When I began the 30 Day Poetry Challenge, I wasn't sure I could power through it. Especially after I learned that there were over 16o different forms of poetry out there that fate could fling my way. But here it is, thirty days worth of complete (but maybe not completely competent) poetry that never existed on earth until now.
On peace and poetry: I found some beautiful peaceful moments in the world and within myself while reflecting
On power and poetry: Pulling thoughts out of my head and sharing them makes me feel empowered, accomplished
On principals and poetry: There were moments that I re-evaluated my beliefs as I wrote. I cast off a couple of old beliefs and adopted some new, more empowering ones.
I am happy with myself. I am even happy with what I have written though some of it is flawed and raw. I set a goal. Got there. And am grateful for the whole experience. I've compiled the 30 poems here in this one post.
DAY 1: CLERIHEW
Genrally Me
Syel General
Fencing with her pen full
Of spells, ever spilling fight or flight
And stanzas sometimes writ right.
DAY 2: DIMINISHING VERSE
Diminished
She can never ever seem to start,
So ends up feeling like some tart
Too small, too burnt, to create art.
Sometimes feel a flick of flair
While locked up in her gleam-less lair
And breathing deep the dreamless air.
Shake and bake some social trend.
Try to rise but only rend
Her heart apart till the end.
DAY 3: ARS POETICA
Speak
We are poets, inherently.
We, of the original kind.
In sacred depths of blood and bone,
The sounds of nearly stolen songs
Still yearn to sing, yearn to belong
To modern mouths, and hearts, and minds.
Our ancient words are balladry,
More elegant than the bastardry
Of the franken-tongues 'they' enforced.
Our ancient words are majesty,
A rich and rooted tapestry
Spun of grit, grace, and gratitude.
Our words are ripe with luscious life,
Sweet with love, swift to condole,
And seasoned with ancestral spice
That still sustains survivor souls.
We are poets, inherently.
Speak a word from your ancestry
And you speak in sacred poetry.
Netogye' niyohdohok ogwa'nigoha'
DAY 4: OCCASIONAL POETRY
Occasion
Serpent slithers on.
We drift twitchy streams,
Dusting off old dreams.
Handless watchers wave,
Hushing out the gone,
Rushing in the dawn.
Open new-old door.
Serge into the shift.
Scream into the gift.
Bush-beasts spin and squeal.
Bells and gunshots thrill.
Canine chorus trills.
Sky-blooms flare and fall.
O're the pots and pans
Clanking cross the land.
Horse head grins on high.
Shriek into it's maw,
"Nu:ya! Nu:ya! Nu:ya!"
DAY 5: NONET
Supernova
Fistful of echoes is what we are,
Dusty screams of the dying stars.
Faded beams from far off skies
Spill into distant eyes
Of us, nebulous.
Wish we could see,
Honestly,
We are
stars.
DAY 6: SESTINA
Orpha
Beneath the tarnish, there are parts golden
That sometimes shimmer neath a near sunrise
Or glint like the grin of a Grandmother.
Sweeping you into the hug of her home.
Sometimes I surrender, and through the door
I slip, so that we can shine together.
Was this the first time I felt together?
Her shape was soft in a sea of golden
Honey streams spilling through an open door.
She is an angel robed by the sunrise,
Sunlit wings warm the twilight of her home.
And I, still dream-spun, see her. Grandmother.
Don't know how or why she is Grandmother.
Only know that when we are together,
Aside the weedy Chiefswood, I am home.
I'd never known such a morning, golden,
Woven of awakening and sunrise
And matriarchal magic at the door.
Drift like dust through starlight beams. To the door,
Gently, to the gleam of my grandmother.
In her hair and smile and eyes, the sunrise.
In word-less warmth we witness dawn together,
Cattails and ditch bouquets shining golden,
A billion birdsongs singing, "You are home."
Perhaps this is my first inkling of home?
Here we two sit before the latch-lock door,
Soaking up these sacred moments, golden
As a hug and buh from a grandmother.
Perhaps... does family mean together?
And might love be like a rez road sunrise?
Beneath the ash, still sparks that slow sunrise.
A constellation of embers leads me home
To a moment we made together
On the new side of an old faded door.
Decades stood between me and Grandmother
But those moments, we gleam sole and golden.
One long-gone sunrise we unlocked a door.
A girl found home beside her grandmother.
We still shine together somewhere golden.
DAY 7: ALPHABET POETRY
Light Trash
Abalone simmers of something behind the
Bastardly blacks and blues and
Colossal slop that you show.
Diamond shapes shine and we're drawn to
Elegant flickers and
Flighty fizzles of spark.
Grave is our greed for the light.
Hustle here, bustle there,
Inquisitive glimpses, slippery lips,
Jasmine scented lies
Kite right into our storms.
Lispy little starlings sing
Mauve little bursts of bling then...
Nothing.
Orderly as a post storm arc,
Putrid hues, like oily water,
Quest to slick our very souls.
Revelation.
Saintly are the synthetic.
Thirsty are the authentic
Umbra hued hearts.
Victory will never be ours for
Westerly stars ever spew their sheen.
Xenos is their constellation.
Yester-life we loved real suns, now
Zoolandarian light-trash has won.
Day 8: BYR A THODDAID
Fall In
Sweet dreamer, gently rest your mind
And slip into the lives you'll find,
Silver and shadow unspun deep within.
Fall in to sacred sleep.
DAY 9: HUITAIN
Spell Bound
Souls hide away from the shiver
And slivers of kisses from sky.
Crunch cross the Trail to deliver
The scribbles they want in reply.
Don't know how I am the bad guy
When I barely survive the drifts.
So I guess I'll keep on crunching
Till this spill of shivering shifts.
DAY 10: PROSE
Storms
All along I have loved them, I have feared them, the beautiful fury of storms. All along I have cowered as I have captured their wonderful, wrathful forms. I have taken hundreds of their photographs but never taken the sacred time to love the kiss of the rain cross my skin.
DAY 11: DECHNAD MOR
Echo
Of everything asprawl with wings,
Singing and feather blessed,
Nestled tense in their twiggy things,
Kings echo cuckoo best.
DAY 12: TRIMERIC
Sge:no
It is a beautiful day to bring together such beautiful minds.
Let us greet and be grateful for sustenance from earth.
Let us greet and be grateful for the sacred song of water.
Let us greet and be grateful for helping hands from heaven.
Let us greet and be grateful for sustenance from the earth,
Nya:weh plants, medicines, trees, animals, and well-being she grows.
Let gratitude ever shine in our hearts and in our minds.
Let us greet and be grateful for the sacred song of water
Nya:weh rain, streams, rivers, ponds, lakes, and wells lending life.
Let gratitude ever shine in our hearts and in our minds.
Let us greet and be grateful for helping hands from heaven.
Nya:weh Winds, Thunderers, Sun, Moon, Stars, and Spirits beyond time.
Let gratitude ever shine in our hearts and in our minds.
DAY 13: CRO CUMSISC ETIR CASBAIRDNI OCUS
We Were Hunters
With crystal drifts receding,
Now comes bag and boot
And bastardly stampeding
Down brown roads of loot.
The way is un-amazing,
Lined by knobby mutts.
Our hunter eyes a-blazing,
Seeking necks and butts
And bodies left uncovered,
Unbroken neath sun,
Waiting to be discovered
By Sixty-nine ones.
Despite blood and bickering,
Soakers and war cries,
We all arise, snickering,
With our clinking prize.
DAY 14: GWAWDODYN
Chilling
Amid the squeak of shivery strolls,
Grumbling wagons and rover patrols...
Robins twitter wrapped in Midwinter...
Freezing our hearts and frosting our souls.
DAY 15: ROUNDEL
Lullaby
I:jeh. Shake off shackles from your eyes
Throw off the comforter in which you're laid
Thick in colonial luxury and lies.
I:jeh.
Blood rusted razor unravels your braid
To twist it with ribbons of enterprise
To soak it in sweet shades of lemonade.
Drift off to your Stockholm syndrome demise,
All sovereignty and savage unmade
By the slow lullaby of genocide.
I:jeh.
DAY16: MASNAVI
Long Ago Glow
Sometimes, like tonight, I despise the light
Smothering the glow of grandmother souls.
Not so long ago night was not our foe
To be slit and slain by electric stains.
Toss me back through time to a Sixty-nine
Where dark was a wild and savage moon child,
All sopping in shade, bare feet upon blades,
A giggling grimoire with eyes full of stars.
Heaven used to be a flickering sea
Full of star frost streams and shooting star dreams.
Oh to spin and whirl, a silhouette girl,
Stare into the heart of glittering dark
Till touch tilts away. To fall unafraid.
To flat grass and grin while grandmothers spin
A round dance on high held universe wide,
Emblazoning glee cross eternities.
The decades have flown. And now we've outgrown
The soft stardust shine of grandmother kind.
Sometimes, like tonight, I despise the light
That strangles the glow above and below.
DAY 17: SONNET
HOPE
Her heart, it twists into a cold black hole.
The sky, it screams a blue yon blues she's known.
The crush of grins and sins deflates her soul.
Escape to roam the dusty Lines alone.
Into the blaze of west she walks and weeps,
Her thoughts all wound around the soul that fled.
Perhaps they'll meet again in starless sleep
If she can step beyond the final dread.
But then a breath, like springtime, from behind.
Unseen, he traced her steps but lead her on
To see with both her heart and with her mind,
They two were one, he was not wholly gone.
They purged their tears and pushed their fears aside
To light the way and show where HOPE may hide.
DAY 18: ROUNDELAY
Through the Squall
Billow willow bearing winter,
Trembling to your heart of splinter.
I love your strength and graceful bold
And leaves rusted that once were gold.
Crown of ice and gown of north glow,
Through the squall you still say sge:no.
I love your strength and graceful bold
And leaves rusted that once were gold.
Dancing even though you're weeping
Wading dunes of crystal, creeping.
Crown of ice and gown of north glow,
Through the squall you still say sge:no.
Dancing even though you're weeping,
Wading dunes of crystal, creeping.
See you bending, never breaking
Neath the sting that sky is shaking.
Crown of ice and gown of north glow,
Through the squall you still say sge:no.
See you bending, never breaking
Neath the sting that sky is shaking.
Billow willow bearing winter,
Trembling to your heart of splinter.
Crown of ice and gown of north glow,
Through the squall you still say sge:no.
DAY 19: BRECCBAIRDNE
Buried
Chitter and chatter
Hatch poetic constraints.
Can not catch a cadence
Neath chorus of complaints.
DAY 20: HAIBUN
Lighter
Swegeha', in the days when moms were low magic and aunties cackled like grackles well drunk, the world was lighter. Under the bruise of mulberry skies, cardboard strips and crayon tips were a treasure beyond measure to formative eyes. Eggshell cracks, bright cross braided, late little bell curves, and unlooping lace all trapped in wax on trash scraps.
Swegeha', in the days when the world was taller and uncles could grin sky wide, metal flashed and slashed down into the dirt. "Draw this." From cool slick sheen of a flip top bed... a head. Reach for red. Straight, sharp lines, plumes like blades, sparks of eyes, and angular rage carved to life upon cereal box flap. "Holy heck, that's good," drops a grin, "Maybe cuz you're Indian... too"
Protest: "I AM NOT!"
Grackles, mothers, and grinners
profess: "Yes you are."
Day 21: RIME COUEE
Sustenance
Embrace the blush of warmer dawns,
Of stirring earth and seedling songs,
Sacred loop of life flow.
Thanking and looking forward to
Three Sisters that will shimmer soon,
Gifting us gyonhehgoh.
DAY 22: DANSA
Dę:ga:t
Dę:ga:t. Dę:ga:t. Dę:ga:t.
Music in the morrow.
Melody in sorrow.
Even deep diddly-squat
Harbors more hymns than not.
Symphonies pipe in rain
And in operatic pain.
Everything is music fraught.
Dę:ga:t. Dę:ga:t. Dę:ga:t.
DAY 23: CATENA RONDO
Sǫ:dęˀ
Sǫ:dęˀ I screamed,
White hot, silent.
Soft, violent,
Sǫ:dęˀ I screamed.
White hot, silent,
Gnarled up in night,
Heart breaking, bright,
White hot, silent.
Gnarled up in night
Sǫ:dęˀ I screamed
Straight into dreams,
Gnarled up in night.
Sǫ:dęˀ I screamed,
White hot, silent.
Soft, violent,
Sǫ:dęˀ I screamed.
DAY 24: RIMAS DISSOLUTAS
Ahsǫhehka:ˀ Hearts
When crick-side was our country
And star-strangled was the night
We were splinters of moon beams
Wound round dust-devil hearts.
We streamed around the one tree,
Its lily skirt blinking bright
With fire flies, all a-gleam,
Like some sacred work of art.
Bare feet unleashed to run free,
Slapping grass where're they might,
And laughs akin to star screams
Till small fires softly depart.
Clear is this well of dark dreams
Dear to ahsǫhehka:ˀ hearts.
DAY 25: GLOSA OR GLOSE
What I've felt,
What I've known,
Never shined through
In what I've shown.
Metallica - "Unforgiven"
Speechless
New words flayed
From fresh lips
Struck silent
By sounds that
Hurt worse than
Boot or belt.
Stripped of song,
From then on
Only spelt
What I felt.
Swegeha'
We suffered
Whips and straps,
Knuckle raps,
White savior
Undertones.
Silently
Hide away,
Under stone,
What I've known.
Can not become.
I, speechless, drown
In laughter floods
And bitter blood.
Just sink and fade
From jaded view.
Can't seem to sing
What needs be sung.
A trill of true
Never shined through.
Raggedly weep
To the unknown.
Breath out and beam
The wildest dreams,
The primal screams,
Bound up in bone.
May all our songs
Be heard. And may
You find your own
In what I've shown.
DAY 26: MAGIC 9
Eksaˀshǫˀǫh
Danced the dance of despise
Until I tripped and fell
Into deep river eyes.
We forged a foundation.
His smile held up the skies.
We were sacred shelter.
And then a new surprise,
A gift wrapped in a spell,
A future fair and wise.
DAY 27: CYWYDD DEUAIR FYRION
Likes
Edehkaˀ snohwe's.
Sǫhehkáˀ knohwe's.
DAY 28: LANDAY
Last Nights
"I'll pay it," she said, all lies and mirth
And then stole my son's funeral and last night on earth.
DAY 29: CINQUAIN
Mourning
Blue morn.
Boots squeak through dunes.
Puff out phantasmic plumes.
Jewels shimmer in dawn dipped tree tips.
Nya:weh.
DAY 30: DECIMA
Sated
Here I huddle at horse-shoe end,
Wound in soft weavings of stories,
Elder grins reliving glories,
And beeps of what a patron spends.
Breathe in the life the kitchen lends,
Drink in the sight of tea spoon shakes,
Fat dumplings drowned in pepper flakes,
This whole intricate feast of souls,
Caught up in life's flavorful flow.
Here I huddle. Drink in the wake.
