Slowly Resolve (Day 406)

Slowly they resolve 

turning inside out 

right and left   relieved

yet so often 

tremulous   questioning

the possibility 

of knowing what we know

stars bloom around 

their gaping eyes as they strive 

to comprehend

the beigeness of his jacket

his right hand barely holding 

little gray shards 

of streets   they see how it is

harder to think

up a suitable answer in the blank 

whiteness   to navigate a path 

pinkened by windblown 

cherry blossoms

in crestfallen octaves 

they fall away   

evening’s incongruously empty 

sidewalks heightening 

their anxiety   sending them 

into the breech   its fury 

swirling and whipping their dreams 

into wild white horses 

(c) 2018, by Hannah Six

Image: public domain/PxHere

The Beast (Day 405)

The beast is stirring. Do you hear her? 

Roaring like war in the middle distance?

Ouroboros consuming her own tail, we 

saw her curled and assumed she dreamed, 

spanning the globe with her iron grip, 

squeezing ever tighter as she slept, 

mistook her eternal cycle for a promise, 

assumed the promises she made she kept,

missed seeing the signs of life simply suspended.

The beast is waking. Do you hear her? 

Hissing and steaming from on high, 

Pele’s rapturous rest was interrupted, and 

with a great volcanic sigh she stretched and rose, 

forked tail unfurling slowly, blotting out the sun,

casting an insidious shadow we didn’t know 

would burn rather than freeze, would bring us 

to our knees, not to our senses, after all.

The beast is rearing. Do you hear her? 

Readying for battle on a field of fire we 

refused to quench, a nightmare no one believed 

would form again. Friends grow chill and soon 

their hatred blossoms into enmity. Enemies’ poison 

grows more deadly still. And we, the unprepared, 

freeze in her gaze’s glare, we helpless prey, 

assuredly the fierce predator’s intended kill.

(c) 2018, by Hannah Six

Image: Fantasy Dimentions

A hint of sweetness (Day 404)

Winter is sleeping 

off an angry outburst 
now  its freshness faded  

and spring’s impending 

buds  sensing the end 

of long cold nights are 

forcing fall’s final leaves 

from their branches  

sending them flying 

toward the estuary  

striped gray and brown 

by three weeks of rain  

flooded with runoff 

from the foothills 

that glow like autumn 

in late afternoon 

when the fog breaks and

sunlight strokes last year’s 

storm-flattened grasses   

nomadic summer migrates 

northward now  fluttering  

open-ended  shallow  

but still in a deep sort of way 

and  straining toward it 

with open-mouthed desire 

we  confined to our nests  

yearn to grasp the slightest

wafer of warmth  a hint 

of sweetness in the air  

dreaming of bees humming 

over a bank of tiger lilies 

and heavy-headed peonies 

kissing the chalky gravel walk

(c) 2018, by Hannah Six

Image: John Singer Sargent, Carnation, Lily, Lily, Rose (ca.1885), 
oil on canvas, photo courtesy Tate London/Wikimedia Commons

With Disdain (Day 403)

With disdain, he considers modern women: 

ditching wifely duties, wearing sweatpants,

working on laptops after dinner instead of 

donning delightful pegnoir ensembles to 

entertain their men. So distasteful. 

They wanted to go into combat? Hah!

As far as he’s concerned, enough is enough.

Time to stop this ridiculous anti-male crap.

Time to stop trying to be men’s equals, learn 

to gratefully accept their cushy feminine fate. 

If these ghouls today really want to serve their 

country, they’ll go back to stiletto heels, micro 

skirts, and sexy lingerie. Instead of getting 

offended every time a man looks at them, ladies 

oughta smear on a little red lipstick, beautify 

the Earth like God intended they should.

After all, why would any girl pretty enough 

to hitch her little wagon to a well-heeled man 

give up all that luxury and ease—to say nothing 

of her biblical duty to take care of her husband 

and children? It’s the greatest job in the world!

The problem with modern women, he decided 

years ago, is they’re incapable of understanding 

how damn good they actually have it. Sad!

(c) 2018, by Hannah Six

Original images:

Housewife: Public domain image

Trump: Gage Skidmore via Flickr

Formal reception (Day 402)

Perfect white petals.

Slight eagerness stills cupped wings.

Formal reception.

Sternly, pines balk, branches bowed.

Eloquent wind speaks her mind.

Sighing, spring retreats.

Ice reclaims still pools and ponds.

Fickle winter smiles.

(c) 2018, by Hannah Six

Image: pihajutkanen/Pixabay

Moonscape (Day 401)

The artist's fingers seek and find  squelched

deep inside his rumpled linen coat 

the lawyer’s letter (signature required)  

growing damp and crumpled  there

he stands and draws his few visitors toward 

the glass   chilled by cold drafts tugged helplessly

into thin indentations   where beyond 

crackled windows   a golden moonscape glows  

a leaf grows here   a twig dries there  lizards 

lounge companionably   trying to warm their skin

in watery sunlight  requiring nothing more than 

an opportunity to taste the apple-scented air

(c) 2018, by Hannah Six

Image: Sahara Desert (wislamos/Pixabay)

Courage to Look (Day 400)

Finding courage to look into the dark 

banks of your own fog is to recognize 

the rambling mind of your unfinished 

autobiography   a patch of olive-colored 

mud amidst a stretch of gaudy days  

a drift of snow in a sunburned desert 

or the price of a stubbornly creative life 

the way a child ambles through 

centuries of paradise   pockets bulging   

to unpack musical nights of rain   

laying out and smoothing the map of 

magical histories emerging like treasures 

collected at odd intervals along the way

(c) 2018, by Hannah Six

Image: jbom411/Pixabay

Restless World (Day 399)

It used to be 

   my heart would 

      travel 

         overseas

but now 

       it does not

know 

where to go.

(c) 2018, by Hannah Six

Image: DEZALB/Pixabay

Cleaning Party: A poem and a prompt for Day 398

After writing and posting nearly 400 poems in as many days, I’m not afraid to admit to the occasional lack of inspiration—or energy. When that happens, I fall back on an ever-evolving collection of favorite prompts/games/tools. 

Today, for instance, I took a trip to a random word generator, where I collected 28 words (24 the first time, plus an additional four later on). Sometimes I only use six or eight words; it just depends on my mood. I cut and paste the words into a document, and after shuffling, sorting, and adding a word here and there, inspiration (usually) strikes. 

I came up with the following poem this afternoon... I left it quite “raw” to illustrate the process. Ordinarily, I’d build a longer, or more polished, piece on this intriguing (to me) skeleton.

Cleaning Party

arms uncovered to 

their elbows

swanky visitors performed 

lively wingstrokes 

with their hands, revealing 

fabulous details, 

like vintage grates, that render 

the current, homely place 

almost likeable

outdoors, in the winter 

garden, fallacious discussion 

absorbed the bitter jobless, 

sprawled like 

recent memories amongst 

the faded begonias 

(c) 2018, by Hannah Six

Original image: The Preservation Station 

When You Rise (Day 397)

When you rise above 

the clouds  say hello 

to the blue for me

memorize its myriad 

hues and shades from 
ice to indigo  tell me if 
you can see the stars 

when you look up or 

if they are hidden by that 
golden light warming 

your flushed cheeks  rest 
a moment on 
the terrible wind 
that bears you aloft 

and look down on 

the soft undulations of 
the sea stretching like 

bleached cotton sheets 
beneath you  only the quilts 

on our shared bed 

can enfold you as softly  
only my arms support you 
with the strength of that 
high gale and 
the roughest tides 
of time we long to sail 
together will quiet when 
you are near again

(c) 2018, by Hannah Six

Image: macayran via Pixabay

Just Looking (Day 396)

Just looking

at the peeling paint

and thinking: Something 

is different. 

You see, I needed 

those dreams 

about my hands 

falling apart

to remember—How 

fortunate I was

to have not

locked the door.

Then I realized: 

You had already left 

the room.

(c) 2018, by Hannah Six

Image: toufik Lerari via Wikimedia Commons

Breathless (Day 395)

for the longest  that  want  time making

myself  that electric blood-singeing 

current  making you  lingering darkening

that look  widening  that rising attraction  

moving  leaning toward  when entering 

a room where another is  a moment

already  waiting a fraction of   that 

attraction too slow  long  years eagerly

outpaced  too lately  too forward  ancient 

foldings inward  unforetold distraction  

enough  just that  enough  I am  I don’t  

want that  I want that  I didn’t  but I do

(c) 2018, by Hannah Six

Image: Jack Fiallos via Wikimedia

Those Unfrightened of the Dark (Day 394)

Blue buffeting those old wet bricks,

cars rumble over cobblestones 

too slippery for walking 

when the chestnuts shed their leaves. 

Night falls, burdens lighten for some, 

the daytime world is squirreled away, 

protected until sunrise. 

Those unfrightened of the dark may

wander, read, dance, play, fight, drink, 

and hope their eyes adjust, or risk 

the quicksand of nostalgia.

If the song’s not right, the perfume 

floating on a summer breath—jasmine, 

sweat, a baby-soft trainwreck of scent

—might lure the unfortunate into their 

own sweet mysteries, tangled as kudzu 

in the trees that line the roads back home.

(c) 2018, by Hannah Six

Image: Skeeze/Pixabay

Black Coffee in Handpainted Mug (Day 393)

too bitter 

to ignore 

the purr it 

releases  finding 

purchase on 

the porcelain 

glaze  cobalt 

perfection  

devoid of 

the grit and 

fingerprints 

one might expect 

on an everyday

object made 

of clay intricately 

painted by a 

tired-eyed woman 

in a dusty 

crowded room

so far away 

I cannot begin 

to imagine 

the language

she speaks

in her dreams.

(c) 2018, by Hannah Six

The Painter (Day 392)

summer’s verdant, musky vines 

painter consumed by her canvas

wildflower ghosts of spring

in a frigid, well-lit space

mushroom-colored, winter day

brushes slay dragons of gloom

(c) 2018, by Hannah Six

Image: Helen Galloway McNicoll, The Apple Gatherer (c. 1900), oil on canvas

Safer Than This (Day 391)

I wish the world felt 

safer than this 

where, every evening, 

I lay my head amidst 

a firestorm of wild mustangs, 

steely hooves trailing sparks, 

thundering without warning 

down the narrow, 

perfumed path that 

no longer bears the weight 

of my few belongings

where yellowing bottles 

of laudanum dreams 

offer an ease, akin to 

daylight’s first soft fingers 

tickling my cheek, warm 

as laughter under the covers, 

last night’s violet silk 

shimmying on the bedpost 

in a lingering echo of smoke 

and dancehall jazz 

where hungry wolves, 

roused from their dens 

in the frozen woods, pace 

through the long, winter nights

—their claws puncturing 

the tense, icy crust 

with each step—waiting for me 

to emerge into the cold

(c) 2018, by Hannah Six

Image: Bhakti2/Pixabay