[x]

El Dia de los DifuntosEl Día de los Difuntos

I could say the clouds were silent,
hushed in close against the skirt
of Volcán de Agua. I could say

they had passed over the market
stones without setting a shadow
down among the candied fruits

and marigolds gathered there for this
day of the dead. Focusing like this –
how the sky lingers uninterrupting,

as sweet squash and cups of chicha
spill across the square, announcing
the burning – I might see two men

there, stripped and beaten by the crowd,
listening to the mouth of a gas can
sing of errors and heavy promises:

never to avoid the rough battles,
ever to defend land and home,
a

SnowflakeSnowflake

I have heard snowflakes
are made by their fall,

each an icy whit unsamed
by eddies taking it unhurried

across tumbling distance
enough to pass from there

to here. Each astral arm opened
by what drives it for a while,

they take to themselves
unfamiliar vapors and glide,

making ready to be held
when at last there’s Earth to touch.

Donna Vampiro

Donna Vampiro

Back into our hands again, you are
not thinking of us, or yourself, or how
we might forget to know you

as more than just a few words
for a woman’s body found in a mass grave,
as we call you the remains of the first vampire

and consider the brick
lodged between your jaws to stopper
fear and disease. Donna Signora,

so small and hard a chip of ghost
days and silence, what undemanding offices
might sway us not to stare at

how no clots of earth are needed
to hold the ornaments of your teeth in place –
there – there – there – to notice

that the damp is no longer your concern,
that you will not

She Will Be Near

She Will Be Near

But Unseen behind her Curtain –
Isn’t that like a book?
Caught just so between lark song and
The taste of Unblushing

Words awakening on her Breath –
A startled square of glass
Unready for the Torch of dusk,
Quick to change the subject –

She will watch the Coachman’s approach
By not watching at all –
Her weight confiding in the sash;
The Stars moving in pairs.

to Emily Dickinson

All That's MissingAll That’s Missing

I would ask her, where is it known
better than in the hollows of dying
cherry trees, what can be as good
as gone – to not have returned to us
too quickly what has been lifted as we
moved lightly through crowds in a park,
as we spoke, distracted by friends?

She might say, what can grow
as sweet on time as things unreturned,
a blue leather wallet, all its photos and I.D.,
twenty-seven years and more gone –
almost never found – and the promise
they hold that you are already waiting
where you’d hoped someday to return?

TestimonyTestimony

It is not so much what I saw
as what was there

inside the shadow of the wall
the second time I turned

to look, lungs burning the breath
of the chase that carried me

up the alley in pursuit of those men –
the two hoodlums who, failing

to steal the weathered Mazda,
ducked suddenly into the dusk

of a waiting mango tree.
Demanding as it was,

I was with him every step;
the older of the two I mean –

every cord of muscle
he unwound in flight

flexed in me; every rock
he ground under his shoe

pressed hard under mine,
until there came the moment

for my eyes to adjust,
and in the change of light

the man was gone.
It was

Of A Scottish GhostOf a Scottish Ghost

What can be asked of one world’s omens
caught ghosting a breach into the stones

of another world’s walls – Is food as important
as heaven? Will truth heal an uncertain heart?

Who might you have watched dying? Who are you
watching live? Is there anything that goes

without saying as we inch closer
to understanding perhaps?

Winter Haiku WriMo 2009

2/1
Moonsliver, mewling at distant stars –
whose cat are you tonight?

2/2
Maple branches worm through morning fog –
without sun, without shadows.

2/3
Chains caroling above empty swings;
my winter blood slows.

2/4
Spider in the bath,
I’m not here to end your lonely day.

2/5
My window locked tight –
in slips the winter moon.

2/6
Lips pressed against air –
this memory of the present.

2/7
Garden stones dark with rain –
why am I not so quiet?

2/8
Trimming trees –
a poem fills with sawdust.

2/9
Her tail curls above piled leaves –
a question beginning.

2/10
Skirting the

Ottumwa ShamanIn Iowa, weeping willows dream of
Tigers, born in pagan fog, their
Coat of stripes singing shaman
Songs; shrill symphonies of grief.
Heaven tilts, crashes, and we race
The dirt to get away. We drink the
Earth with bullets of air and grow
Dizzy, light-headed from breathing
Some far off flame. Perhaps a poet
Who braved the fog of Ottumwa, and
Caught fire. Every cowboy has his
Six chances before high noon, before
The fog forms wispy jackals to take
Them home again. Every son inherits
An empty gun, six voids to fill with
Answers, skimmed and guessed from the
Covers of books their fathers used
To read. There is no other way.
In s

What Makes A Good EndWhat Makes A Good End

Two old shoes flaking mud on the kitchen floor.
A handful of peaches growing wise on the rack. I will have
just set down the knife and stepped from that room

into this one, where the light is a good deal
better. The back wall of the house, still unpatched,
will want paint, but I will be crunching almonds,

having set aside something I was not
quite ready to take on – a moment longer.
My head turning to the windows, looking

out back – two weak boards
complaining over every brush of wind.
The sound will remind me

of how some leaves are neither green
nor red this time of year.
The paper will fall ope

Stars of JasmineI.
Stars of jasmine –
each unlike her, whatever
I may think.

II.
Unfamiliar birds
above a mower's thrum –
my ear itching.

III.
No moon tonight.
The freeway whispers –
no moon.

IV.
Midnight:
Closing the book
is easier now.

V.
Discovering ants
nesting under the carpet.
How hard such work is.

VI.
Now that I have tomatoes,
dark spots on the basil.

VII.
During the rain
the tallest bamboo
had fallen; quiet.

VIII.
Inside
a spider vibrates –
temple bell.

Harvest MoonThree a.m. moonlight
across lazy dust motes; a
tree scrapes the window.
Your arm weighs on my hip like
whispered promises of love.

ScarpScarp

after L’Aquila, words
stumble through becoming
unfit to describe
what they describe as
a quake as debris
and aftershocks as grief –
crust in L’Aquila is a pair of horses
grazing a rolling pasture –
epicenter is a stack of plates
rescued from her restaurant
as it collapsed upon itself –
magnitude is the day
we hear that all will dig until
we are certain there is nobody
left alive. In L’Aquila
tectonics means rescue
workers are scooping
through rubble by hand
to pull a 98-year-old woman
from the fissure where she waits
passing her time knitting –
like the rest of L’Aquila

preludesi.
blue rose into the city backdrop
like balloons, a million for the
morning sun prelude.

ii.
i've not slept a dream
but i have cried a salty face
and letters spilled like beans
into my moleskine,
almost as virgin as i once was
with few stories between my covers.

iii.
the kettle's belly boils
like my head upon a pillow.

iv.
i am guilty for rarely finishing my tea
even when i use the small mugs;
pour, rinse, repeat.

v.
perhaps today i will play dead.

vi.
perched behind my blinds
it dawns on me that i am surrounded
by walled neighbours, strangers,
they're just preludes to lovers
the way i am always
prelude to the one.

Nathan Turner Nathan Turner, aged thirty, was a modest earner, if nothing other. Son of no

father and a flighty mother, and raised in most part by troubled brothers, he was never

one to put his trust in those upon whom the dust of age had scarcely settled. For a time,

he had meddled, even peddled, looking for the light in his own eyes. But never enough was

it, just as well, in his own mind, for the brand of fire which he desired was the sort a

man might chase until he dies, and even at the gates of Hell, never find.

But one cool evening in July, he chanced to meet - just walking by - a woman with

an empty stroller. "Empty stroller?" he asked at on

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ChangingChanging

1.
Changing from dream
to dream,
dreaming we are others
in another place
like this
where I love you,
I will love you.

2.
I have fallen
in love with your
eyes, lips, hands, and hair –
your breast is enough
for my heart.

3.
I am good
because
I feel good

4.
I’ll wait for the waning
moon as you watch
the tide ebb.
So many times we
have seen the burning star
burning.

5.
There are
unbreakable laws
we must obey
as we change
from dream to dream.

AndAnd

– “Blood Makes Noise”
Suzanne Vega

Dream Doc?
What’d I dream?

Well,
since you ask –
since you wanna know:

I dreamt
a car backfired
& a clock was ticking
at my ear,
& then I saw clouds
thickening the gray gravy
of the sky,
& under these a sooty beak
& raven’s wing
carrying nuts
& pods
to the boughs of a tree
nearby extended over asphalt,
dropping these nuts
& pods,
cracking them wide
open,

& I saw dogs,
all patchy fur & stares,
skulking there
& here,
growling at their food –
happy to have conquered
their dishes
& the fleas they would
sup with,

& then there was
a si

It's Time PerhapsIt’s Time Perhaps; Perhaps It’s Time

volleys,
bending headstrong brusquely
toward the mottled umber of disaster,
ripened by sky time,
unbolt sun from granite
where dazzling cotton children
twist the dirt and sky
into peril, bursting
the teaspoon world wide
pausing just the instant before
a lover descends the stairs
(his collar slightly tight around the chin
his trousers roughly rolled)

if not for this

Dutch for FatherDutch for Father

He told me enough!
He told me you killed him. No.
I am your father.

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The Hungry Season

by *b1gfan, Feb 11, 2009, 2:44:23 PM
Literature / Poetry / General Poetry / Free Verse

The Hungry Season
“The next season will be the hungry season.”
Moses M. Kolinmore

A stem, a leaf, a stem,
a stem again,

and the army of our bodies
hanging from the branches
of the Dahoma trees.

We come to this as moths
on Saharan winds

with no malice but the wings’
direction, our caterpillar mouths,
our waiting numbers

cocooned in dirt. We are
aching and glutted

but hungry still, even as
we strip the canopy bare of leaves
and foul each river black

with waste below us –
our gruesome chatter asking,

as we fall into the dirt
to reshape what we are,
can you imagine the hunger?

But of course you can; of course,
you hunger the same as we.

The Hungry Seasonby *b1gfan

Literature / Poetry / General Poetry / Free Verse

And now we should talk about a plague of sorts...

Nightmarish Caterpillar Swarm Defies Control in Liberia
Karen Lange

They came by the millions out of the forest.

From off in the bush, townspeople at the epicenter of the plague heard a low roar, like the sound of heavy rain cascading down through the leaves. It was caterpillar droppings.

In early January, when the long, black caterpillars reached the creeks that serve as the main water sources for the town of Belefanai in north-central Liberia, the creatures' feces instantly turned streams dark and undrinkable.

Moving through the forest canopy on webs, devouring the leaves as they went, the caterpillars advanced like nothing the townspeople had ever seen.

They ate food and cash crops—coffee, cocoa, citrus, plantain, banana, and cassava. They took over homes and people fled.

Venturing into the forest meant being hit by a wave of caterpillars that appeared to be moving forward about as fast as the average person walks.

"The worms would drop on you from all angles," said Moses M. Kolinmore, a mason who arrived in Belefanai just as townspeople realized they had to get word to the government.

"They would cover the whole ground—thousands upon thousands of thick, strong, stubborn worms. It was fearful, very fearful."

You can read all about that here [link] at National Geographic.com

Dave Prisk

Daily Deviation

Given 2013-01-16

The Hungry Season by *b1gfan ( Suggested by *leyghan and Featured by `thorns )

love 2 2

joy 1 1

wow 1 1

~~mad 0 0~~

~~sad 0 0~~

~~fear 0 0~~

~~neutral 0 0~~

*12who Jan 21, 2013 Hobbyist

_{Congrats on your Daily Deviation!}

*b1gfan Jan 21, 2013 Student Writer

Thank you so much Cătălin. I appreciate both your enthusiasm and your kindness my friend

~ForbiddenObsession Jan 16, 2013

beautiful and haunting, your poem sees right into the soul of every animal, from caterpillars to whales to humans. stark, creepy, and perfect O3O

*b1gfan Jan 16, 2013 Student Writer

Thank you Bri. That is wonderful feedback indeed and you are very kind to offer it.

~SarienFhaine Jan 16, 2013

Really great writing

Love the poem and the way you wrote it from the information below. Cool!

*b1gfan Jan 16, 2013 Student Writer

I am beyond delighted that you enjoyed it Sarien

Lotsa love to you for taking to time to read and respond to the piece

~SarienFhaine Jan 18, 2013

Hey no problem

It was a very good poem

*b1gfan Jan 18, 2013 Student Writer

And you are a very good reader

*xlntwtch Jan 16, 2013 Writer

*it

*xlntwtch Jan 16, 2013 Writer

You took information and turned inside out, so nonexperts would perhaps sympathesize not only with townspeople, but also with your protagonists. A terrific job, all the way around. Congratulations on the DD. Thank you.

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