Rosemary Smudge
February 7, 2015 § Leave a comment
Inspired by my favorite Edna St. Millay poem, “Rosemary”
For the sake of all the things
That I would restore
I will write new stories
Using old folklore,
Earl Grey, hot, with bergamot
Will be a tea I pour.
For the sake of faded things
That could be bright again
I won’t use an umbrella
against Seattle rain
I will scribble renga,
and sonnets, and cinquain.
Many things are built upon
What once were everyday.
For the sake of humorous hyperbole
That has gone away
I will learn to curse with “Struth!”
and “The devil you say!”.
2007
Fugue
May 18, 2014 § Leave a comment
Fugue
That is how I came into awareness:
falling.
There is danger in moving through the world unmindful,
coming into being with a bang,
beginning in media res.
Time starts suddenly
and I must accelerate
to catch myself.
No one is there to catch me
so I go tumbling.
That is fact,
not theory.
Findings reproduced today.
9-3-2012
“Is thy day’s joy…”
July 11, 2013 § Leave a comment
Is thy day’s joy from a wandered child?
Bloomed in whited plumage of leaves
Aged forest, or of my sigh
Nature’s singing, sweet and wild?
Can words poured from a hollow well mock creation?
Apprentice god, I make of script a depthless landscape
Printed flowers hast thou for gardens.
What happiness can I give thee?
Rivers of ink, run dry,
One patch of uncertain blue
For all thy sky.
Will murmured words become thy mountains
Scratching curls, thy towns and streets
And hilly lanes, and roofs of houses
Rise from crisply folded sheets?
Emotion’s compass moves which way from me?
Can one breath of moisture caught
Return thee to the sea?
1991
Reading aloud: “duskyjewel”
June 11, 2013 § Leave a comment
Dusky Jewel
I take your silence as I must
The end of this, the end of us
And wonder if these words, you’ve read
And think to censor what I’ve said
But censorship would break our trust
I’m quiet in return, instead.
Or mostly silent – since you see
The one that is a “public” me
So if these days, I show cold
It’s from this longing that I hold
For something that may never be:
Heart’s dear friends, while we grow old.
I have been,in my own way, true
And careful with this love, so new –
A twisted kind of honesty.
Writing verses so you’d see
Reaching out to grasp for you
For you, who never looked for me.
Though still, I’ve hidden, there and here
Anguished with my deepest fear.
Pain and joy, truth and dream,
This love for you is what it seems
The feeling that I hold most dear
As complex as this poem’s rhyme scheme.
How it hurts, to let you go
To think that you will never know
Everything I wish to share,
To give this jewel, bright and rare
To watch you in a dark place stow
Adornment you will never wear.
~ ~ ~ 6/20/04
Undefined
October 23, 2012 § Leave a comment
“Undefined”
I crave the white silence
the quiet room
and the weightless light
Prism’s colors before they shatter
and sound in slumber
I crave the unwritten page
without lines
before my stain
thoughts in chrysalis, still without wings
words in slumber
I crave the blank future
the undefined
unraveled fate
memory untethered, scattering ashes
buried past
Cris de Borja 