i dare you (for One Shoot Sunday)
1.
i ground my being
in search of truth
and found
a scoop of silt
superficialities
i basked in surfaces
the sun swarmed
beguiling
choked my truths
in flashes
glories in seconds
fallen as ash
my pretenses
morphing into
this mush slipping
between my lips
entrapped
in your weakness
i dare you
unclad who i am
2.
who am this
being a pallid skein
of desire tangled
in despair
words dangle
on tips of bones
their flesh i picked off
in my darkness
suns melt
on my breath
gods cower in fear
over my stink
stones corrode
from my tears falling
as flint on my trail
dead embers
rain pools
sizzle on my passing
burn secrets
my footprints bred
3.
taunt me
if you have grit
the songs i spew
rattle angels
wangle crests
of waves my stare
long petrified on seas
turned cesspools
dare to cleanse
the air i poison
my soul departed
litter ivy beds
comb my hair
your fingers hanker
for my silken scales
to root in spirit
grind your being
with mine scrape off
your bareness toss out
your soul i dare you
Photo prompt by Fee Easton
Posted for One Shoot Sunday from a photo prompt by Fee Easton at One Stop Poetry where poets and artists share their art and their passion for it, a nurturing gathering place. Check us out.
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About
autumn wind
wondering about lilies
in a mountain pond
Tell me a writer who really gets a satisfying jornal, in Spanish a daily wage or its equivalent, and I’ll bare a spirit in constant bouts of doubtfulness. Does a writer earn more because of what he writes and how he does it? Or is a writer paid more or less because of who he is? Is it money or honor he expects to receive?
Ahhh … but money as wage, and praise or honor as reward would be too predictable, too common as Job lamented in the Book of Job. It is in these lines that read: “Is not man’s life on earth nothing more than pressed service, his times no better than hired drudgery? Like the slave, sighing for the shade, or the workman with no thought but his wages, months of delusion I have assigned to me, nothing for my own but nights of grief. Lying in bed I wonder, ‘When will it be day?’ Risen I think, ‘How slowly evening comes!’
Restlessly I fret till twilight falls. Swifter than a weaver’s shuttle my days have passed, and vanished, leaving no hope behind. Remember that my life is but a breath, and that my eyes will never again see joy.”
Not money but joy is the ultimate wage as the passage implies. And joy is not hard to earn for it is in everyday life if we have eyes to see, a nose to smell, fingers to touch, ears to hear–a heart beating. This to me, is how a writer earns a daily wage. His wages then take the guise of treasures his heart can transfigure into a universe of thought that taps into other hearts, that causes a swirl in the depth of other souls, or that makes wings to sprout on leaden heels.
Sometimes not joy but rueful, poignant moments are my pick. Take what I earned once: On my walk home in my neighborhood, I caught two clumps of snowdrops–such tiny blossoms smaller than fingertips that do not look up but shyly droop close to black patches on the ground winter has frozen. That afternoon in the frosty wind, they trembled as if ready to turn away and run but how could they? For that poignant moment on seeing the wintry rain beat on the fragile snowdrop–as if pushing it to go home now, go to sleep–I earned my jornal, my daily wage.
Once on summer walk, the crackle of dried leaves just hit me both like the laughter of children and sobs long suppressed. Neither one of them would resolve the dryness, but I recalled how each does bring tears: laughter for joy, sobs for healing that comes with the release of a dammed-up pain. My jornal that day came as two haiku.
Fall has since shortened the day and the heart begins to crave for lost space that it doesn’t even recall which or where. I feel that most treasures have turned into mush so much so I wouldn’t be able to sift them off the ground. Yet I caught the dying day yesterday–so glorious in the gold of autumn it opened a flip side of serene heaven. Blades of grass coated in diadems of rain that carpet the lawns render royal walks poor by imitation. A burst of red maple against an inky blue sky humbled me, a soul bragging about her skill to recreate beauty in words.
I suppose I’m taking Job’s reflections to heart. I’d rather not gloss over each day and look beyond what’s there, right before me, or else fragile as is my breath one day “my eyes may never again see joy” to write. With what then will I compare the eternal joy, the ultimate wage I await?
Yet for now, as other eyes hanker to make the invisible visible, I put a tag on some moments of joy. Like on seeing the snowdrops, I paid myself $200 as my jornal.
What could have been yours?
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that is quite the dare…the desolation.destruction in the second really grabbed me…the words dangling from bones…great piece…
Glad you liked, Brian. Indeed, that prompt was ‘quite a dare’.
Love how you capture a sort of dripping disintegration through working the details. The part Brian mentions got me too. Great challenge response
Thanks, Adam! I really did see ‘disintegration’ right through. It’s a subject I had always wanted to write about as a poem but all my drafts come out as either mushy or gory. The prompt was perfect! Thanks for choosing it among all of Fee’s magnificent landscape shots.
i seond bri and adam – the desolation and destruction is haunting
Thanks, Claudia! The image does haunt me, especially the eyes!
Deep and dark, I really enjoy your take on these prompts, and the fact that you make three standalone parts that make up a tale x
Thanks again, Shan! I know, I’ve been enjoying the prompts immensely. They’ve been drawing out a lot of lines and drafts that never worked out until now.
Outstanding!
Oh, thank you so much. A single word with so much power–what a critique!
Read this earlier Alegria, but wanted to come back and read it again before i commented–it’s a complex poem, and one can get lost in all the little careless but perfect images that drive the message home. This is really striking in many ways, but I’ll just say the whole piece is like a well-written and perfectly choreographed piece of music, with the last two stanzas like a double hammer beat finale.
Thanks again as always, Joy! You got me there again! The first stanza came like a low slow drum and kept rising and falling but the basso profundo of ‘disnitegration’ and ‘destruction’ followed through. The photo prompt helped me get through it–I focused on the skin and eyes and then the hair. I think the lines draw their power from the image. But reading it again, I know, I still have to work on the rough, as you call it, ‘careless’ skids. Thank you again for your careful reading and thoughtful comment!
A great verse…and slowly you build it up to great ending. Liked it so much…
‘grind your being
with mine scrape off
your bareness toss out
your soul i dare you’
thanks for sharing.
ॐ शांति ॐ
Om Shanti Om
May peace be… praying for People of Japan
http://shadowdancingwithmind.blogspot.com/2011/03/whispers-love-and-insignificance.html
Connect me at Twitter @VerseEveryDay
Thank you, Shashi! Glad you liked it!