Cypress (Day 262)

sea-beguiled cypress

intent on sashiko waves

rippling whispers

(c) 2017, by Hannah Six

Image: skeeze

Who Taught You (Day 261)

where do you come from

bursting with exuberance

stomping your flat feet to 

scare my gentle smiling 

dog?  who do you go home 

to at night who taught you

that cruelty is the way? you 

may not realize that I see 

you behind your barbed-wire 

fence  eyes flat  laughter 

fierce  it is not hard to imagine 

that you are afraid and 

that I embody the demons 

who frighten you to the 

marrow of your unmarred 

bones  I admire your courage  

how your very walk spits 

in the face of all that is evil 

and against you and I would 

risk my life for you if you were 

in danger  because you are 

my own heart  because I too am 

scared and sad and frustrated 

by our perverse attraction to 

rattling doom and the scorched 

Earth we will bequeath you 

and those who will come later 

and even so I would like to know 

who encouraged a sweet child 

to grow into the kind of man 

who purposely stomps his feet 

to scare my gentle smiling dog? 

(c) 2017 by Hannah Six

Dripping Words (Day 260)

old-fashioned roses 

russet pathway 

wends  hard-edged 

encircling a bench 

we chose in glossy 

April’s warmth  coffee 

cups in hand  legs 

splayed casually  

sunshine fierce  naïve 

and future-bound  

doubtless   in cocoons  

humming and content  

dripping words that 

never mattered as much 

as what we meant

(c) 2017, by Hannah Six

Image: Pixabay

Loathsome Creature (Day 258)

Seated charcoal figure  

o bringer of freedom   

o darling loathsome creature

your veined cheek caressed by 

unlearned lessons  which  caught 

in gravity’s gaze  slide snail-like 

toward the puddle at your feet   

The lost  face-forward  salute 

your titian glow  their eyes 

like matches spark desire  each 

then thrown  spent and smoking 

on your cache of volatile words 

and empty anthems  no fearsome 

stars for you  each inharmonious 

bar performed by rote  soon will 

rewind into the fathomless 

erasure of merciful Time.

(c) 2017, by Hannah Six

Image: The Rape of Europa, by Noël-Nicolas Coypel, 1727

Philadelphia Museum of Art 

I Turn Coward (Day 258)

I can’t bear to look

—eyes, mouths, words—

I turn coward, and 

turn away from 

the fears of millions, only 

to encounter my own, 

home to roost at the end 

of another record-breaking 

day, familiar face shining

and ghastly under 

the silvering glow of 

a slow-rising autumn moon.

(c) 2017, by Hannah Six

Image: Free-Photos

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 Sweet Spot (Day 256)

The sameness vast       the sweet spot on the map 

of me alone                    the plans we made 

together gone                an opaque white curtain

and you my future        in a box to carry 

where I go only              snow empty and white

when I look forward     only a shadow of light

hardly a glow and          yet I know it does

I suppose that’s just      the way it goes

(c) 2017, by Hannah Six

Original image: NairnBairn