Happy VerseDay.
Enjoy a short, seemingly sweet but inherently flawed gem.
Narcissus
He told her she was beautiful
kissed her on the cheek,
tucked a troublesome lock behind her ear,
And reconsidered.
VerseDay 5-2-19
VerseDay 4-25-19
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.
VerseDay 4-18-19
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
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 hoursand 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
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!
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
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
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.
VerseDay 3-21-19
Because sometimes…this happens too.
Untitled
But sometimes all is darkness
And the sun that lit one hour
Is extinguished in the next.
When you face your smallness
The insignificant
Replaceable-ness
The meaningless
And least-needed void you are.
The worthless use
Of space and breath
When it doesn’t matter
If you walk the Earth,
Or lie beneath it.
And the false bravado
A flickering candle
put out.
As though
It never burned
At
All.
VerseDay 3-14-2019
Hello Lovies,
Today’s Verse Day is brought to you by the amazing and talented, one-of-a-kind, Rebecca Cuthbert.
Rebecca (Schwab) Cuthbert lives and writes in Western New York. She is a hopeless believer in “the beautiful stuff,” like gardening, caring for shelter dogs, reading and writing, and spending time with people who fill her heart up.
Please enjoy and share this gem of writing. Don’t forget to send me your own entries for consideration!
Intermission
“It’ll be just like playing house,” she’d said. “You’ll wear slippers, but not cologne. I’ll wear an apron, but only on Thursdays, only in April and June, and not if I’m not at the bus stop.”
She made me a key, but I saw the framed pictures, coffee rings and toast crumbs I didn’t leave.
Her hair smelled like hyacinths. She left the porch light off when she kissed me goodbye, ignored my declarations, told me not to creak the gate.
It’s August now and I sit behind her on the early bus. She focuses on her crossword or stares out the window, and I wonder if she’s pretending now, too.
VerseDay 3-7-19
Before I wow you with my versatile verses here are a couple of quick announcements:
Send me your poetry for consideration in the The Beautiful Stuff 2019 Poetry Anthology. If you don’t write poetry, but know someone who does, encourage them. Contributors will get two free copies of the anthology and bragging rights. And we all know bragging rights are way better than a cash payout…um…ahem…(*nervous throat clearing).
You can send entries via the contact page on this website or simply by emailing it to me at sereichert@comcast.net with “2019 Beautiful Stuff Poetry Submission” as the subject line.
Also, The Beautiful Stuff’s weekly blog post will now be moved to Tuesdays of every week, as I want to spread out all the thought. I will be looking for guest bloggers at the beginning of April so keep your eyes open for that announcement.
And now…a little scuttle into Sarah’s latent memories.
Recollection
Remember days, sunlit and spread
Tentacles of diving suns and
Russian thistles, green teeth bared,
Before winter tumbled them dry.
The sand blasted faces, relentless wind,
Grit swallowed with water from the hose.
Remember the stolen boards,
The battle of nail and hammer; an engineering feat.
The tree house mansion at the end of the road
That dropped my brother from leafy heights
And gave him the best scar of the summer.
Remember the joyful toil
Sticky hands and brown feet
Mosquito bites torn into angry holes,
Captured horny toads, succumbing to belly rubs
Such degradation of the regal king of sagebrush.
Awe filled fascination, as blood fired from their eyes
A defense of true dragonry.
Remember settling into M*A*S*H with dad,
Never noticing the sting of war around the click of Klinger’s heels.
Or the soft, seeking peace of Radar’s eyes.
The MacNeil Newshour always put me to sleep on the floor.
A sleep that never paused for the bustle of adult worry, or nuclear meltdowns.
Remember toe-headed boys and dirty-dishwater blondes,
Running naked round houses on dares,
Unfathomable speed of youthful freedom
Still not faster than motherly wrath.
When laughter tickled like a persistent cough
And sadness reserved itself for opened knees and epic bike wrecks.
Wounds that healed far faster than the heart.
And left scars you bragged about, not buried.
When life was immortal and endless,
Possibilities not yet limited by the bottleneck of time.
Remember the stolen, joyful days
Dragonry and castles in trees
The naked hearts, and pauseless sleep.
Before we settled into toil?
You toe-headed boys and dirty-dishwater blondes.
What memories lay, grit covered, on your shelves?
VerseDay 2-28-19: In Honor of The Feminine Divine
So I was feeling uninspired when I sat down to write today’s verse (a frighteningly common occurrence these days) and I found a voice that has always inspired me laying in wait in the back of my mind.
So in honor of March (it is tomorrow after all) being National Women’s Month, I offer this tribute to one of the great female voices of our time, Ms. Maya Angelou.
May your words and thoughts continue to inspire us to rise.
Phenominity
She says she is not swayed,
By transcendental bullshit
No one clips her wings
Or guides the undulations of her hips.
She says she cannot be cut,
A skin so thick
It holds the fire,
So nothing gets in, and nothing burns out.
She says she made the world,
And shines her womb in darkness.
Where lesser beings cower, confused
She plays the fear of life divine.
She says no man will change her
Erase her, degrade her.
She is stronger than mountains
More fluid than sea.
She rises like hot mercury
Cresting metallic and fluid,
A danger to hold.
A beaded, magnanimous being.
She dives, not falls, precise and sublime
Small but mighty with peregrine speed
A dazzling twirl of feathers and blood
The small bones crushed, all down plucked clean.
She says she is no token, no check mark
In insufficient boxes of guilty consciences
She is a pale rider, a dark horse coming
And Her rendering of justice won’t satisfy your quota.
She is no one to own, and no body to claim.
She is envy and apathy, lust and indifference
She is all things, undefined and free
Phenomenal you. Phenomenal me.
Sarah Reichert Author 