(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.

Sugar, Sugar

You’ve got me
wanting more,
a linguist feast
for the soul,
a plate to lick,
a finger
in the frosting.

Succubus, I crave
words to melt
on the tongue,
to haunt rethinking,
to taffy twist
what thoughts
you knew.

Thesaurus addict,
I can’t be cured,
only left to wallow
in delicious words,
inviting you
to taste.

Ode to Plano, Texas

Ok, not technically an ode,
but an exalted emotion
from my complex gratitude
for your continual support
of my little lines.

I long to see your little penguin
on my Feedjit Live.
Mingling with countries
and foreign principalities,
you reign supreme
Plano, Texas!

It is your presence,
continual, constant,
popping in as often
as I do,
you looking for me,
I looking for you.

Plano, Texas,
If only you were my sister,
my brother, my love,
as speak your silent comments
so eloquently.

And I without little words
to thank you.

(Plano, Texas: To claim your THANK YOU copy of my book, please email me your mailing address at: phawkenson@ecasd.k12.wi.us)

(Many of you know that I have not been in the best of health for over a month. I am now on a medical leave, hoping for less stress, and more healing. Thank you for your patience. I appreciate those of you who I see still coming back.)

Clouded

Spring brings the deluge,
the pouring of sky’s soul.

Here I drip
many days’ deluge
finally feeling
ready to fall.

Watering Can

Eyes blurred,
I planted iris bulbs
crooked.

First shoots,
curved leaves leaned,
proved my pain.

Yet today’s stem
of tomorrow’s flower -
straight up.

Straight down,
a pint of past beauty,
for a bud of hope.

Screams Drift Up

Only her eyes moved,
darting back and forth,
my god, oh, my god.

His eyes open,
starring into the sky;
she knew him, dead.

They took him
in hushed tones;
she alone on the hill.

Her screams bent
allowing no words,
just agony.

Her body curled
sobbing with her softly,
then gut wrenching.

He took her life.
Even her pockets
were empty.

Push Me, Pull Me

I have reached for the tissues
more than five times
and the pile of my agony
still grows.

Tomorrow I will pick them up
and toss them in the trash,
but today the floor
is where my heart
will lay.

Somewhere around
tissue eight or nine,
anger will come out of the box
and I will cry

no more.

The Concert is Canceled

I have never been a fan of singers
whose voices lift
the spirits of thousands.

And, Wind,
I am no fan of yours.

You roll my child’s ball
making her run
far away from me.
You curl my shoulders,teasingly tossing my hair
to obstruct my view.

Every second I have lost
from seeing
my sweet child’s face
in playful laughter
can not be returned.

Wind,
do not sing
your beguiling song here.
The price you charge,
too high.

Thanks For Letting Me Know

Darkness hid every drop
of rain that evening.
I could hear only
the tiny pings on the roof.
I felt the heaviness
of pressured air.

There was no line
between day and night,
between calm conversation
and drips of cutting cynical words.

Unwarned came the torrents,
the angry cry of clouds.
Finally, when it returned to a drizzle,
soft and steady,
the rain became my comfort
as you went out the door.

The Night Hid the Fog

They all stood on this hill,
stomachs hungry
for more than the rinds
of day old bread.

Yet their voices are lost,
wispy like dying fires
after the dead coals
are stomped and ground.

We have not feed them,
filled their need,
while our own greed
has stolen their future.

Children can not play,
innocent in their day
when the sun only makes
cross shadows on the hill.

Trying to Find Myself

My large kitchen spoon
bent too easily
as I tried to dig
to China.

The top soil
was thin,
so thin,
barely covering
the rock below.

My mom
wasn’t impressed
by my efforts then.

I just kept
on digging.

According to Me

Please keep
those tasty,
tempting,
tantalizing,
thesaurus teasing
bites of you
in this place where
I devour them.

According to me
it is easier
to fight
the robot codes
that to fight
my weight.

I will be
the Biggest Loser
if you bail and post
where I can’t
read your words.

Do I Blame the Squirrel or Rabbit?

Yesterday, there was one leaf,
green and growing strong.

It was the promise
of one tulip,
the mystery
of its color,
red,
yellow,
pink,
growing by the base
of my tree.

Today,
chewed off, again.
Just like last year.

I could blame
Princess,
my white squirrel
who circus walks the top
of our cedar fence.

I could blame
the rabbit,
who doesn’t deserve
a name,
chewing his door in the bottom
of our cedar fence.

Or I could blame
the fence.

Selfishly
holding back
this year’s view
of the carried,
buried treasure
of my neighbor’s
tulip bulbs.

Sr. Mary Aloysius

Sr. Mary Aloysius,
fingers sliding
over pearlized beads,
keys jingling
in an unseen pocket,
bends down
to tie her black shoes tight.

Then a quieting finger
covers her thin lips.
She points to God
who apparently
was still looking
down
on us
even though we had already checked
our laces
and our manners.

I wanted to say
she was making more noise
than us,
but little girls
wearing tissues
for our missing chapel caps
already had enough

to pray about.

To Remember the Day

Somewhere around fifty
our brains shifted
from abstract thinking
about the events
of the day,
who is going where
and what they’re going to do,
to the minute details
of puss oozing
from our ears
and sciatic nerve damage
that radiates down our legs.

To remember the day
that meds our should be increased
while calculating
the effort needed
to climb a flight of stairs,
we need to shift
our creaking bones
to a place where we
remember the day
when we were too young
to care that we’d grow old.

Two Scoops

Just when I think
I know it all,
the electrifying
realization
of your 2 to 1 ratio,
proves, once again,
the magnetism
between my spoon
and a quart of frozen custard
is justifiably intensified
by the viscosity
of my tears
and the volume
of her breasts.

Two Wrongs

Global warming,
earth’s demise,
heating arguments
conflicting
with knowledge
we all insist
is true.

Scientists can’t cool
the fiery tempers
of melting icebergs
and angst filled teenagers,
floating soul sisters,
colliding
and damaging
their sinking feelings

hidden

below.

He Knew That I Cut Snowflakes

He is thirteen
seen forever
by sensitive souls
who pass his hillside,
who hear his muffled
cry.

Scissors.

Duck tape
wrapped around
his mouth
his nose,
his eyes alone
cry.

Scissors.

I drive on,
no scissors
in my car,
my radio,
just a little louder.

Even Solomon Loved a Sale

A piece of paper,
value kept,
worth
fifty percent off
any number
of items
needed,
desperately
needed,
has now died,
died,
an untimely death
with the flipping
of the calendar.

Expired.

Hoarders lament,
tearing their treasure,
each half
now fifty percent
of nothing.

Hairball Island

Only an old cat
can chuck up
a hairball,
stringy,
stinky,
slippery,
that floats
like an island
in a sea of slime.

Only me
left to wipe it up.

That old cat
and I
ebb and flow
with my paper towels
and his rough tongued kiss.

A Spare Tire was in the Back

Wheels spun,
rolling down the road,
screeched us to a halt.

Time was my enemy of love,
held a hand up,
prevented our crossing.

No opportunity
to look both ways,
longingly down the road.

Then my heavy breasts,
filled past love’s capacity,
rested before they got home.

Damn flat.

Washburn

Chequamegon Bay
quiet as the foaming
washing of rocks,
slow as applebutter
spread on toast.

Where lupines wave
their purple spires
giving seed to
crumbling
sandstone churches.

Barren blueberries
dust of pine
buckets of smelt
batter dipped
and fried.

Then brandy slush
it all till snow
covers the land
marking my trail
home.

A Writer’s Fear

Anticipating adrenaline’s rush
mingled with salty popcorn,
the script,
the first sacrificial victim,
heavy in the weight
of the writer’s agonizing
choice of words
falls
to its live or die
ending
with the first reader’s
ominous words:

“I don’t get it.”

PROMPT 10: Write a Horror poem.

A Writer’s Fear

Anticipating adrenaline’s rush
mingled with salty popcorn,
the script,
the first sacrificial victim,
heavy in the weight
of the writer’s agonizing
choice of words
falls
to its live or die
ending
with the first reader’s
ominous words:

“I don’t get it.”

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.

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…