity, and The Right Thing.

Here in the possessed center, there is our eye. It is never still.
It must continue to see the hurricane, spinning at the frequency
Of that octave, which is pitch smeared into sight as a storm wall
Flickering on every screen, at once.

We can imagine there is no storm, but the eye is gratified,
Like the mind, by those colored chords, by composing Chaos,
By whistling it right down our restless nerves, into the wind.
Wind with teeth, wind with dreams.

Dreams begin in nonsense and image. So when one horse
Puts it forehead to another, when each breaths the other's steady
Heartbeat and the struggle begins--which do you pull away
For the day's work?

Whom do you hitch to the carousel?

Sharing today with The Sunday Muse (the picture is the Muse's prompt) and Poets United.

--chrissa

A Transformation of Pears

Lizards unzipped their skins, left them on thorn hangers--
So I dressed my Barbies like dragons, remembering cigarettes
In hotel rooms, once upon a time.

I forget them. I've told you I forgot them. There, in the attic
Were once my parents thought they saw smoke,
With the squirrels and dust.

Smoke comes from only candles and incense, my dear.
Sometimes from the kitchen but never from the throat,
Never from plastic or rage.

Someone brings me pears; they think them safer than apples
While the ivy branch drinks quietly from the bottle
It whispers secrets to them.

I'm waiting until they grow legs, clad in old-fashioned
Curled-toe tights from medieval romance or cartoons.
So far, they only squirm.

But you've brought your own dolls. Odd. And your books.
Open them quick before the ivy grows bored. It, too, shares
Those dragons' fire and writhe.

Hope everyone is having a productive & pleasant week--that you are many degrees above zero, the sky is clear, and there is a good pair of walking shoes and a soft, dry path from your porch to the Road and a good walk and a good adventure just a few steps away. Sharing this with The Sunday Muse (the picture is courtesy of this week's prompt) and with Poets United.

-- chrissa