he loved a linear girl

he loved a linear girl
               unswerving in his gape-jawed puppy love
so easy to be stunned
               like tasering him with one look
in his stream of consciousness
               falling, fleeing those cliché arrows, aimed
by her apparatus of love
               to land just short of his path
to trudge through
               a flock of poison dart frogs singing with glee
for his one life
               the almosts and wish-it-were-so’s
those mean summer
               nightly chorus’s of want and yearning of
dreams playing music
                once more throttling back into his arms
of want and yearn
               intermittently broken and repaired

 

© Jilly’s  All Rights Reserved

Paul over at dVerse challenges us to write this wonderfully musical form.  Join us and give Contrapuntal Poetry a try!

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A Prayer for Rain

stop the bitter sun
it only sours the sky

petition the rain to beat
your skin until you swim

in forest smells of algae
of living mold

urge your lake
to worship the sea

to milk time after
you lie bare at her feet

© Jilly’s  All Rights Reserved

Kim at dVerse bids us write a Quadrille (a poem of exactly 44 words) using the word “Rain.”  Here in Florida we should be at the end of our Dry Season, a time we refer to as our Fire Season.  Instead we are in a prolonged time of rain thanks to an unstable weather pattern that brings tropical moisture both day and night.  There are no fires, including that rather large one that dominates the sky from dawn to dusk.  😉

 

Wager

An ancient Great Blue Heron
knuckles across the lake
to wage a fish war
against the egret

We’ve designed a fighter
jet after him, the way
his wings are set for landing,
I just don’t know which one,
F-something or some
other; I’m not versed
in the jargon of war,
but I don’t have to fish
and hunt to live.

I’ll buy tilapia at the market
letting the fat ones in our lake
get careless and lazy
sacrificing their children
to the wagers of war

 

© Jilly’s  All Rights Reserved

Stops and Starts

Funny the things that come to you
in the night, he said after a moment.

Your eyes, accustomed to that dark,
see his silhouette
against the distant
city light
all orange and skin.
He takes a drink
of the wine, turns
holds it out to you.
What poison
What apothecary

You are not back-lit
He won’t see your hand
Tremble
as you drink.

Let’sgobackandstartover.

© Jilly’s  All Rights Reserved

 

for dVerse Meeting the Bar where Amaya has us building bridges and filling gaps.

The Challenge:  Use a line from one book as your starting line and a line from another as your poem’s end-line.

I chose to use a line from my most recent read, A Gentleman in Moscow by Amor Towles (highly recommend it!!) as my opener, but I edited it slightly.
“It is funny what comes to one at night, he said after a moment.”  Pg. 289

My end-line was taken from my next book, The Longest Road, by Philip Caputo“Letsgobackandstartover” Pg. 185 (yes, it is all run together like that!)

 

Running Wild

take my hand
     walk with me
          through these corridors
where numbered
     doorways
          stairways
               elevators

slide past us
in dull tones
of blue and beige
of grey and sage

hold tight my hand
     run with me
          through these hallways

until the flat surfaces
begin to blur

until
the doors become
ears of corn
the tiles
roll into clods
of dirt
the fluorescent lights
turn into the moon
they were
meant to be

and
we run
through
the fields
letting
the
wet leaves
slap us
across
our
cool faces
and
we laugh
forgetting
our
names

 

© Jilly’s  All Rights Reserved

izquotes

Join me tonight at dVerse Poet’s Pub where I am hosting Poetics and we will be writing Wild.  !!!