G R i E F —
i feel so tiny inside
poems
Emily’s dash
Say what! You mean
That’s not why they call it an
Em dash? — those Dickinson
Hyphens between?
@Risk
Life is like running with scissors
naked through freezing blizzards
Pitch
Night
— the quiet of solitude
— the silence of loneliness
Non compos mentis
after a few beers, my nouns stumble
and my verbs can no longer talk straight —
O! yes after a few good beers verbs blunder
and nouns fall flat on their faces
Listen to the colors
Purple is the soul-lifter
Red, the flame of passion
Yellow, the light of warmth
Green, vibrant stem of life
Pink, a whisper of beauty
Orange beckons, take a chance
Blue is the sea tide in us all
Do I write grief or is it writing me?
I write all these death poems, these grief poems —
and does it really make me feel better? Or am I just
twisting my heart so that I can feel, to remember?
Because I’m afraid that if I don’t feel, I will forget.
Inkdreaming
the smell of ink is
intoxicating to me —
others may have wine
but I have poetry
Only bruises
Poetry allows
my soul to age gracefully
my mind to land softly
amongst the new gray hairs —
without it I’d have thunked
into my forties with
tail bone, funny bone
and spirit broken
Torch
Grief is a fire
set to the heart —
burning some things away
keeping others aflame
Don’t-do-it list
currently i am about halfway through
doing the list of things i swore before
i would never ever do when i got old
43.47943
Specks of universe in my soul,
flurries of God in my head.
Heart ticks away, doing its job—
whispering poetry all the while.
Enlightenment flickers subtly
from old gray half-burnt wicks.
Midlife nights
at night her age landed hard
like the fall of wasted time
blackout poetry created from Danielle Steel, Fairy Tale, 2017