poetry

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 (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.

 

A Poem & A Picture (Skeletal Beliefs)

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Hard to believe this young poet is barely eighteen years old.

Skeletal Beliefs

by Miranda Krase

SILHOUTTE (1024x642)

This skeletal figure dances in the dark shadows of the night.

Trapped. Waiting for her partner,

She dances in hopes of his return,

Content to be waiting forevermore.

…And waiting she shall remain.

 

A faithful wife to a dead life,

A future now no more.

I don’t have the heart,

To look upon her brokenness,

Her empty face, same as mine.

 

An ever flowing river,

Comes from our skeleton eyes.

If only I could tell her the truth,

It won’t save her…

But could it save me?

A Poem & A Picture (Hungry Eyes)

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I said I would try to focus on unknown poets this year, and I will, after this digression.

Merle Haggard passed away yesterday, he was known as “the poet of the common man” but we called him the poor man’s poet. It’s no secret that I grew up poor, and now the fact that I thought the name of this song was My Mama’s Hungry Eyes, is no longer a secret. These lyrics always made me think of my own mother. They make me think of her now, no longer with hungry eyes… her and daddy, no longer struggling.

Rest in Peace & Happy Birthday Merle.  Say Hi to Mama & Daddy for me.

Merle Ronald Haggard (April 06, 1937 – April 06, 2016)

Six or seven years ago
Hard times
Better times

Hungry Eyes by Merle Haggard

A canvas-covered cabin in a crowded labor camp

Stand out in this memory I revived

‘Cause my daddy raised a family there, with two hard-working hands

And tried to feed my mama’s hungry eyes

He dreamed of something better, and my mama’s faith was strong

And us kids were just too young to realize

That another class of people put us somewhere just below

One more reason for my mama’s hungry eyes

Mama never had the luxuries she wanted

But it wasn’t ’cause my daddy didn’t try

She only wanted things she really needed

One more reason for my mama’s hungry eyes

I remember daddy praying for a better way of life

But I don’t recall a change of any size

Just a little loss of courage, as their age began to show

And more sadness in my mama’s hungry eyes

Mama never had the luxuries she wanted

But it wasn’t ’cause my daddy didn’t try

She only wanted things she really needed

One more reason for my mama’s hungry eyes

Oh, I still recall my mama’s hungry eyes

 

A Poem & A Picture (The Fountain of Youth)

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The Fountain of Youth

Photo and poem by Janna Hill

Moonlight on Water

The fountain of youth is a murky pond

Fed by deep springs of optimism

Where no one dares to swim

Doubting toes splash at the shoreline

Mouths turned down like fingernail moons

A nervous frog leaps, we run

Still, the ripple marks the flesh