Damnit! I binged
again II day
IV life was hard
and so I
VIII my stress away.
O why do I so of X gorge?
Since turning XL
I’ve been extra large.
—Terri Guillemets
favorites
Galactic gathering
Standing in a silent still-dark February morning
Cool dewy grass grazes half-bare sandaled feet
Lo! Saturn arrives as Jupiter saddles Sagittarius
Mars burns red near the glowing crescent moon
Serpens slithers against a vaporous galaxy border
Antares winks green and gold, crimson and rust
As Scorpius swings its tail at the southern horizon
Libra starboard and upward of the crowded scene
Balancing askew over the poor impaled lone wolf
Ophiuchus a bystander in the busy celestial show
—Terri Guillemets
Growing old
minutes bloom
hours flower
seconds vine
through the hands
of time —
days hustle
weeks speed
decades scatter
in confetti’d years
—Terri Guillemets
Your battle
If your armor against the world is laziness and excuses, you’re not protecting yourself from battle and injury — you’ve trapped yourself inside with them.
—Terri Guillemets
It’s personal
There is no timetable for grieving —
Grief is a snail
It’s a shooting star
A walk around the lake
It’s eternity
Or frost ’til bloom —
Memories coursing through the heart
It lasts as many heartbeats as it takes;
sometimes all of them.
—Terri Guillemets
Why we can’t let go
Regret is the glue that makes grief stick around for a lifetime.
—Terri Guillemets
What I do
altered prose by Terri Guillemets, 2019
from The Man Who Loved Jane Austen
by Sally Smith O’Rourke, 2001, page 53
Book party!
Let’s get drunk at the library
and have a book party!
“What a good time!” she said
in an excited whisper.
—Terri Guillemets
scrambled blackout poetry created from F. Scott Fitzgerald,
Girl-heart
her smiling girl-heart danced
behind the grey, grey hair
—Terri Guillemets
scrambled blackout poetry created from Enid Bagnold,
Weariest old work horse
“A horse loves freedom, and the weariest old work horse will roll on the ground or break into a lumbering gallop when he is turned loose in the open.”
—Gerald Raftery (1905–1986), Snow Cloud, 1951
Precarious
Aging is millions of moments
stacked upon tumbling years
—Terri Guillemets
Abrupt
When you’re used to seeing someone day after day, for years on end, and then suddenly they’re gone, you
—Terri Guillemets
Insomnia ticking
three o’clock —
anxiety, regret
in the depths of worry
swept away in the
whirlwind of nothing —
a horrible nothing
—Terri Guillemets
blackout poetry created from Octave Mirbeau, The Diary of a Chambermaid, 1891–1900
None excluded
Prayer is for the grateful and for the
—Terri Guillemets
Whole body, whole spirit
We thank
on our knees
with folded hands
for full bellies
and fuller hearts
—Terri Guillemets
Literary LOL
This tweet from a guy named Ben had me laughing harder than I have in a long while. —
Herman Melville’s “Moby Dick” has perhaps the most memorable opening line in all of Western literature:
“I hope you [møtherf*@%ers] like reading about whales.”
—Ben, @pixelatedboat, 2018 August 12th, onegianthand.com
The Prisoner
If you have not a bird inside you,
You have no reason to sing.
But if a pent bird chide you,
A beak and a bleeding wing,
Then you have reason to sing.
If merely you are clever
With thoughts and rhymes and words,
Then always your poems sever
The veins of our singing-birds,
With blades of glinting words.
Yet if a Song, without ending,
Inside you choke for breath,
And a beak, devouring, rending,
Tear through your lungs for breath,
Sing—or you bleed to death.
—Louis Golding (1895–1958), Sorrow of War, 1919
Censorship
To kill words with fear,
It’s a dreadful thing.
—Don’t.
—Terri Guillemets, “Censorship: What the D!ck@%$?”
blackout poetry created from Charles Dickens, “The Haunted Man and the Ghost’s Bargain,” 1848
O! queso what?
What are flowers without the bees,
What of grasses without the breeze?
Nothing the wind if not for the trees,
Nada la quesadilla sin el cheese.
—Terri Guillemets
Blur
Aging is an exponential clock — ticking in runaway years.
—Terri Guillemets
Scoresheet
No volume of history is insignificant, even the worst chapters. Especially the worst chapters.
—Terri Guillemets
May you
May you lose a lot that matters to you
a few times in your life—
May you make and remake and
remake yourself over and again
and burn yourself right down
to ashen smoking embers
of bone and grit and soul—
So that you may always know
the pain of rock bottom
the freedom of rebirth
the hope of revival
the gift of perspective
the awareness of your strength—
May you lose but live again.
—Terri Guillemets
Spring blazes color
vibrant verdure lights
the springtime landscape
in blazingly brilliant greens
a fresh flourishing canvas
for parti-colored sparks
of wildly blooming things
—Terri Guillemets
Resilient
The best faith is not the stagnant,
—Terri Guillemets
Let every blessing strengthen you
You can’t count the bad things that happen. They don’t count against life. They are life. Only count the good things. Let every blessing strengthen you.
—Terri Guillemets