Dear Wild Flower,

I’m late! I’m late! I’m late! For our collaboration. So, I’ve decided, since my poetic brain is AWOL I’ll just leave whatever words come along.

I’ve been stuck on two ideas that I have been trying to wrestle into something poetic: “not this skin” from your last poem; and the concept that the third part is always the hardest.

And so:

Three times sets a rhythm
And four turns again
Another three to follow
To reach a journey’s end

Returning to beginning
Then rising to respond
Balance in the order
Beneath the broken sounds

Between the fire and water
All things do compose
The magic of the universe
In the essence of a rose

There’s rhyming in the stars
Harmony in the winds
Whispers from the fire
The oceans pulse within

Burning off desire
By drowning in the sea
Love’s pain, a recompense
Submission to be free

These hearts beating
Beneath these outer shells
Attune to deeper drums
Seek out deeper wills

These skins, these words
These metaphoric faces
Cast shadows in this light
Over time, only traces

But three times — a rhythm
The music of the heart
On four, the dancers rise
To begin their fire art.

This poem follows Wild Flower’s “A long night inside”… and my third part of our collaboration.

Storms in like a hurricane
rebirth and renewal in its wake
sweeps down like an avalanche
broken away by the heat of the sun
shakes up like an earthquake
dissipating pent up force

burning and breaking,
destroying and quaking,
bursting and tearing
blinding and burying

…

there is no safety
in raging against a storm
that can neither know
attack nor retreat

only in radiant acquiescence
and a sure acceptance
that everything changes
that everything passes

no room for fear,
no sense in fear,
no movement in fear,
no living in fear.

No fear …

Respect.

One would think
After all these days and nights
Following one another
Days and nights and days

After all these changing names
For nameless…realities

After all these changing choices
Breeding conscious…ness
Over top the silence
Of being aware

After all this laughing,
Dying, crying, loving

One should get it.

If not for these illusions,
Distracting by their names,
And their here now
Gone tomorrow

One would get it

Then, how would one know love,
If not for difference
And distance
And change
And turning, turning, turning?

Then how would one escape
The valley of love?

— -

Our collaboration Wild Flower— an invitation to you to write about any concept taken from what I have written. Three times each, ok?

I will write for you no more.
This pen is on a one way trip,
Out from this city of tyranny,
Off and away to the badlands.

This pen is on a one way trip
To write the empty out of love,
And it ain’t gonna be pretty
When those tears rain like blood.

Out from this city of tyranny,
Where hearts freeze in sorrow
And the lump in our throats
Needs to come out right now.

Off and away to the badlands,
On a right good medicine path,
Where rivers talk and thunders sing
And the silence is deafening.

So this is final notice-
I’ll be hell-bent and barefoot
And every word I write
Will be on solid ground.

Off and away to the badlands,
Out from this city of tyranny.
This pen is on a one way trip.
I’ll write for you no more.

Garnet for Poetry in Form.

Epistle to the City of Tyranny was originally published in Poetry in Form on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

If one of us should claim
That truth might be contained
In lengths of time and space,
I’ll ask the question that remains:
Is truth but this domain?

Or ask, is denial the aim,
Lies lie beyond this frame,
Like a fetus might proclaim,
The womb is their sole fate?

And if one of us creates
The song to lead this age
To some ideal place,
I’ll ask for proof of claim,
By your chosen ways.

Or ask, does superstition reign,
Soothsayers rise in fame,
As if answers rise from flames
To the readers of its names?

We stand together in one state
‘tween tomorrow and yesterday,
Yet can never truly say
What secrets there might lay
In either past or future days.

Poised on strands of today,
Might not it show my way,
A secret so clearly plain,
Old as my rise from clay:
Life is in my hands to name?

While measures that I make
Are really for my sake,
And meanings, I might take
To build a better place
By my will to create.

The one choice I can say
Is to make a power play
For riches and for fame,
Or, content to work away,
Meet the needs of the day.

gossip speckled whispers hiss
in misa-miso tongues,
slither “he is”, “she is”,

wisps pass sin-dipped lips,
spitting silver-tipped incest,
insisting innocence

with, “This is our secret”,
in-their-net of prison sills,
spinning spider silks

within this din of shadows;
this tell it like it is,
insipid insincerity.

‘Whisper’ prompt suggested by Kathy Jacobs on Chalkboard

*Incest, in this poem refers to the incestuous nature of gossip, rather than its commonplace meaning.*

Yesterday is our shadow,

Cast under our tomorrow light.

Whatever Sun we follow,

Yesterday is our shadow-

The Way we take defines our Tao.

Whatever we think we might,

Yesterday is our shadow,

Cast under our tomorrow light.

Garnet for Poetry in Form.

Time’s Shadow was originally published in Poetry in Form on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

If (

plethora in prose
populates a panoptic
of phlegmatic pontiffery,
procreating with impunity,
promulgating persistent
petulant poo-pooing)

Then

(purposefully plunder,
per pragmatic prejudice,
pompous, parrot parody;
post posthumous poems,
pen plump pithy puns,
passed postmortem popping)

Printf

(“Party like a pirate’s payday”)

(Additional video thanks to Vito)

I will begin by saying
gentle, followed by
justice. And so it must be.
 — — — -
“You have the right to be … you…
This right has to be
earned every single day.”
(The First Lady, here)
 — — — -
Endless lines of poetry
Are all meaningless,
But for what lies beneath them.
 — — — -
This flight has entertainment
All the way back home.
Pay no mind, the raining tears.
 — — — -
I should be willing to trade
all the words I own
For a single empty one.
 — — — -
Craft is never about time,
Finished in a day,
More like love and sacrifice
 — — — -
The market says, with a laugh,
Let’s chat up a storm,
Losing is what we’re here for.
 — — — -

I heard a word calling from an island somewhere in the ether sea. I wanted to give her a name, but I came up short.

It sounded like something I had heard before, almost a deja vu, though it was in a language that was as if a breath.

Or it may have been a sigh or just an invitation that beckoned me to follow, though I couldn’t tell a compass heading.

And a storm was coming. Waves were beginning to splash over the gunnels of my skiff and I needed to turn into them.

So it was I was taken further out to sea, away from my safe harbour. And still, I heard a whispering within the wind.

These days I’ve taken to writing poetry that I set to drift on the currents, to try giving meaning to the soundless word.

If not for that storm, I would never have come this far. I have resigned that it carried this sweet voice I am yet hearing.