Poetry: Limestone Walker

That so-called stone surface facial of
sedimentary calcium composition
of old fossils, fragments, and ancient scree;
rocks of gray, white, yellow, or brown.

Ubiquitous to trails I hike,
fine for stepping over hazards
or tripping face-first onto hard rocks,
or into some mud puddle or other.

Soft and effervescent in any acid,
yet porous enough to spawn tree or shrub
growth or provide unlimited grot hiding places
for so many critters of the Texas wild.

In a metamorphism of glory,
stones ugly and pitted,
covered with algae, moss, and mold;
magically recrystallizing into fine marble,
given enough time.

Fittingly, oxymoronic as soft rock
used as stones for walls,
or as naturally difficult primitive paths,
or cliffs to climb,
or pathways to find,
so many new trails to blaze.

So much staining, like inked tattoos,
painted with organic rust;
constantly crumbling, chipping,
peeling, spalling, weathering,
and eroding away;
just like me.

A stone-cold darkness arising from dampness,
striving to save archaeological history,
the professional province of geoscience,
ignored by hikers and walkers, but not
missed by the conceit of poets.
We seem to see it all.

Look both ways and watch your step,
for real and with a metaphor.
Mind all the gaps. Trip at your own peril.

Poem: What is la couleur de l’amour?

I never really had a favorite color,
but I lied and claimed blue, then green.
It changes. I never claimed yellow.
I hate, “what’s your favorite…?”

I am starting to like the orange colors,
that red halfway to yellow, t-sip
burnt orange wheels closer to yellow.
I try not to lie awake at night over this.

I don’t have much yellow stuff. Wouldn’t
have a yellow car. Might a motorcycle.
I think it’s because lemons are yellow.
Honestly, sometimes I like yellow a lot.

Maroon, that old chestnut, is a brownish
crimson (hey, `bama) or a dark reddish-purple
horney-frog, Cowtown kinda color just south
of burgundy. Maroon is a French-ish word.

Color words are cool, warm, primary,
and secondary, or tertiary. Some value,
hue intensity with a tint of tone, and neutral.
But gray they say has fifty shades. Maybe.

There’s monochromatic some say is dull,
analogous begins with anal, but a double
complimentary can split a tetrad, even primes,
I suppose. But who cares besides me?

This business with our fondness for colors
may explain something about human nature.
Like long yellow argyle socks and brown sandals.
I like red shoes and sandals (no socks). I wonder why.

Look up and down and both ways for the color of love.
Mind the gaps and forget the French tuck. Let it all hang out.

Sammi’s Weekender #215 (ink)

Click on graphic for Sammi Cox’s page and links to other works.

 

What a wonderful little word and inventive subject. I’ve written of pens and paints, but not of ink, before now. I even read the history of ink and how it was and is made. Forgive me brother and sister writers. I got so excited—I wrote two twenty-two-word poems. Like money and sex, only too much poetry is enough.

5K Years Since

Inks. Invisible,
permanent. India’s art.
Printing or pens.

Words on paper,
not electronically;
ink, a catalyst to creativity,
with words and art.

Lines of Magic

See the flow on paper,
watch lines, curves, and shapes
appear in history, law, art;
even in silent music on a page.

Look both ways for waves of imaginative creations.
Mind the gaps for innovation’s utility and art’s beauty.

The Greatest Gift

There’s joy,
in the smiles of others,
in visions of those we love,
people we care about,
that is where truest,
most honest, happiness thrives.

To see such dancing zest is to feel
the same in my bones, heart, and mind;
while tears of delight run down
my cheeks. When babies laugh.
Hope laden felicity. Even
an old man simply must smile.

To sing and dance
with those we love most,
to see and hear them rise
in rebirth to life’s glorious days,
to overcome fears and sadness
that come with what we call
our human condition.

How strange, that we may
give or receive no greater gift,
no higher prize,
no nourishing of the spirit,
no deeper love than to allow
others to be and to see us
high on being alive.
Even more, to here and now
let love swirl among us all. Hallelujah!

Look both ways for the joy of love.
Mind the gaps, but live and let live.

Sammi’s Weekender (unknown)

Turning Into the Wind

I wish
I didn’t know now
what I didn’t know then,
back when my lost
happiness was
still unknown.

Before I won these emotional
and physical scars;
blissfully, foolishly ignorant;
lucky, privileged;
without foible; free to be me;
a self-centered fool
with a college degree.

Now a recovered lover
of painful truths I never sought.
But I’m proud of our past.

Look both ways,
to the earth and into the heavens,
into the night and through each day’s light.
Mind the gaps and face the facts. It was what it was, and so were we.

 

Poetry: Bloqueo de Escritor

My brain
or is it my mind?
Whatever. It’s rebelling.
Just for today,
as they say in AA.
It will not allow
even a crumb
of creative thought
to come in,
much less,
fall
to the page.

“No, no, no,” it says,
“I will not go!”
As I sit here.
(Ever have this?)
It feels like fear,
but otherwise,
I’m empty
of emotion and purpose.
Where to start?
Much less, any thought
of how to finish.

Just this silence.
The sleep that disallows
doing the exercise,
I’m unprompted
with lines pulled too tight.
I feel stymied
by an overworked
empty whiteness.

Sometimes,
it simply does not
work for me. I’m sorry.
I have ED of the mind.
I should leave.
Take a nap. Wane a bit.
They call it “block.”
I’m sure it’s temporary.
But what a shitty
suffocating feeling.
I feel museless.

Look both ways for the walls of chaos.
Mind the gaps, gasps, and gyps. And this…

“Many people hear voices when no one is there. Some of them are called mad and are shut up in rooms where they stare at the walls all day. Others are called writers and they do pretty much the same thing.” – Margaret Chittenden

Sammi’s Weekender #213 (galaxy)

On the Edge of Forever

Words of uncertainty apply.
Probably, and maybe perhaps,
as proportions with numbers
inconceivable and unimaginable,
describe vastness where nearby,
local galaxies, about fifty-one,
are or were within a mere
three megaparsecs. So close.

Suicidal giants like Tadpole, Black Eye,
Sunflower, and Cigar. Our nearest
neighbor, Andromeda, plans to crash
our party in four or five billion years.

Like the cosmos,
this Milky Way is mostly nothing,
toying with conversions of
angular momentum, universal
collisions of astronomy’s galactic
darlings. The realm of nebulae,
halfway to the edge of the known
universe, whatever that is.

Look both ways to search for a “small, quaint, tidy universe.”
But science “never ends.”
Mind the gaps for a “single ultimate truth.”
(Quotes from Cosmos by Carl Sagan)

Poetry: Spring’s Desires

It’s Mexican Hat season.
They dance in the rain, anyway the wind blows,
swaying smoothly back and forth,
bouncing—just a little,
with wet touches from showering raindrops.

And now it’s time. Put away dark felt hats.
Get out the white straws with good brims
for hot summer days, sunscreen
for kids out of school and in the pool.

Masks down. Baseball games. Dad’s Day.
Lock-a-ways minus hugs-er-kisses, going or gone;
eating outs, coffee inside or out-back, it’s all on the list
as some virus ebbs but not yet gone.
Not yet. Not all gone.

Nature’s changing. Deer sleeping. Skunks are mating.
Birds begging loud and lively, ready to party at sunrise.

Long days inching sunsets later
as we give Spring a pass—its due.
All of us, a season older.

Here come the suns of another Texas summer.
Three sisters tapping on season’s door:
June, July, and August, ready
to straddle time—solstice to equinox.

I’ve memories, some good, some bad.
I want more, and more.
Then, I want still more.

Look both ways at passing seasons.
Mind the gaps and water the plants.

Poetry: Hello, Tom.

All that I can recall
about Tom Steele,
is that he was tall, blondish hair,
quiet, and we never spoke.
We were both CHS
class of 1964, graduates.

His panel is 6E, line 104.
Tom was Army, C Company,
Second Battalion, 16th Infantry,
First Infantry Division. A grunt.
A boots-on-the-ground warrior.

At the Battle of Xa Can My,
April 11th, 1966, Tom was killed,
along with 36 fellow American soldiers,
age 20, not old enough to drink,
but young enough to die.

And I – must remember the boy
to whom I never spoke because
Memorial Day is all about him,
and them, for me to Remember.

Look both ways;
into the past to remember, into the future for something better.
Mind the gaps but try to treat folks with love and respect.
Say it. Care. You never know.

Sammi’s Weekender #211 (nomenclature)

Click to go to Sammi’s blog

Handle With Care

Susan Goldsmith Wooldridge,
in the 10th of Poemcrazy said,
“in practical shoes, holding forth
with firm opinions”
were too many Sues.

Birthed and baptized, lacking
middle saintly nomenclature,
seeking to assert rightful independence,
Confirmation granted my pick,
Saint Bartholomew, a sub
for unsainted Bartley.

Mom had a fit. We fought.
She wanted Richard. I did not.
Constant embarrassment,
my lifelong reminder,
my middle moniker: John.
I wish I agreed to Richard,
at least a better memory.

Look both ways for better self-names. How often would we change?
I’m Dad, Opa, Mister Bill to some, cantankerous (and other adjectives)
Bill or Billy to the few.
Mind the gaps where we may only name things, pets, and kids.