Word Garden Word List--Game Six

 

Hello my little spring chickens, and welcome to another Word Garden Word List poetry prompt! If you know me, you know that I have been a seamhead since I was 6 years old, and with this week being the opening of a new baseball season, I have chosen an excellent book as our source this time: Mark Frost's Game Six.

The Mick. He had retired by the time of game six.

Game Six is an immensely entertaining and readable account of game six of the classic 1975 World Series. It delves into the personalities of the players, what made game six so memorable, and is packed with interesting information I didn't know before. 

Some of you don't care about the sportsing!

I know that not all of you care about baseball, but it doesn't matter! Just use 3 or more of the 20 words provided in a new, original poem of your own. Then simply link up, visit others, and then sit back in the sun with a dog and a Coke and enjoy yourself! This prompt remains active through next Saturday. 

And now, your List:

children

curiously

doggone

fabled

few

gimpy

job

kicked

leather

master

plant

poster

promise

rain

school

scrap

souls

spotlight

story

tradition

Pawn

 

I want to pawn my grave

but they tell me it is worthless

and want my skin instead. 

the sky meets a pickpocket

who lifts the sun and sells it on eBay.

roosters' GoFundMe falls short.

the world spins but produces no cloth.

naked world, let me know you, and love you.

it responds with acid ink on sandpaper.

I buy the sun and slaughter the roosters.

I set the world on fire but die alone.

I miss my skin but have lost the ticket.

________

Shared with Word Garden Word List--Shy Creatures

Tiger

 

there is a tiger

who travels through each of my arms.

One is filled with jacaranda

with the moon asleep in its branches.

the other is a dusty courtyard in afternoon

with a fountain 

and a small child who walks its low wall.

your little balcony

is where the tiger likes to go.

there is a purple reflection in the fountain--

the child 

peels an orange to find the moon at its center,

and me in your arms

near the jacaranda branches

where everything is harmonious

and fragrant.

Equi Feri

 

We came out of the sun like flares

burning out our own memory,

landing like witless baby birds

and handed a brick in the heart before we even knew.

There is the sun, our personal searchlight

calling us not to sell ourselves for nothing. 

We played in traffic, drunk as monkeys,

carrying our Queen Boudica dolls for luck, dodging disaster.

Forever sneaks up, whistling our favorite song,

together with a creepy-crawly to keep us honest.

We have tried to express all of this, bright horses nickering

in the Earthbound Barn but meant for the roses, headlong, guided by the stars.

___________

for Word Garden Word List--Klara and the Sun 

Music: Junior Brown Surf Medley

Gray Cat In the Paperbacks

 

At the most unexpected time

on the most unlikely of days

I met someone who couldn't stay, 

and yet stayed forever.

I wasn't then who I am now

which is both a good and a sad thing.

I didn't really love the one who gave me a ring

but meant well by them.

No poetry, on paper or in my heart

but I had one regret and so made a wish

to know the real thing with someone, only that and only this.

I knew the weight of asking.

I had asked to know peaceful days

before I grew old, and was given them.

I asked for sobriety and the craving was gone as if it had never been.

Still, out of the blue, out of left field...

I saw green eyes and they saw mine

just walking by at the end of an ordinary day.

Imagine someone feeling the same way; hit by lightning, swept away

from the next morning, for one glorious day.

Would you believe in a love at first sight?

Yes, I'm certain that it happens all the time.

Two people utterly bowled over--one day to remember forever--mine.

Talk about the luck of the Irish.

Would I walk away from it again?

Would I be so rulebound? Was I right to head back home?

It doesn't matter now. I'm okay the rest of the way alone. 

I have that day, and the card you sent

to keep and remember what an answered prayer meant.

_________

for What's Going On?: Keepsakes and Treasure Chests (newwhatsgoingon.blogspot.com)

(Blogger isn't letting me do links normally, lately.) 

Image at top is the card mentioned in the poem. I've kept it for 27 years. The gray cat is because I told them about a poem I had read in which a gray cat is a symbol for randomness and kismet. The poem was "untitled" by Carl Rickert. I would link to it but have never found it anywhere except in the magazine where I first read it. 

Music: Holly Cole I've Just Seen A Face  (If the Beatles object to me quoting Help From My Friends in this poem, I place myself at their mercy. I'd kill me if I were them!)

April Begins In A Graveyard

 

April begins in a graveyard

the stasis of winter broken.

Bold dandelion hold my heart

and everything said and unspoken.

I have done this, and that,

often for the last time.

I go gray as the sun moves over me

arranging my bones in rhyme.

Let the lawn grow long and wild, 

the caretaker drunk on his stool.

The old oaks must scoff at upstart April

and at me, a philosophizing fool.

April begins in a graveyard

with its bees more proud than the dead.

Let me doze on a bench in the half-shade

with my hand on the book still unread.

________

For What's Going On?--"April"

Music: Simon & Garfunkel The Dangling Conversation

Aubade II

 

All those songs about waking up in a lover's arms--

I don't know what they're talking about.

Oh, I've known the happy wedding night mattress on the floor

amid the stacks of packing boxes

and the delicious view when the world narrows

to a single cherished face.

The bee, though, doesn't live inside the bloom,

and goes still inside a jar.

Touched on every side by an adoring indigo night,

there is still just one Moon. 

Allow me morning alone in my garden

with just my mug and dog.

It doesn't mean I never loved you, or loved you less.

There is only one dawn--this one

and it only waits so long. 

_______

For What's Going On? "Aubade"

Don't forget, the WORD GARDEN WORD LIST is active through Sunday. 

Music: George Harrison All Things Must Pass

Naive Art

 The black cat with the golden eyes

hides in the garden

with the broken-necked tulips

in the Spring.

The tulips

in their pink headscarves

will never raise their gaze again--

only their arms

to the blank blue sky.

The black cat with the steady gaze

hides in the garden

fascinated with the dun-colored mourning dove

on the gray sill.

The mourning dove

watches for the speckled hawk

beneath the yellow sun

of April.

First Love

 Hey, old girl,

I can't bear it, you know,

to go back.

You're gone anyway.

How can that be?

How could you hold my whole heart for years

and then be gone from the world?

I remember the green! 

The bright lawn in the sun, and the dark green

you wore, the color of forests, and later, Great Lakes blue.

I remember the cloud of rising cigarette smoke

in the warm evenings. 

There were fights sometimes,

even the odd drunk falling down.

It didn't matter.

What I remember best is the heartbeat excitement

of seeing you there.

I recall a rainy Sunday in autumn,

you wearing red, white and blue as if it were July.

Everyone we both knew was always there,

dressed in white like heroes. 

I loved you madly from the moment I met you.

No matter where I traveled,

I always came back to you, my comfort, my heart,

the one beloved constant 

in the uncertain confusion of my childhood, my youth, my middle age. 

Sometimes, still, I dream we are together.

Hey, old girl. 

The one word I can never say to you is "goodbye."

You were my sanctuary and so I ring the bells for you,

shout once more for the home team,

recall the steep aisles, the vendors, the big scoreboard

of Tiger Stadium, the love of my young life,

________

for Dverse poetry of place and space, hosted by Ingrid. 

Music: Frank Sinatra There Used To Be A Ballpark 

Craxis

 

I keep seven calendars, six clocks,

and live in a brick house on a street with no wolves.

There is wind sometimes,

stars,

and I like to read when it rains.

I have been here twenty years and buried five dogs.

I was married before,

considered suicide,

kicked booze,

had a garden.

Every morning, I rise early.

Things must be begun immediately, worked on steadily.

I like muffins and coffee.

I think of my father tearing out his feeding tube,

eager to die if he couldn't have an omelette or a cigar.

The butter and blackberry jam are superb.

I will write another poem this morning,

do dishes,

take time for my projects,

watch some tv.

There is a new spot on my neck. It's nothing.

My dog watches me watch myself in the mirror.

I wonder if anyone will want my books when I die?

I shake it off, go and put on boots.

"Come on," I tell him, "We have jobs to do."

We spend the day outdoors,

come in happy and tired.

I give him part of my snack as a movie plays.

Then, time for bed. 

Brush teeth, 

consider what got done and what didn't,

go around and double check that the doors are locked.

Who would take care of my dog if I died?

We are both just heart beats

in a bed in a house in a sprawling world.

I kiss his head, turn off the light.

"I love you," I tell him,

as I used to tell my spouse, my child, my other dogs.

"See you in the morning."

I close my eyes and sleep easy, as if it were a given.

________

for Dverse Poetics The Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows, hosted by Linda Lyberg.

image: Woman With An Airdale Terrier by Edvard Munch

To An Admirer

 "It's like being mailed into space" --Sylvia Plath

There are children

and a magnifying glass,

an ant

a sidewalk

and the summer sun, 92 million miles away.

The Prometheus ant will shortly know glory

and the eagle.

The children are its doctors

with their laser.

A poem on one's heart

is a volcano in a paper bag.

An old romantic

is an ant in a Hiroshima body.

You'll see me magnified, aflame,

for writing this poem about

happy children

in the summer sun.

________

for Sunday Muse #183.

Maureen

Maureen tied summer to her wrist with a shoelace--
now the sun rises and sets in her sleeves.
Maureen left home at age 8, became a nun, quit, joined the army.
Now she wears her hair loose, 
knows the algebra of your every word before you sigh it.

Maureen talks to the Holsteins in the pasture,
contemplates the squares of the fields as seen from the air in planes
taken from high school geometry and woodworking class. 
"This was all a salt water sea," she tells the cows with a wide gesture,
sun spilling across the sloping green with the arc of her arms.

Maureen likes her milk frothy, her paintings surreal.
She likes you when you tell her she's a habitable planet in a colorform sky.
"We are rapidly approaching a tipping point," she opines dramatically
as you roll her over, then she rolls you, you haystack fool,
stood up on a stick with a silly grin because summer, because crows, 

because Maureen.
_______

for Wordy Thursday at Toads. I have used vintage jellies' word list for reasons explained in the comments there. Just as a nod to the original intent of Sherry's prompt, there is a Grover Lewis reference hidden away here. 2 points for finding it.

Back in the 80's I had about a dozen buttons pinned to my jean jacket. One of them was Nena, who I thought was just the coolest ever. I also had Chrissie Hynde. I still have the jacket, and it still has a couple of buttons but not those. The one everybody likes is a crayon face with a big smile that says CHEER THE FUCK UP. 

Here Is A Sun

Here is a sun,
extinguished, small, 
not the same one at all, but a sun nonetheless.
On a bright morning or gray weekday afternoon,
take it out,
place it on the cafe table between you and your friend.
Feel the hum inside your head;
the tears that come without reason.

"What if we are only figures inside a snow globe?" you ask.
Your friend shakes her head, turns away,
opens her mouth but doesn't speak.
You're an idiot. Again.
An idiot carrying a small dark sun around in her bag,
on the bus,
queering the traffic signals as you pass underneath.

Big bang.
That was a long time ago, now.
You and your friend cast two shadows in those days,
so substantial and fine that they might have danced away on their own.
At night you dream of geologists
breaking their teeth by biting into geodes.
You call someone.
"I didn't sleep well."
Here is a sun to toy with, to set down and forget.
Calls end, days go on and on,
the sky fills with birds no one can identify.
Your head hums, 
tears come.
Nobody asks why.
_________

 

The Weatherman

A weatherman
in crisis
is not something the public is interested in seeing.

They want
forecasts, temperatures.
They get tears, confabulations, outbursts and exposure.

This could happen to anybody.
One minute, you're talking about high pressure.
The next, Woody with Sports enrages you with his talk of baseball and
basketball; his death seems mandated
and necessary.

Listen to me and learn, Grasshopper.
Just backpedal through the studio doors two minutes ahead of the cops.
Take over the crosswalk from the street preachers
and roll with it.

The arrest of a weatherman is not a common thing.
Tazed, his delivery becomes staccato and shrill, disturbing, mad.
If it begins to rain, oh then the cops will need him,
the station will be contrite,
viewers forgiving.

But if the sun stays out,
all day, all night,
the whole Universe will have lost its mind and the Weatherman,
installed at last as Supreme Commander,
will have his revenge upon
the public,
the European Model,
and every trend and anomaly that unhinged and changed him.

Try voice command then.
Try the mute button then,
you worms, writhing expectantly under the shadow of his unstoppable boot.
_____

a compound of idiocy and nonsense for real toads. 

Sweet Man

He's a sweet man.
Am I allowed to say that?
He looks like
A little bottle of India ink.

It's a perfect day.
The sky is full of puffy clouds like lazy angels,
And I'd love to lay a sweet slow one on one of 'em.
Am I allowed to say that?

He's a sweet man,
Like clear water rushing over open hands.
He makes me feel peaceful, like my shit-crazy girlfriends never do.
Am I allowed to say that?

He knows I'm the kind of woman who burns the breakfast
And runs off with somebody's sister first chance I get;
But he's balm for the wounded spirit,
And I love the way he smiles when I say that.

_____

dedicated to N.