Trickling down from branch to branch
Like a saffron avalanche,
Filtering through the sylvan gauze
As a frozen topaz thaws,
Lay, in puddles on the moss,
Golden solar, apple-sauce…
—Tom Prideaux (1908–1993), written in the 11th grade
Trickling down from branch to branch
Like a saffron avalanche,
Filtering through the sylvan gauze
As a frozen topaz thaws,
Lay, in puddles on the moss,
Golden solar, apple-sauce…
—Tom Prideaux (1908–1993), written in the 11th grade
in nature i am
water in the breeze
going with the flow
in society i thrash
every cell halting
resistance grows
i become boulder
thrown off cliffs
accelerating through
no choice of my own
landing hard
splitting open
shattering into
everything wrong
—Terri Guillemets
it is raining!
no, not water
from clouds
but dead leaves
from july trees
scorched by
a brutal heat
too sunburnt
to evergreen
falling, fallen
brittle brown
leafy teardrops
raining down
the dry warm
forlorn face of
mother earth
—Terri Guillemets
for the harsh heat wave
wet apologetic gift
from clouds to tree roots
—Terri Guillemets
princess lightning reigned
it was a dark and stormy
knight to fall in love
—Terri Guillemets
freed pubescent girl
finally crawls out of time
into middle age
—Terri Guillemets
full moon monsoon clouds
glow pale light through windy trees
parched leaves shadow dance
—Terri Guillemets
oh my gosh is that a star
in bright city sky?
nope! police helicopter
—Terri Guillemets
watching birds splash in
morning-after rain puddles
cleanses my spirit
—Terri Guillemets
monsoon winds tell tales
lightning dances thunder sings
rain is main event
—Terri Guillemets
boom rustle tip tap
tippity clink rumble crack
whoosh whish shhh fade black
—Terri Guillemets
phoenix monsoon storm
haboob isn’t dirty word
it is dusty though
—Terri Guillemets
the world we abuse
roasting us like marshmallows
in a fire we lit
—Terri Guillemets
Nature and wildlife
are gradually vanishing
like in the photograph
from Back to the Future —
our future is vanishing too
but we have no hundred
and thirty horsepower
gas-fired time machine
to go back and fix it.
—Terri Guillemets
believing my wings were fragile and fractured
in my formidable forties, i abandoned
approaching fifty, i know my wings are strong
they just cannot lift so many heavy
—Terri Guillemets
our apocalypse
once in ultra slow motion
now on fast forward
—Terri Guillemets
but the science bears out
my catastrophic thinking
—Terri Guillemets
shards of memory
jagged-edged
broken emotions —
wholeness
is the fossil
of childhood —
growing up
fractures
many things —
—Terri Guillemets
God completed my heart
then you finished it —
mortal combat style
—Terri Guillemets
my willpower has become
a fraction of what it was—
my sweet tooth is now
much greater than my resolve—
and the laboratory reports
that my blood glucose
no longer measures in
milligrams per deciliter—
but in sugar cubes squared
—Terri Guillemets
Birds in the springtime —
daredevilish in their quest
songful in their survival —
weightless wings — heavy risk
—Terri Guillemets
“I don’t know of any writer who doesn’t look back at their earlier books and think: can we just shred them? You know, can we go door to door and collect them and shred them?”
—David Sedaris, to Bill Maher, on Real Time, HBO, 2023 March 24th
My five-minute foray into artificial intelligence artwork. Using free app of the day TapUniverse AI Art Generator, input a photo of classic blue and gold marbling from the endpapers of an antique book. After selecting the steampunk style, it generated this nifty image. Well, had my fun and now deleting the app.
—LIFE magazine, 1922 February 23rd, digitized by Google, books.google.com
While researching an old quotation in Google Books, I came across this very interesting LIFE magazine cover from 101 years ago.