Poet Among The Baritones

Unistus Chamber Choir, February, 2014

I was once a member of this ensemble, back a few years when I could guarantee my voice and presence week in and week out. I was forced to quit for health reasons and that broke my heart.

Poet Among The Baritones

A part of the choir,
I write to find harmony
among the voices
not to try solo
but to blend as I was taught,
breathing in secret
and holding my note.
My note - no. It's not my note
but ours - holding that
whether you notice
or whether you don't.

Might be
it hurts to feel them,
devils and angels,
messengers from beyond death,
beyond mortal wounds,
beyond the sunset
and beyond the sun's last rise.

Me too, beyond day
and beyond the night,
I write to be found singing,
found once and for all,
all the time knowing
there is no end to the words,
no end to the love,

no end to the song.

February 27, 2014 7:21 PM

Riots of Color

A Dream Of Fall's Approach

This life does matter,
so momentous in this time
not mine to hold
in the come and go
of the moon, the sun, the love,
all dangerous slopes.

I would give gardens
to you, riots of color
and so many sounds,
so many winged shapes,
then the cool comes close behind
as it ever does.

September 7, 2010 3:11 AM

Ennui Times Three - 3 Word Wednesday

Three Word Wednesday

Aspire; Beast; Slurp

Ennui Times Three

Here it is again,
here just like it ever was,
though they tell us to
aspire to so much,
more.

The mewling beast in us
shall shiver and slurp,
shall slouch past the turn
toward the right, trip and fall
on the way you laid
for us to follow.

We are the foolish false smirk
on the moon's fat face
hung over the spray
of silver shadows falling
on dawn's frosty bed.

February 26, 2014 7:33 AM

It's All

You think I know all.
That's what you said anyway.
I don't know about
how I should sit here.
Are you hostile? Sad? Sincere?
Do you play me false?
Am I in your maze
or on your trackless dry waste?

I don't even know
how to ask you out.

Is there some magic marker
I should use to draw
your face upon coins
most commonly covering
the eyes of the dead?

You think I know all.
This little thing should prove you
sadly mistaken.

February 24, 2014 3:44 AM

Wiki says:

Allusion is a figure of speech, in which one refers covertly or indirectly to an object or circumstance that has occurred or existed in an external context. It is left to the audience to make the connection.

The Bad Dream - A Magpie Tale

Poet's Sleep, 1989 by Chang Hong Ahn

Image provided as a writing prompt by Tess for Mag 208,

Click Here

The Bad Dream

You woke me twitching
in your sleep, letting out yelps,
small and steam shrouded
in the early chill
and I thought of the wolfhound
we've kept between us.

She dreamt like that too.

Perhaps if you'd stop sinking
like you do, creasing
your face with pages
of the afternoon's free verse
you would not whimper
so in the neap tide
of your grasping pre-dawn soul,
you herky jerky
and tangled white sheets
leaving me exposed all pale
and lumpy damp flesh.

February 23, 2014 9:53 AM

Sunday Breakfast

Wordle 149,

The Sunday Whirl by Brenda Warren, Click Here

Sunday Breakfast

"It's your eggs," she said
standing high, holding her mug
with cinammon stick
of course, the steam blown
clear of the surface
all oily and rainbow like.

"Eggs and ham," she said.

"Can you bring them here?"
I asked in my tiniest
peep, all wan and pale.
I am, after all this,
in poor form and I lack trust.
"Is this a damn test?"
She asked, "some trial
of my pluck, my furtive ways?"

At that my nose bled.

‎February ‎22, ‎2014 11:00 PM

The Last Morning

The Last Morning

This morning I felt
you melt, dripping like warm wax
might, red blush warm wax.
The pale light mixed in
with your aroma, sleep sweet.

You've a warm waxy
glow and my dewy
eyes blinked back my sudden tears
at the thought of all
that comes next for us.

Your horses whickered nearby.
Then I smelled leather.

‎February ‎22, ‎2014 3:16 PM

Squaring The Circle

Having Taken Vows

As if you could save
me and in this save the world,
you sling your color
forth into gray space
expecting response as if
I would say right things,
surgical strikes at
the holiest heart of truths,
as if your drawn lines
would square the circle
I lie in squirming under
God's wide ranging eyes
and all things would shift, and I
love you for this dream.

September 6, 2010 8:55 AM

The Holiness Of Place

Mount Moran, Grand Tetons, Wyoming

The Holiness Of Place

Some of us build on
the people in our strange lives
and some build heart on
the places they go,
they have been in former lives.

What is it I do
that so provokes you
I ask? And why is it that
you take me away
again and again?

I am from forests. Aspens
quake in my back yard
and I shiver to
their time, taking their green shape,
continuing my
eternal return.

September 5, 2010 10:31 PM

Lying In Wait - Three Word Wednesday

Three Word Wednesday

Feral; Insatiable; Shred.

Lying In Wait

I keep catching you
in those off moments twitching
your nose as feral
cats on the scent might,
insatiable, bottomless,
haunches tight as drums
tuned to high notes are,
and not a shred of mercy
found in your whiskers
as they stretch ready.
At those moments I still feel
you won't turn on me
but I don't know why.

‎February ‎19, ‎2014 9:49 AM

You At The Stove

You At The Stove

Bacon in the pan,
the starting point of this one,
this journey to you.
The frying sounds shake
the world and smell shapes the day
beyond the cane chair
and maple table
where I shall feast on pancakes
and fresh picked berries
and the solemn taste,
the offerings of rashers
laid straight on my plate.

September 5, 2010 10:02 AM

The Argument

The Argument

Oh shit, here it comes
again, how it hurts that they
say such things to me
as if I'm nothing
to them even though we all
know better than to
think like that, don't we?
There is nothing left for me
but to say, "Because!
That's why. Because I
fucking damn said so, SAID so!!"

September 4, 2010 11:02 AM

Scene 43, Take 6 - A Magpie Tale

Fire Escape on Universal Studios Lot,

Instagram by Sessepian

Offered by Tess Kincaid for a Magpie Tales writing prompt

Mag 207

Scene 43, Take 6

It's all props and fronts,
the whole thing, though of brickwork
and rusty old steel
fastened strong enough
to hold a guy at full tilt
dodging the Tommys,
the spray of brick chips
while half falling down the stair

(actually a
ship's ladder so called)

toward the final ladder
a few more flights down.

There's a couple false wounds
and some actual
bruises gathered on
the way, and a couple grins
from the best boy's crew.

February 16, 2014 1:08 PM

The Epidemic

Wordle 148

The Epidemic

I'll go to your court
later, when it's safe, darling.

Until then, be brave.

Turn tricks if you must, my love,
and never turn down
a party favor.
Don't mind them, dim old turkeys -
they fail our support
due to virus tracks
slurping down their wispy threads
and their wages are
frozen in love's frame.

‎February ‎16, ‎2014 12:12 AM

Written for The Sunday Whirl

North Arrow

North Arrow

Someone drew a sign
in the path I take to you.
I don't know why they'd
do this sort of thing,
but I'm good with North Arrows
anyway, so I
don't sense nastiness.
It does force me sideways
or I will smear it -
I wouldn't want that.

That one wants to change my ways
which happens sometimes,
almost never works.

‎February ‎14, ‎2014 2:42 PM

The Bird At Your Breast

bird to your breast

by A-Fine-Frenzy

models: alison sudol and the pretty little birdie

photographer: michael lavine

http://www.deviantart.com/?view_mode=2&order=5&q=Michael+Lavine

The Bird At Your Breast

Then just choose, will you.
Just confess the breast or bird,
the milk or feather,
and break off the door
to the cage, bury it deep
and if forgetting
then wind it all up
or blow you winds, crack your cheeks!

There is an old choir
brought to the risers,
a group that whispers old gods
manifest in full
though they are gray smoke
in all your finer displays
and they have come here

for us, love, for us.

‎February ‎13, ‎2014 7:19 PM

Spring Awakening-3

by A Fine Frenzy

In A Spot - Three Word Wednesday

This week's words: Cruel; Ghastly; Unkempt.

Goodbye, Philip. I truly liked your work and thought well of you. I am sad you elected early and unexpected departure for other places. I hope it didn't hurt much. God protects drunks and fools. He doesn't keep them alive, necessarily. I don't want any arguments about this. I am just saying goodbye.

Oh by the way, the connection to the poem should be obvious and there is no other link. The poem is about something other than the passing of Philip Seymour Hoffman.

In A Spot

Beautiful, cruel,
vicious and too sadistic
for my normal words,
with your ice black eyes,
and your icier black heart -
it's just the ghastly
way things have worked out
between us that strews my junk
and keeps me unkempt.
They say payback's hell
and I heard God protects drunks
and fools. Yeah, I'm both
of those...

‎February ‎12, ‎2014 9:47 AM

Written for Three Word Wednesday

Down And Out

Down And Out

I twist, I shout out
how I'm trapped inside myself,
inside my old rags
and the dumpsters where
I find things to eat, twisted
up so my life is
swallowed down with half
eaten sandwiches smeared with
fry grease and left to
curdle in my soul.

September 4, 2010 10:18 AM

The Ghost Writer

Brenda Warren's Sunday Whirl - Wordle 147

The Ghost Writer

One body, one stream
of consciousness to contend,
one list of blood lines -
gather your gutsy
old word smiths and pluck their hearts.
Break the dream routine,
oh invisible
ghost, and grasp my hand
for now. Flow with it.
Ectoplasmic squirt, there is
a brass ring to snatch,
a ditty to type.

‎February ‎9, ‎2014 9:56 AM

Fish Lips - A Magpie Tale

Image posted by Tess Kincaid as a writing prompt for Magpie Tales:Mag 206

Sea Creature

I just cannot say
how irritating it is
when you steal my hat
and shift your damn shape
into something that comes close to
a fetching woman
but you can't get past
the fish lip shape of your mouth
so I know it's you.

‎February 9, ‎2014 9:07 AM

A Midsummer Night's Dream

from the ballet of A Midsummer Night's Dream, Shakespeare
Of the ballet, Wiki says:

A Midsummer Night's Dream is a two-act ballet choreographed by George Balanchine to Felix Mendelssohn's incidental music for Shakespeare's play of the same name. In addition to the incidental music, Balanchine incorporated other Mendelssohn works into the ballet including Overtures to Athalie, Son and Stranger, and The Fair Melusine, Symphony No. 9 for Strings and The First Walpurgis Night. A Midsummer Night's Dream is Balanchine's first completely original full-length ballet, and premiered at New York City Ballet on January 17, 1962.

Burning The Dross

We wove complicated
spells of entangled dreaming
because it was right
for us to lift off
and float in mid-air in knots
of our own making,
limbs pinned back and cuffed
like some fetishist might do,
striving for the heights
of hot sensation
burning off all the drab ways
of the same old thing.

September 4, 2010 9:13 AM

Send This Message - Three Word Wednesday

Keep your grav boots on.

Accelerate; Passive; Rogue.

Send This Message

I will dip my ship
in Terra's gravity well
per your work request
to accelerate
the timing. You say I've been
indigent, passive,
with not enough Rogue
Spice present in my cooking.
No matter it's hard
to get that flavor
except on some Jovian
moon's black market run.
I say I will soon
make the required
five point landing at Freeport.
The chits are all signed.

‎February 5, ‎2014 9:47 AM

Written for Three Word Wednesday

I'm Glad That's Over

Brenda Warren's Sunday Whirl, Wordle 146

I'm Glad That's Over

It's all synergy,
that's what you've claimed all at once
as if your balance
depends on it now.
My potential sense of things
requires alternate
garden paths to run
and I've tiptoed along one,
one bucolic stripe
among the others.
I do fear I'll miss some routes
though I am open
still to your former
choices. There's a stronger edge
to your harmonics
these days, not like tunes
we shared back when we partnered up
on our last dope run.

‎February ‎2, ‎2014 12:40 PM

The Duet - A Magpie Tale

Posted by Tess Kincaid as a writing prompt for Mag 205

The Duet

I watch from the door.
You don't see me, you staring
out the wide window,
turned in Egyptian
profile and gauze gowned for sleep,
still glowing from steam.
I gave you your wrap
of terry, then tracked your scent
to our room nearby.

Oh, you were not there
though I thought you'd be waiting.

So I have come here
and find you sitting
above the keys, with your toes
working melody
in the harmonic
duet of our hope and truth.

At least so I hope.

‎February ‎2, ‎2014 11:24 AM