by

Wood Hill

I still have your oak leaf pressed
in a book between yellowing pages
While in the yellowing pages of my
memory lyrics still sometimes swirl,
“close your eyes and think of me
and soon I will be there…”,
as pages of gleaming metal and
bright paint turn,
BSA, Triumph, Honda, Suzuki
fingertips lightly grazing, hard cherry
candy shared between not-quite-touching
lips hidden
in an overhead compartment of rumpled
quilts that smell of miles traveled over
sand, desert, high sweet meadows,
to red hills and dirt roads lined with
pine trees and wide silence
You question my loyalty as she lies
dying and I think you don’t know me
at all
as I don’t know you, a few days in a
cloistered world were long ago and
barely remembered.

by

Her Skin Fits Like a Glove

she threw away her black
stilettos
she stopped using eye cream
at night
her eyebrows went untweezed
her eyelashes uncurled
she cut her fingernails short and
didn’t wear polish
she didn’t have her teeth whitened
or her hair dyed
she shunned tattoos and piercings
and cat eye makeup
she disappeared into translucence
thumbing her nose at the cliff

___________________________

Shared on dVerse Poets Pub.

by

Writings and Musings

April is National Poetry Month and I have let it slip by without a mention on this blog I’ve dedicated to my own poetic attempts. There are so many talented poets out there in internet-land that I’ve had the privledge of reading and I wish I’d had the time and strength to write about them all here, to share their words with you. I wish I had the time to read the work of those who read mine but I only am able to be online in fits and starts – a few minutes here, an hour there. I’m feeling quite discourged and disheartened tonight. I’m afraid, after some events today, that my life will be once again overtaken by issues out of my control. As much as I want, really want, to read and comment and participate in the online poetry community I’ve come to rely on so much, I don’t think I can. So please check out my links page and follow me on Twitter (https://twitter.com/charlotteAsh) where I do at least link to poems and poets that I think are the best and that I follow as I am able.

On a happier note, I am honored to have had my poem “803 MOnroe” published as a featured poem on Mad Swirl and my poem “Avârus Covetous” added to my Poets Page there this month. Also, my poem “Train 59, City of New Orleans” is in this month’s issue of St. Somewhere Journal. “Train 59, City of New Orleans” was written after my mother’s death last year. This time last year I was taking the train every other week up to Jackson, MS to stay a week at a time in the ICU waiting room of Baptist Hospital where my mother laid for 9 weeks in the ICU until her death on June 14. The music I refer to in the poem is part of a playlist I listened to while riding the train up and back during those weeks. I can not listen to that music now because the pain is too deep and dark. I suppose I’m in a dark place now and expect to be there for a while because every day, all day long I think of my mother and I find myself crying like an adolescent with raging hormones.

I guess that’s all. I may or may not be posting poetry. I tend to write more when I’m sad than when I’m happy so, who knows?, maybe this sadness will result in something good.

by

Jazz At 9 a.m.

Clarinet, piano and sax waft
out my open door, melodies
flowing like clear water over
river rock,
high and low
up and down
tinkling, trilling, tumbling
one moment, then
a slow and steady sizzle
the next,
spritzing  in my head all
the day long…..