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Showing posts with label My Poems. Show all posts
Showing posts with label My Poems. Show all posts

Friday, August 22, 2025

The Terrible Mistake

 


On the seventh day, 

when the Almighty should have been napping,

He paced the glassy surface of new poured sea

wringing his sculptor's hands in celestial anxiety.

A nagging tug, a vexing doubt

about creation, something about creation,

something obvious and overlooked,

the one loose thread

to unravel slowly down the eons....

Wednesday, August 6, 2025

Four acre lots of the mind,

are circumspect and clean, so clean


God forbid the ideas should touch one another

Or leak onto the plot next door


Which might accidentally create some 

new upstart idea, something


Unclassifiable and awkward

Requiring a hazmat team to extract....


For fertility of ideas

multifamily structure is best

 

Stack em up

like floors in a highrise


Skyscrapers of boxes on a dock

rickety, shabbily

 

Zagging every which way

expanding in various directions 


In danger of falling over

Askew. Like community garden patches,


Overgrown, seeding their neighbors

plots with something untoward and interesting.... 


                            --- Mad Mar (Mistryel) Walker

Thursday, July 24, 2025

The Essential Trick

If you have perennials, biennials, 

things that seed themselves 

and return to you in odd moments,

sprout anew after a while of dying back

-- then you can't indiscriminately

pull up unknown sprouts in the name of neatness.


Be patient.

Study the situation.

Is it a weed or a daisy in waiting?

or Queen Anne's Lace 

or the wee tip of fern

about to uncurl?


The essential trick?

Never uproot a thing

that will, sometime later,

fill you with the earnest, wild

energy of delight

& make you glad you are alive...


                            --- Mad Mar (Mistryel) Walker

Friday, November 8, 2024

Afterlife

 


AFTERLIFE

I’m just a sullen moth
flinging myself at the porch light,
always speculating,
splitting hairs,
asking myself why.
Is it the light?
Or the warmth?
Or the stillness of the
dried bugs inside the fixture
with that almighty bulb….
very still, but not "one" with the light
as their papery wings become dust….


#poem #mortality #metaphor

Wednesday, November 6, 2024

The Hiding Habit

originally posted May 1, 2024. Seems worth another go....


THE HIDING HABIT

When the world shouts obscenities
and the winds of change roar in the trees,
move low to the ground to the hiding place.

When fear is strong, pay attention.
Sit in stillness, in silence and listen.
Wait. Think. You don't have to move yet.

Breathe in. Breathe out.
Purr to comfort yourself.
If you must move, be stealthy,
silent in the shadows, then return to safety.

When quiet evening finally comes - emerge. 
Look around. Sniff the air. Stretch. 
Give a wide yawn. Blink. You are still here! 
Pay attention!

- Mad Mar Mistryel Walker
--------------------------------

When this photo was taken, the windows were wide open and there was a crew of roofers working on the block  After a while I noticed my three cats were missing. I hunted under and behind everything until I found them. They were  lined up in a straight row in the narrows behind a dresser, hiding from all the noise. 

Friday, May 3, 2024

No restaurant like home

 

NO RESTAURANT LIKE HOME

Whole wheat and rolled oats with flax, 

golden in the hot pan

cook one side then add to the top:

Red red raspberries, crunchy chopped walnuts.

Add remaining batter on top. Wait.

Wait some more. Flip. Wait. Then Flip some more.

When you think it might finally be cooked inside

Cut it in half and look.  Make sure!

Get out the maple stuff.

Pour the coffee.

Be grateful. 

Know how improbably lucky it is to have a meal at all.


- Mad Mar Mistryel Walker

Wednesday, August 22, 2018

Short Poem on Aging: Surprise





Can't understand how I grew so grey.

It crept up over 10 years or more.

Inside I feel like I'm 22,

except when I feel like I'm 94.




......

Thursday, August 18, 2016

Curious encounters with nature




This is an old smudgy pencil sketch of mine. Not sure an actual horse would react as calmly to the half-man half-butterfly thingie in its meadow - which probably, being self-aware of its halves is having doubts of its own. Once the wings were moving I think there would be a hasty, slightly hysterical horse retreat....




I'm kind of low energy these days as you can see by this kind of sad poem.

Doldrums

A tickle really, a night breeze passes, barely touching
In darkness I orbit the neighborhood's circle,
pass the same facades repeatedly.
Anchored by the hum of the highway,
maybe a celestial dipper or two rising
or a flock of little porch lights 
where a few someones live, 
I appreciate their seeming elemental persistence.
Even now I point a bobbling flashlight to ward away shadows, 
though I have nothing to say to shadows these days.
No one minds my silence.

I originally put his up at https://april30poems.blogspot.com/2016/08/unusual-encounters-with-nature.html?showComment=1472256583013#c7537839509355428630 and added it here also...

Wednesday, May 18, 2016

Poem A Week 3 - Waking up fast


Waking up fast

I don't remember how I got there
or why I was flying a plane over a road
a big plane, an airliner kind of plane
.
and I was just noticing how low to the ground we were
Noticing the telephone polls below, cars busy on the road,
treetops brushing the plane's belly, a hillside in the distance.
.
I was thinking why is the plane flying so low,
moving so blindingly fast, and why am I the pilot?
And someone was screaming at me
.
Pull up Mar Pull up now!!! as the ground got closer.
I woke up right then shaking. Not sure why I was flying
or where I was going, or who left me in charge, or
.
if I had changed course or crashed in the ether of the dream.
But it was time to get up time to get up out of bed
and into the new day. So I did.


Thursday, May 12, 2016

Poem A Week No. 2 - Unexpected Attic Access

Unexpected Attic Access

"I need to get into the attic"
the AC tech said matter of factly
.
"Not sure you can get there from here"
I said. As he darted out to his truck
.
I opened the hall closet
empty but for its pile of boxes,
.
Pushed up on the hat shelf,
found it folded back easily.
.
Pushed up on the cloths pole,
found that popped right out of its caps.
.
as I slide box after box out and into the hall
here comes Mr tech with his folding ladder
.
He props, climbs, pushes up the lid
and disappears. "Nice Space up here" he says
.
from out of sight, and a sudden light
shines through the square opening.
.
I have to see, I climb up the ladder, look around
suddenly I;m sitting on the edge of the unfamiliar
.
it's totally clean and empty, but for fiberglass bats
I make mental notes, location of the light switch
.
Kinda odd how you can live for years unaware
under this unknown, unimagined spaciousness...
.

Saturday, May 7, 2016

Poem A Week No 1 - At your funeral mass

At your funeral mass
Poem for Peter S. & for Elaine, Sharon, Dan & Nate

.
I am not listening to the priest
not looking towards the altar.
Not saying the words.
I stand up, sit down
when told, but no
song no words come forth at all,
no call and response.
I listen to the resonant soprano singing,
the echo of it in the empty space above.
I look sidelong, avoid the casket in the center isle
hidden under a white cloth and a symbol
that means nothing to me now.
I try to look right through the
vivid stained glass scenes.
I notice the intense blue
red, green, not the figures
or the stories they portray.
I wish instead I could see the sky
or a river, the sea or a mountain
a tree bright in the daylight
beyond those windows.
Or you on the lake in your sail boat
with your boys, family, friends
and your ready nonchalant smile.

This poem is for the exhusband of a good friend who's unexpected death caused a lot of stock taking. First of the group to fall as they say. It's not that we were particularly close - it's that he is my age I guess and I remember him from his hey day. The photo is from someone else's facebook post. I hope they don't mind. 

Saturday, April 30, 2016

April 2016 Poem A Day #30

The prompt was write a dead end poem. I hate that.

No absolutely not

No endings, dead or otherwise
are permitted in this poem
this is a living cascade
it will not stop this day
or any day to come
this life will
go on with or without me
with or without another poem
the little one celled things
will stretch and divide
and the little wavy armed things
will reach out and grab a meal
somewhere in the miniature
a future of spinning orbs
until a black hole grabs
it all, and then who knows
what happens in there?
ReplyDelete

Friday, April 29, 2016

April 2016 Poem A Day #29 Grief Hazard

Grief Hazard

Boxes neatly packed
stacked in closets
under tables
stowed in odd spots
boxes unlabeled but for
a single word: Mom.
.
I packed them last year
numb not knowing
what to do
I packed for days, hid
this and that away
carefully wrapped,
and now
.
I wonder
what memories hide
in each, if I look....

maybe not right now.

Thursday, April 28, 2016

April 2016 Poem A Day #28 Let the memos begin

Let the memos begin:


trivial outcomes * noticeable chaos * important resolutions
riotous beginnings * interesting research * calm procedures
mournful happenstance * breathable equilibrium * celebratory fireworks
calamitous collapse * undetermined consequences * fortunate coordination
ambitious manipulation * opportunistic flaw * low energy
virtuous approach * flexible consideration * spiteful divergence
love *  hate
indifference 

Wednesday, April 27, 2016

April 2016 Poem A Day # 27 Relief Sculpture

Relief Sculpture

Remove a little here
scoop out some more
deep enough to accentuate,
to undercut, the line of something or other.
Smooth the center, or rough it wildly up.
Remove more, take off the edge itself
so the world curves into concavity.
Take away the center.
See clear through
to the other side.

Tuesday, April 26, 2016

April 2016 Poem A Day #26 Law of Emotivity

The Great Law of Emotivity

Everyone knows
love and anti-love
cannot coexist
in the same space
as they readily ironically
annihilate each other.

Monday, April 25, 2016

April 2016 Poem A Day #25 - Planting

Planting
the spring exercise

  Position the shovel.
  Place your full weight
  on the shovel by standing
  on its top rim so the shovel
  sinks into the earth.
  Rock the shovel back and
  forth to loosen the earth.
  Leverage it down
  and swing up
  this small load of earth
  out of a brand new hole.
  Empty the shovel to the side
  Do over. Do over. Do over. Do over.
  Remove the container and wrappings
  from the plant and set it in the hole.
  With a trowel ease the dirt around the plant.
  Gently tamp with a thumb or a toe.
  Keep filling in with rich loose earth.
  Water liberally.

Sunday, April 24, 2016

Saturday, April 23, 2016

April 2016 Poem a Day #23 Sole Entanglements

For this prompt (to write a poem about footware) I am posting a poem I wrote many (MANY) years ago - because it is my definitive footware poem.

Sole Entanglements


Old shoelaces unravel
unruly as love
as likely to trip you.
Untied, each lace dances
frayed and flaccid
reluctant to knot again.
.
Velcro closures lock
and cling too willing to grip
but Velcro can't let go
There's rip and uproar
when suddenly undone.
.
Old loafers are the best.
So easy to slip
in or out of at a
moment's whim, they
shelter your pennies
never ask for socks.

Friday, April 22, 2016

April 2016 Poem A Day #22 Conditions for Constancy

Am getting silly here. The prompt was use the word star____


Conditions for Constancy

Human beings
require a certain stability. Therefore
it would be best if the constellations
held steady on, not wobbling about
or shooting off into another paradigm
skipping into another multiverse
or tripping oversubtle event horizons
lurking at every bend of light waving,
or every twist of history's winking
or twinkling. Yes, to  remain
would be best so always
use starch when laundering
an inhabited universe.