Forum Activity for @peter-lewis

Origami Bird

West Coast Eisteddfod Online Poetry Competition 2018

Origami Bird

It was just like a collection

of origami birds, each emotion

folded and displayed,

the rook of anger,

the egret of disdain,

the swan of patience,

parade among the teapots,

a circus train to be

sampled and discarded;

today I’ll have the confusion,

tomorrow the dullness,

then perhaps a strainer of anger

and sweep it all into the

junk drawer with the

tape and elastics and pins

and detritus of a life just held

together..

Now let us fold this

egret again, more stately,

more carefully creased,

more able to stand on its own

among the crockery.

This origami life, intricate

and clever, the same sheet

folded into year after year,

waiting only an unexpected

breeze through a window case

to knock all into confusion.

updated by @peter-lewis: 01/17/19 02:47:46PM

Potting Tables

West Coast Eisteddfod Online Poetry Competition 2018

Potting Tables

Once more that poor dirt

is blamed for all the sores

and bodily hurts,

when we are really looking

out for a tendency to bump

into life, bruise out our hips

and stub our toes on

the corners and legs of

tilting tables.

This life needs a

matchbox folder under a

leg, a placemat to

cover a burn, a little

polish into the corner that

gets the light, while

the hips and toes still ache.

So where do dirt and tables

meet in the confusion

of life, but in the

potting shed of course,

where roots are jammed

into pots, my root

into this pot, yours in that,

placed on this table,

in patch of light.

Stub a toe, water a pot,

wipe a spill from some tilting

table’s scratched and burned surface,

that resists all polish.

And pot and pot with fierce

fingers all hurts into

damp mossy stoneware,

to contain the spread of

unstable tables and rooting stems

into every room in the house.

Bat light by littoral

West Coast Eisteddfod Online Poetry Competition 2018

Bat light by littoral

Bat light by littoral, bathing

the stone’s long ribbon,

highest pitch of green-spread

salt-weed foam

frozen at the step of warmth

when the lid is off the steppe.

One day one of the

heat strife, come along from

hot to cool, graze at ground level

with hot breath and teeth

do you stand to be,

from toenail to hair length

a lank drop of heat rash.

Do you come see

the toe in the sand

the fluke skim the bottom’s

top, a breath to shake

a different sediment-need,

a salt tongued baroque

with depth-wise theobor

current crossed.

A pocket of jingle shells

a black headed duck

sleek cormorants split the

surface above the surface

below, toe tangled silts

coarse and damp, the deep

history of distant heights,

beg one beg two

untie shoes and kneel.

Quick like a crab intends

its life, ready to empty

its armor on the sand

salt-rivulet route, cloistered

dream naked in the tide,

make this cratered wave

life’s path to the deep.

Mockingbird

West Coast Eisteddfod Online Poetry Competition 2018

Mockingbird

The mockingbird no longer

sings at midnight from

the antenna lifted high

into the bright fullness

of the moon.

Who can say why or when

I lost the thread of

the unexpected spooling

from my heart, my

mockingbird creating

each note, each run,

each measure.

I lost the flight of each

momentous change

in each second, and watched

the mockingbird leave

bare the arms of an antenna,

spare and useless now

against a setting moon.

Smoking a Cuban

West Coast Eisteddfod Online Poetry Competition 2016

Row yourself home

  already, and take your

  fireflies with you, their

  cold green flickers trailing

  off behind your struggling

  form, catching crabs with the

  oars and rocking the boat,

  ungainly man.

Two birds in the bush

  will never make a living.

  Borrow against them,

  and seed the ground with thorns.

I left her on the porch

  smoking a Cuban.

  She was drawing a bead

  on the tiring form of a

  mourning dove in the thorns,

  struggling to take a crab.

  Shoot the dove,

  borrow against the crab,

  reseed the thorns,

  attend to your Cuban.

The smoke carries your prayers,

  as sure as rowing.

  The porch catches the

  current, sets the chairs

  rocking, like so many elegies.

When you row with the

  current, you gain the illusion

  of control, over oars and crabs,

  bushes and birds, doves and

  cubans, and ungainly firearms

  that draw to the left.

A slight case of desperation.

  The smoke carries your

  prayers to the pawnshop.

  Borrow against your prayer,

  redeem the crab,

  ransom the dove,

  ship the oars, spit in the water,

  sit spinning lazily, waiting in the wind,

  waiting in the wind,

  waiting in the wind. 

Gallardia

West Coast Eisteddfod Online Poetry Competition 2016

Gallardia died when

   I planted it.

Came back after the

   garden's neglect.

Its roots needed time

   to assess the situation,

Consider its position vis a vis

   the quality of the ground,

the willingness of neighbors to share,

  and not choke, the shifting

   chances of water.

Some of us are tough,

   but not that tough.

We move on, pull up stakes,

   seeking some gentle blend

of simple nurture and benign neglect.

Where would Gallardia go,

   had it legs?

Not as far as it's seeds would

   take it, perhaps, clinging to the

back of a snuffling opossum.

updated by @peter-lewis: 09/27/16 12:20:07AM

Their Own Devices

West Coast Eisteddfod Online Poetry Competition 2016

Cucumbers gone,

succumbed to the

cucumber beetle,

scourge, carrier of the

curcubit plague,

Peas gone, stunted

by the refusal of Spring,

and the sudden hot

onslaught of Summer,

Peppers gone,

crabbed little green

balls that sighed and

shriveled, perhaps upset

by the frightening example

set by its climbing neighbors.

Tomatoes, oh my tomatoes,

large and vigorous,

stripped of every fruit by

rapacious squirrels,

oh my tomatoes,

I uprooted you by root and stem

to refuse you to those

tail-twitchers, those

fence chewers, those delinquents

nibbling Grapes and Romas

and Better Boys,

refuse them my efforts,

my store, my expectations.

There are left only the carrots,

thin, asleep yet, well hidden

underground.

There I will pin whatever

hopes remain, that there

will be reward for effort, a proper

end to the works and the faith,

the seeding and the waiting.

See, I am pinning my hopes, turning away, 

I am leaving them to their own devices.

Falling

West Coast Eisteddfod Online Poetry Competition 2016

In falling the need

is to notice,

before the imminent

demise of noticing

how little all things

are, and what

wonders are the

little, before our

lives fulfill the fall,

the fall from noticing to

unnoticed.

And then, there is

always a then, as now

and now and then

we converge

into the closest

knit of heartbeats.

May we fall into

a heartbeat,

notice the push

of breath,

notice the noticing

return to our center

and fall inwards,

always inwards.

updated by @peter-lewis: 11/24/19 06:16:51PM

What Did You Get For Christmas?

General Discussions ( Anything Goes )

I got a sweatshirt and a Dunkin Donuts gift card. Dunkin Donuts is the working man's Starbucks... We have one Starbucks and six DDs in my Stratford. You can't sell croissants in a donut town!

What Did You Get For Christmas?

General Discussions ( Anything Goes )

The first Engelbert Humperdinck, 1854-1921, see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Engelbert_Humperdinck

They're all with Elvis together at that operatic jam session in the sky...