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I went up to Provo to see
If my book was a winner Whitney
But the prize went elsewhere
I was stuck to my chair
But the conf'rence rocked radically!
©2022
by H. Linn Murphy
On this lastest day of April Poetry Month, we're doing Tyburn Poems. To learn how to write this devilishly difficult poem, go here. Otherwise, below:
DANCING IN THE WIND
Lifting
Floating
Turning
Reaching
Dancing lightly lifting floating fray
Flying turning reaching Gran Jette
©2022 by H. Linn Murphy
Spurs and Point Shoes
When she was young she thought
By this age she would be unstoppable
A force to reckon with.
She thought she would be a ballerina,
A successful artist,
A beloved wife and mother.
And all her muscle work and stretching out and bleeding toes
Would pay off.
She thought she would have all the answers.
Her dreams would have gelled into a
Cohesive Plan.
How little she knew.
And yet now she has fewer answers.
And fewer of them are true.
The scales have fallen from her eyes
And disillusionment takes up space in her mind and heart.
And she sees the bedraggled kitchen wench
Where once stood a proud and shining squire.
She sees layers of years and dust
Of dripping sweat and living
Coating the once smooth skin.
Her knees creak and complain,
Back bowed in pain,
Her throat full of nodes,
Battering the once clear voice.
Those layers and layers contain memories,
Some hard won,
Some too easily tossed away--
Dull pennies in a broken well.
Who she wanted to be has fled,
Betrayed her for she who came--
She who gave up and in and settled for less
Than greatness.
She sought the truth, running it to the ground
But what, then, did she do with it?
She stands panting from the chase, a stitch in her side.
But is she who IS,
Necessarily lesser?
She is what she has done, seen, who she
Keeps about her
All the sights and places and experiences
She has tucked away in her
Pandora’s box.
The corners have knocked off, the edges rounded.
Bashed and dented,
She stands with head bowed,
Having sometimes failed and sometimes won.
Wishing she could have been a Knight
But having held the stirrup cup for long, lonely years
Never having seen, done, or been enough.
The ballerina is broken,
Watching from the wings as new dancers
Take her place,
Toe shoes all satiny pink
And unbroken.
New squires come to fight
And win, covering themselves
In fleeting glory.
She stands at the tourney sidelines
And weeps inside.
But maybe what is wanted is not the Knight.
Maybe what was always needed
Is the lowly squire, ever there to help lift and light,
Ever there to bear the cup and steady the horse.
Maybe those scars are the trophies.
Maybe even the serving wench has value
With a truth of her own.
Maybe it's simply too early
To count up the winnings
And she has merely a longer, dustier road
To tramp.
Maybe it's the lamp she holds high
That fills the sky with light for they who come
Afterward.
Maybe someday there will be
Spurs for her,
And a welcome fire and a bowl of broth.
And worth.
©2022 by H. Linn Murphy
Today we're doing Spring Senses Poems. If you want to know how to do one, go here. Mine are below:
Spring looks like a haze of bright yellow, pollen-loaded blooms.
Spring sounds like the bees making the mesquites hum like a plane engine
Spring feels like a deluge inside my sinuses
Spring smells like the orange blossoms in bloom
Spring tastes like allergy medicine.
©2022 by H. Linn Murphy
Can you tell allergies are kicking my rear? You can't get away from it!!!
This is my ABAB poem:
A COLD OR ALLERGIES OR
WHATEVER IT IS
How could a germ a tenth of a dot
Not even the size of a sick little chigger
Have generated gallons and gallons of snot?
The volume of tissue just grows ever bigger.
My nose feels as if I'd been eating ghost peppers.
I drip and I sniff but the snot just keeps comin'.
I'm out of TP thought the best of the preppers
Getting on top of it simply feels bummin'.
This tiny foul bug to my knees now has shoved me
I can't do the things I'm required to do
I hole up in bed with the tissue and hot tea
And hope this debacle will shortly run through.
©2022
by H. Linn Murphy
The Chocolate Castle Caper
The key keeps me coming.
I currently call to the crusty kid
Crunching through the canes
Crows cawing caustically
Can I creep cautiously?
I can catch a calliope calling me from
The cabin of a caravel near a caen stone castle.
A choir cants a cajoling canticle
Keeping me coming complete with key
Cadets call a cadenza in a cheery cadence.
I creep to the curtainwall
And climb up cautiously
Calculating the costs of collaboration.
Careful of cads, cacti, cuddly copycat cowboys,
And creepy caimans
(Kindly kill those cruddy crocodilians.
'Cause they're in cahoots
With the cabaret cabal.)
I crawl. Then clamber over.
The crusty key cantilevers,
Completing its counterclockwise
Circuit, connecting completely cattywampus.
The cabinet creaks creepily
I count to a cabillion, crashing like a cadaver
Then crawl like a caboose into the castle.
CRUD! It's a room full of cuckoo clock
Crunching cadgy cadette caddies
In cable-stitched cardigans
Chewing chicken and chocolate!
I have no cache with this choir of
Cuckoo cutting cats and their
Cacophony of chortles.
I can't keep up with their concatenations
And cataclysmic clamor.
I crazily caper out of the castle
And into the caravel while avoiding
Caffeine and catapults full of cats and cows.
Carumba they cut! Quit!
I'm careening and capering.
©2022 by H. Linn Murphy
We're doing bookspine Poems today. If you want to learn how to do these, go here. And now for a big explanation:
We decided to have the rule in our family (after remembering the shenanigans we and our sibs got up to in our youths) that after the kids turned 12, they would spend the night in their own beds unless it was with parents home, that we knew WELL, or some kind of church thing like scout or girl's camp. Our youngest daughter was utterly disgusted with that rule and wrote a whole angry diatribe book about how she hates Mom and Dad and THE RULE. We found it hilarious and keep that book in our box of memories along with other fiance blackmail pictures and items. So this poem is all about what I think my privateer (so pirate with permission) forebear might have been thinking since he NEVER (that I know) mentioned his parents or even the country of his birth.
By the way, the author of the angry diatribe book has grown up a LOT and is no longer livid about spending the night in her own bed...;)
So I suppose this poem would read something like:
I hate Mom and Dad
I'm the eldest rebel
A soul so rebellious
Now seeking the Spirit
As my inheritance
John McKusick
©2022
by H. Linn Murphy
So this is a difficult poem to write called a Diatelle. If you want to learn how to do one of these, go here. Mine is below:
TO THE TEMPLE
Home
God's space
Father's place
Eternal peace
Serving the human race
A delightful spiritu'l feast
I spend one happy day a week at least
To the Temple with anticipation I roam
Letting go of world's problems--such release
Helping Grandma, Uncle, and Niece
I go before God's face
Blessings increase
Lineage trace
God's grace
Womb
©2022 by H. Linn Murphy
