Sonnet Challenge #33

If there’s a challenge for a sonnet, it’s when the power goes out and it’s soooooo quiet.

Silence

Silence can be the loudest sound of all –
the emptiness between the beats of heart,
the absence of now-frozen water’s fall
from rock to pool, in winter. When we start
and fail to stop and listen to each sound
that tells us so much if we just know how
to hear it. The when quiet comes around
we simply can breathe out, breathe in the now,
the peace, the solitude, the soundless bath
of spirit washing over a rattled mind
and so, refreshed turn back to our own path
with spaces between the stars still left to find.
Dark windless nights aspire to extol
the virtue of the silence of the soul.

Tales from the field #17

There are many challenges that the art fair artist experiences.
Usually the worst is weather. Sometimes it’s as distressing as the porta potty company letting us down on the delivery on Friday night and we arrived on Saturday needing to cross our legs until a rescue company arrived at 9:30.

Sometimes it’s a simple as needing to squeeze an old ambulance into a compact space.

I think they fudged a little on the other side.

And I thought I was doing well to get the Silverado in a compact space without dinging the van on one side and the shiny Tesla on the other!

Sonnet Challenge #27

I realized that I had not posted this sonnet, despite the fact that it was inspired by the experience of a fellow blogger.  Rhi had gone for a very important interview and had asked for some accommodations to help with the difficulties with environment unfamiliarity due to autism.  They guessed at how they needed to overcome her difficulties and did not succeed too much.  Perhaps as a consequence, neither did she at securing the job.  I recommend you read her blog entry before you read the sonnet.

A day in your moccasins

We able-bodied try to understand
the difficulties of the body bent
into a chair, or missing foot or hand
by hobbling ourselves, with the intent
of walking in your shoes – or wheels – or world
of silence. We can don masks, hold a cane,
experience the perspective of hands curled
to uselessnes by age’s creeping pain.
This path we walked can help us build a bridge
across the chasms that hold back those not whole;
and yet one group we still leave on the edge
unable to feel how you’re untypical.
We can’t take steps inside a spectrum mind.
Only see footprints in the sand you left behind.

Sonnet Challenge #26

Sometimes I think poets go through all the circumstances themselves so they can write about things from a personal perspective.

Inside Prejudice

Outside of prejudice, a place that’s learned
like old wives’ tales, absorbed at parent’s knee
to recognize the ones that should be spurned,
no why, just that’s the way that it should be.
Inside of prejudice, that face is turned,
for reasons I can’t fathom, away from me,
til whispers, giggles stop when I get near
and conversation turns to other things.
I know I am the joke I cannot hear
and my imagination then takes wings
and rises on the heat of latent fear,
the wind that is despair, and all it brings.
Outside of prejudice can see no wrong.
Inside of prejudice I don’t belong.

Sonnet Challenge #25

So for a little light bedtime reading, it’s usually a science book or something similar.  I recently bought a science reference book (it’s useful to have a periodic table handy when my mind wanders) and read about the accuracy of Cesium clocks and other (mis-)uses of radioactive materials……

Atomic Time

 

We count the rot of Cesium to mark time;

we are obsessed with measuring the past

as it come at us, from a future cast

quite randomly; yet we strive to align

the whirl of planets circling the stars

above us.  Slicing time up like a pie

in pieces with precise equality

so we can note the passage of the hours.

We watch the atoms split, then split them more,

note and love the difference in decay,

and harness it to blow ourselves away,

then realize we cannot close that door.

We know that action made the world a mess

but that’s one thing we couldn’t second guess.

Sonnet Challenge #23

Muddle Through
We don’t know how to get from A to B,

the roads are blocked, the way through is unclear

.The truck in front blocks signs we need to see

,we take wrong turns trying to get out of here

but muddle through, then find the metaphor

for life – journey without a decent map.

The scenic route that lacks a guided tour.

Don’t know if we’ll arrive without mishap

or even know when we’ve arrived at all.

Our end point might just feel like we’re waylaid

and each attempt at progress we will fall

until we realize this is where we aged.

There’s no set path for anything we do

For most things, we’ll just have to muddle through.

Sonnet Challenge #22

Just in case you were wondering, there are actually a lot more sonnets being written than I post here, but I thought I’d put this one up as I was reading it to D yesterday and we had a good laugh.

 

Flip flops
Flip flops are such a comfy thing to wear,

the shoe with a relaxing attitude.

Slip on vacation hooves and then you’re there –

Flip from a boss into a cool dude.

Your toes feel freedom, something that’s so right.

No more stuffy socks inside the thong!

They’ll fit feet that are narrow, deep or wide,

and waterproof!  You really can’t go wrong.

If it’s too cold for flip flops, stay inside

and flip around the house until it warms,

then hit the beach and dip them in the tide

,the sand won’t chafe your heels, you won’t get corns.

And when you crave a lazy day that’s tops,

kick off the pumps and slip into flip flops.

Sonnet Challenge #21

It’s almost flip-flop weather here.  Well, it was, and then it got cold again, but it’s not quite back to being socks and shoes weather so I’m just letting the toes go cold and staying inside in the morning.

Flip flops
Flip flops are such a comfy thing to wear,

the shoe with a relaxing attitude.

Slip on vacation hooves and then you’re there –

Flip from a boss into a cool dude.

Your toes feel freedom, something that’s so right.

No more stuffy socks inside the thong!

They’ll fit feet that are narrow, deep or wide,

and waterproof!  You really can’t go wrong.

If it’s too cold for flip flops, stay inside

and flip around the house until it warms,

then hit the beach and dip them in the tide,

the sand won’t chafe your heels, you won’t get corns.

And when you crave a lazy day that’s tops,

kick off the pumps and slip into flip flops.

Sonnet Challenge #20

I thought that I would put this one out there today because of all the political huffing and puffing going on presently.  Whatever the rest of the world sees at the international level, I’ve seen (and almost been tangled up in) at the city and county level. <sigh>  One disclaimer – my other half thought in the last two lines that I was advocating such activity.  Seriously, I was just thinking more JFK.  It was a tragedy, but nevertheless didn’t reduce the entire country to rubble.

 

 

Political Machine

A government is such a vast machine
with so many departments interlaced,
it little matters who is on the team –
they are all parts so easily replaced.
It’s easier to just go with the grain
than try to stop this vast unyielding load.
A combine harvester works just the same
and everything before it will be mowed
back into dirt.  Recycled into earth,
ignored, delayed, transgressions found and fined
until the machine has taken all our worth
and then, with welfare, drags us on behind.
And if you blow the president’s head off –
the machine will still continue, with a cough.

Sonnet Challenge #19

Lost and found!

At the chalking festival, I had a lot of spare time on Sunday, sitting next to my creation and talking to people.  Across the street from me a couple of youngsters drew the above in the gutter and against the curb.  Inspiration indeed!

Draw your lost things.

Draw your lost things, there upon the street:

Your heart, your head, your homework, or the key.

A part of life suddenly incomplete.

Oh things! you think, oh please come back to me!

You rack your brain for where they’re left behind,

the cafe or the office or the car.

You look and look and still you cannot find

but that they’re not the same place that you are.

You turn over a glass, a wish to make,

but still your precious things eludes your grasp.

Were they stolen?  Did they evaporate?

You cannot think of who else you could ask.

Your lost things’ minds might try to draw you too,

thus wishing might just draw them back to you.