Ruminations

Guise

—Poems and Photos by Joyce Odam, Sacramento, CA

Words are far away from me today,

no fire or ice to say, nor color
worthier than gray.
I barely know
a thought
or rush
of something
to complete,
if I could only
rouse myself
from this morass,
this pit of gloom wherein
I find no art to give to life.

_________________

THIS TANGLE OF SLEEP

this swirl of almost-known forces
that one must penetrate—this tangle
of sleep, so thick with effort and terror—

how probe the mind for this—the mind is
asleep—only in dreams does it let its levels out

waking is not release—only what swirls beneath

 Quiet the Moon

THE STILLNESS HERE

Beware the stillness here,
the lack of shadow,
the false sound
that follows where you speak.

Beware the golden bird
that floats down
on a shaft of sunlight
through these dark trees.

It is all illusion;
it is all wish;
it is never memory,
though you think it is.

 Katauta

LABYRINTH

Web
is mental,
not unlike
the will of
righteousness—

do not test it
as test is wont to do,
nor argue with it,
there is no frame of thought
it cannot override—

don’t tempt fate
as innocence
will tempt—
let it be,
unless you
are a labyrinthine spider, too.

 A Touch

RUMINATIONS OF A MISANTHROPIST

Nothing wrought from memory feels true.
Take that love with all its loss and gain—
infatuation—love that is insane—               
so much that ends with everything to rue.
The oldest invitations of allure    
still prick at love until the passions blur
and retrospect is harder to endure.  
Or would you let the passions have their say, 
how they can make the willing heart obey,   
with memory that makes a promise last—       
if you just let illusion have its way.           
Obsession has a way of holding fast.
Never mind the ultimate remorse     
when love bails out, preferring a divorce.

 Acumen

THE WINDS WILL HEAR

Of this and that,
there are things to measure—
the where and why, and all the
other, of all such questions.

         ~~~

Forego the questions.
Believe in whatever will
save you. Put your boat out
on that water.

         ~~~

Now you are the single sail
on the sea of being—experience
the calm—forgive what you must
of whatever cancels you.

 My Madness

THIS IS MY MADNESS

This is my madness,    this is my sane,
this is my gladness,    this is my pain,
this is my everything,    this is my none—
this is my ending—barely begun……

Time is the loneliest thing that I know,
Love follows after it,   angry and slow,
angry and cursing and weeping out loud.
Love follows after it.  Love is not proud.

Time is a woman.  Life is a man.
Death is an only child Fate did not plan.
Nothing can harm us, nothing can fail—
look how we walk with our hands on the rail…..

Going down stairways and groping down halls,
we leave the pulse of our hands on the walls,
we leave the echoes of footsteps to fade—
and silence to cover the sounds that we made…….

Merry-go-round with its one-sided horse,
lavender eye, and a song of remorse,
playing and playing, relentlessly sad—
with free rides for children who all have been bad……

I went to look for a possible word;
I found it lost in the throat of a bird.
Mockingbird, Meadowlark, Starling, and Crow—
sing it so sadly—this word I should know.  

Down in the garden the poison is grown,
mushrooms for someone who goes there alone,
goes there with mercy and vision so vast—
if you are hungry, you must learn to fast.             

Out in the sunshine and out in the rain
love follows loneliness for Love’s own gain,
making its promises, and its demands—
Love follows after    with tangles for hands,         

This is my madness,    this is my sane,
this is my gladness,    this is my pain,
this is my everything,    this is my none,
This is my ending—barely begun…          

___________________

Today’s LittleNip:

MIND-POWER
—Joyce Odam

You are that maze
I never get through.

How did you
make yourself so clever,
without an exit?

How did I
get in?

___________________

“You are that maze I never get through.” Thank you, Joyce Odam, for stunning images such as this, and the tight metaphor that follows clear to the end. And those irises! These times are not all chaos; Mother Nature still seems to have her wits about her.

Our new Seed of the Week is Tenderness. Send your poems, photos & artwork about this (or any other) subject to kathykieth@hotmail.com. No deadline on SOWs, though, and for a peek at our past ones, click on “Calliope’s Closet”, the link at the top of this column, for plenty of others to choose from.

Changes! I’ve started fussing around with the furniture in the Kitchen; in the next few weeks, I’ll be brushing up on things that are out of date, for example, and hopefully coming up with more eye candy for you while you’re locked up in stir.

Last night I messed with the links at the top of the home page. Some have disappeared—mostly ones that are, to me, obsolete. But I did add one called “Medusa’s Kitchen Calendar”, the reason being that Sac. Poetry Center has listed a link to that title, thinking that it was my calendar. Well, it isn’t, but I added a page to direct viewers to the real calendar, which is, as you know, over in the blue column.

Anyway, in the process, I discovered (what I had forgotten) that 2020 is the year of the Snake! So I added a silly horoscope to that page, and guess what it says? That this year you should “Be sure to sleep well and take care of your health.” Wow! It also says, though, that “Snake relationships will be meaningful and romantic. There will be a lot of scope for progress.” Good news, there, yes?

Speaking of news, for more about El Dorado County poetry events, check Western Slope El Dorado Poetry on Facebook at www.facebook.com/ElDoradoCountyPoetry/. Right now, for example, you'll see there that MoSt Poetry Center in Modesto challenges you to write a couplet (a two-line poem about anything, rhymed or not) every day until April 30. At the end of the month, the couplets will be put together into a “community spread” poem. Go to the Facebook page listed above and click on the “Community Spread” announcement for more info. It started a week ago, but will last through the rest of the month, so you have lots of days left to participate.

For upcoming poetry readings and workshops online while we stay at home, scroll down to the blue column (under the green column at the right) for info—and note that more may be added at the last minute.

Things to do while you wait out the bad bugs (BAD, not BED!):

•••go through your old poems and organize/edit/submit;
•••write new stuff and send it to the Kitchen (kathykieth@hotmail.com) or elsewhere;
•••fiddle with forms for FFFriday on Medusa, and don’t forget our Seed of the Week;
•••sign up for some or all of Sac. Poetry Center’s workshops; there are actually THREE A WEEK now on Zoom;
•••read, Read, READ! Poetry, of course—but everything else that you usually don’t have time for.

That’ll get you started for this week. And thanks again, Joyce, for your poems and photos!

_____________________

—Medusa, pulling out the mop to give the old Kitchen a go ~

 The Beautiful Chaos of Spring
—Public Domain Photo

Photos in this column can be enlarged by
clicking on them once, then clicking on the x
in the top right corner to come back to Medusa.