Well this wraps up my contribution for April 2016 National Poetry Month but remember, you do not need a special occasion to appreciate poetry. A poem a day keeps doldrums away.
by Janna Hill
Because it hurts deeper
Tastes sweeter
Laughs louder
And lets me know I’m alive
by Janna Hill
Did you shake his hand – the hand of a man’s man?
Did you see how his eyes searched the space around him as the world grew smaller?
Did you learn the secrets of Africa or discuss his tomes over drinks?
Of course not.
You could not for we were mere children – our wedding day marking the twenty second anniversary of his exodus… his rise to immortality.
He won the Nobel Prize for Literature the year you were born – did you know that?
I was but two months in the womb when he placed the beloved twelve gauge inside his mouth and obliterated the ciphering pheasants once and for all.
Did you see how he caressed her? How her cold, soft metal against his finger was as pacifying as the perfect daiquiri… how she (his beloved) alas cured him of the demons.
In a flash she rooted them loose one by one from their hiding place – a place liquor nor currents could mole; a cavern so deep no joule or watt could grasp. Ahh but she did.
She exorcised them, set them to flight riding on soft grey tissue laden with hemochromatosis and fragments of bone.
Christ might have offered the fiends a swine but not her or better yet not him…
A sacrifice for the Bay of Pigs?
It was all such folly — such unholy madness for a simple man and a literary saint.
* Hemingway’s Beloved appeared in HWA Poetry Showcase Volume 1
by Janna Hill
Tissue thin transparent bits and pieces by the millions I gave to you…
To be received, to be tended or to be rendered useless,
as you deemed fit old inhabitants of terra firma.
Slivers of my soul….
What did you do with these pieces of me?
Where are the misplaced microscopic stars of my spirit, where are they laid?
Did they dissolve beneath a soft autumn rain? Or burn in the heat of a cruel summer day?
Were they consumed by the dust mites of fate?
Giving me away was easy…
getting me back seems nearly impossible.
I saw a fleck of glitter this morning, caught in an abandoned web of time.
I retrieved it ever so carefully, pulling away the tiny choking strands;
polishing it in the palm of my hand till it shone bright like a minuscule star…
exploding…
and I recognized it as the twinkle I once saw in a smiling photo of me.
by Janna Hill
She reins me in
Her strong swollen hands tangled inside an unruly mane
Uno ! Dos! Isilencio! Tres!
Three dull thumps convince me to hush
and settle between beefy thighs
Gnarled fingers of assurance tug at my scalp
She plaits my hair with promises
Wisdom weaved among coarse strands of unnumbered mañanas
My head is left tender and spinning
with knitted rows of old wives tales.
**For the final week of NPM I will be posting my own poetry, a mix of published and unpublished. Is that selfish? Yes. Yes, it is. It is also easier — and right now I need easy.
I am grateful to everyone who submitted or suggested a poem. Hopefully we will do it again next year.
by John David K.
Finally
Realities
Influx
Declares
Another
Yippee!
I’ll drink to that.
Happy Friday world, here’s wishing you a fabulous weekend and welcome to the world of poetry J.D. 😀
April is National Poetry Month; it is also Sexual Assault and Awareness Month. I was reminded of the latter while reading a post by fellow blogger Kurt Brindley.
I wrote this poem (some years ago) after hearing one too many gut wrenching stories of sexual assault, rape and molestation. It has happened to women [and men] I know personally and you know what — One is one too many!
by Janna Hill
I cut the stained satin, the sheets where you laid
The mattress beneath them, I sliced & engraved
But despite all my cutting you won’t go away
I stabbed at the pillows till fine downy flew
I stabbed and I jabbed – each aim meant for you
While white lifeless feathers fell without clue
At the semen and slobber – I stabbed all the more
I sliced at the blood and prayed it would pour
Pour from your body wherever you are
When I was done, had cut them to shreds
It wasn’t enough, you didn’t feel dead
So I sat them on fire and burned every thread
I raked up the ashes and ground them with stone
To a fine wispy powder I thought were your bones
Each minute grain- evil seeds you had sown
Then I placed the damned ashes deep in a hole
Inside a corked bottle I hoped held your soul
And just for today I had control
I’ve nothing but anger to ward off the numb
To a million vile deaths I watch you succumb
My imagined revenge… till justice comes
I don’t know about you guys, but I was in dire need of some humor to get me through NPM. I scrolled & scrolled through my inbox and found nothing to make me grin. 😦 But then I remembered a fella named Regis…
Poem & Picture provided by Regis Auffray
I once met a lass named Molly,
Who made me vulnerable to folly;
I fell for her charms,
Took her in my arms,
Molly was a sweet Irish collie.
by Brenda Shaughnessy
Life, this charade of not-death.
Amnesiac of our nights together,
overheard talking in some other voice.
The great fruits of my failure:
silk milk pills with little bitter pits.
Who talks like that? Says we are
ever-locked, leaving everything
petalled and veined the way nature
pretended. Synthesized within
an inch of its life. O the many faces
of facelessness, breathing in the dark –
as if we could shape softness itself,
mold it around us like yams mashed
against a trough by a snuffling snout.
Our own. There’s no way out. Born
to such extra, we are born to lose.
No hairy fingers tapering to threads,
grasping for some lost last use.
Once we were hungry on earth,
soon buried like root vegetables—
to starve the soil as beets do,
growing in our graves.
But now we must remember
our way back to face-to-face,
to eye to eye and hand in hand,
and lock and step and key in hole.
Remembering how not to fall asleep,
we become so desperately drowsy,
and all cells strain to slow to a stop.
All desire to choose otherwise quiets.
No, no one can say we didn’t suffer,
that we weren’t swallowed whole.
by Cagy Sly
Why do you care who I am?
What is it that makes you hide
the color of your eyes
in sky blue hydro-gel?
Combing smooth your tussled hair
striking up an odd conversation on the pet isle at Wal Mart
inquiring about the breed I am feeding.
Each look, each question — a motive
I comply, casually converse
knowing full well it has nothing to do with dogs
unless you plan to get past my pet?
No.
You are frantic… governed by paranoia
I empathize
my own demons guarded , withering in chains
Why not introduce yourself
ask me outright
what you have spent so much effort to learn
I have no secrets
other than the fact that I know who you are
Fear not – I have a dungeon
full of mysteries
Tit for tat –
What do you see of me behind those tinted blue eyes?
Can you rest now?
by Ale Pena
Memory
is the feeling of cool, April rain
dancing in your hair; seemingly weightless.
Doubt
is the way shadows creep slowly in your eyes
when I ask you about belief.
Your retinas slowly expand,
slowly bloom like the firecrackers we watched explode
in a different season.
“Do you believe in God?” I asked.
You shake your head and
the droplets in your hair somehow fall, slip, break in light;
1000 rays of colors
being reflected,
condensed,
forgotten,
as you answered:
“Sometimes I think God is in everything.”
I touched your wrist then and
felt the tendons of life moving only by a miracle
that cannot be explained by Math and Science,
whose seemingly useless scratches on paper
cannot begin to comprehend
the feeling of
your heavy arm and your dense Being;
your pulse pumping through every crevice;
or how every vein in your body
forms a map of Existence.
The motion of your hand is a work of Art,
vibrant and alive; a Masterpiece,
Van Gogh’s Starry Night.
I then felt your spirit,
somehow thunderous,
somehow booming,
loud; pulsing through me.
Every nerve alive:
a Universe inside me; inside Us,
together: one.
Moving forward
is a heartfelt release shaking our very core.
You closed your eyes and exhaled.
In and out: the sound of your breathing body from the exhilaration of finding
truth and faith.
We sit in the God-rain and become free.
Ale Pena was 1st place winner of the 2014Teen Poetry Contest sponsored by inForney.com
The Real Janna Hill in 