Seikou Yamaoka

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Nelson Mandela 1918 – 2013

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cowboy shoes

cowboy shoes
  
Well this isn’t a poem, not yet. But yea, it, meaning me, does wanna come out to play.

There’s this prompt, write a poem with your “shadow voice”. That’s your (or my) voice that got left behind once upon a time, some part that didn’t seem safe or acceptable inside my vision of the world. Simple huh? But simple can be more confused than something complex often enough.

I keep going back to this picture of so so younger me. I felt the connection, but it was light, maybe even a slight-of-hand. Not that I mean my shadow is a child. More playful. More happy, for no good reasons at all. I held those “thoughts”. But even as I wrote the prompt for WWP it became obvious that I was still holding those “dangerous” attitudes at arms length and had to rewrite the prompt totally from scratch. That precisely is the challenge of this prompt for me!

My shadow plays. My shadow is more spontaneous. My shadow is more willing to be visible, to take a chance. He’s good natured. He will tell you what he is doing, and will invite you into the play. He’s easy to understand. It’s not so much that the world is more trustable, but he is. And that is the root of his life.

Writing that prompt was sort of my poem for me.

So that will have to do for now. Lots of work here and there to do and poems are riding in the back seat right now. Yet wanna respond to this prompt. My shadow does. And I agree.

The tip of my hat, and we’ll be back again. Soon and more more often, we both wish.

  
Written for the We Write Poems prompt #149,  write a shadow voice poem.

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Chesbro slopes

Chesbro slopes

they say winter, but it’s not

  
I’m missing your hips, like some
soft brown lover who never quite
arrived in this bed.  even while
I’m yet just arms length close.

who wouldn’t be joined after those
sweet summer scents breathed
into me.  pillows cheek to cheek.

even mostly yellowed dry fleece
impart brazen thistle seeds along
the trailed edge of a passing gasp.
carry me away with you.

blown thigh high hugging near
the curve of breasts, and as no
child wonders, will I land in dry
wind or damp cleft?

manzanita bones or oaken ripe
ribs where lizards tease their
shadows swift.  a forked tongue
or two between the stones.

that shattered soil inhabits
every inch of limb and thought,
dust like new born talc.  never
all brushed out of clothes.

suppose no tears left the
watershed for any child who
fell, orphan from that communal
ravenous choir.

paws that would willingly feast
on any wayward child lost inside
the backside woods.  no
greater love.

now, if I were to leave
it would be only me who
misses you.

but yea, your wandered
curves are drawn in me.

some thistles here remain.
 
 

neil reid, poem & photograph © february 2012

 
          commentary
About “place” that we call home. This is mine. Whether close or far I feel this inside of me. Don’t know another, only one, this one, but suppose not uncommon how one place feels more in rhythm with myself than another does. Homing instinct? What sets the compass inside each of us. My home is more dry yellow-brown than green and the very soil has a scent strong as any other presence here. So much might be well settled, civilized, but there is a wildness yet close at hand and it looks just like this.

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Reverence

R e v e r a n c e

  
This posting is about poems, not mine nor poems rooted in language, but rather in directly pure and visceral experience within our physical reality. Might also seem to be “about” waves or the art of big wave surfing, but neither that in nor of itself, rather within the relationship, human with elemental energy, that takes this stage to express itself.

So what is such a posting doing on a poetry blog? Fair question, but not so hard to understand from several points of my personal compass here. From an intellectual stance, many aspects of life can be viewed as poetic, and all the more when performed to an exceptional degree of devotion and ability. But that’s not my motivation for sharing this post.

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lefty-handy, it’s really true

lefty-handy, it’s really true

please click image for larger version

Being one segment of my left-hand written poem as published earlier.

Just as evidence, it is really true.  Not pretty, as I said, but legible and yes, there is something about penmanship that interests me (by either hand).  And posted here mostly for my own amusement, and to demonstrate, hectic as I am, that I still have too much time on my hands as so demonstrated to colorize!  (merging a little poetry with a little art, and that makes me smile) 🙂

Actually I’d like to post some (shorter) poems in actual hand written form. (Is that a silly desire?) And equally would be interested to see some others do the same. I don’t know what the pen shows but I think it shows something, no matter any meanings in that way. There’s a flavor – something like that.

Oh, and does this append the “rules of poems”? To colorize or not to colorize? Bring out your crayons please!

neil

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One Ferryboat to see

Washington State Ferryboat, the Puyallup

Alight, I was surprised what a personal evocation it was for some to have selected ferryboats as the subject of my last poem. Me, I like about anything that moves – trains make me want to follow, boats they live where our life began but left, and planes, well, seeing down to earth and water below feels like a poem, a gift of god – and makes me smile. But for those enamored of ferryboats in particular, here, here is one of the two actual boats I admired and rode while I was north on vacation near Seattle.

I like their mass, fragile as they are.  I like the comfort of vibration under my feet.  I like the curtain sound of water giving way.  I like the wind embracing me.  Just skimming what ferryboats mean.

Yea, we like things that move, including me.

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