Watermark

This Old House

This house has many rooms. Small
rooms, stuffed with large things; large
rooms, cluttered with trivia. Over-sized
bureaus and under-sized beds.

Razor wire guards the boundary. It sparkles
in the sun. Then the moat, deep and dark,
flashing with goldfish and koi. Harmless
beasts patrol the grounds.

The windows are mirrored on the outside,
shuttered on the in. At the parapet,
telescopes and binoculars, lawn chairs
beneath striped umbrellas.

No monsters hide behind the bedskirts.
They live under the floorboards, with the
operatic mice and web-obsessed spiders.
The walls are buzzing with bees.

In the attic, vintage toys and modern novels.
In the cellar, shell-framed mirrors and
wind-up robots; antique televisions with
shattered screens; bowls of scentless petals.

There is a room for the badgers, with their
sharp teeth and purple gums; and another
for the feral cats. Here is the room of old lovers,
forever young, forever rehearsing their lines.

Books are piled on every floor; art layers
every wall. In the music room, Bach plays
chess with Ani DiFranco. K.D. Lang is dancing
the tango with Philip Glass.

Here is the hall of file cabinets. Drawers
hang open, overflowing with lurid documents,
spike-heeled shoes, scandalous photographs,
broken china, diaries written in invisible ink.

This house is a labyrinth, a maze. Long dim
hallways, twisting corridors, hidden doors
and camouflaged, impenetrable chambers.
Do not enter. There is no exit.

At the top of the house, the gardens: desert,
tropics, alpine, rain forest. Coastal, filled with
wind and salt. Great arched skylights, views
open wide to the indifferent universe.

  

    Totally Optional Prompt: Fireworks! ... explore some pyrotechnic language. Go for some really over-the-top images.

Thursday afternoon: I came in and did some small, but significant, edits.

This is Your Life

 XX by nwolc

MP3 File

A wood. All branches bare, except for the hundreds
of tiny lizards hanging by their tails, crooked legs stretched
out, tiny hands reaching, bodies swaying in the almost
visible breeze, black limbs, white sky, then

a meadow, tall grasses, wildflowers, a wooden chair
standing in the meadow, many-times-painted many
colors, layer after layer, year after year, weather-crackled,
bubbled, chipped and paled. You see him, Weather,

an old craftsman in worn coveralls, bent over the chair,
carefully working away with ancient tools, carving that
valued antique patina, as if it had stood, unprotected
in a grassy meadow, season after season, and

now a vast lawn, green grass thick and mowed and
made for croquet. A man sits in the grass beneath a tattered
useless umbrella, no shield from rain, no guard from sun,
with its broken spines and ribboned cloth. The man sits cross-

legged, the man with the head of a kangaroo sits on the
croquet lawn, he hears the crack! of the mallet, the distant
plummy voices arguing, exclaiming, laughing, and when
you wake you still hear them, laughing.

  

    read write image #17 (now known as read write prompt #81)

    Totally Optional Prompt: Weather

[I sneaked in and did a little editing; will come back later and redo the audio. That gasp you hear was kitten jumping from the bookcase onto my shoulder. I thought I recovered fairly well?]

What I'll Never Tell You

  

1

I did go out that summer day
with an old lover, into the mountains.
We had a meal by the river, then
lay together and made love
on the scratchy blanket.

2

Peonies make me think of you,
how they open, and open, unfolding
petal after petal, so lush, so brazen;
how we chased each other, room
to room, naked and ecstatic.

3

If you had asked, I would have
gone with you. I would have
left all rules behind, followed you,
led the way into that unknown
wilderness, that anarchy of desire. 

  

This week's prompt was what i could never tell my mother.  I changed it just a bit.

Summer Solstice | Sitka, Alaska | 1993

This day blooms
under wide meadows
of sky. We lay
our sun-stunned bodies
in constellations
of clover and buttercups. 

Salmonberry bubbles
of sweet red light
break on our tongues. 
Shooting stars
in the flowerbeds,
pollen in our sheets.

   
 

For an audio post of this poem, go here.

The House-Bound Ventures Out

she prepares for days hoarding
energy / fireflies in a glass jar /
examines clothing for marks
of wear / a hole in the knee / buttons
cracked or missing / missing / stains
on the embroidered breast / amulets
in the pocket / earrings 
finger rings / key ring

her eyes widen / she can feel the lids
stretch / at the distant horizon / far
mountains / clouds / the river
high dark fast / pulling / at its banks
trees bent down in the water

a drive through the neighborhood
of biography / victorian towered flats
the hall of a bed / bath in three rooms
claw-foot tub / pedestal sink / time
cracked / old porcelain

cottonwood flurries at the windshield
out-of-season seed-storm / wide-winged
dark-tipped osprey / young-one
gliding in the still air

boarded storefronts / bowling alley
gone / in its place modern cantilevered
apartments across from the slumped motel
where once she lived husbanded / loving /
loved / daytime soap operas the drama
of housewifery punctuated by books
physics / philosophy / poetry

she buys new fish for the slaughtered pond
tiny shells & silk cord threading through narrow
street after wide avenue / this old woman /
green maples and ash trees


MP3 File