It was another TweetSpeak poetry jam, and this one started with a few rumors. All of the prompts were taken from Rumors of Water by L.L. Barkat. And it’s rumored that quite a number of poems emerged during the jam. We’ll have to wait and see what develops. You can’t be too careful about rumors.

Here are first seven poems from the jam.

Rumors of a Blue Geography

By @llbarkat, @Doallas, @kellysauer, @pathoftreasure, @amberleepb, @RachelleEaton, @divyaasachdeva and @shewhodid. Retweets by @wichmans, @cathiejoy, @shellartistree, @KChavda, @Skookum86, @kruss984, @LaundryLineDiv, @EscapeIntoLife, @umeshnrao, and @CarlyRocks. Edited by @gyoung9751.

Rumors of girls in white dresses

I’ve heard there are rumors
of girls in white dresses
and a woman behind a lens
and a boat with no dress.
Float at your own pace,
fingers dangling,
catching the current.
If I tread the water,
will it weep?
And what of the woman
and the white dress asleep?
How will I write
the white dresses
and the boat
and the fingers.
Oh, I want to write
the fingers…
White moon in a white dress
and me wishing for the next dance.
Can a dress dance
alone?
And a dress:
can it have wings?

How will I write?

How will I write
how the color of your eyes
falls at dusk,
lighting my way?
If life has no symmetry
but the water has waves
the color of your eyes,
perhaps that is symmetry
enough?

She follows the moon

She follows the moon
and dances with the stars;
her fingers disrupt,
catch a wrong chord,
cause disharmony.

She says:
Catch me without disharmony
catch me at the chord
to the left of the little hollow
at the base of my neck.
Catch me alone
or with a purple moth.
I really don’t care
how you catch me
with or without cause
with or without story.

She says:
There will be a purple moth
in every chapter
wings bent as a page
where the story waits to be
picked up again.
At the base of my neck
you’ll find the point
where our story
once began.

The fingers are playing

The fingers are playing
with keys and with strings
and silk faerie strands,
the touch light,
as the moth’s wings
the shivery slide of a nail
against skin
leaving me
rumors of water,
or the touch
that echoes the wing
the memory of lightness
Nails, skin
again storying my dress
and its whiteness.

Pan does laundry, too

Pan could play a laundry cup;
he still knows how to play.
The flute is in the movement;
I will follow Pan,
play his notes again
to echo your message written
inside this laundry-soap cap
you twist and turn with no effort
Shivery slide,
caps glide,
a twist, a turn
you’ll learn my message:
that Pan might make music
to woo us
into the lightness of a bubble
ascending.
The cap flies, spilling words
on the white-winged dress.
In the bubbles
we could rise and
see the world
through rainbow eyes.
A stroke it will be
dear lady
to make laundry of our love;
Just don’t leave me
rumors of laundry.

Spilling words

Spilling words
spilling wings
all this spilling
and I am ascending.
Pool the letters into hands;
pour them into words;
drink them down.
Pool the letters
into my mouth
and my lips will
spill them sweet
to you again

Laundry love

Love is tangled shirts
the hem of a skirt
caught in the brass button
of your jeans.
We hang it out
to dry,
a line of words
glimmering
like those rumors
rising among night whispers.

Ascend to the moon, dear love,
ascend to the moon;
follow the eyes
leading the way.
Let them fly
snapping in the wind.
Laundry love on a line
Ascend to the moon
on a brass button;
ascend the hem
on a line of thread.

From bees, our recent poetry jam on Twitter began to transition to swans (that’s how these things can go). Here are next five poems. All of the prompts were taken from Anne Overstreet’s Delicate Machinery Suspended: Poems.

Stories of the Bees 2

By @mmerubies, @llbarkat, @AnneDOvers, @Jeff_Overstreet, @Doallas, @SandraheskaKing, @lindachontos, @gyoung9751, @poetryinabottle, @rosanneosborne, @togetherforgood, @LoveLifeLitGod, @strangejkp, @quietlybananas, @mrsmetaphor and @dthaase. Edited by @gyoung9751.

Swans

The swans, serene, glide across the water, glass.
The swans, their necks of silk fingered softly,
shimmer their wings frosted by spun sunlight;
drift, leaving a trail of memories;
hiss thundering their wings like horses.

Swans in love

The slick of her neck in the bee-fingered sun
sang of summer, summer sweet as honey,
summer soft as a swan’s neck.
Her hand touched his cygnet ring.

The swan girl picked bees from the air,
rescued the ale boy from a sure gold drowning.
The seventh swan-boy, she loved him best.
Spin me a honey tree; kiss my signet ring,

Ring around a tree, golden dance of honeyed autumn;
ring around a stone thrown in.
The swan grays; the temper of that muscle
in the neck the back a ridge of brokenness.

The leaves turn into the gold of honey;
the afternoons cool with the flutter
of swans’ wings. We are past the season
of milk and honey: the swans sleep.

Forgotten are the swans of summer,
the bees floating through the heat.

A story told

A story told in a tracing of palm against palm,
she combed the nettles from her silken hair;
he combed the honey from the hive, he said
wipe the sting of nettles from my hand.

Wipe the memories too and the shadows
and the sour trace of raveled silk. I try to leave
the rind of summer fermenting into harder months
and dreams that begin on soon-dark afternoons.

Let me trace your palm in silver sunlight,
in golden moonlight; let me trace the lines
that lead to hope and leave behind
the memories trailing paths of grief.

The black cat

There is a black cat at my door,
jingling his collar, telling me
summer is gone, and he’d like
to come inside. The black cat
is not the only thing that tells
of winter’s coming.

And the black swan sang and
the black cat wound her tail
around the silver birch.
The cat is made of black silk,
cut from one special bolt
of cloth, lightening bolt, snap!

Snap! went the birch and
the lines and Snap! went
the taut silk. Winter comes
but first, autumn spills
honeyed sunlight upon
the trees, upon the ground.

Eat my rind

Eat my rinds, too,
there is still some
sweetness left in me.
Even the core has
value. Taste it, spit it
out if you must.

For our Poetry jam on Twitter in September, poet Anne Overstreet, author of the recently published Delicate Machinery Suspended: Poems, joined us. The prompts all came from her collection. And we got into bees and moons and ants and rosaries and all manner of things. (It was great fun.) The first five poems are below.

Stories of the Bees

By @mmerubies, @llbarkat, @AnneDOvers, @Jeff_Overstreet, @Doallas, @SandraheskaKing, @lindachontos, @gyoung9751, @poetryinabottle, @rosanneosborne, @togetherforgood, @LoveLifeLitGod, @strangejkp, @quietlybananas, @mrsmetaphor and @dthaase. Edited by @gyoung9751.

Honey-braided shadows

The sun braided shadows in my hair;
the shadows braided memories,
memories of slivered light and
honey-baked hair, honey-combed
highlights in my hair, baking
shadows into nets, catching my heart.

The bumbles braid a choir with honey bees.
It is a silly thing, my fear of bees. So small,
couldn’t really hurt me, right? But the bright
yellow buzz scares. They enter, they leave;
I can never keep track of their unlined path,
this unlined path stretching before my feet.

I’m eager yet afraid to follow the hum
of the bees to the braided sunlight.
The bees rise to braided rows of roses
that for the shivering had not even opened
their eyes. The path I left behind me is lined
with broken pieces, where I jumped too soon.

Bees and yellow jackets

Yellow jackets like nets cast
marked each step. The vibration
of the hive enfolded his hand;
the energy, transferred, traced
red lines in his palm, enfolding
his face, hive-warm, light-combed.
The vibration of the bees enfolded
his heart, the lines in his hands
between heaven and hive.
The lines of bees enter the heart
of the flowers, carrying away
the sweetness. These days are
my hive. This man, with his tongue
heavy with honey, wipes a drop
at the corner of his mouth.
He can never love another.
She will smell my scent on his skin,
where the honey-love stained his flesh.

The song of the bees

The song taken up,
his heart fills, keeping
to the beat of wings,
sending messages
of hope they speak
with dance of wings.
The struck strings
of bee hum the path
of nectar to my mouth.
Honey, I strum.

The Queen arrives

The Queen arrives, her throne embellished
with sticky sweetness of love. In the winter
the Queen sleeps; in Spring she wakes
to blossoms, and swans. The workers rush
to serve; she answers with beating wing.
The hive’s a frenzy in the seasons of blossoms,
the Queen’s guard on watch.
If this is my hive am I the Queen Bee or
just a drone mindlessly working?
I choose to be Queen Bee. I will woo
the worker and feed him my honey soft words.
My love will cling to him like syrup.

Is it so bad to be the mindless drone
gathering nectar from flowers braided
with spun sunlight?

Tiny weavers

Tiny weavers of petaled cloth,
The bees’ rhythms are heard only
by petaled ears. My mind touches
the memory of bees at work.
Mindlessly I trace my memories,
shadows silking an amber past.

Below are five additional poems from our recent poetry jam on Twitter. I call these our Kansas phase. All prompts came from Kingdom Come: Poems by John Estes.

The Kingdom Comes III

By @llbarkat, @SandraHeskaKing, @gyoung9751, @jestes, @Doallas, @jejpoet, @CeliaNickel1, @togetherforgood, @PensieveRobin, @kellysauer, @sethhaines, @theeagleacademy, @mdgoodyear, and @elizabethesther. Edited by @gyoung9751.

I came to Kansas

I came to Kansas to do a job,
to find a home,
to sing a prairiesong ,
and fell asleep on the drive.
I expected Kansan flatness,
but it wasn’t there. It was
a flatness that rolled, and
moved like a wave, a wave
of grass and cornstalks tall.
I came to Kansas to stop
the plastic bags right
at the kitchen door.

There is no ricochet in Kansas;
the song plays forever,
ancient like the moon,
like the trees it has never seen.
Kansas leaves me
longing, for i am missing
the Oregon trees and
the Oregon woods. In Kansas
the innocent rivers dwindle
to streams of wheat.

The best way to Kansas

The best way into Kansas
I have found is by flying
the house out of Oz:
there’s no plane like home.
What if Dorothy couldn’t
live without plastic, without
fake red jeweled toes?
Her ruby slippers were really
orange, I saw them once
in real life back when I was a kid.

What if Toto barked at the latex
moon? Would there be a shortage
of gloves come morning? Or would
the little dog chase the bouncing
moon, the bouncing latex moon
to California, or chase the moon
to Oregon woods? Pull that latex
moon, measure its give and take.

Under a latex moon I thought
she called me polysemous.
I later found I was mistaken.
There’s no plane like home
except I roam. Kansas, don’t
feel lonesome.

It happens in Oz

Wheat streams golden while I dance
in glass slippers under the Ozzian moon,
a rubber moon, a contraceptive or a big
bouncy ball, if the moon were ever to fall.
Corn stalks pretend to be a yellow brick road
I step across cornstalks, I wade through wheat
in slippers of ruby, slippers of polished
cornstalks, ruby slippers with cornstalk tassels.
If you danced on a rubber moon in ruby slippers
would you be able to tap? Or would your dance
just be a bounce? Oz just doesn’t deliver what
it promises; it makes good on all claims.

Rubies matter, too

She wants to think that rubies matter,too,
and the latex and the windmills she saw
on an old blue dish. Orange latex makes
for good dishes, clean scrubbed, with Oz:
that’s what she wants to think. Crickets
sing as she dreams of rubies and slippers
made of green. Ruby slippers behind her,
she embraces their echoes running wild
through the poems of ancient trees.

Whither Toto?

Toto stepped sprightly
in those ruby slippers,
bounced all the way
to a latex moon, bouncing
in a stitching rain, bouncing
like wheat or corn. Toto
swings on tassels
passels of ruby days.
With a fork and a spoon
he swings on the moon
over the trees of Kansas.

Here are the next six poems taken from our recent TweetSpeak Poetry jam on Twitter. All the prompts were lines from Kingdom Come: Poems by John Estes.

The Kingdom Comes II

By @llbarkat, @SandraHeskaKing, @gyoung9751, @jestes, @Doallas, @jejpoet, @CeliaNickel1, @togetherforgood, @PensieveRobin, @kellysauer, @sethhaines, @theeagleacademy, @mdgoodyear, and @elizabethesther. Edited by @gyoung9751.

I sailed a galleon, a tree

I sailed a galleon upon the sea,
I sailed a galleon, once a tree.
The tree’s the bed we’ll go to nest;
Its ancient wisdom offers rest .

We shall rest under ancient trees
to ponder the echoes that rise
over time, like those same ancient trees,
winding wisdom instead of lies.

The tree is the bed; that’s what she said.
We sit in our tree-bed, reaching for nests
of glass; when the wings are just right
and just ready, we break the nest
like hatching chicks.

This timber cannot be mined for wood;
This tree cannot be hollowed to float.
I try to keep up with moss
that grows too quickly, clouds
that change into three ships sailing.

Mad men like fools

I look for mad men who, like fools
rave and read the river, follow its clues.
Some rivers smile, and some weep,
but the best of them laugh at feet,
clues clinging to toes until we itch
inside river-wet socks.

The rocks rise, bald caps before
the river’s blade carves time
in sandstone, molding sandstone
nests to hold the river. Canyon walls
swallow tears while trees float
down the laughing river

A river flows new every time.
A river laughs new every time.

Stitches

From stitched together stories
we weave a narrative. Stitches
and laughter bind up our wounds;
rivers of laughter bring healing.
Stitches, or itches, slide
between measured spaces
where the needle went down.
How do they tickle; how do we
laugh back? Oh and we laugh
and we laugh and we call it stitches.
We laugh until the pain pines away;
through the eye of the needle we pass.

The Northern Lights

The northern lights glow
like broken glow sticks;
the northern lights grow
like arainbow sky-glass.
We pass through
the northern lights.
We pass through.
Don’t peek between
the blinds, throw them
open, inhale the lights.
Oh don’t close the shade,
let the northern lights in,
let the northern lights come in.

Plastic we shape

Plastic we shape to fit our need:
the curve of an eye, the point of a nose.
Plastic is molded in stainless forms.
The potter molds the plastic, heats

and shapes the form of the rounded
hip of the sleek Cadillac. Infinity is

curved, and it may be plastic: mold me
with your plastic hand, and I will speak

nothing to the curve of your emptiness.
In your hand I take the shape of plastic.

Sharp is the edge of plastic bent and
broken, a shiv to finish the work.

Plastic cracks with laughter, splintering
percussion glass that never gets burned.

I hear the sound of plastic bursting,
plastic laughing, plastic melting.

If I water plastic seeds with plastic
water , will plastic sprout and grow?

The river’s voice

Faith finds me here, under a tree.
Along the river, I hear God.
Are we the camel then, finding
our faith not so rich as we thought
we might be? Is He laughing then,
with the river’s voice, asking us
to laugh along the river with Him?
He is speaking silently, wishing,
wanting for me to find Him.
I think perhaps He is a laughing
river and weeping waterfall
altogether laughing and weeping
with us.

This past Tueday, TweetSpeak Poetry hosted another poetry jam on Twitter. Fourteen intrepid souls participated, jamming to the prompts from Kingdom Come: Poems by John Estes. And the poet himself joined us, and at the end offered this observation: “The poetry-tweet-jam is a thing like no other. An exquisite corpse on ritalin. Nice invention.” We think that’s a compliment.

We posted our review of Kingdom Come here in May. In 2009, we reviewed his chapbook, Breakfast with Blake at the Lacoon. John’s web site is here. He is an assistant professor of English and driector of Creative Writing at Malone University in Ohio.

The first five poems edited from the jam are below. In honor of the poet and his new collection, we’re entitling this group of TweetSpeak poems “The Kingdom Comes.”

The Kingdom Comes I

By @llbarkat, @SandraHeskaKing, @gyoung9751, @jestes, @Doallas, @jejpoet, @CeliaNickel1, @togetherforgood, @PensieveRobin, @kellysauer, @sethhaines, @theeagleacademy, @mdgoodyear, and @elizabethesther. Edited by @gyoung9751.

If I Am Guilty

If I am guilty, let it be
with moss, never with
milk, not linen nor silk;
silk, like moss, appears
between the cracks of
innocence,
innocence with rain
innocence with woods
innocence with poets
and authors and love.

I love you by moss, in rain
beckoning like white stitches
against the grey, stitches
between layers of skin,
fastening tight, holding,
overrunning with stories
remembered no longer
the stories I write,
the stories of clouds,
white galleons sailing.

The Woods of Ancient Trees

The woods of ancient trees
are calling, beckoning;
the echoes of trees
are crying, sighing.
I am called by the tears
of the woods, come be
washed innocent.
My guilt drips like
Spanish Moss, a tangle
of ancient deceit.

I am full of deep clouds,
falling rain, climbing up
and up. I am grown heavy
with burdens, echoing deep
Can you stitch a tree?
What would it take, what
echo might it make?
Tears evaporate, become
the clouds grown heavy like
roots and underground rivers
coursing through canyoned walls,
washed with canyoned tears.

History Speaks Here

History speaks here; I hear it calling, carrying
words we dare not speak. Unspoken, sapped
of life, soured tastes, scoured from our mouths,
they fall heavy, tinder underfoot. Meant as
nevermores, they move away, trading
innocence for embarrassment

Laugh, laugh, wash all guilt away with sweet
cleansing laughter, with laughter and pain,
birth tears. I laughed at a river, once, and
the river laughed back. I didn’t know
the river smiled, staying true yet always
running away, meandering in woods.

I Hear Echoes Laughing

I hear echoes laughing, stitched
from nether parts,
I see galleons laughing, stitched
from rivers of roots,
I feel birches laughing, stitched
from roots of rivers.

There’s a galleon, and a canyon,
galleon ships on canyon shelves,
tilting tips toward sandstone waves,
galleon ships and canyon laughing,
echoing where the river used to be.
I can jump off into water or
jump down and fly.

A Child’s Quick Wit

A child’s quick wit
brings us to a close;
a child’s quick close
brings us to a wit.
A river’s a river,
So let’s drink tea.

Six poems and 16 fragments – the last of our poems developed from the recent poetry jam hosted by TweetSpeak Poetry on Twitter. All prompts were taken from Harvesting Fog: Poems, by Luci Shaw. And our thanks to Luci for participating with us (and she gets full credit for Fragment 15).

The Cinnamon Beetle 6

By @memoriaarts, @mdgoodyear, @llbarkat, @EricSwalberg, @luci_shaw, @gyoung9751, @RuminateMag, @mrsmetaphor, @doallas, @LoveLifeLitGod, @nmdr_, @KathleenOverby, @Sand_RAD, @mxings, @mmerubies, @charsingleton, @CherylSmith999, @lauraboggess, and @VinaMist. Cameo appearances by @LuvStomp, @poemblaze and @annkroeker. Edited by @gyoung9751.

Lovers in the rain

I am rain, sweet rain,
and I am carried away;
hold my hand, love, lest I slip
quietly away.

Return to me, let me touch
the turn of your back, down
which a gentle hand might slide
and find its way to love.

The thirst is quenched

Doorways I

I slip on stars, careening
through the doorway,
falling, and spilling
into the river of my love.

A winter star, observed
through a doorway
will show us through
the darkest night of love.

And on till morning one star
turns milk-white, slips among
the stones, falls, quietly comes
and rests beside the moon,

and spell us for a moment
of enchantment awash
in moonlight, turning us
in a glass smoky with desire.

Memory and time both fade
like sunlight. Now I write
of doorways and wonder
who goes to their beds alone.

Doorways II

I reach through the doorway
to snatch a winter star, placing
it on your finger to light our way.

The winter star holds the eye,
arrogant in its crystal beauty,
sharp light reflected, in sharp air.

The doorway of memory has closed
upon me, the darkest winter night
hides the star that would lead me on.

A star through the window, like a kiss
in the night, opens a translucent
doorway, the face at the doorway.

Lay me down again, by the doorway,
next to the constellation of you.
Lay me down again by the doorway.

See the ashes, cinder-soot of the love
we had, the winter, the island, the dream,
of the doorway and the ashes.

A glitter of ash

I wait for you as I wait
for the ocean to part,
where I might fling
a glitter of ash you left.
Can a tongue taste
the clouds or speak
the lightning reflected
in your eyes? Can a hand
grasp the thunder?
His fingernails are translucent;
veins run through those hands,
Veins like strong ropes sew
their way through the tissue
of his hands.

He was crazy

He was crazy, standing in the doorway,
gun loaded. He asked if I could kill a man
cold-blood. The gun was heavy, cold;
I did not even want to touch it but I did;
I could not let him think I was afraid.
The bed, yes, always the bed; put away
the gun; follow me back to the bed.
Piles of pillows, shame hidden; come
back to bed now, put away the weapons
and trust my body to kill.
When I need to write I call on him
in the doorway, in the dark, with the gun,
and I ask him to write me again
and to the bed return, a winter’s memory
to dream on, the way a lover does,
enchanted, in the face of a full moon.

Blue sheets

The faded blue sheets were all I had
to tell me of that night…
I was scared on the blue sheets
in the blue room with a wizard
on the wall and a trunk full
of my letters by the bed.
Sheets were borrowed; sheets
were blue; I was swimming
in blue sheets, diving through dreams.

The last blue sheets of paper
hold your last words to me
until the drip I hear in blue
plastic barrels washes your words
from the last blue sheets of paper
folded in your hand. Enfold the sheets
about me; life will live on the morrow.
I am tired.

Fragments II

1.
When I walk down his staircase,
I let my hand trail the soft wood
of the banister. It is silk, like skin.
It is reassuring.

2.
A verse in glass
he etched
to woo her.

3.
What can one read
from lines in parts
apart across
a thousand miles.

4.
Stick my finger in a jar
of peanut butter;
brush my teeth with it.
No one is watching.
If my fingers were candy,
could I resist biting them
off?

5.
I floated on a blueberry,
drifted to an island,
found an open bed,
and slept.

6.
Ashes pile up under the full moon.
The beetle crawls under sandstone
rocks. The stain of ashes is like a curse
in the dark.

7.
I sat entranced
by a rainbow beetle,
a thick blue and red
beetle, with wings
of colored hope.

8.
The water at hand
recalls the gentle
thrum of rain, and
mornings given
to too late rising.

9.
Lightning tang
acid touches tongue
bright flavor carries
away thought, leaves
only now.

10.
What are you doing?
Reading poetry online.
That sounds horrible;
I’m going to watch
something on TV.
That sounds worse.

11.
His arms, a sail,
we soar in wind
and wave free,
free, unfettered.

12.
I’d like it to be Lent again.
I feel like I belong in the ashes
of mourning. Instead here I am,
hurtling forward to Advent.

13.
No clause
perhaps
but claws
sunk in
do hold.

14.
Tip your hand now
into the water, warm
bubbling water;
close your eyes.
It really is time
to heal from this.

15.
Rain finds the river
through forest and
road and rocky slope,
awash in moonlight,
stones smooth,
like pillows.

16.
Fast poetry.
Fun and fancy free.
And free!
Great goodness
in small chunks.
How sweet it is
to tweet.

Below are five poems and five fragments pulled from our recent poetry jam on Twitter. The prompts were taken from lines of poems included in Harvesting Fog: Poems by Luci Shaw.

The Cinnamon Beetle 5

By @memoriaarts, @mdgoodyear, @llbarkat, @EricSwalberg, @luci_shaw, @gyoung9751, @RuminateMag, @mrsmetaphor, @doallas, @LoveLifeLitGod, @nmdr_, @KathleenOverby, @Sand_RAD, @mxings, @mmerubies, @charsingleton, @CherylSmith999, @lauraboggess, and @VinaMist. Cameo appearances by @LuvStomp, @poemblaze and @annkroeker. Edited by @gyoung9751.

Consumption of words

Why aren’t you rushing?
The ashes are disappearing
like words, words that nourish,
truth that burns going down.
I will always eat your words;
you are never too late. Bitter
taste it leaves is better than not.
I would eat them
a thousand days,
a thousand nights.

The ashes of black tea are
cinnamon and sugar on your breath
A spoonful of sugar with or without
the medicine; sugar,
sugar, to put out the fire!
Nor are your words spent like ash,
spread like ash in the balm,
a coating thick
cinnamon and sugar
a coating thick on toast.

I am not averse to ashes worn
on the forehead of my soul.
My forehead burns. I like the fire:
it spreads like paprika words.
I scatter paprika like ashes on the bread
just a dash of it is spice enough in a night.
And butter, there must be a pat. Sugar
cannot hid the painful ash sliding down
word made flesh, burning tongue drinks
the glass red as fire. Shards, like words, heal.

Ashes must lay fallow to grow again
and we wait, rushing not.

The girl with no shadow

I want to be the girl with no shadow, but
I cannot be her. I love myself too much.
My shadow is my dearest friend. I lit
the candle, three-wicked, and I watched
the flame in the dark, and I smelled
the perfume of your ashes. Now,
with pink pills, they take a knife
to my shadow, ripping her apart
at the seams, covering her mouth,
and she tries so hard to scream.

When do you know your candle flame
is dying? Who is there to say this is
the end? My therapist says I have
a way with words and something
deep inside me tries to sing.
More than a year since I held her
hand in that coma no one knew
would end. Now she rolls her eyes
at me, stands to watch TV, smirks.
I cleaned the dresser last night.

I have milk-pale skin and cinnamon
freckles and ice cream breasts and
hard rock eyes. I am edible and
unknowable. I am one.
I will put my cinnamon wherever
I want to; no clause could hold me.
My rocky eyes betray my indecision.
I do not know what I want…
who I am…
where we are.

Is it bad to miss the words
that come with theinsanity?

Love once taken

Love once taken
can only be returned.
Love never received
can still be longed for
Return, my love,
return from the islands
of spice, unmask
this heart, rend
like the curtain, torn.
Shear me wide open
or speak of the scent
of spice.

A river of words

I interrupt the rush of milk-pale river
of words that lie on my tongue, unkept.
Words, water rushing, carving paths they
never expected to travel, interrupt
the nights, interrupt the waves, washing
smooth stones to step upon, under
cool water, and cool water beside the bed
before we pray, before we say goodnight.

I interrupt the noise of crashing waves
and sit in the ashes of silence, listening
to poems of the deep, inhaling
the sand smells, the years of thrashing
these stones. Walking the shallow river
by moonlight, I feel the cool on my feet;
a blessing. The river of moonlight flows
swiftly through time, lulling me to sleep.

The stones, smooth stones, river born,
know my skin, feel my pulse in their fingers,
spill beneath my feet.

Crystalline strawberries

Crystalline rigid prisms splinter,
quartz gathers, glows.
And quartz and clouds like stones
and the pulse of milk against the skins
of strawberries tenderly crushed
between the teeth; such fruit, swimming
in cream, floating and brand new, is savored.

Inspired by joy, I dine on goats milk and
strawberry panini I made myself. I once
wrote of eating strawberries with a man
in bubbling hot water, chocolate dripping.
I wrote our love. The moonlight flows like
thick cream on bowls of strawberries.
I am a berry and I wait my turn.

Five fragments, and shards

I.
Leave your father and your mother,
and cleave… cleave to me.
Do hold, and pierce and cleave,
leaving a mark, the way a lover does,
in the face of a full moon.

II.
I was manic then, throwing words
at the screen, like they were
the only way to save myself and,
somehow, they were my poison.

III.
Two eyes I have; I can look straight
Ahead and straight into your soul
but what if I’m blind in one eye or
the other or both?

IV.
Blessing and curse,
each terse verse
lifted from the fire,
cupped in these hands.

V.
Shadows worn without apology,
don’t try to lose or loosen them.
Sometimes clouds shadow us;
sometimes lightning burns us
Lightning, too quick to catch
flashes glass clouds
of shadow skin.

Guided by the words of our trusty prompter, our recent poetry jam on Twitter swirled around the lines from Harvesting Fog: Poems by Luci Shaw. And they swirled around oceans and ashes, a drive down side roads, the telephone and how something as mundane as burning the toast becomes something else again.

Here are five additional poems from the jam.

The Cinnamon Beetle 5

By @memoriaarts, @mdgoodyear, @llbarkat, @EricSwalberg, @luci_shaw, @gyoung9751, @RuminateMag, @mrsmetaphor, @doallas, @LoveLifeLitGod, @nmdr_, @KathleenOverby, @Sand_RAD, @mxings, @mmerubies, @charsingleton, @CherylSmith999, @lauraboggess, and @VinaMist. Cameo appearances by @LuvStomp, @poemblaze and @annkroeker. Edited by @gyoung9751.

Oceans and Ashes

I wait for you as I wait for the ocean
to part where I might fling a glitter of ash
you left, the ash of your tattered soul
glittering on the surface of my inner ocean.
And ash fell from your words, smeared
on the forehead, littering the fireplace,
a blessing either way. Ash to ash and
dust to dust fling wide an ocean of life;
sing now, no clause perhaps but claws
sunk in. The ashes of your words tattoo
my skin like claws sunk in; ashes glitter
on my tongue. Smoke and clouds of spice
stain the hot water. Fling spice instead of ash,
burn it first as incense, in memory.
I tasted you. I tasted you, as I said goodbye.

Driving on side roads

I’m not asking for any of that. But I can drive.
Or you drive; I’ll read poetry on side roads
As the fires stain the sky.
I’ll take your twists and turns of verse;
you keep your eye on the road.

I wait for the ocean to drive its poetry
on side roads; it is on side roads that
I find the poetry lost and forgotten.
How can I keep my eye on the road
with you beside me?

And what if you kissed me? What then?
if you can kiss with one eye on the road
what possibly could be the problem?
I pull over to the rest stop.
And am arrested for slow driving.

I give the cop my latest poem. The Ticket:
Driving too slowly, distracted
by view or thought.
Why aren’t you rushing?
Beach at low tide kisses the sunset.

And when those side roads swell
we watched ash spin, clawed against
the onslaught. It’s beautifully dangerous
to read poems while driving in the summer heat,
windows down, the words curving on my tongue.

The tide is out

Try scaling the sandstone rocks
now that the tide is out;
the stain of salt is in the air.
The tide is out, the wash will wait.
Who will take away the old appliances?
There would be the dryer;
we could kiss there, and the TV
we’d try every channel.

The telephone

Slam down the receiver.
Cell phones are much less
satisfying. There is only
the “end call” flashing.
No crash, no tangle.
I hate the telephone.
I hate to send my needs,
shrill ringing, into someone
else’s day. He never called.
Not once in all these years.
I am to be satisfied with
an email, a note, here and
there, that says he loves me.

The phone rings in the silent room,
pixels flashing notes across the miles.
I long for the smell of ink, the touch
of paper, the phone still ringing.
The words are burning me up inside;
I have to get them out.
The paper folds again and again,
the ink wears thin on the creases,
thin like the curtain that holds
your shadows .

A voice without a face, so little to see,
so little to say; pixels hurled from black
to white, charring in the heat of my anger,
tormenting me with their lack of poetry,
beauty.

Phones do not ring anymore. Now,
they sing snippets of someone’s song.
They tinkle like the ivories. They buzz
and shake and no one can hear the voice,
a voice I will always hear even when
it’s not speaking.

Incinerating the Toast

Incineration is only one way
to avoid the law. I’m not averse
to incineration, of words spent
for unfulfilled nights. Words are
the curse of language. Words are
walls between us.

Every night the incineration happens
again. The smoke detector is broken.
I am not averse to glass either, but
smoke detectors lie, crying wolf over
burnt toast. I am not averse to burnt
toast or lies if told gently; scrape
the black away, the toast is fine.

Lie detectors lie, crying wolf over
truths unseen by the naked eye.
The boys asked why a dark setting
on the toaster? I tried to explain
this odd preference for burning.
Always with the burning.

We now have an additional seven poems from our recent poetry jam at TweetSpeak Poetry. All the prompts were taken from Harvesting Fog: Poems by Luci Shaw, including the title of one of the poems below, “The Body Curled, Like a Comma.”

The Cinnamon Beetle 3 

By @memoriaarts, @mdgoodyear, @llbarkat, @EricSwalberg, @luci_shaw, @gyoung9751, @RuminateMag, @mrsmetaphor, @doallas, @LoveLifeLitGod, @nmdr_, @KathleenOverby, @Sand_RAD, @mxings, @mmerubies, @charsingleton, @CherylSmith999, @lauraboggess, and @VinaMist. Cameo appearances by @LuvStomp, @poemblaze and @annkroeker. Edited by @gyoung9751. 

When You Turn Away

When you turn away
what blue anger heats the air.
The air heats, melts
Venetian glass, beetle blue.
The glass I got in Venice
is a mirror,
is the iris in your eye,
is the color of bruises.
I am always hungry for cinnamon
and air thick with desire.
I desire stars and raspberries
and the softness of you
when waking and
for water wending,
for the turn of your back
down which a gentle hand
might slide and find
its way to love.
I turn you in a glass, darkly,
smoky with desire,
renting space on charcoal skin,
smoke disguised as desire.

Seasonal Fruit

The raspberry concentrates summer
in each tiny drupe, surrounding
seed with sugar sunlight. Desire is
Christmas in July, raspberries rather
than hollies, summer’s scorch rather
than quenching snow.
Send July heat please,
melt me like butter; my tomatoes
ache for angry red.

The Letter “W”

The letter ‘W’ turned round
becomes the ‘M’
for mine own eyes
might see you
sweet beside me.
The letter W is like me and you,
double dose, melded into one,
wending our way
conjoined
like twins;
one heart,
many limbs.

The Curse of Language

Words are the curse of language.
Words are walls between us.
I will not partake of verse,
this curse of words.
Pour the curse out,
turn it into care.
Give me cities of walls,
stack word on word into towers.
Poems know games
prose cannot imagine;
this is why prose
keeps poems around.
I’m the blue in the glass,
I am the questions.
I am the poem
you could not write.
But poems are such stains
as only death can bleach;
there are questions no poem
can answer. Speak only in prose.

The Final Pouring

At the moment of the final pouring
the glass melts; furnace heat destroys
use, introduces possibility.
Melting glass, bubbling,
waiting to be formed
and twisted, like waves
of words spilling like juice.
In the final pouring,
see such shape as
may be made and quick
as smoke rise.

The Spilled Poem

During the party the host
writes a poem on his coaster,
then spills his wine to hide it.
It bleeds onto the rug, spilled wine,
but the deep pile white shag
reminded me of the sea.
I meant to choose berber
because the stain wouldn’t show.

“The Body Curled, like a Comma”

The body curled like a comma
takes its pause as light grows dim,
for feet like a question mark,
the curve of toes that say, “When?”
The body curled like a comma
offers a pause in the muddle of chaos,
smoke clouding my memory, my body
curled in arms, in hope, a comma,
a paisley comma, upside down tear
with a curl. Breathe between
thoughts, balancing
on the comma,
resting on hope.
Periods are like gunshots
through the heart.
Colons twist in the belly.
This is my punctuation,
pause and eat,
and remember me.