Submissions by Ahavati (Tams)
POEMS AND SHORT STORIES
Poet Introduction
Don't make me take my pearls off.
OBSERVATIONAL POEM
Published
28th May 2015 1:56pm
28th May 2015 1:56pm
The Whistle
The sound of my five-year-old
grandson's whistle pierces
the hall half-past his bedtime
Sounding it staves off fingers
of sleep like a Calvary charge
against a nocturnal army
His sabered flashlight slices
the advancing darkness in faith
by an innocent make-believe
As I write, every moment I'm silent
in pretense of not hearing, he retains
a millisecond of childhood hope;
Of superhero strength and imagination
prevailing over shadowed crouchlings
in the walled corners of his room ...
grandson's whistle pierces
the hall half-past his bedtime
Sounding it staves off fingers
of sleep like a Calvary charge
against a nocturnal army
His sabered flashlight slices
the advancing darkness in faith
by an innocent make-believe
As I write, every moment I'm silent
in pretense of not hearing, he retains
a millisecond of childhood hope;
Of superhero strength and imagination
prevailing over shadowed crouchlings
in the walled corners of his room ...
1245 reads
8 Comments
OBSERVATIONAL POEM
Published
27th May 2015 2:02pm
27th May 2015 2:02pm
Re-write
Mornings are important to the young poem. It struggles
after an extended adolescence. The format has to
be cleaned so it hardly has time to think of you. It needs strength,
bagels and caffeine for the messy tangle of words strewn about
like cheese doodles locked in battle position on the parlor floor.
It will unearth closets full of past, journaled experience
written on napkins and cigarette packs. It will want to stop
because its allergies are flaring. The...
after an extended adolescence. The format has to
be cleaned so it hardly has time to think of you. It needs strength,
bagels and caffeine for the messy tangle of words strewn about
like cheese doodles locked in battle position on the parlor floor.
It will unearth closets full of past, journaled experience
written on napkins and cigarette packs. It will want to stop
because its allergies are flaring. The...
983 reads
11 Comments
OBSERVATIONAL POEM
Published
25th May 2015 9:13pm
25th May 2015 9:13pm
Come Monday
Sometimes Love likes to sleep late. It's had
a long night of arranging people into position
for that morning cup of sentence, or dissolving
tablets of discontent from multiple divisions.
Sometimes Love likes the feel of 400 thread
count(ing) shee(p)ts and a feather down mattress,
warm, deep, huskless cotton stroked by heated lines
of noon drifting between a window's cracked lips.
Sometimes Love is tired of being taken for granted,
used in vain through the endless cliches and cheap
metaphor of bad...
a long night of arranging people into position
for that morning cup of sentence, or dissolving
tablets of discontent from multiple divisions.
Sometimes Love likes the feel of 400 thread
count(ing) shee(p)ts and a feather down mattress,
warm, deep, huskless cotton stroked by heated lines
of noon drifting between a window's cracked lips.
Sometimes Love is tired of being taken for granted,
used in vain through the endless cliches and cheap
metaphor of bad...
1130 reads
10 Comments
OBSERVATIONAL POEM
Published
24th May 2015 1:43am
24th May 2015 1:43am
Beloved
The sun has become a Scarlet Ibis ballooning
its great wings in flight until nothing remains
but the instant of its perfect form diving
over me and this lambent hill swarming with
tractor parts and a muddy swimming hole
behind a grey rooted barn of bleached red.
There's a smell to a forgotten farm, dirt
chambers of blood-bone and marrow earth
tilled with the DNA of rusted secrets whose
umbra gnats of reminder skim the soil's surface.
A magpie wrangles its nest with a gingham
remnant of a quilt fragmented in dryness.
...
its great wings in flight until nothing remains
but the instant of its perfect form diving
over me and this lambent hill swarming with
tractor parts and a muddy swimming hole
behind a grey rooted barn of bleached red.
There's a smell to a forgotten farm, dirt
chambers of blood-bone and marrow earth
tilled with the DNA of rusted secrets whose
umbra gnats of reminder skim the soil's surface.
A magpie wrangles its nest with a gingham
remnant of a quilt fragmented in dryness.
...
1070 reads
11 Comments
OBSERVATIONAL POEM
Published
23rd May 2015 00:13am
23rd May 2015 00:13am
Resolution
Your strength is flailing, I know. Your sadness,
thick-rooted into every cold corner of the forest,
contained by heaven and hell, loosely scattered
by beasts and fowl, guarded by barbed thickets
you think love cannot penetrate, grows.
I sense you snapping from melancholy weight
in the distant wood, a mother tree giving up
the ghost through underground conduits for a
sapling to nurse the legacy of joy entombed
within the experienced rings of your years.
You have carried life for decades; nests, burrows,
camouflaged leaves against the...
thick-rooted into every cold corner of the forest,
contained by heaven and hell, loosely scattered
by beasts and fowl, guarded by barbed thickets
you think love cannot penetrate, grows.
I sense you snapping from melancholy weight
in the distant wood, a mother tree giving up
the ghost through underground conduits for a
sapling to nurse the legacy of joy entombed
within the experienced rings of your years.
You have carried life for decades; nests, burrows,
camouflaged leaves against the...
1008 reads
6 Comments
OBSERVATIONAL POEM
Published
22nd May 2015 2:31pm
22nd May 2015 2:31pm
Love in the Time of Cholera
Spring, 2015
I
You were there from the moment of birth,
a quiet space between trees, the hidden
pocket of air in the creek -- the outstretched
hands within leaves. Yet, I remembered more.
There were days I would sense your dimension
opening above me; I remember rising,
as if lifted so I could float those few inches
above this physical reality.
When I was young, I believed if I was still as stone
you would manifest in...
I
You were there from the moment of birth,
a quiet space between trees, the hidden
pocket of air in the creek -- the outstretched
hands within leaves. Yet, I remembered more.
There were days I would sense your dimension
opening above me; I remember rising,
as if lifted so I could float those few inches
above this physical reality.
When I was young, I believed if I was still as stone
you would manifest in...
1189 reads
7 Comments
OBSERVATIONAL POEM
Published
21st May 2015 3:37pm
21st May 2015 3:37pm
Reprieve
Spring, 2015
The falling Sandal-Tree sheds fragrance round,
Perfumes the axe that fells it to the ground;
It isn't like they aren't trying to reproduce, give birth
to relieve so much drying and pain. Fertility is a gift
of the gods beyond the stratosphere of tangibility.
They're drifting in all the right places, against one
another hushedly, away searchingly, dissipating
into thin veils of a bridal gown waiting at the...
The falling Sandal-Tree sheds fragrance round,
Perfumes the axe that fells it to the ground;
It isn't like they aren't trying to reproduce, give birth
to relieve so much drying and pain. Fertility is a gift
of the gods beyond the stratosphere of tangibility.
They're drifting in all the right places, against one
another hushedly, away searchingly, dissipating
into thin veils of a bridal gown waiting at the...
972 reads
7 Comments
OBSERVATIONAL POEM
Published
20th May 2015 5:30pm
20th May 2015 5:30pm
Syzwgy
2015
Spring has adorned the cornflowers in their blue
robes as it has done for hundreds of years. They line
this road like the royal guard, parting only for drives,
portals that begin and close behind people's lives
where they are born to grow and grow to die.
Young wheat, its adolescent chest billowing against
tares is rising from the ground like mist. Tire
ruts have sliced tracks between the colonies of crops
and bordered wood; it's quiet except for an exodus ...
Spring has adorned the cornflowers in their blue
robes as it has done for hundreds of years. They line
this road like the royal guard, parting only for drives,
portals that begin and close behind people's lives
where they are born to grow and grow to die.
Young wheat, its adolescent chest billowing against
tares is rising from the ground like mist. Tire
ruts have sliced tracks between the colonies of crops
and bordered wood; it's quiet except for an exodus ...
968 reads
10 Comments
MISCELLANEOUS POEM
Published
19th May 2015 10:55pm
19th May 2015 10:55pm
musery
The silence can seem awkward
don't look; it's perfectly at home.
the poem will justify the yearn,
the necessity of walls; believe that.
My thoughts are tires spinning gravel
and can't slow down for adjectives
or verbs except for the poem.
Take this sentence and swallow hard.
in the trust of you feel twos become
one. Here, we can take turns, your
silence for my words. You understand
because we've spent a lot of time
recognizing tone: train wreck months;
gnawing clocks; enormous rooms.
look, baby, despite the lack of nouns...
don't look; it's perfectly at home.
the poem will justify the yearn,
the necessity of walls; believe that.
My thoughts are tires spinning gravel
and can't slow down for adjectives
or verbs except for the poem.
Take this sentence and swallow hard.
in the trust of you feel twos become
one. Here, we can take turns, your
silence for my words. You understand
because we've spent a lot of time
recognizing tone: train wreck months;
gnawing clocks; enormous rooms.
look, baby, despite the lack of nouns...
1050 reads
10 Comments
OBSERVATIONAL POEM
Published
18th May 2015 5:34pm
18th May 2015 5:34pm
12 R 3 BC
This road with its sharp tongue twists
and mid-west terrains, cars welcomed
by open hearths and business parking lots,
or swallowed by the cracked throat of narrow dirt
paths. There's an abandonment here of forlorn
pavement, rogue weeds overthrowing guard rails
and worn asphalt strangled by merciless roots.
The farm houses are tiny against the grain of wheat
labored into the landscape by pregnant mounds of earth.
Old bridges sagging under metal weight, a listless flag
dangling over yesterday's...
and mid-west terrains, cars welcomed
by open hearths and business parking lots,
or swallowed by the cracked throat of narrow dirt
paths. There's an abandonment here of forlorn
pavement, rogue weeds overthrowing guard rails
and worn asphalt strangled by merciless roots.
The farm houses are tiny against the grain of wheat
labored into the landscape by pregnant mounds of earth.
Old bridges sagging under metal weight, a listless flag
dangling over yesterday's...
1054 reads
13 Comments
MISCELLANEOUS POEM
Published
17th May 2015 1:12am
17th May 2015 1:12am
Phlox Oakington Blue Eyes
You reminded me of phlox
rounding a Sunny-side curve
to an old friend's house;
not Scarlet,
popping defiantly as grease
but Oakington Blue eyes -
denim, the color of torn Levis
and shirts worn in the 70's;
frost-hardy under the pressure
of ice and notorious for slow
warmth until conformed to bodily
contours with an aged grace.
It's been three plus decades
those curves still exist
as does the house
only with different occupants.
Our friend, your love left us
into the wind of...
rounding a Sunny-side curve
to an old friend's house;
not Scarlet,
popping defiantly as grease
but Oakington Blue eyes -
denim, the color of torn Levis
and shirts worn in the 70's;
frost-hardy under the pressure
of ice and notorious for slow
warmth until conformed to bodily
contours with an aged grace.
It's been three plus decades
those curves still exist
as does the house
only with different occupants.
Our friend, your love left us
into the wind of...
961 reads
5 Comments
MISCELLANEOUS POEM
Published
15th May 2015 5:22pm
15th May 2015 5:22pm
Christmas in Vietnam
1964 - Second Tour
Christmas lights in Vietnam
were automatic weapon fire
blinking within the perimeter;
While back home in America
I broke the leg of my first Barbie
bending it too far back, my cow-
licked pixie at morning attention
transmitting code-aviation across
a cracked oatmeal bowl, a crippled
doll, a divided country, an ocean,
a continent, a gulf, a peninsula,
and Cambodian border to intercept
and slit the throats of ricocheted ...
Christmas lights in Vietnam
were automatic weapon fire
blinking within the perimeter;
While back home in America
I broke the leg of my first Barbie
bending it too far back, my cow-
licked pixie at morning attention
transmitting code-aviation across
a cracked oatmeal bowl, a crippled
doll, a divided country, an ocean,
a continent, a gulf, a peninsula,
and Cambodian border to intercept
and slit the throats of ricocheted ...
1444 reads
15 Comments
DU Poetry : Submissions by Ahavati (Tams)
