Fall Apart

"Fall Apart"
Poetic Form: Kyrielle

You cut your hands trying to hold
the hands of time. Trying to slow
the sun from turning to lost gold
You fall apart when you let go

Life lines, dull, cut across your eyes
with sweeping strokes the past bestowed
like dreams you didn’t see had died
You fall apart when you let go

You don’t need a map anymore
Because you know, like calypso,
that heartache whitecaps on love’s shores
You fall apart when you let go

Each moment burst like fireworks
blinding stars that have learned to show
you how the past can be artwork
You fall apart when you let go

So, you move quietly behind
the silver screen making shadows
in your story. Bleeding and blind.
You fall apart when you let go

The Creative Moment Challenge 1

 

The first The Creative Moment Challenge was to create a piece of art centered on the emotion sorrow. Here is my first draft of a poem and then using my original idea I crafted a shadorma poem. I talk about the process in our latest episode: The Creative Moment

Like a solitary tree

on the horizon of the mixed grass prairie

Sage and cactus speckle green

in sea of sun drenched buttes

You wonder what storm could bring

A single seed

to such a dry land 

break the ground apart 

drop it deep enough

to give this tree a chance

A chance to grow

All alone in this world

Shadorma: Spanish 6-line syllabic poem of 3/5/3/3/7/5 syllable lines for poem / stanza.

Like a tree

solitary on 

horizon 

of the mixed 

grass prairie. Sage and cactus 

speckle green in sea

of sun drenched

buttes. You wonder what 

storm could bring

a single seed

to such a dry land, break the 

ground apart, drop it 

deep enough

to give the tree a 

chance to grow

all alone

in this bare world. You sigh as

you feel your heart beat.

PAD 2022 Day 30: Moving On

 This poem is presented in its rough draft form for the PAD 2022 challenge and will be revised. 

PAD Prompt: Moving On

Poetic Form: Tanka

Untitled

I rest my palm on

a door I walked away from

so long ago.

I’ve lost the key to the lock,

yet I don’t want a new one.

PAD 2022 Day 29: The Last BLANK

 This poem is presented in its rough draft form for the PAD 2022 challenge and will be revised. 

PAD Prompt: The Last BLANK

Poetic Form: 7 Syllable Lines

“The Last Goodbye”

The sun dances with the edge

of the world. They pause at a

rusted gate, wondering if

there is enough time left to

appreciate the garden

beyond. He pushes the gate

open, feeling as time gives

away in a screech. A stone 

path weaves through flora, wildly

and beautiful. Rose bushes

six feet tall. Yellow bursts from

giant sunflowers. A fox 

darts across their path. Its red

swallowed by the darkening 

green shrubbery. A granite

fountain, empty and stained by

passing days, is dressed in thick

ivy. Blue wild indigo 

stand guard with daylilies like

a wedding party waiting

for the ceremony to

begin. They walk hand in

hand, feeling the colorful

chaos eclipse them in sight

and fragrances - for now they

are happy. Shadows start to

fill the spaces between the

leaves. He spots a small patch of

Forget-Me-Not. Letting go

of her, he kneels to pick a

bouquet. He inhales the scent,

a hint of rain reflects the

goodbye he is forming for

her heart. He turns as he stands

placing the small blue flowers

in her hand. Kisses her cheek,

like a breeze. “Forget-Me-Nots,”

she says as she lifts them to

take in the moment. But the

hint of rain pierces her heart.

She looks up to find him gone,

like all the colors of the 

garden around her, fading

into the darkness of night.

PAD 2022 Day 28: Sight

 This poem is presented in its rough draft form for the PAD 2022 challenge and will be revised. 

PAD Prompt: Sight

Poetic Form: Haibun

“The Ghost of Me”

7 a.m. bus trip on the back highways of Nebraska. A beautiful day for a track meet. Tilled farmland rolls across my window. Gray, with small rows of dirt. Every once and awhile a farmhouse breaks the horizon. A change in the sunlight reveals my reflection. I see a ghost of who I used to be. Cheeks heavy with decades. Eyes aided by glasses. And as the bus rumbles I feel the soft weight of a body that used to be athletic. I suddenly feel as sparse as the fields moving through my reflection. I have coached longer than my athletes have lived. The ghost of me frowns in jealousy as it fades away into another unplanted field.

Nestled on a hill

Sits a square cemetery

With the names of ghosts

PAD 2022 Day 27: Remix

 This poem is presented in its rough draft form for the PAD 2022 challenge and will be revised. 

PAD Prompt: Remix

Poetic Form: Contrapuntal

“How to mend a Broken Heart- Follow”

Follow

The first step is to start.

Follow forever

Taste the pain, a flaky tart,

Follow friends

to inspire the muse of art.

Follow fables

Follow faith

Happiness will feel like a blink,

Follow fads

yet, the cracks will break the link

Follow fancy

to the tears that smudge the ink

Follow flames

Follow fantasy

you chisel into the heavy stones

Follow failure

of time. Stop. Listen to the tones

Follow future

your heartbeat creates for loved ones.

Follow forgotten

Follow fleeting

Tension between the beats will strain

Follow

the rails this pain uses to take us by train.

Follow fiction

At the next stop, taste the rain.

PAD 2022 Day 26: Anti-love

 This poem is presented in its rough draft form for the PAD 2022 challenge and will be revised. 

PAD Prompt: Anti-love

Poetic Form:  Catena Rondo

“Let’s Be Honest”

Let’s finally be honest about this.

Love is an illusion we compose 

with recycled cliches no one knows.

Let’s finally be honest about this.

Love is an illusion we compose. 

Past moments quickly fade.

We color in loneliness. It never stays.

Love is an illusion we compose.

Past moments quickly fade

reminding us that love is already gone.

Every kiss ends, every person moves on.

Past moments quickly fade

reminding us that love is already gone.

We stand alone holding the aftershocks

from broken hearts now behind locks,

reminding us that love is already gone.

Let’s finally be honest about this.

Love is an illusion we compose 

with recycled cliches no one knows.

Let’s finally be honest about this.

PAD 2022 Day 25: Response

 

This poem is presented in its rough draft form for the PAD 2022 challenge and will be revised. 

PAD Prompt: Response

Poetic Form:  Golden Shovel

“The Last Note”

- after Marianas Trench “Ever After”

The last note is the hardest to let go, I 

lean my head into the final verse. We could 

sing this song as we run yellow lights. Be 

one heart, laughing until I get lost in your 

smile. Stealing kisses between the chords. A perfect 

note that strikes relentlessly, leaving me a disaster.

PAD 2022 Day 24: Hero Villain

 

This poem is presented in its rough draft form for the PAD 2022 challenge and will be revised. 

PAD Prompt: Hero / Villain 

Poetic Form:  Cadralore

"Life in a Moment"

1. He doesn’t understand why he hates

the boy. He knows it’s wrong, yet

his hands burn with a fire flamed

by everyone at school who feeds his ego

that is physically beat down when he gets home

2. He stands in the April snow, decades from their

last kiss. Broken from the loss of his life,

he has wandered to her door, unsure of what

happens next. He knocks and knocks. She

can’t answer because she has a new name.

3. She hears his voice, like a cyclone circling

across the coast line ruining a family

vacation. A game she learned on the driveway

with his love, that now storms through

her skills to win a medal and his approval.

4. She rages against a love that she never felt before.

The burning from the glass releases the gates

of remorse. Another two count goes down

in one motion. She lets the bar hold her up

as she dances to a song she doesn’t like.

5. Every choice we have now is because of the 

choices we made. We follow our hearts one time,

then choose what our minds think the next. 

Our fantasies mix with reality until we don’t know

if we are the villain or the hero of the moment.

PAD 2022 Day 23: Conspiracy

 

This poem is presented in its rough draft form for the PAD 2022 challenge and will be revised. 

PAD Prompt: Conspiracy 

Poetic Form:  Nonet

“Notification Conspiracy”

The notification says it’s time

to live life through other people’s

content. We feed ourselves by

consuming feeds through a

screen. Reality

no icon to

click. Life is

to feel

heart.

PAD 2022 Day 22: Organism

 

This poem is presented in its rough draft form for the PAD 2022 challenge and will be revised. 

PAD Prompt: Organism

Poetic Form: Mondo

"Untitled"

Can we finally

decide that the world is a

garden needing our tending?

Sadly, I think we
are too obsessed with concrete
and glass to know true beauty.