(Writer’s Digest – 2nd Place Winner- Quatern Challenge 3/05/2012)

Guillotine

When your lips brush my yielding neck,
I remember why I should turn
away from all the sharpened words
that landed with a cutting edge.

Your warm breath tries to soften me
when your lips brush my yielding neck,
but I’m still stiff and suspended
above your pensive punishment.

Even though I reprimand you
as your strong arms coil around me,
when your lips brush my yielding neck,
you make me want to struggle less.

For I’ve been found guilty of love,
and if I have to bite my tongue,
I’ll forgive my shoulders dropping
when your lips brush my yielding neck.

PROMPT 5: Write a poem about too much information.

My Glass Was Filled Again

Covers rolled over me
clouds billowed past
my distortion of day,
my mixing of night.

Dreams dropped the words
that slumber used to describe
my mixing of people,
my confusion of time.

Somewhere in the pillow
that holds my jumbled words
my poem was left in pieces,
my frustration wakes again.

I thought I would remember
all the feelings of the dream
my clarity of morning,
my forgetfulness of you.

PROMPT 4: Write a history poem.

Run

Sidewalks
colored, Easter chalk,
drawing green twisting tendrils.

Sunny morning,
kneeling day
in white lacy gloves.

Mother’s warning,
“Take them off”
still ringing in my ears.

I remember
yellow blooms
big as her opened hand.

With sheers in hand,
draw out winter pain
by cutting to the quick.

My hibiscus can’t run like me,
stuck
kneeling deep in dirt.

Photo by Patricia A. Hawkenson

Be Self-indulgent, Feel No Shame

You may have to think hard
to remember
boredom,
that lay on the couch,
curl up with a good book
lapse into nothingness
way of existing.

Ahhh…

Drink cocoa
slow.
Lick marshmallowy foam
off your lips.
Expect nothing
more than the turn
of another page.

Ahhh…

Let quietness seep
in with breaths
deep and warming,
hot mug to your cheek.

Linger.

Let only decadent words
pour from your mouth
when silent reading
can not be done.

Ahhh…

A Triangle Has Sharp Corners

My life spins
like an empty bottle
when I am with you
remembering.

Unable to pour out
what you do
that reminds me
of him,
only a smile points
its way to my lips,
my guilty pleasure
remembering
what we did.

When I recognize
that smile on you,
I have to let
you drink it in.

Bed Spread

In the morning the light is pouring in
through the slits in the blinds
creating blurring splotches
fluid against the wall.

I can see only the shadowy silhouette
of my fingertips as they flow
over the knuckle mountains
and hand valleys lying across your chest.

You are slowly waking with one eye
skeptical as you see me lying beside you
smearing the line between
what I remember and what you forgot.

When Two Worlds Collide

The cloth lay on the table
innocent in its intentions
to become something amazing,
and it held within its fibers
the inspiration we needed.

My daughter, only six, asked me,
“Who controls the power of clothes?”
I answered, “You do.”

Soon, with a hungry anticipation
and an eye for design,
she dressed for Halloween
as a Recess Peanut Butter cup.

It was difficult to control
my urge to eat her up.