#responsepoem

Not when you defy god and man at every turn.

Not when you’d rather watch bridges burn.

He was married- is married

As your faith is concerned

That gap in years matters

No matter what your heart yearns

Conflating mentor with lover

The first lesson to learn

Hurting your family

Their love you have spurned

Ignoring friends wishes

And all the fears that they warn.

Tonight, I write about how sometimes we have to shatter everything to find the pieces that matter most.

I see myself in a picture, Looking far away, looking removed, And I want to run away from everything They asked me to do,

or just sledge- hammer the flawed porcelain doll-man standing on the stage singing words so well he doesn’t realize, like Monkee’s, they are genuine words of other people who

I once compared

the aroma of flowers

To candy

As a symptom of

My first long-term love.

A callow young poet,

The one who’s security deposit

I kept

When she broke

Her lease on the space

Behind my eyes;

She loved Candy.

A film of discarded

Silver wrappers forms to each

Crevasse and crease

below my foot

Her security deposit covers

the cleaning costs,

But I bear the

Toothache,

Trauma,

and Therapy

On my own.

Each day

Each week

Each month

Between her and I

Further disclose my mistake:

Not all flowers

smell of candy,

but Bleeding Hearts

Always do.

{response poem only to https://saynotoclowns.wordpress.com/}

Say no to clowns, rode in on the donkey thinking The end of this adventure will require humility. So when we departed one another in the desert I had no regrets, but second thoughts do come Every now and then. Couldn’t I reach more souls If I was the one king to rule them all?

Say no to clowns, harder to do in a crown Drops of blood and…

Squirming, his seat offered him a memory Stolen from a blissful archive, an unabashed Moment in time that lingered, a Madeleine Proust would have spun into an eighth book.

There is a period in life when roller coasters Are terrifying, a terror that builds each step Closer to the front of the line as The Eager Ones Pile up behind, conveying their enthusiasm for

Horror. And so he bit into a…

The Length of a Moment, Eternally (Part Two of A Yeats’ Response)

{This morning, I posted a response to Yeats’ The Indian to His Lover and commented that I felt there was a second response poem in the later part of the poem.  I wrote this on the airplane from Hong Kong.}

My footsteps barely show in the sand next to yours Maybe, the fact is, only I can see them, though With the certainty of our living love, I know You feel them press down next to the lake, just…

Backcatablogging: Tanya Cliff and Siren Whispers and a response poem “In the Deep”

It has been a true pleasure to explore the back catalogs of two wonderful poets: Tanya Cliff and Siren Whispers. Siren’s poetry covers a great range of sensual writing from explorations of nature, understanding grief and sorrow, and raw sensuality. Early in her work I found a shared connection with the sea and the transitional seasons of Autumn and Spring. Tanya covers an equally broad range of…