Summa Summarum

he sends me
pink pyjamas covered
with snowflakes
so I can have winter
anytime I like

first published in MET
photo taken and copyrighted by Guixia

waves crash
on shore, only to pull back
again—
as though I need to explain
why I love you

first published in MET
photo taken and copyrighted by zwitser

age eight
I watched them take my father
by ambulance
seventeen years later
here I am waiting, waiting

first published in MET
photo taken and copyrighted by  Annet van Raalten

fresh snow
untouched unmarred
how I wish
to start my life
over again

first published in MET
photo taken and copyrighted by jaynenjoe

 

at the train station
we share our first
kiss
look, the old couple whispers
they’re in love

I step
into the bath
gleaming white
scented with bleach
his equivalent of roses

previously published in MET
photo taken and copyrighted by mirlen

Pink Roses Against Your Cheek

Accolades were tossed today
like meteor showers
touching earth
but all I can think of
is you are alive and breathing
and maybe waiting, hoping
for some pink sweetheart roses to arrive
with a brush of baby’s breath against their cheeks
and while you are still breathing
living
laughing
I have been asked to write your eulogy
and I feel like such a traitor
as I start scribbling about you
in the past tense
while you are very much alive
and losing yourself
in the first wisteria's
fleeting scent

photo taken and copyrighted by Reg Wyatt

wild strawberries
the way he says
my name

 
                                   thunder –
                                   I catch her name
                                   in the obituaries

red
the colour of
many kinds of love

first published in bottle rockets
photo taken and copyrighted by dgd

In My Dreams

 

In my dreams, I am able to save you from

the horrible pain, the strain of gasping for breath,

the awful moment when you mouthed the words, Help me

In my dreams, you no longer lunge into the air,

trying to pull oxygen into your struggling airways,

You are at peace with your diseased body. We hold

each other, I am able to impart my strength to you, and

the wisdom I have gained in hindsight is utilized

to the fullest.  Then I awake. It all crumbles around me,

like an old letter yellowed with age that was wrapped and tied

with a musty pink ribbon, for too many years,

never taken out to be appreciated over and over; it

is left no choice but to disintegrate into dust, to be read only when

night falls, and I finally am able to dream again.

photo taken and copyrighted by Nick Lagos

Angry Wind

The wind is angry
I don’t know why
I didn’t do anything to it

It bangs the tree against my office window
making me lose my train of thought
and halts the flow of my poem

The wind has a temper

It knocks boxes
from the neighbour’s recycle bin
rattles my door
wreaks havoc with the leaves
jangles noisily in the eaves

Maybe it is trying
to tell me something in its rage
but no matter how hard I listen
I cannot begin to decipher the message
of its noisy blowing
the wisps of messages it shatters
against the steady brick walls of my house
the clatter that  rises
above the beating of my own heart

photo taken and copyrighted by kk marais

Please come visit

Over the next few days, I'll be a little too busy to update this blog, but new work will be posted by myself and other poets at Magnapoets Japanese Form, and Magnapoets Free Verse and Form. Please come visit.