Try It Now (Day 508)

How many tones ring 

in your ears when 

you silence Them?

When you uninvite 

Them from the daily

celebration that is 

your morning coffee?

When you mute Their 

urgent, insincere pleading 

and fearmongering?

Do you suddenly 

hear papery leaves

—mere buds, last time 

you noticed them—

rustling in the whisper 

of a breeze?

How many heartbeats, 

before eternity settles 

back into your center?

Until the exquisite 

smallness of the everyday 

smooths the lines of

tension from your brow? 

Try it now, and 

count yourself 

among the blessed.

(c) 2018, by Hannah Six

Image: Winslow Homer, Girl in a Hammock, 1873

Oil on canvas, Colby Museum of Art (via Wikimedia Commons)

Missing (Day 479)

Seduced  falling 

into that pleasure 

relative to pain  

a moment 

of unspooling

unwinding fibers

frayed ends easing 

through hardened 

knot twists

fever-burnt  

prickling 

in cavedark coolth  

buoyant  leaden  

bedded by a body 

unwilling to live  

still  unwilling to 

let go  of life  still 

missing  just missing

(c) 2018, by Hannah Six

Ophelia, Sir John Everett Millais

Via Wikimedia Commons

Pointillist II (Day 436)

Breathe hush wind beach fog 

Petal cup hand abundant kiss

Slice green point edge damp

Electric shiver ice steel frost

Marine slough clear shimmer curl 

Breath flow gurgle chime rocks

Bird floral bittersweet wing dust

Knowing warmth wait send tucked

(c) 2018, by Hannah Six

Image: Patterns of the superbloom 

at Carrizo Plain National Monument 

Bureau of Land Management/ Flickr

Words Hit the Paper (Day 429)

The words hit the page differently when 

the light enters my room from the east   

letters tumble and scatter  landing as they 

may in heaps and clusters  later in the day 

I will find an hour or two  when I can linger 

and hold them  gaze fixed softly on an image 

in the middle distance  fingers folding and 

coaxing the rambunctious disarray until 

a gentle thrill of recognition wakes me to a 

poem  now revealed in its inevitable form

(c) 2018, by Hannah Six

Image: Unknown miniaturist, The Monk Eadwine (c 1150),

 illustration on parchment, Trinity College, University of Cambridge

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

Watercolors (Day 390)

Where the edges

are not, there now

twist and turn, into cavernous

echoing chambers, bleeding

rivulets of umber diverging into

creases that vein the vast,

opaline expanse of 

love’s cold, hard floor,

over which we slipped and

ran, laughing until we cried, our

seawater tears blooming like watercolors.

(c) 2018, by Hannah Six

Image: JMW Turner, Lyme Regis, Dorsetshire, England (ca. 1834), 
watercolor, Cinninnati Art Museum (via Wikimedia)

A little warm (Day 382)

sometimes isn’t it 

                      a little warm 

he moved and I can 

     and he begins 

to reach 

    toward the other

  friend  side  next 

face on the other side 

I reach 

               and I can’t and 

stand  move to a 

different  noisy  place 

with his 

warmth and my 

         comforting like 

sitting  not  feeling  

     next to me 

smiles at eight and 

      gets up and walks away

(c) 2018, by Hannah Six

Image: Moriz Jung, Viennese Café: The Man of Letters (Wiener Café: Der 

Litterat) [1911], lithograph, Metropolitan Museum of Art via Wikimedia

Experiment (Day 371)

Almost Always True (Day 366)

The only things are bitter 

words and politics and cold 

blue sky aching tired and 

purring under a warm river of 

chocolate and chamber music 

reading and resting warmly 

wrapped in the things we used 

to love how they lifted and 

lightened our troubles until 

they merely floated away like 

feverish dreams and poetry 

winter and absinthe inspire 

and so that’s all I able to give 

to you but at least you knew

it was always almost true 

(c) 2018, by Hannah Six

Image: Advertising poster for "Absinthe Rosinette",

 published by Imprimerie Camis, Paris, circa 1900; 

via Wikimedia Commons

Sole Transformation (Day 360)

no longer is this 

our sole transformation

this agonizing feint 

so special so beautiful 

trusting in the lingering 

bands of shadows 

from stands of tulip trees

a story that may not be 

objectified 

best left in its natural state 

without humor 

or self-deprecation 

the vibrant location 

never required 

a single elaboration

(c) 2018, by Hannah Six

Image: Vincent van Gogh, Farmhouse in Provence, 1888, 

oil on canvas, National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC

This is how history works (Day 345)

This is how history works.

Disgusting, irresponsible 

requests that start to sound 

strange to your ear, 

after the fourth

or fourteenth 

or forty-thousandth time

you hear them repeated.

Men and women, reading

aloud from storybooks,

not reading what needs

to be read, deciding 

things best left undecided 

by anyone but God 

(or whatever you prefer 

to call the great Mystery),

such as, “When does life start?”

or “What is the meaning of art?”

There are no set boundaries,

no term limits on genius,

where literature,

or music, or architecture 

are concerned.

Imagine, then, the absurdity

of government, among a people

unwilling to lift up 

their voices to demand justice 

for their neighbors, 

their friends, 

their fellow citizens.

Look: They cannot figure out

how to feel about a painting 

of a Campbell’s Soup can,

or Crayola’s new crayon colors, 

or whether Disco should have died.

That is how history works:

It is a beautiful and flawed

choose-your-own-adventure 

tale, and we must find a way 

to decide.

(c) 2017, by Hannah Six

Image: Campbell’s Soup Cans (1962), by Andy Warhol

via Wikimedia Commons

Making art (Day 342)

Making lingering art

a public dream 

of dark bars and 

coffeeshops

sleeping ghosts and 

mystical gifts. 

The fine raw 

humming energy 

arising from 

the work itself 

rewarding 

the fatal selfishness 

of creating  

of giving  

and the unexpectedly 

selfless grace 

of taking 

time and energy 

to receive 

the finished work. 

Without the one

the other would fail.

Without the other

the one would 

never have been.  

(c) 2017, by Hannah Six

Image: Pot Pourri, 1897 (oil on canvas) 

by Herbert James Draper; private collection

via Wikimedia Commons

Decadent Elders (Day 273)

decadent elders tucked 

  away 

in black cashmere 

     ghostly 

clouds of smoke 

and silken shame 

       swirl  

excuses ugly 

in their chests none but 

the youngest 

meet the eye 

          glimmer 

of voices cherished 

      proclaim 

sparkling raised 

   to block 

the noonday sun 

     without 

that special something fun  

   you just can’t live 

so generously 

(c) 2017, by Hannah Six

Image: The End of Dinner, 1913, Jules-Alexandre Grün

Kafka (Day 269)

Kafka on the Shore

Finding Water

In a Sunburned Country

(c) 2017, by Hannah Six

(After Nina Katchadourian)

Talisman (Day 257)

I am unspooling 

into taupe  liquifying in 

an aqueous netherworld 

of subtlety  gentle understanding 

and ancient knowing dwell here 

among the crystal glimmers 

of possibility

don’t birth me into your world 

of fire  don’t drag me kicking 

and screaming 

against  against  against your  

hot  cold 

white  black  

right  wrong 

sears my eyes  their unquestioning 

allegiance wakes me late at night  

in a sweat of skepticism  

no  allow me to remain  

wallowing in what I do 

not know  wrapped in gray layers 

of of hidden meaning  

a gleaming necklace of human 

teeth my talisman against 

the dreams of others

(c) 2017, by Hannah Six

The Talisman, 1888, Paul Sérusier

The Noun’s Rosy Glow (Day 246)

In the noun’s rosy glow,

legs stretched out 

in front of me, adjective 

minnows kissing my toes

under the cool gaze

of a tribe of water-spiders,

I lean back into the warmth

of an adverb, the one 

I’d been eyeing since 

we arrived almost 

a week ago. Bill Z. tells me

I shouldn’t run with such

a fast crowd, but I disagree. 

How would he know

of the pillowy comfort 

of the passive tense,

he who never dangled

with a participle in his life?

No, give me my sparkling

modifiers, my lazy verbs,

and I’ll leave the prickly

bits to him, standard-bearer

of brevity, killer of favorites,

unquestionable conqueror

of loquaciousness. 

In honor of William K Zinsser

to whom I promise to revise and edit this poem 

when (if?) the 1462 days end.

(c) 2017, by Hannah Six

Image: Pexels