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Indigo Vales

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Indigo Vales

Tag Archives: poem

Isn’t All Poetry Confessional?

30 Wednesday Oct 2019

Posted by Kristine in Uncategorized

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Tags

amwriting, angry woman, confessional, labels, Mary Oliver, poem, Robert E. Howard, Sylvia Plath, woman


They had to call it something.  Everything has a label, has to have a label otherwise it cannot be understood?
Things cannot be as they are, they must be classified and microfisched for further review by busybodies who write the law.

I wanted an MFA tag, but that’s fruit from the Tree of Knowledge (of)  
I refused to pay the price.
‘stead I carry pomegranates in my apron
I never share them because that would be truth-telling, that would be
the real deal.
Who wants to hear more sylvia plath confessionals
yet another unhappy woeman
writing names in the sand
counting down?

I would rather have been Mary Oliver in the end
some kind of smooth stone you keep in a mason jar
or a sassy fawn named for a childhood friend
the one who still carries the North star

or better,
a body carved with hieroglyphs of the sea
wrapped in a Robert E. Howard shroud, epically 

or simply

e e cummings
      free

10 Saturday Aug 2019

Posted by Kristine in Uncategorized

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Tags

hyena, lion, Persephone, poem, poem?, prompt, season, seeds, sorting, the long night

She Lay Curled In An Animal’s Trench

She lay curled in an animal’s trench
Soft shed hair helped keep her warm.
She patted the ground hoping for lion
but most likely flighty hyena lay here.
She pulled in handfuls of dust and chaff,
plucked shallow weeds.
They smelled of old blood and broken loyalty.

Obsidian sky dripped malachite meteors,
low slow and long.
Chandeliers of stars once reflected in the pond
that lay east of her chin
But the water was gone
consumed by tongue and air.

Rested, she rose and twisted tufts of weed and hyena
into her hair.
She spat into the sandy earth and ground it in her palms,
painting the four points on her face.
She continued her long walk west back to the sorting place
determined to be a mirthless, disobedient beast
until the sun came back to retrieve her.

(Persephone’s Staircase)

Lillies In The Vase

27 Monday May 2019

Posted by Kristine in Uncategorized

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Tags

blood, Buddha, color, flower, life, Lillies, meditation, poem, Saffron

Maroon lips, the blood we cannot talk about
Buddha robes, patient orange sit with me ten minutes straight,
silent
or thinking thinking thinking,
name your thought is it salty or sweet
Saffron savory, orange tang touch it with your tongue you’ll never go away unsatisfied
(are you less thinking thinking thinking?)
Pink pale prim fuchsia blushing from behind happy to share water with you
let us walk, step right. Step left. Step right. 

Mellifera

04 Saturday May 2019

Posted by Kristine in Uncategorized

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Tags

flower, honeybee, nature, poem, Saffron, wild

I see you bee, flower
I see you flower, bee

Come lean on me
come walk in me
give me take me flower, bee

saffron fingered me, you, bee.  

Upon Seeing The Word “Waves”

12 Tuesday Feb 2019

Posted by Kristine in Uncategorized

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impossible, Mermaids, ocean, poem, Polaris, power, waves

Sentient explorers
rogue shoulders
wild breathing
last gasp upon the shore, hammerhand, quartz-carver
cloak of invisibility
keeper of secrets
Mistress
impossible blues
Polaris gleams upon her black spine, hope for men aloft on Poseidon’s foaming mares
and dreams for little girls wanting to be mermaids.

A Hymn for You.

15 Saturday Dec 2018

Posted by Kristine in Uncategorized

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blood, crime, hymn, lost, poem, trauma, unknown victim, woman

No one was looking for you, but I guess I was meant to find you. 
It happens sometimes when you’re adventurous, curious, 
spelunking in roadside limestone caves or shuttered buildings
nobody has any business being in, but we go. 
Dare, we go. 

I want to believe that if I sprinkled water onto your bloodstain
shadow on the cement floor I could reconstitute you,
I could bring you back to us so I could know your name. 

No one was looking for you, but I guess I was meant to find you. 
Somebody’s daughter. Maybe somebody’s mama caught up in 
the life. They brung her down here for trade, 
you can tell because the torn condom wrappers say “ribbed for her pleasure.” 

The reconstituted you tells me you don’t know why things went wrong,
it was supposed to be a simple cop, but it turned into
something else she hardly cared about,
it would be over soon
and there was no reason to bring out the knife
she assures me. She was only fake fighting back, after all. 

She slides back down into her bloodstain 
her body taken wherever they took, quiet again. 
She bears no wounds of the holy martyr, pierced in the side by 
fated centurion, followers capturing the flood in a cup
prepared to write hymns for her future. 
She was only ribbed for your pleasure. 

I gathered wildflowers whose names I do not know. 
I knelt in a field and…
Maybe I’ll let you know when I’m ready to let them go. 

Night Sounds*

21 Saturday Jul 2018

Posted by Kristine in Uncategorized

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Tags

evening, fireflies, heartbeat of the night, life, magic, nature, noisy neighbors, poem, silence, soundtrack

Speak softly if you must speak at night.
Sparrows might be preparing to take flight
Finches nestling in for the night
Crickets and katydids are creaking vigorously
Not for you and not for me, so hush and let them be.
Speak softly if you must speak at night.
The breeze is changing direction.
Rain is coming but you would hardly know it.
Worms will rise and robins will strike in purple dawn
before the sun gets in the way
tomorrow.
Speak softly if you must speak at night.
You might hear the lamp post lights humming
your very own heartbeat
your lover’s breathing
you can almost hear a fireflies’ wings beating
if only you would speak softly in the night.

Or maybe…  do not speak at all.

*dedicated to the neighbors across the street who haven’t a clue what all is going on in the night because they’re too busy saying terrible things to each other they believe is righteous and apropos.

The Pleiades Are Not Amused

18 Sunday Feb 2018

Posted by Kristine in Uncategorized

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Tags

editor, fear of success, Hercules, not writing, periphery, Pleiades, poem

“You want me to what?” she said, nearly choking on her raspberry-flavored coffee. It was 11 AM. She was fully awake but not yet showered or dressed or fed. She’d spent the morning reading Twitter trying to make sense of the outrage, impotent, her body filling with her own outrage and bile. Her lips and throat were dry. She pondered more coffee. She pondered the pain in her shoulder she’d ignored for months. She pondered the call for submissions and wondered just what do you mean, call for submissions? You talking to me? She pondered emailing the editor to make some small talk, to see how he’s feeling these days. She supposed if she wrote to him he would reply kindly and she could take it as some kind of encouragement to answer the call, but the man is busy and he ain’t got time for loiterers.

She thought about answering the call for submissions, the deadline is plenty of time away. A comfy goal. She wrote a little poem long ago that would be perfect for their upcoming tome, absolutely perfect, but what was the title–what did she call it? Where did she save it? What file? Which drive? Or should she begin a new piece just for their next issue?  Should she search for it now or take a shower first? Or have another cuppa joe? She couldn’t start, do an actual anything without being clean and watered and fed, who can actually doing anything in disgrace?

“What do you mean, call for submissions?” she murmured. Might as well ask me to divert rivers to clean out the king’s stables, she thought. It’s only been 30 years of shit piling up. No biggie. She supposed she’d get started after lunch. No sense trying to find a poem in a haystack on an empty tank. Her mind drifted into wondering what she should wear today, something comfortable, was there enough dirty clothes to take a run to the laundromat yet, and then she thought about putting meat out to thaw for dinner and prep veggies for a nice salad. Better use up the cauliflower before it goes bad…

Jim Nabors

01 Friday Dec 2017

Posted by Kristine in Uncategorized

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Tags

childhood, choir, don't give up, holy, Jim Nabors, memory, mother, music, passion, poem, power, sing, tears, voice

Jim Nabors has left us. I am glad he is in peace. I can’t say that he’s the reason I wanted to be a Marine. It’s too complicated for that. (It’s certainly more complicated than the unyielding call of the jets flying over the warehouse where I toiled.)  His most recognizable character, Gomer Pyle, was simple in nature, kind of heart, which seems antithetical to being part of the war machine. He was part of my childhood thanks to Mom and his voice… oh. Jim Nabors’ voice.  I learned about passion by his voice alongside Andy Williams, Johnny Cash, Cher, Barbra Streisand, so many more. I heard his voice sing the hymnals I recognized from church, and it moved me, a girl of impressionable age.   Jim moved on, and I am grateful to the internet for sharing his performance of Impossible Dream (The Quest).  I dare you to listen and not be moved and reminded that the world is the life and we are stewards of it all, and our voices are holy. Our voices are holy.  (don’t waste it all.)   He is with my mother now, who introduced me to black and white TV. Shazam, and Golly, and Surprise.

Oh, by the way.  Tell me how you feel after reading the lyrics to this song. How does one bear it, how will you learn to bear it, where does your strength come from to sing those notes he sings effortlessly the power of that poem, to find the will, and the will, and the will to do anything at all, in those years that I didn’t know I had any power at all, little girl? Jim’s song seems effortless. I will never write or live or be as effortless as the victory of his voice… but it sure does give me something to strive for.

I may or may not stop weeping on the sound and the voice of his memory. And that’s just okay.

Forecast

10 Friday Mar 2017

Posted by Kristine in Uncategorized

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Tags

poem, weather

The sky is tinnitus white

Branches, cracked tempera in the window frame

Prayer plant on the sill will sit high and wear garnet today

Her leaves will unfold and sigh in cloudy reprieve.

Some say snow is coming

But it matters little to my rhyme.

I have come to ignore forecasts

Because Virginia changes her weather clothes on a dime.

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