Word Garden Word List--The Silent Patient

 

Hello my pretty punkins! This week, mum's the word as our List is derived from Alex Michaelides's 2019 novel The Silent Patient. It concerns a woman who seems to have it all until the night when she shoots her husband five times and from that moment refuses to speak a word. It is up to the (unreliable) narrator/therapist to find out what is going on with her. I quite enjoyed it, though I have seen it on one or two hate lists, too. 

I thought that, although there are no ghosts or goblins in it, that this book was sufficiently October-ish for our purposes! What we do here is to use at least 3 of the 20 words provided in a new, original poem of our own. Then just link up, visit others, and then help count the spoons at the local asylum where the Method of Doctor Tarr & Professor Fether is being strictly employed! 

And now, your List:

bliss

camera

childhood

chilly

chiming

confetti

courtyard

darkness

dazzling

forgot

glass

jagged

maternal

mints

radio

remotely

siren

smoker

suit

vacant

Scrapbook

 

Two parents, tidy as mints on a pillow,

produce three children who float into the world

like bewildered but bright confetti. 

The first lives inside a camera,

clothed in instructions and operating

the mechanism from within.

The second lives in the courtyard,

raised remotely from an upstairs window

by the detached shadow of the first.

The third grows inside a smoker

and can barely see. It is assumed she will be

a servant or a sparrow, but she is a fissure.

The second hates the first

and hides inside the family car,

finally using it to elope with an accident.

The first is made of mirrors,

the second of fists. The third grows

eyes on her palms and holds them up.

The first is successful and becomes a living myth.

The second is successful and has a skin of diamonds.

The third is on fire, shifting in the wind.

This is the story of the farmer's wife

she cut out their hearts with a carving knife

have you ever seen such a sight in your life

as this family, so proper and nice?  

________

for Word Garden Word List--The Silent Patient. 

The Memory Place

 

This is the memory place, the preserve

of hollow wallpaper grandmothers,

stale gingerbread eyes balanced on

straw shoulders, fragile as a dream.

In this place, maple-leaf red and long

as love letters, her hair revives again.

The swing rope rewinds itself and 

her feet are steady on the knot. 

This is the place where what once was

soaks the air like a diary left on a porch rail. 

Everything is musty, throats close, eyes water

until I take my place, brittle, superannuated,

a carousel horse with painted eyes, spinning.

Weight & Lightness

 

In morning, a thousand plans;

afternoon finds me recumbent

Hours become like contraband

and my plans undone but done with.

I feel unchanged, sitting by the window

but tire at the slightest exertion.

I watch as the evening bends low

and wonder at vitality's desertion.

But my mind! Imagination grown brighter!

While a simple chore leaves me breathless.

So I poeticize or read another chapter

and for the moment feel light, lifted, deathless. 

____________

for What's Going On? -- March of Time.

I have been a sad child and a wild addict and a recovering person, a long-time employee, been married and raised a son, been divorced and started over, called myself straight and LGBTQ, and I end as I began, with a love of dogs and poetry. What a long, strange trip it's been, but I am happy where I have landed. 

Don't forget that the Word Garden Word List remains active through Sunday. 

Music: Fleetwood Mac Landslide

Word Garden Word List--Autumn

 

Hello my darlings, all arrayed in red and gold! If you're like me, then this week's prompt will be right up your alley. I love Autumn! And so, our source this time is the Autumn section of The Four Seasons, a pocket poets collection that is part of the Everyman's Library. 

This section includes work by such marvelous poets as Robert Frost, Walter de la Mare, Emily Dickinson, Wallace Stevens, and Amy Lowell. Here is Lowell's poem "Autumn":

All day I have watched the purple vine leaves

Fall into the water.

And now in the moonlight they still fall,

But each leaf is fringed with silver. 

Now a poem with the same title by Walter de la Mare:

There is a wind where the rose was;

Cold rain where sweet grass was;

   And clouds like sheep

   Stream o'er the steep

Grey skies where the lark was.

Nought gold where your hair was;

Nought warm where your hand was;

   But phantom, forlorn,

   Beneath the thorn,

Your ghost where your face was.

Sad winds where your voice was;

Tears, tears where my heart was;

   And ever with me,

   Child, ever with me,

Silence where hope was.

It occurs to me, dear poet friends, that the prompts I find around tend to be topical. Personally, I favor the traditional major themes of poetry: love, mortality, and nature. Surely there is no better time to contemplate these than now, as autumn begins. 

What we do here is to use at least 3 of the 20 words provided in a new original poem of our own. (Your poem need not be about Autumn at all, but you'll get a nod of approval from your humble prompt mistress if it is!) Then just link up, visit others, and then spend some time out of doors, savoring the change of the seasons. 

And now, your List:

enchanting

ferry

fluttering

forgotten

grackles

mixed

phantom

pheasant

poetry

poppies

quiet

remembers

scatters

scent

smoke

vine

walnut

wasp

web

yellow

Mount Pleasant

 "But in the grey of the morning 

my mind becomes confused

between the dead and the sleeping

and the road that I must choose"

The Moody Blues Question 

I remember a secret place behind new house construction

still untouched, with a little brook; I knew the hidden entry.

It was September, yellow leaves nattering on thick birches

with impossible blue sky behind. My solitary sanctuary.

I've not been back but know

that a sub and casino took its place.

SUVs, neon signs, leaf blowers,

but in my mind it's still my private place. 

My wandering discoveries now unfold in recurring dreams

of curious, fey, deserted neighborhoods found just beyond a rise.

The streets are new, but the homes deserted and crumbling

with just a face here or there behind a curtain, calmly waiting to die.

In these latter years, one seems

as real and compelling as the other.

I once saw a pheasant burst from a bush

and a grackle's lost feather flutter.

___________

for Word Garden Word List--Autumn. 

Music: Frank Sinatra The September of My Years

Printer's Devil

 

A printer's devil told me

(gesturing with his blackened fingers)

that the sound of your voice had been published

by moonlight on a dead crow's face.

Little starfish, I said, touching his beardless cheek,

return now to your watery home, that shell

full of mermaid-song out by the reef.

Poor Inky, no jagged cure can ever get him clean.

I returned to my clay and kiln, thinking that I might bake

some sort of Vodou plaything to give your tongue a palsy.

The waves down by the dunes offered their salt

and told me that the whole sea could be my circle. 

Of course you spoke anyway, like glue-sap in a broken bucket

from a storm-split tree tapped with a sharpened crucifix..

I'm leaving this damp-match town bursting with illiterate poets,

your half-dead friends, parroting smoke from the foundry of your good intentions.

_________

for Word Garden Word List--B Is For Bad Poetry. 

Word Garden Word List--B Is For Bad Poetry

 

Hello genius poets and poetasters! I know we all strive to write as well as we can, but everything can't be Ezra Pound, can it? What about bad poetry? What about when you call it bad and it slinks around and sits softly at your feet and looks up with those I'm-sorry eyes? What then, meanie? 

This week our Word List is taken from Pamela August Russell's volume B Is For Bad Poetry. Some of it is pretty funny. Here's an example:

Subterranean Abstraction

In Hell,

just before lunch

Gandhi is waving

a gun around

demanding a steak.

What we do here is to use at least 3 of the 20 words provided in a new original poem of our own. Then just link up, visit others, then tug on their sleeve, asking them repeatedly if they wouldn't like to read your haiku. Do it until they cave! This prompt remains active through Sunday.

And now, your List:

arrested

atomic

baked

ballrooms

cliff

consolation

cookie

Cubist

glue

haze

key

melting

movies

name

sad

starfish

waltzing

watery

waving

yen

Why So Pale & Wan, Fond Lover?

 I'm not a vampire, silly.

No more bewitching than your auntie's 

freestanding lamp,

all hat and flat feet.

Yes, I favor red

lace, a little lipstick

and I'm Irish pale

but I only bite muffins.

Just a harmless mouse,

shy of cats and mirrors.

________

for Dverse Quadrille #208

Music: The Motels Icy Red

Poem For Those Trying To Reach Me About My Car Warranty

 "I found that just surviving was a noble fight" --Billy Joel

If you're bleeding on my block

I'll call an ambulance.

If you're hanging around the kebab truck looking broke

I'll spring for some kofta,

but I can't carry the world's weight--

my own is enough.

It's September and once again I take stock. 

My trees are a little bigger--

I touch them with the flat of my hand as I pass

wishing them prosperity.

Sometimes a limb will fall;

I can see where the woodpeckers have been.

There are two different ones who visit--

are they the same ones as a year ago? Two years ago?

Am I the same as I was then? 

Will someone call an ambulance for me one day?

One night driving home I ran over a skunk.

My dog killed a different one on a different night.

I felt bad, but kept my car, bathed my dog.

He is my seventh dog. This is my only life. 

I've told it all, about the PTSD, the alcohol, the depressions,

and also about recovery, coping, finding joy where I can.

You want to talk about wars and rumors of wars.

Whose side am I on? Aren't I outraged? Don't I care? 

It's September and the sky is that glorious rare blue.

The jays have been by, and the grackles.

I did not drink today or wake up screaming. 

I did not consider methods of suicide.

I wish all of this for you, too, but peace

is too precious a thing and I'll only give what I can spare.

________

for What's Going On? --"Finding the Balance"

Poem About a Dream, With Shifting Tense

 

I dreamed you were there again

like a delayed letter in the mailbox

twined with thorns, slick with lipstick.

There you were, at my doorway

on my farm where I have never laid eyes

or set foot, nor sat cross-legged in the wild-grown meadow.

You were with someone new.

I was with someone new.

They were both starting to see how things are. 

Your hair, you know, it's like a pillow on a bed

where I long to be. And me, I have the key that you can't find,

as clunky as a cow's bell, as broken as an old washer. 

The guy you were with had begun to see the 

sunset behind your October eyes; I've known your full dark.

I'm here but obscured from the wildflower partner beside me.

I'm getting a vibe, like pixelated messages from space,

that your man would like to be mine instead, and drop his

heavy bags on my rag rug. I think my partner has checked out silently.

So there we stand, in a now that never was,

in a place we never were, playing out a scene like breezy clouds.

I see blackbirds on the split-rail fence, dipping, calling,

and feel my heart break apart inside my chest like a broken door handle.

___________

for Word Garden Word List--The Jesus Cow

Music: Coldplay The Scientist

Word Garden Word List--The Jesus Cow

 

Hello my patient people! You have my apologies for being so late with this, especially since I skipped last week. Who knew retirement could be so jam-packed with activity???

Michael Perry

This week our source is Michael Perry's novel The Jesus Cow. Like the famous pieces of toast, a cow gives birth to a calf with the image of Jesus on its hide. You can imagine the brouhaha that ensues! 

Here, we make our own brouhaha by using at least 3 of the 20 words provided in a new original poem of our own. Then just link up, visit others, and ask the local bovines, "How now, brown cow?" It's Shakespeare!

Your List:

admitted

autopilot

babies

barn

cow

details

fireworks

fresh-baked

haters

implode

joys

mailbox

media

megaphoning

pixelated

regret

safe

silence

sniffed

snowblower

Wings & Anvils

 

September was vivid as a kiss

or a hard push back then--

one scarce, one common.

The smell of a new eraser, the pungent insistence

of a just-opened jar of paste, the grind of a sharpener,

or the sound of snubbed scissors cutting through 

construction paper--I remember them all.

I loved the school library with the soft edges

of books read a thousand times, the dark wooden

window frames, the rows of tables like boats at a marina.

September also meant doctor's waiting rooms,

the assault of hospital smells and rooms full of

us guilty damaged goons, our mothers' faces

as brittle as dropped plates. We're defectives and know it.

I remember. Here is my hat being thrown ahead,

out of sight, down the hall. Here is the boy touching his face

while staring at mine, afraid he might catch the ugly.

Here are the mimics, a circus of relentless clowns.

I remember all of it, though to look at me, you'd never know. 

That child rides on my shoulders and inside my mouth--

the one that could not make herself understood.

I was educated and the lessons were both wings and anvils,

the thorn in my flesh that God gave His stunned child.

________________-

for What's Going On?--"Education."

Image: The Broken Witness by MistiStudios, redbubble. 

Music: Morrissey November Spawned A Monster

Happy Labor Day!

 

Dear friends and Listies, I find that I am too busy with other projects today to do a List, but it will return next Monday. Happy Labor Day!