POEMS OF THE WEEK ~ BY THREE REAL TOADS

For today's feature, I went a bit farther afield than Poets United, to our sister site, Imaginary Gardens With Real Toads. I am sure many of you have come across Fireblossom, Hedgewitch, and Mama Zen, while making your rounds, as many of us participate in both sites. They each write brilliantly, and each, in the last few weeks, wrote a poem that knocked my socks off beyond any hope of ever getting them back on. Enjoy! All poems are used with the poet's permission.

The first poem of Shay's that I ever read, at Shay's Word Garden,  blew my doors off. I grinned all the way through The Witch of Waxahatchee By the Numbers, as I had not known, before that poem, that the sky is the limit for just how far a poem can go outside the bounds of conventional poetry. In that poem, when the person on the front porch threw a dead squirrel through a passing pickup's window, I clicked Follow and  have never looked back. 

Pictures of Heartbreak, Poems in the Spokes of a Wheel

Here is how I imagined my heart:
blood compromised, made thin and blue by work schedules,
thoughtless words,
kindnesses forgotten,
mad-making obstacle dreams and stale air
arriving at the right atrium like someone stumbling in out of the snow;

Received like a guest, served coffee and cookies,
surrounded by the biological greenery outside the atrium,
this blood eventually slipping through the delicate leaflets 
of the tricuspid valve into the guest room quiet of the right ventricle.

Shall I go on? Isn't it obvious, the druggy dream of the pulmonary artery,
the bloom of new love in the left atrium,
the free fall through the mitral valve into the left ventricle
with its clocks and chimes, and finally the aorta into the unknown?
This was my concept, my imagining.

Reality was this:
An endless rain, the filth of the floodwaters bringing
boards, bodies, houses, livestock and death on a black surge,
an ink to begin my poetry with.
Within my chest, the wheel, the weird carnival,

All I had ever consumed or breathed gathered in ceremony,
children being born and let go but never let go,
the shout above the wind, the wonderful stupidity of the church tower
or widow's walk in a lightning storm,
the stanzas, the strophes, the angeldust afterbirth of all I needed to say.

Go ahead, tell the one whose love you need the most
that you are dropping out of med school,
that you are bisexual,
that you have knocked over a bank and shot the President;
they may forgive you, or at least pretend to.

Finally, tell them you are a poet and watch them walk away.
Feel the flood, the fever and fire-- 
then, dear heart, start writing.
_______ 

See what I mean, my friends? Sigh. Right after I read that poem, I read the following one, by Hedgewitch, written to the same prompt. And then I knew I had to share them with you.

PICTURES OF A FAILED EXHIBITION

From the days of my religion
when men were gods
and trees were prophets
painted tall and straight
till the witches'-broom showed,
I took nothing in the end
but the relic in the bone box
framed by black velvet,
lid so carefully carved
with all my fables.


I set it on a scarlet altar
with seven priests and seven
blessings, where canvas cherubim
genuflected with a smirk.
In times of great need, I took it out.
I overlooked its sour smell,
its shriveled form, and
fervently adored it as I
prayed its intercession
in my damnation.


But each year it just
grew blacker, crackled, smaller,
till opening the casket one day
I saw only a brimstone dust.
Then the incubus came
to please and torment me,
the spoiled trees
were felled, the priests
unfrocked and the cherubim fled,
never having truly felt at home


All that was left
hanging in the chiaroscuro
at the alter was a memory-shadow
shape of a severed thing decayed
pointing out the way
to dissolution. From these pictures
I learned two things:
that evil is good's bad dream;
that evil is insane
for it cannot dream at all.

Joy writes at Verse Escape. Brilliantly. Her work is so first rate words fail me, even when leaving a comment. "Evil is good's bad dream."  I can only read and admire her talent. I love the trees being prophets, and those stellar closing lines. In Joy's mission statement, she said she began her blog for archival purposes, (as did I), thinking poetry was an obscure art in this digital age. She says she was delighted to discover poetry is alive and thriving online. Me, too. 

Mama Zen, Kelli, writes at another damn poetry blog  with an edge with which we women, especially, resonate. She puts into words what we all sometimes feel, but often can't find words for. She writes it real, succinctly, with precision, and absolutely nails it, every single time. Hear her roar.

Alpha Bitch Can

Alpha bitch
can get things
done.
Every closed door is a broken window.

Alpha bitch
can find
feral words while
growling through her lipstick
while helping pups with homework without
batting an I (can't take this anymore!).

Alpha bitch
can kill with kindness,
love lick,
mother,
nurse -
one handed and half-brained.

Alpha bitch
can feed on pain

and never needs
peace or
quiet or
rest or
sleep;
never stands on the threshold of an ugly cry,
a very ugly cry,
wishing she'd never laid eyes on these people,
wishing she was still young enough to run
somewhere
anywhere
anywhere but - NO!

exhale / inhale

Alpha bitch can

exhale / inhale

keep her zen and her shit

exhale / inhale

together.

Wow! So powerful I almost substituted another poem for this one, to make nice, the way we women tend to do.  And Kelli has written a thousand brilliant poems to choose from. But then I remembered that the point is to show how far a poem can take us beyond "nicety and convention", deep into Truth and the real stuff of life. 

Kelli has the gift of expressing a woman's reality, which is far from turning apple peelings into pie in the sky. She serves up her pie, hot and delicious, sweet and sour. Just like life. 

I don't know how these three poets do it. Consistently brilliant, poem after poem. I am just so very glad they do. 

Reading their work stretches my mind and my spirit, leaves me breathless with admiration, makes me want to dig deeper, write bigger, go farther. The takeaway is: the sky is truly the limit. If you can think it, you can write it. 

We must mention here that these three fantastic poets collaborated on bringing two outstanding books (so far) into the world: Three -Note Howl: The Wild Hunt, and 
GEMINI/ SCORPIO / CAPRICORN, both available at Amazon by clicking on the links.

                                        

Thank you, ladies, for stretching our wings and widening our vision. Thank you for the dazzle, and for the joy of reading your work. You three are my poetic she-roes!

Do come back and see who we talk to next, my friends. Who knows? It might be you!