Poet's Body

I have a poet's body,
so to see my beauty,

you may have to search deeper within.

I make up my face not with lipstick,

for if my lip sticks you're not hearing

what I've said.

I have a poet’s body,

not perfect,

yes there are flaws.

I’m not structured a certain way,

no concrete,

I'm breaking down walls.

I stay covered,

not exposing my flesh,

would rather arouse you,

with the words that I spit.

I have a poet’s body.

My stomach holds truths,

some find hard to digest.

I expel ideas,

meticulous

with common sense.

I have a poet’s body.

My shoulders carry burdens,

that anchor me to the ground.

I massage out the stress,

by writing this down.

I have a poet’s body.

I inhale my surroundings,

hold for a second my breath,

then exhale metaphors,

resuscitating life just as quickly.

I have a poet’s body.

My heart pumps creativity

that flows through my veins,

allowing others to say,

they may feel the same.

Yes, I have a poet’s body,

so to see my beauty,

you may have to search

deeper within.

I have a poet’s body.

and my mind

is waiting to be examined.

       © Suzanne Saxon, 2013

Possibly only the second known photograph of Emily Dickinson,
seated on the left.
Photo released Sept. 7, 2012 by Amherst College Archives and Special Collections
and the Emily Dickinson Museum

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Mother and two cubs lumbered black 

from the shadows under heavy maples

whose branches spread out over the lilacs 

bordering the backyard.

The babies left their mother to scramble up a pine 

gnarled from past winters and dry summers.  

They draped their legs over two branches, 

their long fur cascading like Spanish moss, 

and watched the larger bear paw her way to the back deck.

Behind thin glass, I peered over my reading glasses at the scene,

mesmerized by her proximity and her enormous paws,

their claws manicured into steel knives,

her fur knitted into thorny brier.

How unconcerned she was with the swing 

set into slight motion

or the chimes twirling in the wind.  

She rose clumsily on heavy back legs 

and tilted the bird feeder on its side, 

shoving stolen food past well-worn teeth 

onto a pink tongue.   

She glanced over, no thought for me.  

With a growl, the mother beckoned her babies,

their fur a tapestry in shadow.  

They bounded down the tree, leaves shaking like maracas 

and 

joined her at the tilted bird trough.  

Together they gulped the remaining gravel down,

then side-stepped the slide to head for blackberries,

thornless and plump from last night’s rain.

© Susan Muse, 2013

 Mother black bear, a cub barely visible
Photo by Alan Vernon, Wikimedia Commons

Childhood Memories

It was a bunch of mulch piles,

I think,

our fort. 

But perfect. 

We even built a bathroom,

and kept it freshly stocked with

leaf toilet paper. 

Sometimes,

the newspaper shed was unlocked.

We'd climb the 

mountain stack,

and slide to the bottom.

The ink,

long dry,

wouldn't stain our knees,

just drench the stale air with its smell. 

Once,

in the woods,

we just sat down and started digging.

We weren't pirates that day,

but still found a treasure horde:

old mason jars, chipped porcelain, leather shoes, a calcified stirrup.

We'd perfected how to climb 

their fences

without barbed wire snags. 

And we knew just how 

fast to run

through the field to still have time

to avoid the cow patties. 

At our creek,

we'd swing from the tree branches,

and catch tadpoles in the murky water.

At our river,

we'd slide off the rocks,

mermaids. 

© Miranda Hogan, 2013

At Our River
Photo by Tony Russell

The Balance Is a Mystery

The moment exists, and slips my grasp

today as it does on many------

as present bliss is lost in time 

that will not be detained, even if I resist the flow

some unseen force is moving through me

and I question if the current knows the stream------- 

or if consciousness can recognize living as it seems

is simple awareness reality and living just a dream?

or is the truth of being alive somewhere in between?

human born, we're born to see ----------

the balance is a mystery, 

a cosmic dance-----

Siva gettin' down, gettin' up, gettin' on, gettin' free!

destined for more than a meal and a mate

we must daily choose our fate and feel the power of the stream------

for we are carried, after all.

yet, its up to us to paddle and not to drift

for ultimate enlightenment

     © Gerry Sackett, 2013

Moormans River, Sugar Hollow
Photo by Tony Russell

Just Call Me Lazarus

A people born wearing their funeral clothes,

we don't even know there's a stone. We sit in our grave, 

dirty feet, dirty cave, and trace patterns into 

the ground. The sweat of our brow drips in rivulets;

a salt-imbued lie of release. A taste of the sea, 

of a river, a spring, of a well we're too haughty to drink. 

We think we're so rich in our tatters. We think 

we're so bright in the dark. We think we are kings

in our coffins and schemes like this is the best that

we are. Like there isn't a voice small inside us. 

Like there isn't a breath in our lungs. Like there 

isn't a world waiting just out that door if we'd

only stand up and explore. Like there isn't a man

calling out to us. Like we don't hear our name in a

prayer. Like we don't see the stone for the lid 

it's become on the room we see fit to call home. 

I no longer choose to abide this. I no longer want to

subside. I want to be strong and impassioned and 

torn by the wind and His name and the horn. I

want to be fashioned for battle. I want to wear

armor and light. I want to sing hours and hours on

end with no ceasing in day or in night. I want to

feel roads underneath me. I want to drip words

from my tongue. I am done with the silence, the darkness,

the violence, that my evil days often had sung.

I no longer revel in drunkenness. In sculpting my

face to a norm. In starving and fighting, in lying

and hiding, in valuing how I perform. We need to 

rely on the 'other'. That power found outside our own.

I need to escape, to find spirit, take shape- this 

tomb is no longer my home. I will resurrect. 

          © Sarah Fletcher, 2013

The Resurrection of Lazarus
St. Paulinus in Welling
from Wikimedia Commons

Child’s Play

She seems to me the epitome of what destiny was meant to be.

Recently, she has been challenging the frequency her brain's been traveling,

enticing the sweater of thought to come unraveling.

Third eye's released, striving to ignore hazy doors that open into cold reality.

Burning knowledge like it grows on trees.

She's 

skipping rocks on media brooks,

knocking rooks off blatantly bent balance beams,

landing on nimble feline feet,

Freedom Rides down crooked slides, a heady high created by dopamine.

Dancing through her dreams bow visions of veracity;

as tempting specialties become dishonestly concrete.

Fabricated forgeries spread thickly,

like honey on warm bread straight from love's own bakery.

Slow to face charming truth, we imprint our opinions discretely,

directly influenced by the economically replete.

We accept only the agreeable beliefs,

facts fussily side-stepped, rendering them obsolete.

Meanwhile,

Dice St. Deities treat themselves to dance with immortality

through Babylon's natural tantric heart beat

while tracks separate colorblind concrete 

from monotone bricks created to calm Uncle Tom's irrational fears of the sweetly disillusioned elite.

His vessel shows the wear of time as repeat beatings still have the stub of his wings bleeding.

Attempting a resurrection of lost meaning,

lessons form themselves like wine from twisted grape vines.

Only with the fermentation of time can we freely revive honesty.

Tempting visions drunkenly painted on torn tapestry tease the mind with hazy imagery.

When dreams at last are given release, we find the fallen king recuperating sweetly,

residing among Hawai'ian tides, his heart is tied from distance over sea, 

his cravings for familial connection appear obsolete

due to the importance of breaking free from the prison of self induced disease.

Meantime she's stumbling through closed doors, breaking through screens, and running away from responsibility.

Carrying children within worried womb, daylight's gleam

forces glazed eyes open though her instinct is for eternal retreat,

hiding beneath sheets has become as second nature as crying to christian savior when in need.

More than once now God has aborted the ones created to give her someone she thinks will never leave.

She misunderstands that consuming for two requires her to actually eat, 

and through this we find haunting familiarity between

current proceedings and mother's erratic routines while raising the one called she.

Culturally cut off from her elders, even minimum wage seems to be out of reach.

If only this floundering girl could make it out to sea,

perhaps joining her fallen angel father could calm the storms; set her weary mind at ease,

albeit he is living on the beach. 

As romantic as that image might seem to you and me,

it is stability that is needed for this filter fish, while high tides flow and recede.

She is tuned into the Earth Mother's sensitivity,

and wonders why she is drowning when Gaia's heart beat is becoming more fleeting. 

And I am reaching, reaching.

I am trying so desperately, asking for wisdom that continues to elude me.

How can this scattered ohana once again become a "we"?

What will it take to help this lost Goddess to succeed?

Where is the answer we all so desperately seek?

It seems so hard to accept our own potency, 

because that frees us from self induced captivity.

I pray for you, child, may you learn the lessons you so obviously need.

May your cravings for something to nurture turn into nurturing received.

May your hunger be satiated, and your worries all relieved.

May you continue taking breaths, and may you learn eventually to breathe.

I pray the browbeat expressions prepare you for what you will eventually be,

As I am of the mind that every experience is the planting of a seed.

And baby girl I truly do believe,

When the garden you are growing blossoms, 

the bounty will be beautiful indeed.

© SABRe, 2013

Feuerbach's Gaia
from Wikimedia Commons

Last Train of My Childhood Dream

In this tunnel

where fear is an animal

smothering me

with unbearable fur,

I feel earth tremble

as if an ocean,

trapped beneath trees and rocks,

is pounding hard

against roots,

the way my heart hammers

against its own roots of dread.

I have heard the same roar--

tornados thundering toward me

like stampeding buffalo

until terror slams me awake.

Now this darkness

opens its one bright eye.

Light that does not mean hope

drives the future 

at me fast,

your death a black train

filling the space

between me and escape.

© Jean Sampson, 2012

Locomotive 45212
Photo from Wikimedia Commons