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Time’s Clergy

   she didn't believe in time  until it was too late
    to know if she believed
                             until she walked into the sun
clocks were ancient secrets
                                     (they had be that old
                                      to be worth to decode
telling us how the sun lives  she forgot
Sun dies too & walking
backwards can't erase five hundred miles
                                     (& I would walk 500 more
she didn't walk into the sun
she wouldn't stop moving
                         as Earth turned in
    for its novular kiss
                                     (I'm still sleeping on the gun
                                      shot the unbelievers & I
                                        shot her
                                     death means nothing more to do

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written in response to read write prompt 116: the time of your life

Sonnet

I don't believe I spilled the beer again
getting out of bed: I was too tired
to get out of bed                   again
and somehow here I am     tapping on the window

I don't believe divides
me from outside
the people who walk
the people who love

                      listen I sing & talk
even if I seem to stand above
the sidewalk
when I'm only on the floor     above

I don't believe
height or sleep's the real  these

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written in response to read write prompt 115: what do you believe?

:Route: 66 Kicks

o glorious southwest
 o tulsa   o albuquerque   o motel six
eggshells patter your freeway fiction
    well, I hacksawed that —— the fiction of your free
      way to panic & decay    (or litter or slow pedestrian dinners
                           she muttered under crown
         of red dirt frog
    these (now) frosted lanes in summer (floor it to then)
  become another footlocker
for roadkill & Arby's & McD's
                               lubricious in their juicy beef
posters & blood would be offensive
when you can have ketchup
  or semifresh, tomatoes , instead

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written in response to read write prompt 114: all over the map

Grown Up, or, Not a Revelation since Nothing Changed

blue house
gray house
synthesized
barn house

six-year old,
thinking there’s
nothing, to protest,
other than a changed
schedule on Saturday
morning TV:

she did march at home
round and round her
parents’ parking spot

San Francisco,
decades later
(almost two)
she marches
yes but also sits
arrested for blocking
Federal property
cited out:
War (Iraq, Afghanistan)
never ends.

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written in response to: read write prompt 113: the therapeutic cleanse — a spa for your writerly being, by mary biddinger with the following changes to my recent style: no physical gaps within lines, more punctuation (in an earlier draft this was even truer, but I couldn’t stand it), closer attention to the location of the emphasized syllables, starting in a setting I haven’t used for years (Coburg, Oregon), and trying to tell a story a bit more than I usually set out to do.

Winter Solstice

window beaded with my sweat
hides the falling snow
which softens light, a world reset
window beaded with my sweat
won’t let me see to forget
who wouldn’t stop when I said no
window beaded with my sweat
hides the falling snow