No, THIS be the verse

(after Philip Larkin)


A life as tired, wracked and wrecked
  (as a parent's life will bend)
would seem a stream you'd not expect
  to reach a fruitful end.

As loss of sleep from infant wail—
  then teenage Ragnarok—
gives way to 3 a.m. travail
  awaiting key in lock.

You could predict a murderous tide
  in every family den
and epidemic fillicide
  and few grown women or men.

Yet here we are, among the years,
  to raise our deepening cup
and say to mom and dad, "My dears,
  you've really fucked me up."

rolling pin

written in downtown LA at sunrise

i wake inside a rectangle

write on lines, type in lines

go online

how to aver linearity and the quadrant

while boxed in by the grid?

i wedge down inside the grid line

i dive down in

i go down into the black ink, the river of darkness

i flow down this line to the 90 degree juncture

to the squeezing point

where thought has dominated nature

my nature thinking feeling nature human nature

this right angle is

wrong -- a strong mindvirus

selfreplicating

i gather the qiforce of the flowline behind me

within the dark water canyon of black ink

black solder

it is easy to break, these lines

but i don't want to break outside the box

i want to morph the box itself

the box itself wants to morph:

who wants to be a square? 

a rectangle? 

the grid line ripples, wanting to move out of this strange strain

this kink in the flow

i take my rolling pin (tool of my foremothers)

and start the rolling process, rolling out the weak link

the weak juncture, the strange pinch

maybe 90 degrees is bees knees to the knee

the elbow, the crotch of the branch

but mostly round is stronger

cylinder tunnel uterine cervix globe sphere

oval arch vortex bubble flower petal bronchiole

elephant ear meander ocean earth

mostly round is stronger

so i curve my round fingers around this round rolling pin

this curving branch  this fine tool of the grandmothers

and i do as the corner asks, and roll it out, curve it round

spring it back to its curved sense

the grid smooths out, the black ink river, steel river

wave form morph shimmer back to its curved sense

still hefting the imaginal powerful

the rolling pin's fine smooth cusp in my cupped palm

i think to turn out the window into the LA dawn, 

will i still see buildings, just round instead of grid?

will the roads turn back to rivers, the cars canoes

or is there some other thing

what 

will 

we 

see? 

Prompt: Superpower Shimmer and Morph

Mary Cowan, Shimmer [Painting]

Take something assumed to be true about something, and turn it inside out. Upend it. This week, you have super powers. So does all creation.* Enter the fabric of creation, and in the poem itself, change it. Make the change that matter or creation is already wanting to make, to bring about more life-giving wholeness, and encourage it. Nurture it. Name your superpower of morphing in the title of your poem, just to be extra clear. Keep it simple as you change the world - there can be many ripple effects. 


Labels: poem, shimmer, poet's moniker

* Actually, the planet always and everyday has superpowers anyway. I know, I know, all praise creation/the evolving bigbangiverse. Go with it. We are dramatizing the fibers of how the universe is evolving, and becoming more aware of our part in it, and that's a very good thing.