C.J. Prince

Verdict of Discretion

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blue crescent moon and clouds

Verdict of Discretion

 

Tears wait in dark clouds.

Walk upstairs backward.

Springsteen or Pavorati?

Stars fill your eyes.

Capitolism or socialism?

Sunbreak or downpour?

The bar is closed.

Cannabis or chemo?

The moon holds a cool blue aura.

Men or women or ???

I don’t care.

Paleo or vegan?

Loneliness owns cities.

Tarot or I Ching?

When will the duck call?

Amethyst or seraphinite?

Sterling or stainless?

Bus or train?

Cloth or paper?

Bellingham or Kiowa?

Audrey Hepburn

or Janis Joplin?

Who is the blind woman?

Golden years

are fraught

with cyclic dilemmas.

Tiny stitches to nowhere.

~C.J. Prince

©2015

DAY 26: Taken for Granted

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Close-up of granite rock. Rocky Mountain National Park, Colorado, USA.

Taken for Granted

You want to put me in a sling,

think I am worthless,

cast me away.

Some days you fondle

me, rub your thumb pad

against

my earth worn face.

Do you wish me

to wound or heal?

I can draw blood

or lead to the pavilion

of meditation.

Within me, find ancient

truths, long tales

of travel, covert

messages.  You

skip me.

A shallow toss,

and you forget.

My ancestors

are your foundations.

Take me to bed.

When you cannot

sleep,

touch me.

I soothe you.

Slip me

in your pocket.

I protect, balance,

encourage.

I am pre-historic,

collecting archeology

in my veins.

We are allies.

Remember,

a stone is a mountain.

A rock is all that is.

C.J. Prince

©2015

Dear Muse,

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purple pointy toed shoe

Dear Muse,

You stand there, elegant as Butterfly Woman,

a halo of white lilies in your pale,  gossamer locks.

Skirts of aubergine and amber synonyms swirl

in the breeze of lip licking meter.

You stir the cauldron of dictionaries, words

that never touch my ears.  I see you

toss in the rosemary of metaphor, a pinch

of saucy simile, a waft of allegory,

followed by a taste of alliteration.

You lift a wooden ladle to your lips.

A fleeting frown.    Deep in your apron

pocket, you call forth the nutmeg

of language, a foreign word, a bliss

of chocolate rhyme.   Your ephemeral

cookbook shimmers with the suggestion

of couplet. You dribble a hint of haiku,

three drops of rhythm,  a twinkle of sonnet,

a repetition of villanelle, a glossary

of mouth-watering Anglo Saxon,

a sprinkle of anonymous antonyms,

a smidge of stardust.

You peer through the amber vial

of Latin and allow three drops to fall.

Bring to a boil, simmer and chuckle.

Then your purple, velvet pointed pumps,

dainty on my window sill, waken

me to the breath of the unexpected.

I remain your faithful servant.

~C.J. Prince

©2015

A Dialogue Between Inner Self & Oversoul

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self and oversoul

A Dialogue Between Inner Self & Oversoul

     After William Butler Yeats

 

My Oversoul, I summon you now at pyramid’s peak;

Above me, I perceive, yet in my very marrow,

Why do I await the Owl’s call, to catch your starlit voice?

I plunge through horizontal labyrinths of each day, neglecting our oneness.

In the darkness, I feel your Light never wandering.

My dearest Inner Self, one of many, as you know, unique as freckles on your flesh,

No severing occurs when your mind strays;

You cannot rend the golden thread that flows between thee and me.

Follow the Green Man through flowers and forest, centuries

of incarnations.  With every arcana you turn,

I am there, in the Druid circle, in every stone you hold.

Wear silken embroidery or torn peasant’s clothing,

But fear not.  It is a journey.  Your choice.  My presence.

~C.J. Prince

©2015

Hori Hori

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I will give you the prompt for today from NaPoWriMo so you will know why I dare write after Sylvia Plath.  Her poem included.

And now for our prompt (as always, it’s optional!). In keeping with the mysterious quality of the number 13, today I challenge you to write a riddle poem. This poem should describe something without ever naming it. Perhaps each line could be a different metaphor for the same object? Maybe the title of the poem can be the “answer” to the riddle. The result could be a bit like our Day One poems of negation, but the lines don’t need to be expressed in negatives. To get you thinking, here’s one of my favorite examples of a “riddle” poem – Sylvia Plath’s “Metaphors”:

I’m a riddle in nine syllables,
An elephant, a ponderous house,
A melon strolling on two tendrils.
O red fruit, ivory, fine timbers!
This loaf’s big with its yeasty rising.
Money’s new-minted in this fat purse.
I’m a means, a stage, a cow in calf.
I’ve eaten a bag of green apples,
Boarded the train there’s no getting off.

???????????????????????????????

Hori Hori

After Sylvia Plath

I’m a riddle in four syllables,

sharp as a Gemini.  I bite

like a dragon, teeth

serate or slice. I repeat myself.

Two of five elements,

I strike at your whim.

Dualistic but even tempered.

I am rigged for hard work.

Without me, tulips fail.

I’ve eaten grit in your honor,

am more practical than an averrcunator.

You think me foreign;

however, I assist earnest earth-workers

on bended knee.

~C.J. Prince

©2015

Vernal Yearning

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Writer’s Digest Prompt:  today’s prompt, write a seasonal poem. This should be a snap for haiku poets; after all, inserting seasonal words is a rule for the form. However, you don’t have to write haiku to write a poem that references or happens in one of the four seasons: Spring, Summer, Autumn, and Winter. Pick a season or include them all.

2013.2 013

My desire for roses—

he promises spring

with radical whispers.

~C.J. Prince

©2015

A Kabballah of Stones

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Prompt for Day 10:  Now for today’s prompt (optional, as always): Today I challenge you to write an abecedarian poem – a poem with a structure derived from the alphabet. There are a couple of ways of doing this. You could write a poem of 26 words, in which each word begins with a successive letter of the alphabet. You could write a poem of 26 lines, where each line begins with a successive letter.

 SONY DSC

A Kabballah of Stones

Another

Breathless

Collection

Danburite

Ephiphany

Flourite

Garnet

Hematite

Iolite

Jamboree

Kunzite

Lithic

Mountains

Nummite

Oceans

Peridot

Quartz

Ruby

Sapphire

Tourmaline

Unakite

Volcanic

Wulfenite

Xciting

Yearning

Zoisite

~C.J. Prince

©2015

Visual Annual Exam

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Today’s prompt:  Today, I challenge you to write a visual poem. If that’s not specific enough, perhaps you can try your hand at a calligram? That’s a poem or other text in which the words are arranged into a specific shape or image. You might find inspiration in the famous calligrams written by Guillaume Apollinaire. And a word to the wise — the best way to cope with today’s exercise may well be to abandon your keyboard, and sit down with paper and pen (and maybe crayons or colored pencils or markers!)

I thought I’d need help with this, computer help from one of the family experts.  Instead I played and this is what happened.  Let’s see if I can not load it here where the lines are always altered and I can’t figure out how to amend unless I sit with Laurel Leigh or Lish Jamtass.  (I actually wanted to eliminate the grid but haven’t figured that out either.  However, it is interesting this way.)  Drat.  The art did not transfer.

Visual Annual Exam

What day is it The doctor asks A test
Day of week Month Year
Like a year Means Anything
Except How many More
Years or months Or day And then
She asks The mental Acuity test
Remember These Three items
Tree Ball Chair
She Says Which
Are the Last words I say to her
Instead of Goodbye I
Can Still Touch
My Toes And
Practice Tai Chi
Does It Matter
My Matter When
Yours Is Eaten
By Leiomyosarcoma ?

~C.J. Prince

Copyright 2015

Space Between Keyholes

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Today’s Prompt:  Day Eight: today I challenge you to write a palinode. And what’s that? It’s a poem in which the poet retracts a statement made in an earlier poem. You could take that route or, if you don’t have an actual poetically-expressed statement you want to retract, maybe you could write a poem in which you explain your reasons for changing your mind about something. It could be anything from how you decided that you like anchovies after all to how you decided that annoying girl was actually cool enough that you married her.

I didn’t really do this but followed the concept and the following emerged.

A few pinpricks in the dark sky

Space Between Keyholes

     After Neil de Grasse Tyson

 If there were no stars,

no hydrogen, helium, carbon,

no moon, nor silicon and nitrogen, et al,

no meteors or explosions in space

where elemental thieves own

the universes, an un-natural

habit.  What you need,

entrance to hotels, no back doors,

when integrity longs for moral fiber,

an amalgamation, collaborating

to peer through telescopes of hope

to find a galaxy cluster

where gravity collects us

into the evolution of love.

Above all else, love.

~C.J. Prince

©2015