Moon Poem

Everyone was talking about the moon
like it had magical powers

to change size, turn red or blue,
or even disappear for a while,

when it’s really just a big lifeless rock
speeding around a cold and airless track.

Now an octopus is something to talk about.
It can change color, disappear into its surroundings,

and even open a jar with its eight wondrous arms.
(I, too, know about cold, and speeding around a track

and I have known your wondrous arms and legs.)
And when I feel most like my world is airless

(and even when I feel like the rock)
I remember the light of your eyes upon me,

magical, how that feeling made me shine.

Elevated White Blood Cell Count

An elevated white blood cell count
can be too much of a good thing,

like being too full, too old, too tall,
too thin, too rich, too smart, too

honest, too aware of the ragged
beating of your heart, too much

in love.

Winter Solstice

Today the sun is a hazy memory
smaller and farther away through snowclouds.

Tomorrow will be a few minutes longer,
barely perceptible like a grain of sand

In the heel of your shoe, perhaps, but more like
one snowflake melting on your cheek

Or a wink from someone you love and dearly miss.

Poem Published at Poetry Breakfast

Have a look around at Poetry Breakfast and see my poem “When We Hear Stars.”

sedoka* : lost love

the anatomy
of memory is subtle —
the parietal cortex

is linked by neurons
to the hippocampus through
networks of lost love lesions

 

*The sedoka is an unrhymed poem made up of two 3-line katauta with the following syllable counts: 5/7/7, 5/7/7. A sedoka, pair of katauta as a single poem, may address the same subject from differing perspectives.

A katauta is an unrhymed three-line poem the following syllable counts: 5/7/7.

star-crossed

she specializes in constructions
using egg shells
old coins and bits of string
and wire

he writes poems in pencil
and shifts
from free verse to rhyme
without reason

they live on other planets
a million miles away
and gossip on the radio
with seven hours delay

When We Hear Stars

When we hear stars
we think backlit pinholes
on black velvet and we wonder
what lies beyond the smooth surface
of the finite expanding universe.

Other nights we think
star wombs pregnant with iron
giving birth to planet children
like a fusion of mass and energy
unbounded  by love’s strange topologies.

Poets Are People, Too*

They walk, and talk
to themselves when another
is absent. They eat and drink

too much, and piss
and shit their little poem turds
onto the porcelain page and

cannot resist a look-see
and an audience to tell.
Poets make love famously well

to others (show, don’t tell!)
because they practice so much
by themselves.

 

*Written by me on July 28, 2010 and previously posted at Bard of Liminga — https://raysharp.wordpress.com/2010/07/28/poets-are-people-too/

 

Bee Mine

Caught meeting six dates
in one night in the same bar –
now banned from Bumble.

Bee in her bonnet – she called
him a hornet in the hive.