Flood

 

She is up to her ankles in water now

And it keeps on flowing in

There’s a storm blowing outside

The trees are bent over in the wind

their leaves bedraggled from the rain

Her  soaken neighbour is yelling 

“Come NOW! While we can still drive out”

She is turning in circles 

What to take, what to leave,

Grab some pictures of the children,

and the big one of her beloved lab,

Grab her grandmother’s lantern,

Grab the Quilt her mother made,

 What? what?

“NO! NO!,” the neighbour yells, “you need your purse,

your keys, your jacket”

She turns in circles, he grabs her arm, he’s pulling hard,

Finally she lets him lead her away, purse in hand,

What else is there? 

Anyway

Ellecee

Inspiration from

Good Universe Next Door

26. Think fast
What would you save from 

apocalypse? What’s in your 

Noah’s arc or “just” in your 

car fleeing from some emergency? 

You have 10 minutes to gather your

 “valuables.” 

Write a poem about your most 

Important precious belongings. /

The Sum of all Grief

The sum of all grief 

arrives at the end

of a life

The sum of all

deaths

Siblings,husbands, friends

children

The sum of all 

faculties lost

Hearing, eyesight, balance,

cognitive thinking

The sum of all hope

for recognition, inclusiveness,

new love, empathy

The sum of all pain

physical, emotional, visual

The sum of all desires

a lifetime of them

met and unmet

These and more

always present in

her mind

The sums of a lifetime

the sum of all grief

Ellecee

Day 23 - NaPoWriMo 2024
Prompt: The Sum of all Grief
From: TP_Poetry

Negotiation

 

He is taking the artwork

She wasn’t into it

She is taking the classical vinyl 

He wasn’t into it

She is taking the kitchen “stuff”

He doesn’t cook

He is taking the bedding

She wants new

They are selling the house

Splitting the equity

She is making a down payment 

on a condo

He is buying

a Harley Davidson

They have joint custody

of the dog

He will take a long ride

She will go on a retreat 

He wants to punch a

hole in the wall

She wants to jump up

and down, screaming

But they won’t

Their’s is a civilized

negotiation

Ellece

Day 7 - NaMoWriMo 2024

Inspired by

TP_Poetry

Truce

We are warring

Such hostility 

All the energy

fuelling our intimacy

redirected

to painful chicanery.

We take no prisoners

Nor bury  our dead

Within this non-abating cyclone

love is literally dying 

all our dreams 

decaying.

Please

Please

Before there’s

 no returning

Ceasefire

Ellecee 

Day 1 - NaPoWriMo 2024

Ceasefire

Inspired by TP_Poetry

Soft Kill

 

According to Lori Lieberman (singer / song writer)

“behind this song was a story of a young female musician struggling to find the space where both her voice as well as her ideas would be respected and not expropriated whenever it best suited the purposes of the others.” 

Soft Kill

You steal me bit by bit

Killing me softly like

Lieberman said

She said it best

this thing that you do

Murder is murder 

Soft or not

I’m still dying 

because of you

All those love words 

You laid on me

All those touches

 My body yielded to

When all the time

it’s you, exploiting me

I need you, I need you,

I want you real

I give it away 

So you’ll feed me

Feed me still.

Ellecee

Day 25  - NaPoWriMo 2023

Inspired by:

Sanaa Rizvi

Musical Inspirations

Today: Killing Me Softly - Charles Fox, Norman Gimbel, Lori Lieberman

Thaw

 

“Thaw with his gentle persuasion is more powerful than Thor with his hammer” The one melts, the other breaks in pieces”

Henry David Thoreau

She is reminded of past loves

Her own

The one suffused with romance

 bitter sweet

Days of sunshine

Little thunder

Two lives blending

then gently melting away

Ice in a crystal glass

Then on into a storm

Monsoons destroying

sacred springs

Tempestuous hours of lust

followed quickly with days

of bitterness and disdain

Blown apart

leaving only splenetic

regret

The first morphing into

gossamer dreams

The last

the last

Ellecee

Day 11 - NaPoWriMo - 2022

Inspired by the above quote

from Henry David Thoreau

The Plan

He was the one

Handsome and entitled

he could have anyone

She would play hard to get

Not clutch his pant leg

as others were prone to do

Not flirt and flatter endlessly

She, the remote one,

would capture his delight

Her mystery would draw him in

Being elusive would beguile him

into her surreptitious snare

He was attentive and obliging

eager to relate

Then married someone else

a damsel in distress

a Cinderella type

She is salty with remorse

how could this be?

That yet again, for her,

“the best laid schemes 

o’mice an’ men

gang aft agley”

Ellecee

Inspired by:

A well known quote from To a Mouse by Robert Burns

imaginary gardens with real toads - when good wishes go bad

and

Skywriting - Salt

Tears Laid Waste

The A L'Arora, a form created by Laura Lamarca consists of eight lined stanzas. The rhyme scheme is a, b, c, d, e, f, g, f with no syllable count per line and the minimum length for the poem is 4 stanzas with no maximum length stipulation

Decades ago in the full bloom of youth

she gave birth to a child

a son, brown eyed and fair

melancholy by nature

He needed something more

a different kind of care

Not understanding she

was filled with despair

They were alone in the world

and she struggled to provide

the rent for their roof, the money for care

But he wanted her, no the kindly other.

She held him tightly

whenever she could

but this compromise she offered

came to no good

His father had means and much more

She begged him to help her

She feared for their son

He offered a solution with considerable craft

A stay-at-home aunt

willing to play her part

and welcome this toddler

with his broken heart

She forbade tears, angst and fears

when the decision had to be made

The father arrived with a missile in hand

she must sign away contact or no deal

"They" thought her resolute

they thought "beyond caring"

Not one understood

the remorse she was bearing

Each year on his birthday, she searched in vain

Her children called this her obsession

they grew weary of her quest

So she made it in hiding, to no avail.

How could he disappear

never to be found

Lost in the mists

like a ship run aground

After six decades of searching

came a DNA swath, it

presented a granddaughter, the offspring

of her son long lost

He wanted no part of this mother long gone

no upset to a life lived without her at hand

This, she, with true sorrow,

could well understand

Ellecee

Inspired by

imaginary garden with real toads - The A L'Arora form

and

Skywriting - Craft

The End

I awoke bereft. Something or someone had died. I struggled to remember who or what it was. There was a breeze outside; the curtains were fan tailing into the room. Gently, all the way in, all the way back.  The house seemed very quiet, I heard none of the usual morning sounds. I didn’t want to remember. We had quarreled about something insignificant. I threw his precious paperweight and it had broken. It shattered before our eyes and we were shocked into silence. But not remorse. “take no prisoners” came into my mind. No turning back.

Rage accosts the soul

overwhelming the senses

as illusions fall

"ellecee"

Inspired by today's prompt fromimaginary garden with real toads

Winter Olympics

Too high to see anyone

and talk about the winter

Olympics or how much 

snow has fallen in the

Maritimes this year

she sits at the sports bar

and drinks Guinness,

relaxes and lets her mind

trace outlines throughout

her body encircling the

scars where her senses

have come to life again.

She waits for the old,

 resurfaced,

pain to subside

It’s an effort not to cry

the tears are right 

there, She can feel her

eyes coated with moisture

The bar maid must be

thinking, “she’s high on

something”

Or maybe just pathetic

and too old for this sort of

nonsense, she probably

thinks, “it will never

happen to me”

As if passion stops at

55, punch the time clock

and your card’s rejected, no

overtime allowed.

The second Guinness helps

She starts to watch the big screen

Olympic snowboarding

Wow, would you look at

that! He lifts off, spins in

the air, lands dead on and

finishes with a flourish,

snow flying around his feet

38.9 seconds

Is that a record, do you think?

“ellecee”

Inspired by today's prompt fromimaginary garden with real toads

What Price Love

What price love?

The kind that bestows moist kisses

Gentle touches

Bodies entwined floating

in a sea of bliss

shared sleep

lovers’ dreams

the litanies of needs met

What price love?

The kind that bears a grudge,

impatiently forgiving

misdemeanors

Sleepless nights

Restless dreams

plans fading into loss

The litanies of needs unmet

What price love?

The kind that steals away,

nights apart, hopes fading,

Blasphemies spoken and unspoken

Points taken

The question unanswered

Tears

The litanies of needs erased

Ellecee

Inspired by today's prompt from

imaginary garden with real toads

For

A little levity :-)