Light Painting 2
—Photo by Katy Brown
—Katy Brown, Davis
Ancient tales in fractured light
painted on the vaulted halls—
angels in the key of amber,
dropping notes on shadowed floors.
Notice how the glass has shifted:
flowing downward, pulled by time;
fractured glyphs in ancient light
painted on the vaulted walls.
Jewels of light set in the windows:
paths of light flow in the aisles;
shades of faith and of redemption
swirl in alchemy of light.
Fractured light tells ancient stories
painted in the vaulted halls.
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Thanks to today's contributors, including Katy Brown for the pix and poem, continuing her "conversation" with Taylor Graham with an unrhymed Rondel; Pat Hickerson's take on our SOW: Where there's smoke... and Allegra Silberstein for the LittleNip, about which she says: I'm taking off on Tom Goff's "white plume of a womb" which I love and "in the hollow of the night" which may be too much borrowing for this short haiku but wanted to share it with you...
And Michael Cluff. If you scroll down to the Ticklers at the very, very bottom of the Kitchen, you'll see that he has sent us a Charlie Sheen poem, which now makes two that we have down there. Feel free to add to them!
BTW, if you checked on the Kitchen earlier today, you saw Michael Cluff credited for two poems that Tom Goff actually wrote. Oopsie. I fixed it.
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CIGARETTE KISS
—Patricia Hickerson, Davis
kid named Pete kissed me
at a high school dance
he grabbed me, kissed me
inside his mouth
taste of a stale cigarette
smoke drift
rotted out tobacco
shreds lingered between his teeth
kissed me
never said a word
kissed me behind a curtain
smoke rising
Pete grabbed me
gave me a cigarette kiss
more smoke
no one saw us
that was it, a kiss
he later married a girl named Lynn
I picture them together
Pete in his skivvies
sits on the couch
watches the fights on TV
pulls on a cigarette
grabs Lynn, kisses her
smoke whirls blue above them
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ESSENTIAL STRANGER
—Tom Goff, Carmichael
My blood, essential to me,
yet travels in me unknown,
introvert, withdrawn—
and I thought myself alone.
Now the Blood Source man
suavely inserts a needle,
so lightly I scarcely feel
my red fellow traveler detrain:
like throwing a big switch
and shunting the blood
to an offbranching lane.
In its now-red bag it lies
like the rail mail of old,
to be hooked and haled aboard
some other fleeting train,
to be snatched
for Saskatchewan or Kansas
asleep in its bag of canvas.
To ride soon within what stranger
needing blood like a weird friend passenger,
some taciturn federal marshal,
for escort out of danger?
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DOGGEDLY
—Tom Goff
“A man may write at any time,
if he will set himself doggedly to it.”
Doctor Johnson, did you never
write with that liquid sweet sense
of numbers in flow like comb honey?
Was it always toil for hard money?
Come, come; as surely as ever
you turned valiantly medicinal
prose for the weekly Rambler,
you were no mere backbent laborer
assigned a brute, bitter task
and pushing foggily through it.
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Today's LittleNip:
Moon flower blossoms
in the the hollow of the night
white plume of a womb
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—Medusa
Exeter Rose
—Photo by Katy Brown