Every Moment an Instinct 30/30

Oh, how we compare ourselves to caterpillars.

But it’s like the moths gravitating towards bright lights 

then dying that we mimic.

How we tell children that dreaming is where happiness is made.

That when dreams come true, 

wings unfold with unimaginable colors and take flight.

Yet, the lives of birds, insects and flowers are not so beautiful as we are told.

Every moment an instinct. 

They are not joyful for their magnificence.

Our happiness on the other hand has the habit 

of transforming like clouds to tears.

It’s not true that rain comes from the sky, 

and rain is not falling to the ground.

Why do we lie to ourselves?

At the top, will the view will be enough?

From the top, there is only room for one, 

looking down,

                                              looking down.

From the top, 

       there is 

                only 

                              looking 

                                         down.

Staying Takes You Somewhere 29/30

Which-

ever 

the 

way to 

go?

Up, 

down, 

same thing. 

Depending on

what you're looking for. 

When to move? 

But even staying 

takes 

you 

some-

where. 

The only 

constant is 

constantly 

going. 

Suffering 

is trying to make it stop. 

Stopping is like perfection; it doesn't exist.

Ephemeral Architecture 28/30

Life is a delicate structure,

Built upon ephemeral architecture. 

This transient space 

we call time; the framework. 

A short-lived experience endlessly eclipsing itself. 

For Something Pure to Bring Home 27/30

From far away, 

Squinting sharpens your features,

Brings definition to your edges, 

But you are still too far to touch,

Comprehend,

Have. 

I listened to the music that 

Tickled your ears 

And softened your heart. 

But all I heard 

Was the droning of a tired bee 

Out looking for something 

Pure to bring home. 

And all that squinting for the future 

Brought tears to my eyes. 

No Thing to Tell 11/26

There is no thing to 

Tell you,

No thing to tell,

It's not to late to find your feet

To get you through this spell. 

Take your steps,

Step with care, each footprint 

Makes a dent.

Reflections move and change their views 

With every rivers bend. 

For All Creatures of Good Heart 25/30 for Chai & Bamboo

Todays Poetry prompt from NaPoWriMo is a clerihew poem. Although, they are usually only 4 lines, I needed an extra quatrain for the benefit of all sentient beings.

For goodness sakes Madame Woodland Park Zoo,

You've made a gargantuan travesty of the lives of chai and bamboo,

These sentient beings and the other zoo lot,

Aren't just novelties like dodo birds or triceratops. 

It's time to do right Monsiers and Madams,

Letting go of your money, your accreditation and stand.

Send Chai and Bamboo to retire in peace,

And for all creatures of good heart to be released. 

In this Air I'll Shine 24/30

From water I'll come,

To breathe a new kind of light.

In this air I'll shine.

I Am Enough 23/30

It's a simple tweak

Gentle touch and

Barely noticeable smile. 

The one just underneath the skin

Like maybe because it's always there,

Always tilted up without effort 

In a thought of kindness 

Or swoosh of sweetness. 

An Illusive opposite of shadow

A sensual passing through. 

What is that rising flutter in my heart?

A infinitesimal shift

With a colossal effect. 

A momentous rejoicing

With the smallest of sighs. 

Enough, enough, enough!

I am enough.

What If? 22/30

What if the rain never came?

Drip 

                  drop 

                               dry. 

There'd be nothing to wash 

The tangles from your hair,

Or the soot from your pores. 

What if the sky never filled with clouds?

Drip 

                  drop. 

Each lost droplet a lost idea 

For the clouds are the accumulation 

Of all the ideas and dreams 

Of the people down below. 

What if the thoughts stopped coming?

Drip. 

                                    Drip. 

                                                                     Drip. 

                                                                                                   Drip. 

What if?

Puddling is Not a Simple Matter 21/30

Napowrimo.net prompt for today was to make an erasure poem.
This was much more difficult than I thought it would be...
try it...you'll see what I mean!

When I Heard Your Heartbeat, I Cried 20/30

#NaPoWriMo Challenge: Write a poem that states the things you know. 

The ground beneath my feet is really layers 

and layers of time.

Stepping softly won’t slow my growing old.

Walking in circles only makes me dizzy.

I know I need to embrace this journey. 

The sun doesn’t choose whose eyes to shine in -

I am here as witness to each glimmer. 

Your spring hydrates my crisp summer leaves.

When I heard your heartbeat I cried,  knowing 

The flood was on the way - and I knew how to swim.

I had thought I knew what love was,

I had thought I knew,

But love is like time,

beneath my feet,

with each step,

I grow wiser.

Leaving Marks 19/30

Of worries I've shared many. 

Some thrown to winds,

Some dashed to dust,

Leaving marks,

With ancient rust. 

Today's #NaPoWriMo Prompt is write a Landay. 

Landays are 22-syllable couplets, generally rhyming. The form comes from Afghanistan. 

With This Sunny Day 18/30

With this sunny day,

Collapse onto the first 

Grassy spot you find. 

Sit just for the sake of sitting. 

Take off your shoes, 

And your socks. 

Look closely to find little insects 

Wiggling around under blades. 

Aren't you also wiggling 

Up and over similar blades and bumps 

Looking for something?

Try your hardest not to squint 

When the sun touches your face. 

Don't be chilled by that cooling breeze, 

Instead notice every follicle that is feeling something. 

Let that fly linger 

Just a moment more on your arm 

And see the hundreds of reflections on its wings. 

Aren't you also always landing in places 

That try to swat you away 

As you try to be just who you are?

Modified Haiku in The Key of Sea - in three parts 17/30

#NaPoWriMo haiku challenge-4:9:4

Modified Haiku in The Key of Sea

In three parts

I

Another wave 

Won't stop for the shore because it can't. 

Energy's curse. 

II

Compulsive bursts 

Spit up the underbellies of thoughts

Then back to sea. 

III

Then back to shore 

Then back to sea, a marriage of fates

Without a truce. 

All The Things Your Heart Is 16/30

Take all the things your heart is

      And all the things your heart isn't, 

Can them 

      Into a jar 

                                  And watch the flickering lights 

                                                                   Blink on and

                                                                                      off like summer 

                                                                                    Fire bugs on a 

                                                                             Dim lit hazy night.

Above stars will play

                                Hide and seek

                                                  With night clouds 

                                                                             And moon-shadows.

When you go to slumber

Your mind will buzz 

With a million thoughts 

Until 

        Sleep 

                 sets 

                         you 

                                 free.

All at Once Yet Never Together 15/30

Heart and mind. 

                                   A metaphor murmuring 

                                                          And melting evermore

                             Into puddles of 

       Desire and despair. 

    Always all at once yet never together. 

                            Which one could stand alone?

As the sea and the shore join endlessly 

                                                         Rock by pebble by 

                              Sand to silt. 

         I am left to reflect how the 

                                           Waning tide suffers 

                                                                          no remorse 

                                                       As it leaves me. 

                                                                    Returning later, 

                                           It will not grieve that

I have gone. 

Tomorrow is Tax Day 14/30

Each moment is significant. 

For example, this line at the post office. 

Tomorrow is tax day. 

That mom with the two young children. 

What she says to them: wait here. 

How they look at her. 

And they are watching, learning, learning about waiting. 

Children are always learning about waiting. 

The older woman behind me. 

How she chews her fingers and looks around. 

Once she was young and then after that she was somewhere in between 

like me. 

Each line has a memory of another line. 

Whether or not the end of any line gets you what you wanted, 

the wait is often noted, recorded, reviewed. 

Each anticipation of any wait-er has been solidified in the mind; 

calcified blocks of 

personal stories and vignettes. 

How our waiting settles into these clerks, 

perhaps to ground their slowness to slow 

and then seemingly slower.

Did someone press pause on this moment? 

Is it for me to finally notice?

Should I take this time for something significant? 

Conversely, sometimes it seems we believe 

that frantically looking around at anyone 

who will meet our eye will speed up the process. 

We are all waiting for our turn. 

Life is not waiting for us, but oh how we wait for it. 

For it to happen. 

For it to unfold and reveal its mysteries. 

Right now is always fighting our anxiety with 

elongated space between here and there. 

Every line in our life is like time passing. 

How we wait is telling. 

How we wait 

is who we are

In each 

significant moment. 

Somewhere Between Neither 13/30

Yesterday I said I will

Catch up to a breath,

Catch up to the moment.

 

But Today I'll be somewhere between neither.

Try to hold what it was,

It disappears. 

Try to hold it tight,

It begs to be let go. 

There is no future for wanting. 

There is no breath waiting to be had.

Starry Eyed Hopes 12/30

Those starry eyed hopes,

That this life sees who I am.

Life is but a dream.

A Hard Truth 9/30

Waking up inside small circles

Still asleep. 

Still wrapping around and around and 

Around.

In truth,

The center is hard to locate.

The center has its own center.

Its own center doesn’t exist.

So what am I

Wrapping around if not 

Nothing at all?

This One to the Sea 11/30

Mother takes the hand of little fingers,

kissing them one by one.

This finger down the mountain,

This finger through the trees,

This finger touch the sky,

This one to the sea.

Mother touches so gently each blade of grassy hair on little heads.

Here sprouts the life,

Here the flowing gold,

Here flowering seeds,

Here the dreaming folds.

Mother walks with care, small steps and slowly.

First steps in the water,

First falling to the ground,

First dance with windy music,

First whispers in the round.

River Won't Listen 10/30

River rushing,

Messing through tranquility,

Upsetting soft grasses 

And still trees.

Calm sky clouds

Stay open for a wide sun.

But river shatters the rays

Upon rocks and edges.

River won’t listen 

To birdsong or deer hooves moving.

Instead, tantrum-ing down mountainsides,

And butting up against boundaries and lines.

Always running,

although towards or away from,

We may never know.

Whirl-pooled and streaming puddles of childish tears,

Crying until they’re all dried up.

I'm No Sooner Arrived 8/30

I'm back from the woods where I spend a few days off the grid...I couldn't post for #napowrimo, so the following posts will be catch up posts of what I put together at Breightenbush Hot Springs in Oregon.

Sooner and later I'm always

Looking for shadows and shapes

That disappear behind 

Each distraction,

Dissolve into every reflection

And dip beneath an under-looked depth. 

And later I awake to find 

I'm no sooner arrived. 

A Drop in The Bucket 7/30

Today's writing prompt from NaPoWriMo is: Write about Money

A Drop in the Bucket

It’s in our DNA,

To build upon and build upon.

To multiply, and increase.

To take up more space, 

To be our own. 

To identify what is ‘mine’. 

One penny connecting to another,

Becoming another form of currency, 

Attracting more connections.

The endless becoming of many pieces 

That together represent 

More than the whole.

Culturally the monies display differently, 

But underlying the structure, 

Their concepts, 

look the same.

Like with our own DNA, 

Money buys ninety percent junk, 

Only ten percent for what we need to function.

Often, our wallets suffer from disease and loss. 

Some feel emptiness,

Some are obese,

Some are tainted with bad blood.

Many submit to the God gene and feel all powerful,

While others are stolen

Disappearing into the masses,

Unnoticeable,

                  An insignificant 

                                              drop 

                                                                       in the bucket.

It’s in our DNA to make more.

It’s in our DNA to take over,

As we spend

                              we speak,

                                                                 Through our voices,

                                          we evolve.

Aubade to a Sleepless Night 6/30

Aubade to a Sleepless Night 

Let me return this to you. 

It was a long night,

Restless and aching,

With sheets damp with worry. 

Upon your dawning,

I thought to give this back

See if you could do better with it. 

With its colorless cast,

Soundless lamenting,

It's not so much that I tired of it,

It just didn't seem to take to my efforts. 

So, here it is,

With its soft luring,

Whispering and warmth 

It so cruelly withheld from me. 

I know as soon as you rise, 

It will nuzzle up 

To your sunny disposition 

And stop racing around 

Through the gaps in my breaths.

Murky Waters 5/30

Murky waters. 

A place to stay away from,

Perhaps a state to beware of.

Or rather something to not get mixed up in. 

It might be too deep,

Too dark,

Unclean or worse. 

Yet, from the womb we emerge

A sooty mess,

All muddy from pure beings blood,

And we arrive full of light,

Having endured the darkest 

Mysteries of life.

#puddlepoem #napowrimo2015 #napowrimo #poemaday #poetrymonth #poetry #earthart

Enter or Exit 4/30

Where on earth to go?

Wheels can spin fast or turn slow. 

Enter or exit. 

Birdy Told Me Nothing 3/30

A little birdy told me nothing. 

Nothing about what was to be. 

Not a tweet about love,

Or loss, or glee. 

Of pain, hope and joy, there was silence,

Only a lone crow caw upsetting the balance. 

No flits of light on my shoulder,

Or visions of happy life when I'm older. 

Just here and now, amongst sky and ground. 

Inside just this moments sudden breeze I am found. 

A little birdy said nothing to me,

                                         and as it will be, 

                                                   Only a song for its mate

                            High in the tree. 

This is Mine 2/30

Now, just you wait a minute. 

I'm not done yet. 

I see you.  

I hear your scuttling. 

And you lurk around 

just about every corner. 

I know you're waiting. 

And you're restless. 

What is it with your impatience?

Your hunger?

For what?

Get your own. 

This is mine. 

This is mine. 

Subtly Step More Solidly 1/30

April is National Poetry Month

Puddlepoems is Participating in NaPoWriMo 2015 and will post a Puddlepoem-a-day for the Month 

Something not quite right,

Out of place,

Can't put your finger on it,

But it's right there,

Waiting for you to say ohhhh,

Waiting for that stomach drop feeling,

Then, 

oh. 

The whoosh of realization,

Something doesn't belong,

You don't belong.

The word imposter spits at you,

Taunting you with "I see you"

"I know you." 

But it doesn't 

And you're not. 

You belong right where you stand,

Because, 

Well,

Because you are standing there. 

Then,

Something not quite right,

Out of place,

You subtly step more solidly, 

shift right

Then left. 

There,

On your place. 

You belong. 

#puddlepoem #napowrimo #1 #instagram