Tag: Tweetspeak Poetry

April, Fool

~ Elizabeth W. Marshall ~ 2 Comments

house camelias

Dogwood blossoms bounce on twig ends
Like lace doilies doing a jig aboard a Charleston green joggling
Board
With the cold and old dead leaves
Bouncing up and down outside
The window still wears winter
While acorns dive bomb the roof like Japanese fighter
Pilots pelting the earth, releasing the heavy artillery on
Pearl Harbor’s ships
Floating unknowing, waiting for the unforeseen
All of this bouncing in the wind
Like a lost line from a Dylan ballad
As if some long awaited answer to a question asked in the 1960’s
Will come landing in the yard blowing in on the next flight
On the tail of the windswept tumbleweeds, dried leaves
Of remnant winter winds
The earth is stuck in between a gear shift
Winter to spring like a sixteen year old driving
Grinding, the transition is that of a novice
Grating from, to without well-oiled perfection
Shifting not smoothly from one to the other

No the cold wind still whirls like a flushed toilet bowl cyclone
As a frozen and confused squirrel with an acorn the size of a grapefruit
Stares his cold stare straight through the dirty window
And asks with his eyes
Is there room in the inn it is cold and wintry here in the yard
Blackbirds serenade a shrill birdsong, trilling as if gargling,
The sound a constant attempt at announcing spring
Their overhead conversations sound like an underwater melody
Muddled and muted
Like these early spring days
The tempting temperatures dip and dive
Then rise, like a flirty girl raising her skirt
Then dropping it down again just as we warmed
To the thought
Of Spring
It mocks a bit in its procrastinating
Giving us hot flashes, then cold
Like a menopausal woman
The earth drags along
Forgetting to turn the page to the next
Season
We are stuck in the inbetween
As the boinging sound on tinned  roof clamors from raining down
Deadwood and nuts
Keeps syncopated rhythmic time to the symphony of songbirds
Serenading the hot pink garish blossoms of the Azalea bush
Excuse them, they no not what they do
Rushing the season and  loudly overdressed
Their gay pink frocks
Make us cry out a little louder
Buried and weary
Worn out by winter’s wiley ways

Yet the dogwoods sway and swing keeping time to the earth’s broken timepiece
Tocking when it should be ticking
Ticking when we thought we had arrived a tocking
A cruel game of wait and see
What April Fools are we

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Joining tweetspeak poetry book club, Poemcrazy, by Susan G. Wooldridge

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Airing Out The Soul

~ Elizabeth W. Marshall ~ 2 Comments

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Airing Out The Soul

The first warm breeze
It thaws the crusty lingering on
The hangers on of a deep winter of
A soul
Ice  cold  frozen tundra patches, folded over, held over,
Hidden in their fear and trembling
All the working parts and pieces
Leaves them high and dry, ice cold
In desperate need of a team of doctors
Remove the dead, breathe new life
Send them out regenerated, heavy with hope
Surgically implanted
Cleaning crews called in to raise the broom
Do some heaving lifting
Break down the  corner cobb webs
Lower the boom
Hang those blooming hanging pots
Make it look like Spring, feign a vain attempt
Extract every dust bunny, grab them by the tail
Send them packing
The temple needs the tables turned over
And over again

Re-arrange the furniture
And redecorate the soul

Start by cracking a window

Air out the smell of death

Grab a rag which smells of Pledge

And promise

Throw open the portals to the merciful new

And breathe a breath of birth

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Joining the team at Tweetspeak Poetry today with a Billy Collins prompt. We are spreading some wordcandy sweetness around this Eastertime. Visit wordcandy.me and dip into their box of goodies. You will fill your sweet meeter to the rim with all the offerings. The newest are the freshest for spring.

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Poetry, Always

~ Elizabeth W. Marshall ~ 2 Comments

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Poetry Always

In the middle of  crashing thunder, noise grinds to a halt.

On the edge of charcoal skies,  radiant glory shines.

Into the broken places, healing.

Plaster walls

Whisper into chambers

Set the captive free with prayers,

Always, poetry.

Wash over the wounded

Cry out a modern day psalmist’s lament or praise

Proclaim beauty wrapped in words

Of poetry.

Leave the world for moments only

Through the portal carved gentle by a phrase or two

Of not prose,

But poetry.

Befriend the friendless, mount up to the highest heights

Go up with a word, lay it down,

An offering,

Always leave the gift of poetry,

Penned in grace, bound up with strands of love,

Potent packages of

Poetry.

Joining Tweetspeak Poetry and 100 Sweet Bloggers for some poetry with Wordcandy.

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Plum Tuckered Out

~ Elizabeth W. Marshall ~ 4 Comments

sunset over jeremy creek

Plum Tuckered Out

He is stuck there now.
The rut provides peace.
The same draws lines of safety in an unsafe world.
The control gives comfort where comfort looks for refuge.

The sliced plum and arugula salad, night after night.
All the senses are satisfied, satiated. 
Routine of majestic fruit on bitter greens and
We call it a night.

And the purple moutains majesty
In the west and the setting sun on the back
Of an indigo sky with the windswept hues of purple
Soothe the gut punch life gives, the bruising from a day in a life.

She is stuck there now.
The rut provides  peace.
The same draws lines of safety in an unsafe world.
The control gives comfort where comfort looks for refuge.

And the song hems in a world with a simple line of love.
They hear it, play it over and over, like stuck vinyl record
Amazing grace how sweet
Every funeral, every church, every man.
Cannot get enough, give enough amazing grace, grape juice, wine,
The crushed grapes become liquid, life-giving, the bread, the body, the transaction at the rail.
And grace. The hole is deep and wide and needs filling, like the dying need a blood transfusion, purple nectar sustains the living
With grace. 

Cannot get enough of amazing grace how sweet the sound
It saves us in its repetition of the truth.
Draws us in with the familiar strains.
No need for reaching for the hymnal we all know it by
Heart, even those with bruises, no especially those with the bruises.
We all have bruises. We all fall short, we all fall down.

That grace covers a multitude of sin
No, love does that
And if we count the number of times we’ve sung Amazing Grace.

We all fall short
So we sing it till we sing it blind and weak
And till we’re buried beneath the wisteria vines in the old cemetery down the road.
And we’re all plum tuckered out.
But grace never is.

They are stuck there now.
The rut provides peace.
The same draws lines of safety in an unsafe world.
The control gives  comfort where comfort gives refuge.

And they all, each one, seek sips of grace from the cup
Given by the royal Priest who gently heals the battered and bruised.
And wears humbly his royal garment of Healing and Comfort.
And we’re all just plum tuckered out,

in need of
grace.

bee in glove with purples

I am joining Tweetspeak Poetry for this month’s poetry prompt — purple, plum and indigo. So I am shading my words in these hues. And joining Laura for her Playdates at The Wellspring. One of my favorite places in the blogosphere.