Category: collaborative poetry

• A response poem to Holly

  Dear Holly,

  Mystic

  Stand still long enough in the present
  moment, and Border Town springs
  to life, a mirage of mirrored souls
  strolling down Main Street amid a sea
  of glass-front shops. Twenty-four hours
  a day, they say, it may appear,

  sometimes as near to you as a pear
  in a bowl, a still life given as a present
  we open by breathing, forgetting the hour-
  hand, the minutes, the seconds that spring
  to life in a primordial sea,
  a briny home, birthplace of our souls.

  Border Town, Edge City, we don’t know it by a sole
  name; a phantom place appearing
  as Atlantis, tendrils of sea
  anemone fingers waving the present
  tense in our faces, until the spring
  that winds us loosens, a slack Slinky in our

  chest that slows the hour-
  glass sands. We plant the soles
  of our feet, grow roots, soak up spring
  water until openings appear,
  inner floodgates that present
  a view to the hidden city of Eternal Spring.

  It’s a Shangri-La we thought we’d never see –
  conjured countless times at happy hours,
  downing gin and tonics to wash away the presence
  of black marks on our mortal souls.
  It’s like wind in the trees, or peering

  into a well, fed with a spring
  meandering from underground seas.
  A cavern in the ribcage, it once appeared
  to us as the cauldron of a witching hour,
  but now has become our sole
  mio, a sunny bow on a wrapped present.

  Time is an unfurling spring, a malleable hour
  in which we see the yards of our souls
  uncurling, appearing to us as our own present.

  ***

  Holly (Lost Kite) and I have been responding to each other’s poems in what has become a series. Here is her poem.

  The prompt this week at RWP was to collaborate on a prompt, and then mix up the prompts to write a poem. I’ve got to admit that although I contributed to the prompt, I chose to collaborate by responding to Holly’s poem.

  December 4, 2008

  Lost Kite, read write poem, sestina, the edge where poets meet

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• A response to a poem by Holly

  Dear Holly,

  The buttons on my sweater
  strain at the thread, promise to bare
  my heart, leave me unfettered

  in a world of burly, leather-
  clad men who stare
  at the buttons on my sweater.

  I’ve never been a ‘come-hither’
  kind of woman–I’d rather
  my heart stay unfettered.

  One night of heated touch on feathered
  pillows, and my fingers close with care
  the remaining buttons on my sweater,

  now tense from coming together.
  I doubt I could ever prepare
  my heart to leave me unfettered,

  to open up its folds, consider
  taking up the dare¬
  to loosen the buttons on my sweater,
  to freely bare my heart, unfettered.

  ***

  I love playing around with forms. This one is a villanelle. Thanks, Holly, (Lost Kite) for the great image of the straining buttons, and for the idea to use the image as a metaphor for internal changes.

  November 28, 2008

  Lost Kite, villanelle

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• Lament for Federico García Lorca*

  
  

  You will always be a myth weaver
  with coal-black eyes who sings to me
  across the years of gypsies on shadowed roads,
  of velvet dark, of orchid dreams,
  of girls at night who wait downstream,
  windows open wide for men on horseback
  making their way down rocky slopes.

  But the riders have fallen–
  their underwater faces
  waver in moonlight cisterns,
  their arms like lilies glow under silver beams.

  If I could hold your hand across the years,
  lift you from the rivers where you wept,
  I’d draw you to my chest,
  wipe the tears you shed
  for all the lovers
  who slept before their time
  on earth was due to end,
  for children who died before
  they learned the dance,
  for men who were the darlings
  of other men,
  for Spirits of the Wind
  who tore away the chokehold
  of the trance.

  The stars began to fade
  the night you died–
  shot in a cave, tossed in a grave.
  Now your words of passion
  shine for you instead.

  *This title is in reference to Federico García Lorca’s poem, Llanto por Ignacio Sánchez Mejías.

  I first wrote this poem as a sonnet:

  
  Lament for Federico Garcia Lorca

  Garcia Lorca’s lambent words release
  their light across the years – his gypsy songs,
  laments for dying heroes now at peace
  in moonlight cisterns shadowed all night long.
  If I could hold his hand across the years,
  and lift him from the rivers where he wept,
  I’d draw him to my heart and wipe the tears
  he shed for all the lovers who have slept
  before their time on earth was due to end,
  for children who were born to those who danced,
  for men who were the darlings of their men,
  for those who broke the chokehold of the trance.
  The stars began to fade the night he bled–
  his words of passion shine for him instead.

  ***

  The prompt this week at Read Write Poem is to break the rules. I took what I liked from the sonnet, and rearranged the lines to suit the spirit of the poem. Lot’s of rule smashing going on here!

  November 25, 2008

  Federico Garcia Lorca, read write poem, sonnet

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• read, write, collaborate

  In Your Eyes My Own Reflection

  When you step out from behind
  a gossamer curtain, the shape
  of your face, the line of your lips,
  releases the light, curves into morning.

  Pieces of me stick to whoever
  gets too close, they tie you down,
  rough as rope.

  As you peel me away
  I feel a shiver, notice a reflection
  in a mirror – is it you, or is it me?

  ***

  The lines from this poem come from several different poets. To read the original lines, visit read write poem’s collaborative poetry prompt, by Read Write Poem participant Holly, from Lost Kite.

  November 6, 2008

  read write poem

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• just when you think it's over, a collaborative pantoum

  just when you think it’s over (click to listen)

  The philter will bind you a year and a day,
  your body and mind beaded on a thread of time,
  and when at last it’s done with you,
  holding the strength of your sinews,

  your body and mind beaded on a thread of time,
  what will you have but fire on your mind?
  Holding the strength of your sinews,
  the philter will find you, I swear, some way.

  What will you have but fire on your mind?
  Arms & eyelids strung, you’re a marionette.
  The philter will find you, burn your mind, some way
  as you dance on the street for the crowd.

  Arms and eyelids strung, you’re a marionette,
  a tattered Pierrot at a mute carnivale.
  As you dance on the street for the crowds,
  your muscles bundle into nerve bouquets.

  A tattered Pierrot at a mute carnivale,
  void of a beloved, you will need my help.
  As you dance on the street for the crowds,
  you climb inside my cauldron, feast from burning hands.

  Void of a beloved, you will need my help
  opening surfaces, unsheathing layers.
  You climb inside my cauldron, feast from burning hands
  that run along your rough fibrillations.

  Opening surfaces, it unsheathes your layers,
  and when at last it’s done with you,
  running along your rough fibrillations,
  the philter will bind you a year and a day.

  ***

  I arranged the lines for this pantoum from quatrains by the following poets, including one line I wrote.

  rethabile
  nathan
  michelle
  jillypoet
  dana

  To read the original quatrains, please visit poems in progress: quatrain chain at the poetry collaborative.

  The first and last line of this pantoum comes from a collaborative poem by Jo Hemmant and Michelle McGrane, entitled Each act of love foreshadows the end.

  November 5, 2008

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