Tea and Ash

A half-remembered dream,
Fitfully had,
Plaque on the mind,
Scrubbed off in the
Sunshine and the rain
That alternates relentlessly
In this New England atmosphere
So far away
From where my heart was burned
In a conflagration
Of my own making,
Because no one breaks your heart
Except yourself,
And I would rather
Ashes
Than
Pieces,
I’d rather
Cinder, unmendable,
Than
Kintsukuroi, golden-veined.

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Gratitude: Part 1

Today I am grateful for:

Prayer for Rain

Bring on rain,
Those torrential precipitations that ravaged elsewhere this year,
Bring the storm clouds gushing over-full to drench the fuel for this fire.

This conflagration that congests the air –
Burned beauty scorching sky;
All part of the cycle, a frightening part of it,
That pushes away animals, that bursts open pinecones,
That sends warriors up the mountain to extinguish it:
Let them stay safe, let the weather quench them,
A baptism in ash and water.

Let the air clear, may it be calm and quiet,
Not crackling in fiercely firing wood,
Popping for resin burning hotter,
Let the hush lay flat upon it,
Smothering out into smoking,
Let the water lay it onto the ground,
May the mountain find again tranquility swiftly
So that it may begin healing.

Monster Speed Dating

This one kicked my ass, just like it knew it would. Last month, before the 31 Plays Challenge began, I wrote a list of prompts for myself. Top of the list was this very simple idea: monsters speed dating. I knew that it would require a level of concentration that I was unaccustomed to, bouncing back and forth between conversations so that they flowed in a reasonable fashion that also built on itself. I picked probably the worst day to work on this one.

Little sleep. A position at work that predicated I could not write. Chores to do between jobs. A near fight at the dinner show. A photo-shoot and a line-through for one of the plays I’m rehearsing. On top of all this I decided to write a fourteen page play? Challenge accepted.

Frankie, Frankly – NaPoWriMo #21.3

What a mistake you’ve made, Doctor,
What hobbled-together harbinger of horror have you awoken in me,
What misplaced mortality have your conjured out of an electrical storm and organs that don’t belong?

What’s Your Name – Oakland Workshop Writing Prompt

Am Yisrael Chai, Am Yisrael Chai,
Am Yisrael, Am Yisrael, Am Yisrael Chai:

Born of the north of the land of milk and honey to parents of other native tongues who
Tasted the tones of Semitic proverbs that rolled on the winds of two millenia of Diaspora and now it sweetens their saliva, khalav v’dvash, and pass it in a name to their son.

My father holds me, his third boy, my mother’s first, eight days after birth – the brit melah.
This name hovers over the synagogue, not yet announced, but it seeps through the ceiling and out the hearts of the congregation, an ancient promise:

Take to Find

I want to tell you everything I know about myself and so expose when the moon hangs low,
Growing nearer as the stars glow gallantly in comparison to the brightness in your eyes when I have you in my orisons.

Core untrimmed, contents revealed:
I’ve known loves that dropped like out of the sky,
Didn’t pull my chute out of fright and plummeted instead to the ground,
Ended it with the clack that resounded extra loud.

Clack! Rounds rebounded, stored and stacked,
Some might say he’s slack in the stack stored upon his back,
Boasts a knack at knocking words together,
To turn them toward some poetry,
When the fact he’s writing poetry should yet fill her with some worry, see?