Tag: #npm15

The Blues

~ Elizabeth W. Marshall ~ Leave a comment

In honor of National Poetry Month, my friends at Tweetspeak Poetry are gathering a collection of poems inspired by the prompt “Show Us Your Poetry Jeans.” Follow the link here to read the creatively inspired contributions. I am adding my name to the list of contributors who are digging down to see what comes out on paper when we write about our old blue jeans. Or his blue jeans. Or our “poetry jeans”.

Join me for some intriguing poetry. See you at Tweetspeak.
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The Blues

Perhaps I should have told you long ago

That I find your smile a thing of beauty (In my eyes)

Though your grin is more akin to a swamp gator

Toothy jagged line of metal

The mechanics of which keep my pride intact

After all you’ve done for me in love

Comforting me, expanding and contracting

Allowing room for growth

Never speaking of the sliding scale

Never pouting over your place at the bottom of the heap

Of denims, cornering the market on blues

Cornflower, cobalt, Caribbean, Carolina, Cerulean

(three letters in and you are just getting started)

Secrets follow you around

Shadowing a life lived in tandem

Pre-baby, baby you were there

Post-baby, baby you know how to make a girl feel loved

Winking at me with that one brass eye

(Never telling a living soul about the times I poked your eye out, let it roll across the old pine floor)

Frankly I am worn out

You must be too

But, baby I’ve got too much living to do to stop now

They can bury me in an old pine box In my old blue jeans( the number on the itty bitty tag remains our big fat secret)

Secrets tucked in all four pockets

Keep an eye on me in the grave

And we’ll archive the antics

Between we two, when we get

To the other side

Heaven knows

You’ve got a lot of stories to tell

Be a dear

And keep your lips zipped

(Goodness knows I would hate to send you off to Goodwill)

What I Wanted To Tell You, One Tuesday

~ Elizabeth W. Marshall ~ 3 Comments

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What I Wanted To Tell You, One Tuesday

I went to meet the sky last night
Awash in bold pink, we could not look away
An eighth world wonder sort of night
At 7:51 she came to tell a story
Skywriters capture messages in a language I am still learning
But you see this as hyperbole mixed with cliche through your veil of gloom
Fools run out into the night, while pink rains down
(He went to see it too. We are both fools).

Miles away a friend wrote
Told me what I did not see
A double rainbow
No big deal
And yet it is
I did not decide this. The counter of odds and percentages and trackers of skywriter’s journals call it rare.

Blinded by beauty I missed the more beautiful

I wanted to tell you it is there for you too

But you insist on seeing with one eye closed

That is not what I wanted to tell you on a Tuesday
It was that I hope you are around to see the next pink sky
And the one after that
And double portions of scientific cool stuff
And glory

It was this too
You are more beautiful than all of it
And I am a fool

Inspired By Feathers, Fur and Friends

~ Elizabeth W. Marshall ~ 3 Comments

I find it a bit ironic that it is National Poetry Month 2015 and these dry bones are not giving up much poetry. Or prose or words of any genre. Nice timing, right? That it is Springtime and nearly everything around me here in the South is green or pink or fuschia and lime. New birth, earthy moist and hopeful surrounds me. Lifts my spirits high and yet paradoxically seems to mock my writing life. It is not in sync with the world. My words sit at the bottom of a dry well.

As a writer, inspiration can come from the seemingly strangest of places. Truly. This is a bit confessional and a lot inspirational for others who find themselves in a dry place creatively.

So yes, I have been tending to six baby chickens. Loving them, naming them and studying them. Trying to figure out all their hunting and pecking strategies or randomness and simply why they do what they do. It is like a mini Anthropology course but not so much because they are, duh, chickens. And so this won’t be the longest introduction ever to a poetry blog post, I will move on. Move forward with this poetry segway. Or segway into a poem which breaks the silence.

I just hung up from Voxering a bit ago with my friend in London, Shelly Miller. I whined about, slash confessed, my lack of writing inspiration. Is Voxering a verb? And then I promptly promised someone in Europe that I would make myself write today.

Make myself? What?

What happened to passion and for the love of the craft and “I can’t not write?” Shelly and I lamented and then if that wasn’t enough I Voxered my friend Sandra Heska King in Michigan to whine some more. Some days require bicontinental consolation.

And after all the whining I realized all the inspiration I needed for today was found in studying my chickens hunting and pecking and scratching. They work with what they have. If they can do it I can too. And gazing at my old yellow lab who may live another week if we are lucky. She wanders around in search of joy. I believe I’ve got this.

If my old girl can find joy in her slow and lethargic wanderings. Well, this writer can too.

And my friends, who are writers and artists, whispering just the write things at just the right time into my life as a creative. That feeds my soul.

I am grateful for the fur, the feathers and the friends. And for how they fuel my passion for writing. Light a match to the fading embers. Move me from thinking of writing, to actually writing again.

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That Poem

Elusive, it refused to be tied down
Like a thought bubble in a Dennis The Menace cartoon
It floated
Adrift
Like an apparition in search of a place to lay down and rest
Or die

The knock comes
Disregarding the “do not disturb” sign rocking back and forth on the brass knob
You mouth “go away”
White lies are for times like these
I am out of paper comes to mind
And the computer is on the blink
The cartridge in your favorite pen is low

The problem with come back another time
Is that though the poem is thick skinned
It will not
Come back

It will check in, unwritten, into the retirement home with no waiting list
And go the way of the unwritten words
Feet up, watching Jeopardy

And the poet who barred the door shut?
She’s
Still wondering where childhood and all the lost poems went
And how to repentantly ask her poems for forgiveness
For ever training them to play that game
Of cat and mouse

For in the end
The rat takes the cheese
The sign comes off the door
A win, win
For that poet and
That poem

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Joining Tweetspeak Poetry using a one line prompt from today’s Everyday Poetry poem “Where Childhood Went’ by Kim Addonizio.