Coffee Cup Poem no.89

Midnight Warrior

Midnight Warrior, Tiny Gustav the Patient,CCP 89
you soon may burn in the light
of day as you sit on our porch
laying in wait–have you been struck
from the night’s red heat sky?

I’ve never seen your kind so close,
but how small you look balled up
as if just biding time for dusk
so you can strike into the sky
and take up the hunt.

Because you, Tiny Gustav the Patient,
would not take the moth handout I gave
was it pride or exhaustion that
prevented your noon time snack?
How foreign daytime must look to open eyes.

I wish I could ease the hours until
night, when you will spread
paper-thin arms, stretch your thumbs,
and look to the stars.

In the morning I shall see you’ve gone.

*Coffee Cup Poem in spirit–I was drinking coffee when we found Gustav, the Eastern Red Bat, on our porch.

Coffee Cup Poem no.88

Sixteen Breaths of Fresh Air 

There is nothing magical to death.
It simply is.
Death whispers us out of the worldccp88
in a breath as silent as the breath
that breathed us into it.

The magic in this world
sits in another place.
Joy and Exhalation,
Patient and Wonderful,
waiting in the nooks and crannies
of everyday.
Silent like death,
and the footsteps of mice,
and the sweet songs of lovers,
and the swaying of tall grass
and the secrets of children.

Coffee Cup Poem no.87

Mowing the Lawn

The summer grass is,
somehow
,still in abundance
in verdancy as
stretches of foot-high
stalks blow in the wind
carelessly tossing
their rebellious hair
and flaunting theirCCP 87
slender limbs to taunt
the neighboring yards.

It is as ifthey stretch for miles
“OOOKlahoma, where
the wind comes sweeping
down the plains,” or rather
my backyard.

I know I should mow,
perhaps HOA will come knocking,
the weeds may launch an attack
or cat may lose herself,
a lion stalking prey,
but the view
from a house-cage,
artificially cool is made
so much wilder by overgrown
stretches that bend light
with a gust of wind and
darker when still.

“OOOKlahoma, the wavin’
wheat sure smells sweet
when the wind comes
right behind the rain,”
in this marvel of a spring.

My backyard is Oklahoma,
wild and untamed by man and nature
my overgrown grass
stretches yards in breezes,
not yet yellow
and wilting under summer,
but still green
under tornado wake rain.
My grass waves its foot
long arms goodbye to
the season and
greeting summer.

I may as well let it run
wild in the last few weeks
of freedom.

Coffee Cup Poem no.86

My Cat, the Killer

It appears that she is floating,
not a limb pressing down on the coolCCP 86
grass beneath four feather-paws
as she tenses her entire body, pulling
with stored energy and killing motive
as the butterfly is in her sights.

Her golden tuffs of fur
are the only part visibly moving,
as she imperceptibly shifts weight
and twitches with anticipation–
her victim flutters unknowingly, absent
minded and innocent to the threat.

In a second she pounces entrapping
the butterfly in an instant
but she does not kill it–not then,
because it is far more amusing as a toy.
To watch it flutter inches and fall,
all within her control, never going too far
and all the while the butterfly
is suffering as silently as its life
passed, too quiet for the human ear,
beating its wings, trying to
catch the last of the summer wind.

It’s Allergy Time

Please pardon my lack of coffee cups, for it seems I have not been getting Starbucks for the three bucks out of pocket.

Being Ill

Sometimes getting out of bed
is like fighting Caesar’s army
when my nose is the Hoover Damn
and my ears filled with cotton
the head aching with anvil weight
pressing in full force on my temple’s gate.

Whoa is me, I dare say
when sickness strikes on holiday
work seems such a frightening fate
too far away and too rigorous to make
me rise from my goose-downed tomb
a curse much like exiting the womb

and yet I persist to put on pants
and a shirt in a rather clumsy dance
from horizontal to vertical is quite the task
as I make it to the chair and desk
and back to bed for it is far too much
and life is short and unjust and plain rough.

I think I will go back to bed
to hibernate allergy season to its grave
perhaps I shall wake when my stomach growls
and calls for me to fill it’s empty pit
but then that, I think, is asking quite a lot
from yours truly, Miss Allergy Fraught.

Coffee Cup Poem no.78

A Brief Respite

It rained for the first time this summer,
really rained, and I
went outside to catch a raindrop
heavy in the morning heat
just to make sure it was real
and caught twenty as I
stood under the dark sky,
the one that pushed away
the 100 degree heat that had stayed
itself for months, just to pour out
in celebration for the end,
the end of tyrant heat and the start of
something new, a welcomed something
to let me know the world–after everything,
my mind dark clouds and summer contradicting–
is still turning.

Coffee Cup Poem no.75

*I had a lot of form problems with this. It was originally in four quatrains, but it seemed a bit too prose like. Not sure how much this has improved it form-wise, but it’s a start I suppose.

I Wonder…

I wonder when I will stop counting
the constellations and galaxies between us
since you left earth
and took to the stars,
looking back, looking down
at the life you counted down until take off.

I wonder if you’ll glance, now and then,
from the moon and miss the earth,
its infinite color, and wish
for rainbows instead of black holes,
those yellow roses you left in the garden.
Your white picket fence.

I wonder if the constllations and galaxies
are everything you thought they’d be from earth
hanging in the sky
so silent, so hot, so burning
calling you to the skies,
calling for take off.

I wonder, looking up at the great expanse,
blinking in white hot light
blurring edges between dippers and belts
if you see the same black burning
the great expanse, growing, glowing
and you wonder, keep wondering, too.

Coffee Cup Poem no.71

As much as I would love every single one of my poems to be deeply thoughtful, I simply cant crank them out like that. So this is just a little something I jotted down while sipping tea on my apartment porch this morning.

Musings Upon Waking Up 

The sweet smell of freshly mowed grass
raises up through the summer air
and tickles my nose as it passess
along on the warm summer breeze.

I take a long sip of tea
letting the chill sooth the heat
and trickle down into my soul
as I open stale pages and wait

to hear the early morning swallows
to peak their hesitant heads out
and begin to sing, to bellow
the mourning songs of spring.

They too were taking note of the heat
wishing there were still a chill
to help ease the 85 degrees
that makes us al sweat until

we’re forced inside for refuge,
the sweet blow of air conditioning
and the calm circle of the fan.
This year will be a hot one.

Coffee Cup Poem no.69

Theories On the Nature of Tragedy: A Working Mule

The devil likes to keep a mule,
And nudge it with a stick
Or lash it with a whip.

When it stumbles, this mule,
Loses its balance, and trips
It becomes the devil’s trick

For it does not strike, but runs into
And that is how tragedy begins,
The sneaky little thing it is.

This mule, tragedy, has no life of its own,
A devil’s slave with poor falling aim
Moving when a red beast yanks its chain

With no real motivation to harm
It unsuspectingly causes pain,
A sad creature with tight reins.

But when god uses it as his muscle
The mule becomes a weapon, carefully aimed–
Two sides of the very same coin.

Coffee Cup Poem no.67

Something Wicked This Way Comes

The leaves dance in anticipation,
Letting loose a sea of green
That travels in waves over the wind
Landing in swirls of verdant

This is only the beginning

Clouds presume over sinister waltzes
Performed for a gallery of crying of swallows
As they loom, watching, waiting
Threatening to pour over souls restless.

And now, the rising action

Ominous drums quicken their step,
While spotlights flash in the dark
And illuminate the tempest dancers
Twirling faster, faster to keep up.

Time for the denouement

A strike across the sky, chaos
And confusion of light, no one
Can see the play as gleams fall heavy
Across the stage, a menacing act.

The Shadow Show has come to town to stay.