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Poems
jane taylor Jun 2016
utah
jane taylor
Jun 2016
how i have ached to walk amongst the evergreens
encased by dazzling quaking aspen
in my rocky mountain home
i yearn to fall again while skiing
and catch a wisp of icy sky blue
snow powder crystals
on my tongue
******* feelings
rise and fall
as they melt
and disappear
i long to breathe in your scent
sitting on the peak of wooded ridges
amidst slate colored boulders
sea salt combined with cinnamon
laced with wildflowers
crisply filling my lungs
i hunger to once again
behold again your red rock formations
creating tender hollows
through which timid coral sunsets peer
i crave hiking at dusk
into your jagged emerald forests
and sit wistfully mid the columbine
while darkened sunflowers juxtapose
against the jet black emptiness
enticing the stars
to etch enchanting paintings
on inky cobalt skies
hankering to be at the sundance film festival
coyly peeking into restaurants
covertly spying on the movie stars
on old park city main
itching to experience waiting patiently
for a moose to cross the street
its majesty splashing gingerly
sending chills throughout the galaxy
magnificence abounds
i pine to have memories gently cradle me
like worn out patchwork quilts
warmed by incandescent fires
wrapping me in soft colored canvas
the past craving transformation
by an echo that’s now dim
faintly crying out for
an old familiar artist’s brush
that still lingers
to snag times gone by
and paint the future in
amalgamating the antiquated
with the present
luring in
my destiny
i dream to don my fringed leather jacket
and hear my cowboy boots
fiercely clicking
against charcoal shadowed midnight sidewalks
while i watch the harvest moon
i’m parched too see your autumn chestnut leaves
against the bloodshot auburn sky
as cardinal hues give way to glistening winter
melding into tender spring
your summertime birthing
tingles down my spine
as chartreus aspen leaves
morph to golden bisque
enticing ute country
to blow in
copper colored indian summers
with cherry fragrant wind
yutaahih you were called
by the apaches
their historic essence
somehow ingrained within
my every cell
thirsty to lie enveloped
like a long lost lover
in your rugged western terrain
once having left your presence
i return to you now
my heart flutters
with wild anticipation
to see your precious face again
utah
©2016janetaylor
encased by dazzling quaking aspen
in my rocky mountain home
i yearn to fall again while skiing
and catch a wisp of icy sky blue
snow powder crystals
on my tongue
******* feelings
rise and fall
as they melt
and disappear
i long to breathe in your scent
sitting on the peak of wooded ridges
amidst slate colored boulders
sea salt combined with cinnamon
laced with wildflowers
crisply filling my lungs
i hunger to once again
behold again your red rock formations
creating tender hollows
through which timid coral sunsets peer
i crave hiking at dusk
into your jagged emerald forests
and sit wistfully mid the columbine
while darkened sunflowers juxtapose
against the jet black emptiness
enticing the stars
to etch enchanting paintings
on inky cobalt skies
hankering to be at the sundance film festival
coyly peeking into restaurants
covertly spying on the movie stars
on old park city main
itching to experience waiting patiently
for a moose to cross the street
its majesty splashing gingerly
sending chills throughout the galaxy
magnificence abounds
i pine to have memories gently cradle me
like worn out patchwork quilts
warmed by incandescent fires
wrapping me in soft colored canvas
the past craving transformation
by an echo that’s now dim
faintly crying out for
an old familiar artist’s brush
that still lingers
to snag times gone by
and paint the future in
amalgamating the antiquated
with the present
luring in
my destiny
i dream to don my fringed leather jacket
and hear my cowboy boots
fiercely clicking
against charcoal shadowed midnight sidewalks
while i watch the harvest moon
i’m parched too see your autumn chestnut leaves
against the bloodshot auburn sky
as cardinal hues give way to glistening winter
melding into tender spring
your summertime birthing
tingles down my spine
as chartreus aspen leaves
morph to golden bisque
enticing ute country
to blow in
copper colored indian summers
with cherry fragrant wind
yutaahih you were called
by the apaches
their historic essence
somehow ingrained within
my every cell
thirsty to lie enveloped
like a long lost lover
in your rugged western terrain
once having left your presence
i return to you now
my heart flutters
with wild anticipation
to see your precious face again
utah
©2016janetaylor
after a 5 year absence, we are returning to utah at the end of this month
Styles 12
Aug 2018
secrets at dusk
tasted vigorous as
Coltrane blues
in a smokey nightclub
under mysterious saxophone seas
this style is not my own
but it helps me swim better
I decided to adopt it
curious why it tugs ruthless
on spit fire sleeves
deliciously drowning me free.
forest moons at night
help you drop it all
bags of unwanted programs
flung from broken chimneys
violet threads pass perfect
through kitchen chipped glass
moth wings burning summer up
like her eyelash fluttering innocently on some other guy's cheek
shattering divisions snag
on moonlight betrayal dance
enormous sea hooks chop in
helpless lips seduced
mad quicksilver rush
reserve this room for my only friend
we have private letters to write
on a future night when
god dreams come true.
This is for you.
My only friend.
What weighs heavy is certain light
how it pierces
through troubled waters.
A million traces of faces
lit up in every beam.
One night I felt it bleed through me
using rivers of sun-fire screams.
Volcanic poetry spoke without a sound.
Jim Morrison breaking through doors
under spells of hypnotic waves
wild vibrant shimmering
on multi-colored sheets.
This style is not my own
but it helped me lava streak
across bitter shores.
Now,
my voice strays away.
Gone hunting
a broken well voice
picked up by an old cracked bucket
leaking simple worded wishes
deciding to voluntarily borrow her
stolen forest eyes.
I heard them speak translucent leaf
on a summer day
when clairvoyant kids
heard God speak
on pathways of brilliant blue lake
when sunshine
whispered us
in scintillating ripples
right before our astounded,
washed feet.
I am dripping funeral summer sweat
under tombstone studded trees
smiling while choking in
liquid clouded dark.
Alone but not alone.
Mighty Ghosts of heaven
holding my head up
making sure the Nile
doesn't gush out while
I still cannot even write or speak
turn my notebooks into confetti
nothing describes this mysterious sea
a new species of saxophone waves
has belted its killer wonderland
sound out across an entire broken stage.
*
I can picture us
walking barefoot
on star contacted sand
gazing out
under champion chandelier wonders
walking on Texas Lightning storm colors
bellies full on Rumi soul food
our secret flames
burning up
plastic playgrounds
violating propriety
on some nuclear guarded beach
schools of fish cut
by saxophone hooked seas
blasted by vaults of unwrapped poems
someone else wrote perfect
in our dreams
we hope one day
the unpredictable silence
of simple worded wishes
will help us
extravagantly bloom
new spring leaves
rain stamped on tender delicious works
after winter is done
savagely wishing us dead
we are touched by other worlds.
https://youtu.be/6xcwt9mSbYE
For Drew
For Drew
Nat Lipstadt Apr 2019
My Prize for Waiting
Nat Lipstadt
Apr 2019
My Prize for Waiting
~
tucked in all by myself,
resting dark and quiet
in the thin place^
where the distance between
this world and the next,
is no distance at all,
but a few inches separating,
easily fordable, back and forth-able
my palms, hands down,
come to rest on my *******
and the two thumbs in unison,
begin to sweep the streaming space of their in-between,
conducting a radar sweep-search for the precise point
passageway to poetic mystical places,
hoping to snag any residuals for safekeeping
no hurry to either arrive or depart,
in patient attendance for
rhythms of woven word arrivistes,
coming in no particular order,
asking to be seized, greedy to be
nominated and recognized, immortalized,
as great poetry, prize worthy,
kept for all time inside others poetry chests
but in the thin place,
dream records are not kept,
hazy scraps at best retained,
a recipe for a witnessed totality,
is only a soupy reduction of a
few seconds of hazed video,
that can neither give nor get
no satisfaction
the plastic surgeons attempt to reconstruct
the body of the meal, the real deal,
alas, there are no prizes either
for botched surgeries and pretty but meaningless
poetry scraps
the only evidence of my travels,
a flushing, blushing residual flow,
slow to dissipate, a hangover makers mark
of a sojourn best described as unsatisfying,
my blush, a prize for waiting but failing,
“the most peculiar and most human of all expressions”^^
woe to me when returned in ignominy,
medaled in only base irony,
me and philosopher Pliny,^^^
both dying while recording our own private Vesuvius,
our bodies preserved by voluminous volcanic ash,
but alas, you cannot recite the ash of poetry
so one waits, cut and pasting brown edged
burnt photographs epistles,
that are clinging and clung to the distaff spindle,
insufficient to weave a flax complete
and yet we return perforce twenty four hours from now,
to snag another prized piece of meaningless,
my prize for waiting
in the solitude of the thin place
3:35am Saturday April 6th, 2019
~
last nights scrap
cease your whining,
seize your waiting,
therein is your own paid price
for the prize of inspiration
inspired by Jean Fisher,
a real prize winning poet
~
tucked in all by myself,
resting dark and quiet
in the thin place^
where the distance between
this world and the next,
is no distance at all,
but a few inches separating,
easily fordable, back and forth-able
my palms, hands down,
come to rest on my *******
and the two thumbs in unison,
begin to sweep the streaming space of their in-between,
conducting a radar sweep-search for the precise point
passageway to poetic mystical places,
hoping to snag any residuals for safekeeping
no hurry to either arrive or depart,
in patient attendance for
rhythms of woven word arrivistes,
coming in no particular order,
asking to be seized, greedy to be
nominated and recognized, immortalized,
as great poetry, prize worthy,
kept for all time inside others poetry chests
but in the thin place,
dream records are not kept,
hazy scraps at best retained,
a recipe for a witnessed totality,
is only a soupy reduction of a
few seconds of hazed video,
that can neither give nor get
no satisfaction
the plastic surgeons attempt to reconstruct
the body of the meal, the real deal,
alas, there are no prizes either
for botched surgeries and pretty but meaningless
poetry scraps
the only evidence of my travels,
a flushing, blushing residual flow,
slow to dissipate, a hangover makers mark
of a sojourn best described as unsatisfying,
my blush, a prize for waiting but failing,
“the most peculiar and most human of all expressions”^^
woe to me when returned in ignominy,
medaled in only base irony,
me and philosopher Pliny,^^^
both dying while recording our own private Vesuvius,
our bodies preserved by voluminous volcanic ash,
but alas, you cannot recite the ash of poetry
so one waits, cut and pasting brown edged
burnt photographs epistles,
that are clinging and clung to the distaff spindle,
insufficient to weave a flax complete
and yet we return perforce twenty four hours from now,
to snag another prized piece of meaningless,
my prize for waiting
in the solitude of the thin place
3:35am Saturday April 6th, 2019
~
last nights scrap
cease your whining,
seize your waiting,
therein is your own paid price
for the prize of inspiration
inspired by Jean Fisher,
a real prize winning poet
^”It turns out these destinations have a name: thin places. ... No, thin places are much deeper than that. They are locales where the distance between heaven and earth collapses and we're able to catch glimpses of the divine, or the transcendent or, as I like to think of it, the Infinite Whatever”. The New York Times
^^ Charles Darwin on blushing
^^^ “For my part I deem those blessed to whom, by favour of the gods, it has been granted either to do what is worth writing of, or to write what is worth reading; above measure blessed those on whom both gifts have been conferred. In the latter number will be my uncle, by virtue of his own and of your compositions.” Pliny the Younger to his uncle, Pliny the Elder, who most likely died in the eruption of Mt. Vesuvius while trying to save a friend.
^^ Charles Darwin on blushing
^^^ “For my part I deem those blessed to whom, by favour of the gods, it has been granted either to do what is worth writing of, or to write what is worth reading; above measure blessed those on whom both gifts have been conferred. In the latter number will be my uncle, by virtue of his own and of your compositions.” Pliny the Younger to his uncle, Pliny the Elder, who most likely died in the eruption of Mt. Vesuvius while trying to save a friend.