VerseDay 5-30-19

Posted on by sereichert

Belated is better than be-not-at-all-ed? Okay, I’m a little loopy from a day of summer kick offs and emotional rollercoasters from various areas of my life. Here’s what I got. They can’t all be pretty.

Don’t forget to send me your stuff…seriously. I will print it.

 

 

Amend

Sometimes the battle cry at end of day,

Is nothing more than a whimper

a sigh.

A pitiful resignation

Of body into sheets and tired eyelids pressing

 

Sometimes the battle cry at end of day,

Is the knife you did not take up,

The pills still stacked in unopened bottles

The liquid in bottles still stoppered,

House loud with the unopening of vessel

Human or otherwise.

 

Sometimes the battle cry at end of day,

Is the giving into the aching vice of bone

And the people we cannot change

And the problems we cannot solve,

It is a cry of letting go,

A world we cannot Amen-d

VerseDay 5-23-19

Posted on by sereichert

Enjoy today’s VerseDay and be sure to send me your poetry, essays, thoughts and musings for consideration in The Beautiful Stuff’s 2019 Poetry Anthology aptly named “No Small Things: The Beautiful Stuff Poetry Anthology 2019“.

Send your work for consideration in the body of an email to: sereichert@comcast.net, with “POETRY SUBMISSION” in the Subject line, along with a brief bio and your website/promotional information.

And now this….

 

When you see me again

 

When you see me

Again

I will be much changed.

I will not be the girl you knew

I will be something

Strange and fierce.

 

The calm of sensuality

That you cannot touch

Hunger you cannot satiate

And when you see me,

You will ache to know me

But will not comprehend.

Cannot comprehend

The ways in which I have left this space

 

When you see me

You will know,

The river you cannot swim

The depth of mystery

And love

You only dipped

Fingertip

in

You cannot

Slide across my surface

or touch to feel me

anymore.

 

When you see me

I will have shed you as old skin

Left behind, pinched

between rock and ground

The ghostly outline, honeycombed in dirt

The woman who knew you

Has dropped away the shell of your empty

Affection

 

When you see me again,

You will not know me.

I will be much changed.

Strange and fierce.

An untouchable,

Incomprehensible

Ache

 

 

 

 

 

VerseDay 5-18-19

Posted on by sereichert

Found

 

When they find me

Alone.

The questions and headshakes

The quizzical depths

Of loam and silt they cannot sort through

No reasoning to be caught

in bucket or screen.

 

When they find me

Dressed as animals do

In the skin I was in

The day I roared into the plain

I will shock in cold white,

filled with trout breath

And minnow kisses

 

When they find me

Broken shell

Battered lovely in purple and blue

Head struck rock, knee scraped branches

Lips like Dahlia and mountain blue Belle

They will lament

The wasted beauty

 

When they find me

The questions of why,

Lost to the brine of self-takers before me

Of all the ways I failed

And too long loitered in futility,

 

When they find the body,

They will burn it

While the soul sneaks

down river bends to the sea

not to be found.

 

 

VerseDay 5-9-19

Posted on by sereichert

Recently I sat in on a class taught by Poet Laureate, Jovan Mays. He took every member of this class on an amazing journey in search of the river of our creativity.

In the coming weeks I’ll be sharing some of the results from the workshop. Some of the poems and free-thought writings will stay in my notebook. The power imparted by our inner creativity sometimes opens doors to things we aren’t ready to give to the world yet.

So enjoy, share, comment. Love hearing from you, always.

 

river

What The Water Said

 

And the water said,

You are not yet enough.

 

It spoke; it whispered

Over the cold, pale skin of me,

That I had rocky tumbles yet to go,

And so long to learn.

 

About the ways,

I fell short

in the neophyte tremblings of someone

Who’s walls had been built,

Before her heart had finished growing

 

And the water said I was

but was not

Enough

Until I saw it for myself

 

And In myself

 

And the water said

come back to me.

Return to the edge of the

smooth pebbled riparian and

Find

Yourself

 

When you are ready.

 

 

VerseDay 4-25-19

Posted on by sereichert

Mornin’ kids. I hope your Thursday is starting off sweet and slow.

No matter what your plans are or how many ‘to-do’s’ you’ve packed into this day, carve out some time to get outside and find your quiet.

Haze

 

Gray cascades of fogged memory

Blanket the distance

And everything seems so much closer now

Kinetic in wait.

 

The world was never so quiet

Nor so still.

Even as rain needles pierce my neck

And trace frozen rivulets down the valley of my shoulder blades.

More pleasant a day I have not lived.

 

Here in the stillness.

The quiet and uncomfortable

The shivering slip of feet and

Icy hands

Scuffed against granite and lichen

In search for hold.

 

How we’ve come to fear being alone.

How we shy from homegrown reflections,

And shudder at the thought

Of being solitary amid the rain and rock.

 

We don’t even know to mourn

The tremendous loss

of keeping our own company.

 

Perhaps the gray residing in our hearts would be lessened,

The stormy mind;

Hurricane of worry and doubt, would dissipate

If we more often paroled our bodies to the rough beauty of nature

The purity of what is real might bring us back ’round.

Clarity borne from the muddled haze.

IMG_0008

VerseDay 4-18-19

Posted on by sereichert

In observance of the Boston Marathon bombing that occurred 6 years ago Monday, I’m reposting a poem I wrote the day after.

Running on a dark highway, under speckled stars and the approaching dawn, I felt the legs of thousands of runners alongside me. The shrapnel of fear and terror, echoing thousands of miles away, gave rise to such indomitable hope and strength for so many.

runner

Runner

 

Today I ran.
Not out of fear,

not out of obligation to a scale or a time.

Today I ran to remember why we run,

to share the heavy hurt,

to find the solace that only comes in the gentle cadence of the body and road.

Today I ran for them,

For the hearts and soles that carry the world with them as they go.

just as I do.

Down pavement, and sidewalks, and dirt trails we fly

Down these paths to lighten the burdens of life.

Today I run with my countless brothers and sisters.

Those who came before me,

those paced beside me,

those still on their way.

For all of the tireless legs, the calloused feet, the hardened lungs and loosened smiles.

For those that find their peace and promise where feet connect to Earth.

I don’t have to know you, to know you.

You are me.

In the dark morning, pavement shining in just-stopped rain.
In the quick wedge of afternoon between meetings and bus drops.
In the long weekends when we find out what we really can do in the hours

and hours

of loving devotion.

With hope and in respect,

Today, I’ll carry your burden,

Until you’re back on your feet.

Today I ran.

VerseDay 4-11-19

Posted on by sereichert

Sometimes, as a poet and writer, it behoves us to stretch ourselves and try out new forms, word use, and technique. I encourage you all to step out of your normal patterns of verse and play with alliteration, assonance, and the ever-popular to say but disastrous to spell: onomatopoeia.

Enjoy this little experiment of mine and pass it along.

DON’T FORGET TO SEND ME YOUR OWN POETRY TO BE ENTERED INTO THE ANTHOLOGY AS WELL AS TO BE FEATURED AND PROMOTED HERE ON THE BEAUTIFUL STUFF!

 

sky space dark galaxy
Photo by Pixabay on Pexels.com

Effervescence

 

I am the marksman and martyr

The ever-present effervescence.

 

Symbiotic soul-light, illuminating illustriously

Black nebulous annihilating, extinguishing entirely

 

A Universe boundlessly unfurled

A speck of compressed silicate,

 

Wider than infinite relativity

brief as an angel blink

 

Temporal finitism laid against,

the inconsequential ticks of time.

 

All and none,

Faith fashioned from fear

Release reborn of resistance

 

The ever present effervescence.

 

VerseDay 4-4-2019

Posted on by sereichert

 

 

What We Lost In The Fire

 

The favorite,

The only.

The irreplaceable

Warmth of need

Burned down to ashes

And the lies we told ourselves

To keep it from leaving

Gone.

Orange and black wisps in swirls of wind

We destructive pillars

That love

only to destroy

That shield

only to suffocate

That want

only to deny.

Fickle-hearted arsonists,

Love and burn

Cherish and consume

Better to see objects of affection destroyed

Than ever set free.

Rather let the memory burn,

an inextinguishable flame

Than free ourselves from the shackles of desire.

Never understanding,

how much of ourselves sits smoldering alongside

Until all we are

Is ash and loss.

VerseDay 3-28-19

Posted on by sereichert

Good morning ladies and gents. I don’t know where you are living these days, but Spring is making a coy arrival here (followed, of course, by a snow storm forecasted for the weekend).

But, as I am working towards living in the present moment, here are some thoughts on this hopeful, anticipated season. Enjoy and share!

 

The Quiet Fury

 

The silent rustle of Spring

Comes renewed in partial glances

A robin’s canter, coy flash of red breast, 

Among the tender buds, 

Tucked tight arrow tips.

Fearful, of irrational snow

And wind still chilled by winter’s breath.

 

The sun creeps round the curtain, lessens her stage fright

Staying for longer moments on horizon’s stage.

Life stirs below ground, within dark chocolate soil

And harbingers of decay make their case like tender pink accordions.

 

Where last have you slowed the pace of expectancy

To stare in wonder at the world?

When last did you marvel,

Explore,

Dissect and rescue

The gentle, beautiful

Living

Things?

That when in Spring do rise to the occasion

In bursts of sound and furies of color.