Cancellation Notice

Some things go on the calendar for a year out
Dates strung like bait for time and the great waves
Marking the passage of eras or the small slaps
Of holidays schooling around harvest and spring.

While I flip other pages, kicking to swirl flies
Off the back of my legs while summer is passing
In an empty majesty of water above and below,
The thing I haven't been attending to dies.

My own stomach drops--clenches--in sympathy.
Summer ripples. It had grown so calm
That I had begun to ignore the shadow's edge,
Filling the sedate water, shifting the lines.

Sharing with Poets and Storytellers United for Wednesday's Seeing Things prompt. Do keep your eyes on the water.

-- Chrissa 

In the Sunset

~"Seeing Black & White" photography by the lovely and talented Susie Clevenger~

I used to spear ideas with my antenna. There--

Back of the white clouds stained gleaming

As the falling sun splashes saffron through the blue, 

They're swimming still.

My head used to be full of asphalt rules
Governing my going and coming, waiting
Like all fantasy roads, at the apartment parking lot
When I was fish and man.

And dry my tail has become, silent
Those wheels upon the strand, gone
To memory and habit and the disuse that spear,
Although, within the sunset,

The ideas are swimming still.

A wonderful image for this week's muse! I enjoyed writing to it, although I found myself revising away those lines that tended toward rage...that's not really what driving reminds me of (well, right now, EVERYTHING does). And there is the knowledge that, should I be fortunate enough to see a when-this-is-over timeline, there are places that I won't go again. And I'm tired of writing about it and thinking about it and dreaming about it. But I guess that's the whole point of the LOTR quote "There's some good in this world, and it's worth fighting for." Or remembering, if the fight is just remaining as contained as possible. 

Sharing today with The Sunday Muse and Poets and Storytellers United, hosts of wonderful poetry and conversation.

-- Chrissa

Iron Keys

You have to know it burns. Like trailing a torch

Across the grass, spreading like fire under the green.

You have to know it burns.

Every morning, one of them unlocks the cell.

They walk in, balancing the carafe of water,

Bread, fruit, and a small pot of cheese. These go to the left,

On the shelf under the window.

Every evening, one of them locks the cell.

They sing at night, responding to each other.

I didn't burn down the entire country. I watch the sunset,

Sometimes pretending to be the sun.

Every morning, one of them unlocks the cell.

They offer me a reading, knowing I don't speak

Their language. It was so beautiful, the shimmer I saw first.

I didn't remember my keys.

Every evening, one of them locks the cell.

They speak my language at twilight. They ask

If I understand eternity. If I wanted to hurt them, if this

Was what I wanted? Forever.

Every morning, one of them unlocks the cell.

I hold my iron keyring tight to my stomach.

Today, paradise and prison are still the same.

So, there's got to be something wrong with me that makes me think of prisons rather than escape when faced with this picture. But, really...does this look like escape? 

-- Chrissa

Ringlets and Waves

Champagne, 1920s. Atelier Manasse was a legendary Austrian photo studio that captured the golden age of cinema and cabaret in Vienna of the 1920’s and 1930’s. The studio, active in Vienna between 1922 and 1938.

It has driven the universe since it passed through her hair

Leaving an echo of emptiness on the plate,

Already gone.

And that's it. Weirdly. Not quite a poem; not an American sentence. Sort of the only verse of a song caught in passing. Maybe there will be more later or it will show up in this month's Camp NaNo project (a self-indulgent science fantasy just because, well, I'm still having trouble imagining the future) or it will just be the image that got away, as some of them do. There were fireworks last night and we were up late as one of our pups is nervous and managed to chew part of a notebook during the evening between perching on one or the other of us like a nervous crow. Actually, I'm not having a hard time imagining the future at all. I'm just starting to believe it's being written by a bored and suddenly supernaturally powerful Edgar Allen Poe. There's no Netflix like America, always eager for the cameras to roll...

Sharing today with The Sunday Muse and Poets and Storytellers United. Hope you're having a good week, staying safe and finding hope. 

-- Chrissa

The Grain

Word Crafters Wednesday Prompt:
The Big Things/The Little Things

Ocean vs. A Grain of Sand

The Forest vs. One Leaf

Write about the ocean or a grain of sand. Write about the forest or a single leaf. It can be anything great or anything small, and if you want to fancy write about both.

The Grain

I give myself permission to slide over others; 
To fall through narrowness; to be buried by others.
There is nothing but waiting.
There is nothing but a slump,
Then sliding, then sifting beneath.
A narrow neck; it sometimes hisses
All is silicate, time is clear as glass.
I give myself permission to be Time itself
Its body, its breath, its blood.
Over and over, 
I forget the stillness in motion,
Forget stasis in a slide.
It seems that I have become
As small as any eternal second.

I'm usually the one that uses EVERY SINGLE PIECE of the prompt; not today. There is something satisfying about sand, its sharp softness, its weight, the way it retains heat and shape. And time, if the hourglass has its use. Back in the day when telephones were firmly attached to land lines and often to the walls themselves, my parents bought a phone timer. It was an hourglass encased in a thick layer of acrylic (or glass) that was intended to keep you from staying on the phone and running up long distance charges or just taking up the single family phone line for hours. I can remember the weight of it, the sharp edges of the acrylic, the silent slither of the tiny sand grains through the narrow waist. I'm not sure if we ever used it for the phone, but I know that I was mesmerized by the falling sand in a completely different way from the anxiety of a timer counting down. 

-- Chrissa

I Have Come

I have not come to lay the dust.
Oh, there is a sorrow for that,
Cracked like the horizon's fire
Running through park and tundra,
Memories of bones I'll squeeze
Bright against my marrow.

I have not come to press thorns
Through my palms or forehead,
Angels in the smoke blown out
Of life running through the blood
Marking me with those stories
Smelling of dead bonfires.

I have not come to remember.

I have come to breathe
Your past deep and release
The sweet, ashy exhale
Of our future.

So there are probably less melodramatic times to sit down to write a poem...but there is literally a Southern Gothic sky out there right now, the damp grass is practically warm as bathwater, and a haze of dust has draped itself over us like the concrete to which we're addicted in the puddled suburbs along the highway out of the City Itself. And the heat. And the creeping panic. And the stay-at-home orders competing with the mad laughter of those who are aggressively free. And the heat. And the concrete sky...

So, yeah. Melodrama it is, folks. Which means that I'm looking forward to all the ways this will be interpreted and set to words across The Sunday Muse this week and all the ways in which Poets and Storytellers will see the world differently so that I can change keys as another week becomes this present and I crawl closer to finishing? Drafting another section of? In Thornish, wringing out the melodrama before it becomes part of the story. *gasp!* *sigh* *evil chuckle*

Hope you're having a good week! 
-- Chrissa

Untitled

That old umbrella frame

I thought would be

Moonflowers, mini pumpkins;

That I imagined a cave of moths,

October poetry readings,

Finger food, fire pit smoke

That skeleton--

Lizard road and reflection

In the rain-filled anchor pot

Holds an empty season

Like a scarecrow year

In the water that waits

To be inhaled, wept out.