poets swing too high
until the chain kinks
and snaps
the
fall
is
poetry
—Terri Guillemets
poetry
Alchemy
A poet swallows life and exhales painted words.
—Terri Guillemets
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
—Terri Guillemets
Questions of the sky
—Anonymous, The Queries Magazine, 1890
How to write a poem
make your poem make sense
in the most beautifully nonsensical way
and use every one of your senses
to write with utterly uncommon sense
as in childhood you used to play
—Terri Guillemets
Classics declassified
Grass of Walt
[D!@%] of Moby
Boz gets Lit
Bard’s the [$h¡t]
—Terri Guillemets
Poetry of spring
Springtime is a poet —
the blue sky its blank page
so vibrant green in rhyme
a different metre for every clime
birds chirping to keep the time
wildflowers yellow, red, purple divine
words dancing on tall blades of grasses
sparkling in the morning dews
no commas the flow keeps buzzing
vernal dashes & blossoming branches
on newly greening verdant trees
refrains whispering in each breeze
butterflies — floating apostrophes
ladybugs dot floral question marks
blissful bees stray stanza to stanza
seeds disperse from verse to verse
continuing a poem that’s never ended
and into summer’s colors is blended
—Terri Guillemets
The graceful and beauteous
Flowers rewrite soil, rain, and sunshine into petal’d poetry.
—Terri Guillemets
Elderberry prime
Autumn birds speak cheerful poetry from their berry-stained beaks.
—Terri Guillemets
Inching along, leaving behind
the poet is a sensitive snail —
wandering along the path of life
leaving a glittering trail of words
—Terri Guillemets
Word altar
An author can be just a writer, but a translator must always be a poet.
—Terri Guillemets
Plexus
we feel poetry and art
in the sensitive veins
that run through soul and
carry not blood but spirit
—Terri Guillemets
So easy, so hard
My poems are love-drunk letters to the universe.
—Terri Guillemets