Angel Wings

I'm not surprised we give our angels wings:
It's not just flight we're after - after all,
Man can fly now, more swift than any bird
And higher too, past earth and clouds and sky,
But still the search for wings continues on.
In jetpacks, parachutes, gliders, kites,
Da Vinci's ornithopter, still is sought
The means to mount on high through man's own strength.
For what's the sky but empty blue expanse?
It's feathered wings we covet, not mere flight:
The sound of wings - all rushing like a falls,
Their look - so fierce and soft, like driving snow,
Their intricate design and perfect form -
How can we help but want a thing so sweet?
They give us more than sky, if not quite heaven,
It's power to move to choose, it's power to be!
The denizens of heaven may not be winged,
But even so, it's good enough for me.

Outdated

This was my (first and, I'm afraid, only) attempt at humorous poetry. Unfortunately, I seem to have been born without a funny bone. I think I can promise you a villanelle by next week, though.


The dragons of that country having all been vanquished
or chased into hiding (he could never find them)
or tamed into small, portable flame-throwers,
the knight
polished his sword a little brighter
and took up fighting shadows.

There's No Such Thing as Darkness

First week of poetry month! Yay!


There's no such thing as darkness,
really, just a stubborn insistence
on ignoring the vast majority of
light in the universe.
There are no dark places anywhere
just places we're not equipped to see
and even what we think we see
have more and more dimensions of light
(which our eyes can't see at present, of course,
but even now we're getting there - imperfect but audacious
scanners and lenses and metal eyes)
and not a deepest abyss of Earth there is
that isn't lighted.
So please, no more of this nonsense about
"the dark and empty reaches of space" -
Ha! - as if
those weren't the fullest
and brightest places of all.

You call it foolish but I call it real

Today's poem is a guest post by the very famous poet e.e. cummings!
Just kidding, he's dead. It's by me. But it is inspired by him. And it was so terrifically fun to write that I might be adopting this as my permanent style.



You call it foolish but I call it real
it's funny how some who grow up and around
folks have forgotten to learn how to feel
(the nearer the sky is the nearer the ground)

here lie the people forgotten by dance
slowly stopped motion in tombs made of glass
they might still alive but they leave that to chance
a hiss and a murmur and life whirls past

We who remember the life before life
and after and during but   are   right now
we are the ones who sing fiddle and fife
maybe   look   why   wow

dreamers children flowers and me
up and inside us for light to reach far
a purpose in living is more than to be
(the brighter the heart is the brighter the star)

How Beautiful

I am usually quite verbose. If you see a short, free verse poem, it means I'm pretty much out of ideas for the day.  Yep. Sorry.


Feet: they are ugly.
Toenails veins calluses
All dirt and grime
And a weird sort of shape too.
Feet are simply not attractive.
But the feet of someone you love
The feet of someone who has given you something
unimaginably precious:
They are beautiful
How beautiful.



I bet you no longer recognize "feet" as a real word. feet feet feet feet feet feet feet feet feet feet feet.

Tears

Day four of Epic Lyssa Poetry Month. This writing-something-every-day thing is actually much harder than I'd anticipated.
This is a "pleiades," a seven-line form in which every line begins with the same letter. It was invented in 1999 by Craig Tigerman, and it sounded so delightful that I had to try it (making me probably the first person since Craig Tigerman to do so).


The enemy of makeup and all
That is false, streaking down a face in
Times of anguish or
Triumph; joy, darkness; shining
Through the dull and placid everyday
To reveal the extraordinary by their perfect
Transparent light.

To the Tree-Climbers

Ugh, late and it's only the third day. Sorry everyone. I promise I tried really, really hard. But I also rushed. And structured poems take much more effort than just an idea with words on (aka free verse).Thus, the technical term for the quality of this poem would be "craptacular."
Anyway, I'm going to try out as many different poetic forms as I can think of this month (except perhaps sestina, because those are really hard and I don't even like them that much). First, I present to you: the humble sonnet.



I've never had a chance to seize the world
Or soar above the sunset and be free.
On mountains, it was never my flag that unfurled
Except just once, in the arms of a living tree.
How greenly and how sweet those branches sighed
A world apart, for whose like man still hunts.
Its trunk was firm, but swayed in the open sky
I was sheltered and exalted all at once.
Now lately it's been hard to climb my tree;
I don't fit like I did when I was small,
But, now I reach high limbs more easily
And for all this, it's never let me fall.
So I still climb my tree, because it seems
No matter what, you're never too old for dreams.



*Fun Fact: about half this poem was actually written in a tree.