03/11/13

Walking This Land

Treacherous Beauty

Walking this land is a treacherous endeavor
Barbs and bites strike out
And leave their mark

Sweet Acacia,
Cat-claw thorn adorned
Snags, grabs, breaks clean, digs deep in flesh

Diamondbacks hide near,
‘Neath purple muhly grass
Most often overlooked, but when not, death

Gila monsters lumber out,
Steer clear of gripping jaws
They bite on rare occasion, won’t let go

Spry jumping cholla,
Its cousin teddy bear
With spiny, break-’way segments covered in snow

They all leave their mark
Barbs and bites strike out
A treacherous endeavor, walking this land
And yet I do.

03/5/13

Cure

Cure!
We plead! Hear!
Hear our prayer!
Father, Dear!

“God answers sharp and sudden on some prayers,
And thrusts the thing we have prayed for in our face,
A gauntlet with a gift in it.”
~ Elizabeth Barrett Browning

Cure!

Cure
Conveys this vessel
Consumptive
To the precipice
To the edge

Commanding a view
Of the valley below
Where the shadow
O’ercasts ledge to ledge

It is here that cells die
Or, perhaps multiply,
Where the will plunges down
Or soars high

It is here
That the cure
Will adhere or demure
Despite when compared
More severe
To be sure
To the illness employed to deny
Existence

It is here
We learn
That our answer to prayer
Was a gauntlet with a gift.
Endure.

*Written for Verse First ~ The Cure at Poets United.

01/27/13

Empowered

I see the flare
of illumination,
the semi-auto sparks

I hear dark silence set in,
move toward me
as anxiety arcs

I smell the fat
from too-lean bodies
burning a block away

I taste death
acrid, biting, bitter
this cold January day

I feel the trigger
of my M4, comfort,
in a frightening way

I envision
the future, just minutes ahead,
know a choice can now be made

I settle the muzzle
just under my chin
squeeze hard, my last card played

Empowered, I didn’t let them kill me.

Process Notes:
I’m currently reading The Yellow Birds by Kevin Powers and just read “Walking to Walter Benjamin’s Grave” by Gavin Jones. The two pieces of writing prompted this one.