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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
We're doing Haiku today. To read about Haiku, go here. Here's mine:
Grumpy toad, blood in your eye
So tiny and fat
Run away if you can, Chub.
©2022
by H. Linn Murphy
Lost
Foggy
Mind missing
Head full of smoke
Neverland claims it's own soul once again
Until its grip relaxes, pushes off
And I drift home
To the place
Where love
Lives
©2022 by H. Linn Murphy
Today we're doing Acrostic poems. If you can't figure out how to do them (there are a couple of ways) go here. Otherwise, below:
SILENCES
Secrets building behind her lips, explosive, corrosive, thrusting at the bars.
I have nowhere safe to let them free, she said, quivering. He doesn't want them.
Listen without judging, without defending, she begged. I could smell her fear.
Embrace instead of attacking, without forming me into a paper doll. Snip. Snip. Snip.
Need to trust the person with whom I've built a life, but can't.
Can't bear to break the silence, hoping to change things for the better, only to fail.
Enticing--the impotent reticence. It looks safe, but rots from the inside out.
Someday....
©2022 by H. Linn Murphy
CAMPING
Creating home away from home from a couple of canvas walls and a torture cot
A sleeping bag the size of a coffin
Marshmallows stale enough to pound nails with
Peeing in a hole in a board that smells like a bog--if you make it
Itching from something you picked up tromping through the forest
Night sneaking animals and insects that can bite or give off incredible stench
Great fun and I'd do it again in a minute!
©2022 by H. Linn Murphy
Today we're doing cinquains. Here's the explanation. Here's my poem:
PATIENCE
Waiting with grace
God employs it often
Handy coping mechanism
FOREBEAR
©2022 by H. Linn Murphy
This is my 5 Ws poem. However, I didn't go strictly by the exact order because it didn't work that way. If you want to learn the order, go here. Otherwise, my kilt poem:
KILT KILT
Granny once went to Scotland fair
When the world was young and bare
She asked me what she could buy me there
Hoping candy would be my fare
"A Kilt!" I said with a great deal of care
When at last my gran came home
Never to Scotland again to roam
She gave me a doll. Said "Hair to comb!
Kilts were $100 a foot, you gnome!
Next time just ask for a finger of foam."
And so I lit instead on another path
To earning my kilt, instead of wrath
Became my clan's editor-in-chief I hath
With words I won my kilt plus math
Because $900 bucks plus is completely daft
©2022 by H. Linn Murphy
Here's my other poem for today:
THE HIGHLANDER'S LAMENT (written as Johnny McKusick)
(A titch naughty but inspired by the Great Moth Influx of '22--a horribly real occurrence)
My kilt has been chomped by a moth
There are teacup-sized holes in the cloth
The holes there and there
Causing lassies to stare
I canna just ignore them both.
I might have to cut them away
But then too little fabric will stay
It'd be a tight skirt
Covered up by a shirt
I'd have no cloth leftover to play
At one hundred bucks a foot
I don't have the dollars to boot
On the front there's a patch
And the back has a match
I no longer my bagpipes will toot
For sporrans in front give a cheer
But for patches things might appear
I'm happy to say
By the end of the day
I've had plenty of offers for beer
So if you should find it's your lot
That moths hole your kilt like a pot
Better take heart and mind
And a lassy you find
Who treasures what jewels (and patches) you've got!
©2022 by H. Linn Murphy
Today we're doing a Rhyme Royal. If you want to tackle this more difficult form and don't know how, go here. Otherwise, here's my poem:
WHEN YOU LIVE IN A DESERT
Living in deserts without drifting snow
Your winters are full of unbearable heats
Ice won't paint flow'rs on your frosty window
No ice for skating in thick enough sheets
Rolled socks for throwing must be snowball cheats
I want to move somewhere the snowflakes fall
No dangerous poisons and stickers tall
©2022
by H. Linn Murphy
Pluto
N E E D S
Exhaustion
B R E E D S
Carelessness
Imagination
B E C K O N S
Awe
If you want to know what a brevette poem is, go here.
I got this picture for Christmas. While it is beautifully done, and I enjoy it, it profoundly bothers me. In fact, all pictures of this sort bother me as I feel it reduces a person to their surface details, while ignoring the deeper qualities reflected in a person's face. With Christ, that problem is magnified a hundred fold.
FACELESS
Why
Would I know You
By everything You
Are not?
You were never
About clothes or hair
Surface detritus
Nothingnesses
They do not matter to You,
Those details lost in other
Importances
You are all about
Depth-less, Boundless, Eternal Eyes
Full of Eternity
Lit with the Light of your Creations
Awash with All the Love
All the Caring,
All the Infinite Longing
To see your younger sibs once more
Crowded around you,
Filling your arms
Clambering to be close.
You are those eyes
Full of infinite sadness
And hope
For the Lost,
Those who,
Cut and bleeding, forge their own path
Through broken glass
And broken hearts
Feeling forsaken, but not,
The takers,
Their own lives chasing
Will-o-the-wisps
Of power
Who think they Know,
But do not care
Those who may never turn their gaze
Back to You.
You are those ears
That hear us calling out to You
In the night,
Offering our fears
For You to allay.
You hear our agonies
In the small hours
Beseeching, begging
Clambering for blessings
Answers
We rarely earn or heed,
But still beg of You.
You are those Eyes
Which See each of us,
Full of light,
Lantern-bearer
Seeker of the recalcitrant,
The stubborn
Those who think we are our own,
The mistaken, the clueless,
Finding us out in the stickers and rocks
Leading us back
To the safety of Fold,
Our little faces raised in Trust,
But still distractable.
You are there to guide
In perfect patience.
Yours are those lips which,
Utterly Guile-less,
Say the words we must hear.
You whisper of enduring,
Of doing and finding
Of serving, and growing
The Comfort we crave
Those magic-seeming,
So simple,
Difficult Words
That show us how to
Pick our way
Back Home.
You are Your all-engulfing arms
Those havens from darkness
Those deceptively strong
Pillars of strength
That hold us to Your
Limitless Heart
That remind us we are Loved
With such billowing, blazing,
Boundless Love
That we can never comprehend it all.
You are those Eyes.
©2022
by H. Linn Murphy
LOVE AND LIGHT
We come down to this world
Knowing nothing but love
Leaving with slightly more
God's precious light's a trove
Today we're doing Octopoems. To find out what that is, go here. Mine is below:
SPELUNKING
I sit in the dark with my headlamp off. The black is so dense I can barely breathe.
No season matters in this Stygian place of silken draperies, chocolate ribbons, buttery bacon, and crazy-shaped Helictites
Beneath, a watery floor who knows how deep, puddles full of cave pearls and blind fish
For weather, only the drip drip dripping of seeping water hitting my helmet and a breathe of passing breeze
My grubbies are mud from the bottoms of my ragged shoes to the top of my head lamp
I sit on a stone stool to wait for my following son, who is chimney-ing down the last of the narrow crevasse.
I'm so glad I have my helmet on, or I'd have M*A*S*H-ed my head a hundred times.
Might as well have the sandwich I didn't want to leave in the car to give me food poisoning. Yum. Dirt.
 |
| These are 5 of our 6 children. |
We're doing Pyramid Poems today. If you'd like to learn how, go here. Otherwise, Ta-dummmmmm:
Beings
Human beings
Human beings having
Human beings having spiritual
Human beings having spiritual moments or spiritual beings having human moments?
©2022 by H. Linn Murphy
Blossoms
Orange blossoms
Orange blossoms smell
Orange blossoms smell heavenly
Orange blossoms smell heavenly as they drift to the ground
©2022 by H. Linn Murphy
Today it's What if Poems. Here's how to do them. Here's my poem:
WIDE OPEN
What if I didn't let others' imaginations limit what I could do with my mind?
I could break out of the box and into the wild blue beyond.
What if being able to do that only needs letting go of preconceived notions.
I could do anything in my head or out of it.
What if all I needed was something to light the way?
I could ILLUMINATE the way for a myriad others.
What's stopping me?
©2022
by H. Linn Murphy
We're doing Quinzaine Poems today. If you want to know how to do one, go here. Otherwise, mine are below:
Sunny oven in summer
Why is it so hot?
Grow more weeds.
©2022
by H. Linn Murphy
We recently had a General Conference for our church. One of the leaders got a note from a little boy who had had it with all the boring sitting around listening. These are their words:
Why is conf'rence so boring?
Why do we do it?
Salvation.
Today we're doing Tan-Renga Poems and I'm doing mine with my friend Janet DeSantos. The Tigger is an inside joke. If you want to know how to do one of these, go here. Otherwise, here's our poem:
Friendship is priceless
Seeing life through others' eyes
Equal give and take
Caring, sharing life on Earth
Friendship is a gift from God
Tardigrade
Existing
Toodling
Drinking
Swimming
Breeding
Monstering
Today we're doing "ing" poems (plus I did a free verse one). If you want to know what that is, go here.
DOGGY
Fetching
Sniffing
Barking
Protecting
Herding
Sleeping
Gnawing
Racing
Flying
Catching
Peeing
Burying
Grinning
My Mom
From when I was tiny
You were my mirror And my lantern,
Holding aloft an example
Of what it means to become
A woman of God.
You are the woman on her knees,
Twice the missionary
You are the most patient,
The kindest, the busiest,
The most creative,
Curious about nature,
And about the world around us.
Mom the trouble shield
Though supportive wife
The go-getter-est, most intrepid
Person I know.
More than that,
You were always SERVICE.
You were there when
You wished to be anywhere else,
Making it work for the rest of us.
Because it was what you do.
You build 'HOME'.
You build the future out of
Snips and smidges
And things others left behind.
You believed in a clumsy ballerina
And a squeaky violinist
And a writer of books
You, the ebullient,
Player of Scrabble
With a twinkle in your eye,
Who hopes to win,
But
gladly acclaims others' wins.
The creator of art and life,
The cork who rises to the top,
The water off a duck's back,
The 'This-too-will-pass' person.
You taught in spite of not knowing
The language where you lived.
You the globe-spanning teacher,
Cleanser of hospitals, bedrooms,
Mistakes and hearts,
You bloom where planted.
You, a fearsome warrior
For the righteous.
You who take meals to the sick,
Bake bread for the hungry,
Make dolls for the world,
You, the erstwhile debutante
Give clothing to children
IN Africa, You who work in hospitals
And orphanages,
Who walk though lame,
Who digs up the past,
You who hunt relatives
Like a coursing hawk.
You who care fiercely
For her young,
Who taught us hard work didn't hurt,
My mother who remembers
The little things,
And gives them back
As big things.
You the sentinel of the broken,
Who dragged me around the world
When I was too young to appreciate
All you sacrificed for me
And for our family and
Everyone you know
You, Mom, are my HEROINE.
You are my world.
©2022 by H. Linn Murphy
