Composed 6/7/16
Description: It’s a bitch.
Sometimes I pride on a heart made of ice
But there’s no such thing
Tragedy pierces and
Anger melts it
Sadness seizes and squeezes until tears leak
Out between clenched fingers
Happiness radiates and thaws
Hearts throb but it must freeze again
Because ice crystals keep the scoundrels at bay
But it inevitably melts away
And it always burns
Composed 4/11/16
Description: For Day 10 of NaPoWriMo. Based on a conversation I had today.
She was worried she’d die
Face down on the treadmill
Doctors would lick and stick electrodes to her
Watch the beeping of her heart and
She’d begin
Step after step breathing heavy
Up and up and across that digital mile
Sweat beading in her brow
They’d watch her spike
And go flat
What she didn’t remember was
Her heart had experienced more than that mile
She’d known stress of great intensity
Chronic worry and work to the point of fatigue
She cared immensely about every need
Her heart beat along with the
Buzzing in her head and the
Heartbeats of everyone around her
She’d lived a hundred stressful lives
Heart thumping with the emotion of a hundred miles
What she didn’t know was that she’d already passed the test
This was just a formality
Composed 12/15/15
Description: When you write, you dwell on things.
It was her nature
To move on while sitting still
She bubbled along the brook
Without mind to
Rocks, debris, and things
It was easy
To stroll about the attic
Leave the heart of things untouched
To watch it all blindly
Omnipresent and objective
Like the storybooks
But one does not live
In third person
Rushing forward does not present
Opportunity to be human
So she gulped until she felt her heart
And retched in on the page
And lived
In the moment
Composed 5/12/13
Description: I recently stumbled across another poetry contest that really sparked my interest with its prompt. The post described a study that found that “twenty-three words still in use today have survived mostly unchanged from the end of the last ice age.” The blogger then went onto list these words: I, we, thou, ye, who, this, that, what, mother, male/man, not, old, black, worm, bark, hand, ashes, fire, to give, to pull, to spit, to flow, and to hear. The challenge was to create a poem using at least fifteen of these words in less than 12 lines. It sounded fun, so I gave it a shot! I hope you like the results.
Also, be sure to check out the contest and poemelf’s awesome blog! She has such a cool project, and, if you like poetry, I’m sure you’ll love her blog.
I hear those folks who say
My man’s heart is old and black
That it burned out in the fire
And all that’s left of it is ash
But I know what his heart’s like
Because he gave me that warm hand
And asked me not to leave him
When I said “I understand”
He just needed me to pull
His heart strings soft like this
To let his love-song flow
To grant my one true wish
Scraps of Paper 