#tuesday platform

This year, high summer has cast a tidal wave of rhetorical bullshit. We swim in an ocean of it. It’s smeared over every beach, masking the sweet scent of sunscreen with its bitter stink until nothing’s left of August’s decadence. Sunny holidays disappear into autumn shadows, night falls far too soon, and the stench of decomposed promises cannot be masked by rotting leaves and wood smoke. Looming…

Our bodies unfurl and then curl into each other under night’s cover. We are waves in motion on an inky ocean or sand-blown stones hidden in a desert’s undertones. We are intertwined limbs, hearts, souls and minds, dancing in the dark until we spark – stars falling in the empty sky of morning.

Kim M. Russell, 13th August 2019

Image found on Pinterest

My response to dVerse Poets Pub Poetics: Lost…

Woken by a Summer Night

White hot lightning flashes through the blinds, a celestial photographer illuminating crumpled sheets twisted with the lack of sleep. Fiddling with volume control, clouds amplify and dull thunder’s rock and roll, rattling roof tiles and wooden blinds like xylophones. Beside the bed, a glass of tepid water whirlpools with vibrations.

Kim M. Russell, 30th July 2019

My response to dVerse Poets Pub…

Together we rise, the bees and I; they fill the drowsy garden with their resonance.

A patchwork of shadow among green lungs transforms into a smoky meadow of seeding grass and flowers, patches of shifting light bound together by cobwebs and the hum of bees.

Kim M. Russell, 23rd July 2019

Image found on 123RF

My response to dVerse Poets Pub Poetics: Movement, also linked to Imaginary Garden with…

Are there tea And buttercups now? The coffee and dandelions Have had their say. Some wine and daffodils Would also suffice. The bourbon and cacti  Are for later, I pray. ‘Tis time now for paisley And pastel at once. Lay your pinstripes to rest ‘Til the morrow. O struggle I put you  At rest ’til the dawn. Until then some patience  I’ll borrow.

    Welcome back to Imaginary Garden With Real…

Kim M. Russell, 11th June 2019

  My response to dVerse Poets Pub Poetics: To market, to market! also linked to Imaginary Garden with Real Toads Tuesday Platform

Sarah is our host this Tuesday and she wants to go to the market with us. She asks if there’s anything more evocative of a place than its market.  She says that there’s something wonderful about buying a pasty from the woman who baked it; or a punnet of berries from the farmers that grew them; or a taste of cheese by the man who created it, or a smear of chutney from the cook.

Like Sarah, we have a small market in our local town. We also have the famous covered market in Norwich, which I love to visit whenever I go ‘up city’, as they say around here.

Sarah would like us to write poems that convey the feel of the market somehow – the goods on offer, the people selling and buying, the smells, the tastes, the sounds. She tells us to let our poetry run free!

There’s a sparkling space between orchestra and clear soprano voice, a tragic butterfly in a bell jar, bright wings shimmering before she’s pinned.

Puccini’s signature violins swirl and an incidental flute curls, a ship’s smoke on the far horizon, as Cio-Cio-San’s dream spills: one fine day, she’ll see Pinkerton climbing up the hill.

The voice, clear as crystal, at first wavers, vulnerable, and…

Welsh Byr A Thoddaid

I saw a large drosophila In my favorite opera. Alas when ‘Madame Butterfly’ is on. ‘Tis one lovely blue sky.

  A Drosophila, as I learned the hard way in Mr. Morabito’s ninth grade biology class, is a fruit fly.   Ever curiouser and curiouser about new (to me) poetry forms, I’ve just found out about the BYR A THODDAID, a Welsh style of poetry.