They flee from me…

Sir Thomas Wyatt (1503-1542)
They flee from me that Sometime did me Seek

They flee from me that sometime did me seek
With naked foot, stalking in my chamber.
I have seen them gentle, tame, and meek,
That now are wild and do not remember
That sometime they put themself in danger
To take bread at my hand; and [...]

Gangotri (The place where The Ganges flows to earth from heaven)

In the thin air at Gangotri, I hover like a ghost.
Every breath is poison.
I fall through a sky of fire
and fade from view.
You hover over me like a halo of mercy.
Palaces, and legacies of
civilizations pass through my eyes
to yours.
Together we purify these bones.
Together we burn and scrape them clean.
And when the stars align,
we shine.

The poet of my adolescent dreams

DO NOT GO GENTLE INTO THAT GOOD NIGHT
Do not go gentle into that good night,
Old age should burn and rave at close of day;
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
Though wise men at their end know dark is right,
Because their words had forked no lightning they
Do not go gentle into that good night.
Good men, [...]

The poet of my youth

I babysat a lot when I was an early teen… and younger.  I got a regular gig with this sweet family for bowling night or something, basically I just put the kids to bed and waited.  Usually I watched tv.  One night I started leafing through the set of Harvard classics on the bookshelf and [...]

Sin and Salvation (100 word fiction)

My first husband was a narrowly-escaped disaster.  Walking in my sleep all hours of the day, I wandered.  Moments of content, interrupted by the chaos of rationalization for continuing to watch my body torn to shreds.  Each holy space invaded, ransacked and destroyed.  Deconstructing to the molecules until there was no hope of rebuilding.
My first [...]

Promethius’ Chains

A glut of consuming fire has engulfed all of us.
Instead of producing, we consume and consume
Until the blistering rivulets of engorged excess
have strangled and burned our insides.
So pinched and perplexed are we
That there could ever be a consequence to holding a flame.
The fantasy ends abrupt.
The chains are malignant with peculiar force.
The dreamworld is cracked wide [...]

Bloodless Troy (Menelaus drops his sword)

Bereft of travail, I dripped out so gelid, so winged.
Naked.
I entered you through your cold hollow gaps
Your cold soul, so empty.
In palaestra, I stood, shoulders glistening
I fought you.
Achilles straining, you succumbed.
Alongside my brothers, I hunted.
I fell in and out of love, like a child.
I slipped in and out of life, like a dream.
And so did [...]

Cancer

Your veins sing so softly
a whisper your lips deny
cradled in your bones,
deep down to the marrow,
you know.
All the secrets you keep there
are furious with the need
to be spoken.
Slowly, carefully, they stealthily plot against you
One rogue cell divides,
and divides again.
Happily, a cancer grows
drawing blood and food
to feed itself.
Eventually it finds the surface
as your equal.
Your mortal enemy.
Before [...]

Idling

I hate the gaudy smell of perfection
It stares me right in the face
knowing I won’t make eye contact
the thought makes me itch and fret.
I’ve gone down, chased down that path
grasping, coming so close to the mirage.
Failure is like a bruise,
an injury that can’t reach the surface.
It just settles there under the skin
Swollen, sore and ugly.
I [...]

Ceremony of innocence

For no particular reason, I just felt like my (late) 4th of July post should include William Butler Yeats Poem, The Second Coming:
THE SECOND COMING
Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony [...]