VerseDay 12-27-18

Posted on by sereichert

For the last VerseDay of 2018 I wanted to give you something amazing and powerful. Alas, this is what you get instead. (Well? Laugh!)

 

Next week, dawning the New Year, I will once again be promoting my submissions to VerseDay for the anthology out next fall. If you want to see your poem in print, please feel free to email or contact me with your poetry and/or essays.

 

And now…the final poem of 2018’s VerseDay adventure…

 

Honey Bee

 

Sometimes,

I miss you.

Miss the sound of your voice,

And the slight buzz 

Dripping Carolina, Honey

 

sweet.

 

I miss your fire,

the uplifting energy; an element so unconfined

The rushing ideas,

The rebellious feeling and defiant

 

heart.

 

I miss you, and your hover,

The way you called my flower the sweetest,

The only, under this sun,

You’ve ever loved, and danced so delicately across my

 

petals.

 

I don’t miss the way

Your deluge engulfed me,

Suffocated and overran in conversation,

The sting of barrage, welting my heart over and over again

And feeling that I was never quite important enough

To stop and take a

 

breath.

 

I don’t miss the pain,

Of the aching guilt you pierced me with,

The weight of what I should be,

What you wanted me to be,

The ideal you set

A high ivory honeycomb of complex,

 

deception.

 

Life does this.

It educates us.

Sometimes in human form,

and one sweetly hovering honeybee

Hard and hurtful once lured by the beguiling warmth

We must choose the limb to chew off to spare our

 

freedom.

 

You were my lesson

To enjoy the drawl but not submit to the voice

To know the sweetness of honey, without succumbing to its

 

taste.

 

To stoke my own energy,

To comprehend that I don’t need yours.

Orbiting in the clouds of your unfathomable passion taught me

To look for the fire in

 

Myself.

 

VerseDay 12-13-18

Posted on by sereichert
dark darkness loneliness mystery
Photo by Engin Akyurt on Pexels.com

The layers of cover

are threadbare;

receding

I’ve spent so long building

these traps, these obstacles,

these ways I keep myself

safe from the world,

 

From my own heart.

 

and now they’re pulling away

like the ocean drops from the sand

Threatening to surge again.

 

But I’m tired of the weight.

I don’t want this smothering shelter

I’m tired of burying the mess

swept under thin skin.

 

I don’t want the false safety

the shroud that masks heart and desire

that hides me and my imperfect from the world.

 

I just want to be.

to stop teetering on a pedestal, while the world rocks it beneath my feet.

to stop seizing with fear

of falling.

being exposed

Naked and messy

pure form of rough-hewn human

mistakes and faults spilling out and over

ruining the world’s ideals of beauty

 

I’m tired of keeping it together.

I want to lose my shit.

and have the world be okay with that.

 

VerseDay 12-6-18

Posted on by sereichert

Happy VerseDay! It’s a bit late due to extra have-to’s in my life, but sometimes a verse in the dying light of day is all the more sweet.

If you have a piece you’d like to share, feel free to send it to:

sereichert@comcast.net

or in any comment on this post or at my page.

I’d love to hear from you, so send me your poems about winter, the holidays, or whatever thoughts have invaded your mind. Cheers!

Not Myself Of Late

I am long away from from the girl I once knew.

The embodiment of all that was good and bright;

swallowed by annihilating-gray skies.

Mired by the confused need,

Where my heart flounders in the soft darkness.

I pluck it out; calm it’s fluttering and gasping.

Gently shush it’s cries for you…

I let you upend me.

I let you through the layers

And the idea of you

Embedded into my soil.

Tender but steadfast seedling.

I forgot myself.

I’ve forgotten myself.

Forgotten that you are just shadow

Borne from the reflections of my desire.

A chemical reaction, unchecked.

I was dry underbrush,

And you, just a catalytic match.

But now

I am the fire.

I am heat and devastation.

I don’t need your suggestive darkness

To know that I am bright.

(Early) VerseDay 11-15-18

Posted on by sereichert

Happy Early VerseDay, my lovelies.

Normally I would do this tomorrow, but my days have been very scattered this week.

So–

This one kind of came out of nowhere, but…it’s a lip bite and a coy look over shoulder. Share it with someone you love. (and I’m not talkin’ about your mom)

 

Ut Cupio

 

Chemical tendrils,

Desire laced and wrapped

around my underfed neurons,

Where every shimmering shiver of anticipation

Swells the wave.

Way back to the dark corners, where thoughts are safe to roam.

Where you lay,

Reposed and calm, but for your heart.

Beating faster,

Rolling thunder of hooves against Earth

Nerves and skin, sweat and breath,

Saturated in the quickening of time,

That it will come,

For us

both.

 

 

VerseDay 11-8-18

Posted on by sereichert

Hello!

We’re back this week after a short break with a new entry from Stephanie Chou. Stephanie is a mom, writer, photographer, and poet in the Northern Colorado area. She is currently working on some new projects. Enjoy a quintessential Autumn verse.

The gorgeous photo featured above is also Stephanie’s work. How lucky are we?

Feel free to comment and share!

 

Portraits of Autumn

Pumpkins posing on porches,

Toothy smiles lit from behind.

Apples bobbing in barrels;

Stiffened corn stalks tied with twine.

 

Chimney’s smoking with wood fire,

Cozy couples couched with wine.

Heads drooping, drowsy from school

Clocks ticking backwards in time.

 

Leaves turning vivid colors,

From green, to yellow, to red.

Foliage buckling in wind storms;

They swivel, sway, falling dead.

 

Shingles shimmering with ice,

Moonlight mirrored from below.

Window panes painted with frost;

Nearly time for Christmas and snow.

 

VerseDay 10-25-2018

Posted on by sereichert

What Was. . .
Hours fall silent in Autumn’s dappled shade
The undertone
Impending death
Swallowed in fiery grandeur.

Illusion of beauty
Laid waste by crackling footfall.

Wind torn branches
Stripped barren
Their cold black fingers
Silhouetted against the potential dawn
Where murderous flocks huddle
Waiting for light,

Warmth.

Never comprehending
Both are gone.

VerseDay 10-11-18

Posted on by sereichert

Today your weekly dose of culture-building poetry comes from the talented Ben Brizell, a writer, poet and blogger. Check out his other work at: Benbrizwritings

 

Enjoy!

 

 

Further

Looking back through

all these memories;

ticket stubs,

scrawled notes,

stacks of poems,

leaves a painful taste.

All I can do is wonder

If it all really went that well.

I’m a cynic at heart,

which leaves a little room for bias.

 

 

Ben Brizell

VerseDay 9-27-18

Posted on by sereichert

Happy VerseDay! Beginning next week, I will be featuring some of the amazing stuff that you have been sending in. Until that time, please enjoy this triplicate of Haiku.

The feeble heart stroke

Little beats against her ribs

Sparrow trapped within.

Rush of blood to brain

Thoughts misplaced; edged with remorse

For words said, too late.

The trouble with love

Is the world in which it’s borne.

Death springs from context.

VerseDay 9-20-18

Posted on by sereichert

I don’t know about this one.  It’s a little rough. I think it needs something. Severely lacking in hope and warm fuzzies, to be sure, but something else. What do you think?

 

Time

 

Time is moonlight through the branches

of a tree that once sat lower in the window

It’s the gray hair in the washbasin you notice while brushing your teeth.

The teenage screams of “I hate you” and the slamming of doors,

Doors that once could not be shut for fear of being too far from you.

Time is the ache that once whispered,

And now holds you hostage.

 

Time is the moon and gray hair

A change of pace,

The wobble of temperament,

And the cruel device flashing revelations in pops and crackles of bone and joint.

 

Time is the tired vacancy of your parents’ eyes and the sudden realization

That you will be an orphan in less time than you’ve already lived.

It is the knowledge that they will be gone…

And so will you…

And that howling teenager, once so sweet a baby,

 

her too.

 

And we think it so unfair…so sad.

But our thoughts and laments do nothing to change it.

Nothing we do will ever stop it…

Because Time is an uncaring bastard,

who marches by and leaves you along the side of the street,

waving your tired little human flag.

 

And nothing matters really.

 

We humans are so infantile, never growing in our short span of century.

Cry babies for truth and justice,

Never grasping that we lack the ability to really understand there is no truth…

Justice nothing more than a construct of simple neurons needing to find order.

We are not ready for truth, we are not big enough for justice.

 

Nice try, pea brain.

You can barely remember where you parked your car.

VerseDay 9-13-18

Posted on by sereichert

Here’s a thing….

 

Atomic Hit and Run

I am in need

to feel your atoms against mine.

Even though it is short lived and often

 

unintentional.

 

Because your matter on mine,

matters.

 

Gives my particles cause to spring up from apathy.

As if I shared your stardust once, so long ago.

As though we had a place in time long before this,

When oceans were gas, and metals made mountains

Comets careening off of placid moon-dusted plains.

 

Somewhere back there,

You careened into me

And my soul still remembers.

 

It drives my poor lizard brain to ache

just once more

Maybe I’m just looking for the particles you stole,

when you astral side-swiped me.

Like exchanging insurance numbers.

A slight streak of sanguine against metal.

Small token of our shared space.

 

It is miserable

and noble.

All at once.

Time is a boundless roundabout

And all exits bring me back.

 

I tell myself it is a finite dance

I can only spin so long,

Until the friction of physics halts my motion

And particles lay in defeat.

 

I have to tell myself it is finite.

I need to know it ends.

I need to know it ends.