A Poem & A Picture (Madre’s Mexican Blackbird)

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Madre’s Mexican Blackbird

by Janna Hill

Mexican Blackbird

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**For the final week of NPM I will be posting my own poetry, a mix of published and unpublished.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.

A Poem & A Picture (Friday)

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FRIDAYI'll Drink to That (649x1024)

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. 😀

A Poem & A Picture (Till Justice Comes)

/ Janna Hill / 3 Comments

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!

Feathers and Flames (1024x683)

 Till Justice Comes

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

A Poem & A Picture (A Limerick to Lighten Your Mood)

/ Janna Hill / 2 Comments

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…

Molly

by Regis Auffray

 

Collie (photo provided by Regis Auffray)

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.

A Poem & A Picture (Last Sleep Best Sleep)

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Last Sleep Best Sleep

by Brenda Shaughnessy

Dead Sleep (1024x644)

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.

A Poem & A Picture (Incognito)

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Incognito (Your Eyes Disguised)

by Cagy Sly

Eyes disguised

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?

 

A Poem & A Picture (Being)

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Being

by Ale Pena

Running in the Rain (1024x735)

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

A Poem & A Picture (Time Passes)

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Time Passes

Joy Ladin

Riddled

 

Time too is afraid of passing, is riddled with holes

through which time feels itself leaking.

Time sweats in the middle of the night

when all the other dimensions are sleeping.

Time has lost every picture of itself as a child.

Now time is old, leathery and slow.

Can’t sneak up on anyone anymore,

Can’t hide in the grass, can’t run, can’t catch.

Can’t figure out how not to trample

what it means to bless.

A Poem & A Picture (Thirst)

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Thirst

Laura Cronk

Petals and Teeth (1024x683)

Unclouded third eye and lush

red wings.  I’m pouring water

from cup to cup.

 

This is the water we are meant

to drink with the other animals.

There are daffodils by the water,

 

a road leading from the water

to the shining crown of the sun.

My white hospital gown—

 

off-the-rack and totally sane.

My foot unsteady, though,

heel held aloft, missing its stiletto.

 

Nine months sober emblazoned

on my flat chest in red

below girlish curls and mannish chin.

 

You can’t see my eyes.

You’ve never seen them.