POEMS OF THE WEEK BY THREE REAL TOADS

Today, my friends,  we have poems written by, in my humble opinion,  three of the most electrifying poets writing in the blogosphere today, Shay Simmons of Shay's Word Garden, Kelli Simpson, of another damn poetry blog, and Joy  Jones, of Verse Escape. I am sure most of you are familiar with these dynamic women from either Poets United or our sister site, Imaginary Garden With Real Toads. Draw up a chair and enjoy these poems, which just might leave you as breathless as they did me.

Train

The train that I took out of London seven years ago
appeared in my dream last night.
It had dinner plate wheels and hung on a chain that hoisted it up to a mailbox
where letters spread their wings to dry.

The train that I took out of London seven years ago 
only moves in one direction: away, and yet there it was,
undeparted, filling like a lung.
I have sung everything into the parish poor box--

those things I loved most, first to go.
I have sung until I am mute, and as unsentimental as an oxygen tank.
The priest cut off his ears and put them in my pocket
like coins. I told him his wish is dust, and he turned into Jericho's wall.

The train that I took out of London seven years ago
took off its clothes and reported my movements from memory.
The tracks only go in one direction: away, and yet there I was;
I woke up in love, a stone in flight, a letter with no address,

a dove that left its light down a well, yet sings in the dark when I'm gone. 

Shay Simmons, August 18, 2016

Sherry: Where to start, with how much I love this poem. I can feel it, the having-given-it-everything-I've got, that which "only moves in one direction, away", the "things I loved most, the first to go." I love the letters spreading their wings to dry.

Your closing lines leave me with tight chest, no air to breathe. I have so been there, and perhaps am there still. Sigh.

Shay: The poem is about a dream I had, but it had nothing to do with the train, which was something that actually happened. it represents giving up on love, and then i dreamed i was in love with someone, and when i woke up I was thinking, wow, I had forgotten ever feeling that way.

Sherry: Love is glorious, but when we lose it, it hurts. We are not always up for risking that much pain again. I  know the feeling of giving up on love.

Shay: Except for doggy love!

Sherry: Of course! Doggy love is the truest kind; it never fails us.

Shay: I had the Fleetwood Mac song "Sara" going through my head. Also, the person I was in love with in the dream was not anyone i know in waking life. 

Sherry: Thanks, Shay, for sharing this poem with us. That "dove with its light down the well, yet sings in the dark when I'm gone" will stay with me a long time. 

Now let's hear from Kelli, with a beautiful poem called  "Stars", written by someone who clearly still feels the full breadth and flight of loving.

STARS

I will write my love in stars;

let every letter burn and fall

bright - my wishes where you are.

My want is strong enough by far

to shrink the world between us small.

I will write my love in stars.

Need is wild within my heart,

beating thunder at the walls

tonight - my wishes where you are.

I love with every piece and part;

my skin, my cells - you have it all.

I will write my love in stars.

So let a longing for me start.

A want, a need, a love; call -

don't fight - my wishes where you are.

I'll split the earth that keeps us apart

if you give me any hope at all.

I will write my love in stars -

light - my wishes where you are.

Kelli Simpson, August 3, 2016

Sherry: This is so beautiful, Kelli. I adore "I will write my love in stars." Tell us about this poem.

Kelli: "Stars" is a villanelle, a form that should probably have died with Dylan Thomas. Oh, I'm kidding! Well, mostly. I find the villanelle an almost impossibly difficult form, and I generally avoid it like the plague. But in this case it felt right, and I'm actually not completely embarrassed by the result.

Sherry: I should hope not! I, too, find the villanelle very difficult. It is odd, as I love the pantoum, but somehow the leap from pantoum to villanelle just floors me. You employed it to perfection though. You inspire me to try again.

In closing,  let us enjoy a wonderful poem of Joy's, about one of my favourite creatures, the wise old elephant. Let's take a look.

THUNDER IN MOURNING

Thunder mumbled all night,
thunder subdued, a cello played
by a sobbing storm,
or the beat of a drum: an elephant's steps
on the following walk, trunk to tail through
the wrong end of the kaleidoscope
up the curved wall and
down down again toward the moving end.

As the stained-glass lights blind,
she shows me the way
to balance my bulk
up on a ball, on one oak-like foot,
small eyes sunk and kind
too old for my mind.

She's a thing born for trust
despite what we've seen
from killers and users,
pale abusers who'll never hold
the blowing rose that drops away
as they push close.
She knows
all our possum secrets,

our summer fades,
how we murder our minutes
to buy our day.
She sways, a grey
forest that grows wild and wide;
she blocks the dead light

that increases night.
She'll let my feet slide
down the dodger's paradigm
towards the planet that struggles
to be a star, to the music
womb-warm but
played from so far. She bends
down her great head

to let me ride, for going there
might take a fall, and all
that's left of our lives, drums in the rain,
footsteps patient--cello gone soft
thunder subdued,
thunder in mourning.

Joy Jones August 21, 2016

source

Sherry: Where to start, for it is all wonderful! The cello, the "small eyes, sunk and kind / too old for my mind", and the drums in the rain - such beautiful images. One feels the slow, plodding steps of the elephant.

Joy: Most of my poems start as a thought or a phrase. I scrawl them out and put them in a file to mature till hopefully something comes of them. This one had nothing to do with elephants when it first came to me, but it did have a spirit in it, a somnolent, wise and suffering one, so that when Shay asked us to write about elephants for a prompt, something just clicked and I began to rewrite it. The painting I found to illustrate it added the cello music in the opening. The elephant became part of the soul of the world, and of our own souls in that world, a mirror for both our best and worst selves, and for whatever is greater than each. And in the end, a force to give us strength and comfort.

Sherry: I love the concept of the elephant as part of the soul of the world. We need such mirrors of our best and worst selves, and the treatment of animals on this planet is perhaps one of the most disturbing. Thank you, Joy, for this wonderful poem. 

Kids, these three talented women collaborated on two amazing books : Three Note Howl: The Wild Hunt, and Gemini / Scorpio / Capricorn, both available by clicking on the links. I proudly own both and they are excellent reading.

Thank you, Shay, Kelli and Joy, for stopping by to share these beauties, and your love of poetry, with us. We appreciate it.

Wasn't this wonderful, kids? Three wonderful poems and poets. Do come back and see who we talk to next. Who knows? It might be you!

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!

Life of a Poet ~ Hedgewitch!

by Sherry Blue Sky

Kids, such a treat for you today.  We are sitting down with Joy Jones, the renowned Hedgewitch of Verse Escape ! So set down your brooms and draw near to the cauldron. I intend to ask her what magic potion she drinks, in order to write her amazing poetry. If I can get the spell from her, I’ll share. Then we can all write as fabulously as she does.

Poets United: Joy, I am excited to be speaking with you at last. So much to talk about! But first, would you set the scene for us? What is life like for Hedgewitch?

[image from google - layoutsparks.com]

Joy: I live in the heart of Tornado Alley on an acre of red dirt and wind, with my third and final husband of almost twenty years. We share Castle Hedgewitch with a huge Giant Schnauzer/Husky mongrel named Chinook who thinks she is the Iditarod sled dog champ, and a twelve pound Jack Russell terrier who thinks he’s a 400 pound gorilla. My neighbors let me vicariously enjoy their horses, cats and cows, and I let them share my frequently overwhelming and over-ambitious but always much loved garden.