A brief observation (Day 727)

Patriarchy’s downfall, 

it seems, is giving birth 

to the violence that seeps 

in around the edges 

of men’s fear and anger. 

(c) 2019, by Hannah Six

Image: Sarah Stiercb/Wikimedia Commons

Don’t shine your golden light on my rained-out parade (Day 726)

Please don’t shine your golden light 

on my rained-out parade. Your sunshine 

is my shade. Rather than brightening my day,

that glare in my eyes highlights the darkness 

around me—darkness you cannot see—and 

throws my world’s defects into sharper contrast. 

When the peaks of my spirit are enshrouded

by heavy gray clouds, please don’t tell me 

you see only a glimmering rosy mist. 

I promise you: I can tell the difference.

Instead, whether I am mired in the mud of 

an internal swamp or splashing momentarily 

through a puddle of dog piss, 

trust me enough to be honest with me. 

Agree with me that life can be unfair. 

Send me some love (or some chocolate). 

Take me somewhere outside these four walls, 

and let me walk for a while in a world 

not of my own devising, where we can talk 

about window displays, children’s toys, 

or nothing at all. Because sometimes 

saying nothing is the best gift there is.

(And, truly, wouldn’t that be easer for you, too?)

Yes. Next time my parade is rained out, because 

this is real life and there will likely be a next time, 

please: Buy a ticket and join me, or sit that one out. 

Because there isn’t room in the exquisitely verdant, 

complexly-shaded forest of my current life 

for the papier maché trees of too-easy answers. 

(c) 2019, by Hannah Six

Set design by Alexandre Benois (1870-1960) for Pavillon d'Armide, 

Harvard Theatre Collection, Houghton Library, Harvard University 

via Wikimedia Commons

Loosely Twined (Day 725)

loosely twined   pearls  

around fingers   cat 

around ankles   crossed and uncrossed   

silk shadow creases 

in corners and edges 

of light   pools spreading   splashing 

against walls unpainted   red by now  

where figures pose unposed   

gathered symbiotically   

without thought to the whims 

of creation  or creators 

whose needs were irrelevent anyhow

(c) 2019, by Hannah Six

Image: Delphin Enjolras, Evening Party

Via Wikimedia Commons

The next stop (Day 724)

back and forth  wind-scrubbed rush  

arms laden   low-slung day-glo faces 

intent on the next stop   dragging 

children off their feet  leashed 

dogs straining toward each other  

leaning in to greet a new day’s odors 

and savor the contraband traces 

of a foreign land called Night

(c) 2019, by Hannah Six

Image: Garry Knight 

via Wikimedia Commons

Fishing for Words (Day 723)

Slippery as trout, 

and evasive, they 

won’t come, 

won’t show themselves

in the light of (this) day. 

Deep in the shady pools, 

they turn and hover, 

suspended, expectant,

unwilling to emerge 

into the foreign air 
and, perhaps, die
there, on the page. 

(c) 2019, by Hannah Six

Image: Jacob W Frank/US NPS

From the Square (Day 722)

darkness twitters, shrieks. 

Soft mist twirls among the trunks 

    of sunbleached columns, joyous 

dancers, poetic slips of orange 

    and gold, seek the gaze

—souvenir trinkets, blazing, blinding—

shivering, the crowd, once boistrous, 

    trickles from the square.

(c) 2019, by Hannah Six

Image: MaxPixel

Generous (Day 721)

generous roots spread east and west   

spring frail sunlight seeps through 

iron clouds whose massive sighs 

bend each minute into hours 

twist involuntary showers of twigs from 

winter roosts and send them hurtling  

bird-like  toward the silent path below

(c) 2019, by Hannah Six

Image: Dan19878/Pixabay