VerseDay 4-11-19

Posted on by sereichert

Sometimes, as a poet and writer, it behoves us to stretch ourselves and try out new forms, word use, and technique. I encourage you all to step out of your normal patterns of verse and play with alliteration, assonance, and the ever-popular to say but disastrous to spell: onomatopoeia.

Enjoy this little experiment of mine and pass it along.

DON’T FORGET TO SEND ME YOUR OWN POETRY TO BE ENTERED INTO THE ANTHOLOGY AS WELL AS TO BE FEATURED AND PROMOTED HERE ON THE BEAUTIFUL STUFF!

 

sky space dark galaxy
Photo by Pixabay on Pexels.com

Effervescence

 

I am the marksman and martyr

The ever-present effervescence.

 

Symbiotic soul-light, illuminating illustriously

Black nebulous annihilating, extinguishing entirely

 

A Universe boundlessly unfurled

A speck of compressed silicate,

 

Wider than infinite relativity

brief as an angel blink

 

Temporal finitism laid against,

the inconsequential ticks of time.

 

All and none,

Faith fashioned from fear

Release reborn of resistance

 

The ever present effervescence.

 

VerseDay 4-4-2019

Posted on by sereichert

 

 

What We Lost In The Fire

 

The favorite,

The only.

The irreplaceable

Warmth of need

Burned down to ashes

And the lies we told ourselves

To keep it from leaving

Gone.

Orange and black wisps in swirls of wind

We destructive pillars

That love

only to destroy

That shield

only to suffocate

That want

only to deny.

Fickle-hearted arsonists,

Love and burn

Cherish and consume

Better to see objects of affection destroyed

Than ever set free.

Rather let the memory burn,

an inextinguishable flame

Than free ourselves from the shackles of desire.

Never understanding,

how much of ourselves sits smoldering alongside

Until all we are

Is ash and loss.

VerseDay 3-28-19

Posted on by sereichert

Good morning ladies and gents. I don’t know where you are living these days, but Spring is making a coy arrival here (followed, of course, by a snow storm forecasted for the weekend).

But, as I am working towards living in the present moment, here are some thoughts on this hopeful, anticipated season. Enjoy and share!

 

The Quiet Fury

 

The silent rustle of Spring

Comes renewed in partial glances

A robin’s canter, coy flash of red breast, 

Among the tender buds, 

Tucked tight arrow tips.

Fearful, of irrational snow

And wind still chilled by winter’s breath.

 

The sun creeps round the curtain, lessens her stage fright

Staying for longer moments on horizon’s stage.

Life stirs below ground, within dark chocolate soil

And harbingers of decay make their case like tender pink accordions.

 

Where last have you slowed the pace of expectancy

To stare in wonder at the world?

When last did you marvel,

Explore,

Dissect and rescue

The gentle, beautiful

Living

Things?

That when in Spring do rise to the occasion

In bursts of sound and furies of color.

 

VerseDay 3-14-2019

Posted on by sereichert

Hello Lovies,

Today’s Verse Day is brought to you by the amazing and talented, one-of-a-kind, Rebecca Cuthbert.

Rebecca (Schwab) Cuthbert lives and writes in Western New York. She is a hopeless believer in “the beautiful stuff,” like gardening, caring for shelter dogs, reading and writing, and spending time with people who fill her heart up.
Please enjoy and share this gem of writing. Don’t forget to send me your own entries for consideration!

 

Intermission

“It’ll be just like playing house,” she’d said. “You’ll wear slippers, but not cologne. I’ll wear an apron, but only on Thursdays, only in April and June, and not if I’m not at the bus stop.”

 

She made me a key, but I saw the framed pictures, coffee rings and toast crumbs I didn’t leave.

 

Her hair smelled like hyacinths. She left the porch light off when she kissed me goodbye, ignored my declarations, told me not to creak the gate.

 

It’s August now and I sit behind her on the early bus. She focuses on her crossword or stares out the window, and I wonder if she’s pretending now, too.

 

VerseDay 3-7-19

Posted on by sereichert

Before I wow you with my versatile verses here are a couple of quick announcements:

 

Send me your poetry for consideration in the The Beautiful Stuff 2019 Poetry Anthology. If you don’t write poetry, but know someone who does, encourage them. Contributors will get two free copies of the anthology and bragging rights. And we all know bragging rights are way better than a cash payout…um…ahem…(*nervous throat clearing).

You can send entries via the contact page on this website or simply by emailing it to me at sereichert@comcast.net with “2019 Beautiful Stuff Poetry Submission” as the subject line.

Also, The Beautiful Stuff’s weekly blog post will now be moved to Tuesdays of every week, as I want to spread out all the thought. I will be looking for guest bloggers at the beginning of April so keep your eyes open for that announcement.

And now…a little scuttle into Sarah’s latent memories.

 

Recollection

 

Remember days, sunlit and spread

Tentacles of diving suns and

Russian thistles, green teeth bared,

Before winter tumbled them dry.

The sand blasted faces, relentless wind,

Grit swallowed with water from the hose.

 

Remember the stolen boards,

The battle of nail and hammer; an engineering feat.

The tree house mansion at the end of the road

That dropped my brother from leafy heights

And gave him the best scar of the summer.

 

Remember the joyful toil

Sticky hands and brown feet

Mosquito bites torn into angry holes,

Captured horny toads, succumbing to belly rubs

Such degradation of the regal king of sagebrush.

Awe filled fascination, as blood fired from their eyes

A defense of true dragonry.

 

Remember settling into M*A*S*H with dad,

Never noticing the sting of war around the click of Klinger’s heels.

Or the soft, seeking peace of Radar’s eyes.

The MacNeil Newshour always put me to sleep on the floor.

A sleep that never paused for the bustle of adult worry, or nuclear meltdowns.

 

Remember toe-headed boys and dirty-dishwater blondes,

Running naked round houses on dares,

Unfathomable speed of youthful freedom

Still not faster than motherly wrath.

When laughter tickled like a persistent cough

And sadness reserved itself for opened knees and epic bike wrecks.

Wounds that healed far faster than the heart.

And left scars you bragged about, not buried.

When life was immortal and endless,

Possibilities not yet limited by the bottleneck of time.

 

Remember the stolen, joyful days

Dragonry and castles in trees

The naked hearts, and pauseless sleep.

Before we settled into toil?

You toe-headed boys and dirty-dishwater blondes.

What memories lay, grit covered, on your shelves?

VerseDay 2-28-19: In Honor of The Feminine Divine

Posted on by sereichert

So I was feeling uninspired when I sat down to write today’s verse (a frighteningly common occurrence these days) and I found a voice that has always inspired me laying in wait in the back of my mind.

So in honor of March (it is tomorrow after all) being National Women’s Month, I offer this tribute to one of the great female voices of our time, Ms. Maya Angelou.

May your words and thoughts continue to inspire us to rise.

 

 

Phenominity

 

She says she is not swayed,

By transcendental bullshit

No one clips her wings

Or guides the undulations of her hips.

 

She says she cannot be cut,

A skin so thick

It holds the fire,

So nothing gets in, and nothing burns out.

 

She says she made the world,

And shines her womb in darkness.

Where lesser beings cower, confused

She plays the fear of life divine.

 

She says no man will change her

Erase her, degrade her.

She is stronger than mountains

More fluid than sea.

 

She rises like hot mercury

Cresting metallic and fluid,

A danger to hold.

A beaded, magnanimous being.

 

She dives, not falls, precise and sublime

Small but mighty with peregrine speed

A dazzling twirl of feathers and blood

The small bones crushed, all down plucked clean.

 

She says she is no token, no check mark

In insufficient boxes of guilty consciences  

She is a pale rider, a dark horse coming

And Her rendering of justice won’t satisfy your quota.

 

She is no one to own, and no body to claim.

She is envy and apathy, lust and indifference

She is all things, undefined and free

Phenomenal you. Phenomenal me.

VerseDay 1-24-19

Posted on by sereichert

Before you immerse yourself in this succulent little slice of verbiage, take a moment to remember that I’m still calling for submissions to the poetry anthology and look forward to featuring your work here on my website. IT’S FREE PEOPLE…and you get all the feel-good bragging rights of being ‘published’. So consider and send me your stuff.

 

Okay, proceed to the Verse…

 

 

Puzzle

If I could stand in those empty fields once more.

The sun and wind bearing down,

Driving back the faint of heart.

If I could catch the notes of sage on the back of my tongue,

And the distant blue horizon

Far and stretching for eons

The time of endless days, turned eye-blinks.

If I could walk those creaky halls, and the comfort of shadow

The patterns of wood and love

If I could smell the dust of my bedroom, hear the closet door creak,

Lean against kitchen countertops, where the coffee pot left

Traces of brown on the laminate.

If I could just go back.

To that time

To that girl.

Maybe I could find the pattern of me,

The places before broken lines were drawn.

And piece the puzzle back together.

Maybe in this place, the dirt that grew beneath my fingernails,

The dust that scattered through my hair

The sweet sunshine that painted my cheeks in freckles

And the smell of an innocent child who belonged to the wild.

If I could just run those tracks, single and winding through empty fields,

On the squeaky tires, of the most faithful steed,

Who’s cracked seat pinched tender thighs, if ever the thought to sit occurred.

If I could spend the day on an adventure,

I could find the greatest one yet.

The one that tells the story,

Of a girl who was fearless

A girl who loved the wind and the sun

And the freedom beneath her was a fair gale to wings

Of a girl who wouldn’t give up.

Not ever.

Of a girl who persisted and

Stayed wild.

Maybe I could find the pattern of me,

Before the broken lines were drawn,

And piece the puzzle of myself together again.

VerseDay 1-17-19

Posted on by sereichert

 

Klutz

Today I stumbled

Head long.

Tumbled over the errant thought, that came from nowhere,

Like a toe caught on the lip of concrete,

Stopping my heart while the Earth’s momentum continued.

I crashed,

Scraped both knees,

Bloody and torn

 

In love with you.

 

I raised tattered palms

The shock of surviving

Such pain

Embarrassment,

Stupidity.

I looked up to see who’d noticed.

But the world carried on,

Oblivious to my fall.

And me, staggering to rise,

Unable to take any of it back.

Left with these scars.

VerseDay 1-3-19

Posted on by sereichert

Happy VerseDay, the first of the 2019.

While you’re making all of those resolutions, resolve to send me some of your poetry, essay or flash fiction to be featured on The Beautiful Stuff. Just use the contact button on my WordPress site, or e-mail me your brilliant stuff at sereichert@comcast.net

Enjoy!

 

Don’t lose your direction, nomadic heart.

Look to the needle swaying

In the depths of blood and bone

Old soul encased.

 

Waylaid by the plans of men and monsters

Fears and agitations,

False desires and hollows.

 

Don’t lose your direction, traveler.

Your feet alone touch dust and rock

Trails of world and earth,

Don’t let them plot the miles you go,

Before you rest.

 

Do not waver into their squall.

 

Do not falter, drifter.

Remember what your feet are for

The strength of legs, unbuckling

Remember, you…heart.

The pulse of your rhythm.

 

Find it.

Cling to it.

Let it draw your map,

Let it lead you.

 

You know you.

You know the truth of your existence.

Though they’ve taught you to fear it.

Though they’ve convinced you to deny it.

To question it.

To distrust the very core of your happiness.

 

Do not let them take your journey.

Do not let them own your path.

 

Be the master of your fate,

The commander of your soul.

 

Do not falter.

Do not falter.

Seek the astrolabe inscribed on your heart

The Heavenly body.

The incline of space.

That can’t be measured by the methods of any other man.

You made no promise to tread on their pristine track.

Their paved and acceptable roads are not your obligation.

You owe nothing but to your soul.

Only you can pay the debt of your happiness.

VerseDay 12-27-18

Posted on by sereichert

For the last VerseDay of 2018 I wanted to give you something amazing and powerful. Alas, this is what you get instead. (Well? Laugh!)

 

Next week, dawning the New Year, I will once again be promoting my submissions to VerseDay for the anthology out next fall. If you want to see your poem in print, please feel free to email or contact me with your poetry and/or essays.

 

And now…the final poem of 2018’s VerseDay adventure…

 

Honey Bee

 

Sometimes,

I miss you.

Miss the sound of your voice,

And the slight buzz 

Dripping Carolina, Honey

 

sweet.

 

I miss your fire,

the uplifting energy; an element so unconfined

The rushing ideas,

The rebellious feeling and defiant

 

heart.

 

I miss you, and your hover,

The way you called my flower the sweetest,

The only, under this sun,

You’ve ever loved, and danced so delicately across my

 

petals.

 

I don’t miss the way

Your deluge engulfed me,

Suffocated and overran in conversation,

The sting of barrage, welting my heart over and over again

And feeling that I was never quite important enough

To stop and take a

 

breath.

 

I don’t miss the pain,

Of the aching guilt you pierced me with,

The weight of what I should be,

What you wanted me to be,

The ideal you set

A high ivory honeycomb of complex,

 

deception.

 

Life does this.

It educates us.

Sometimes in human form,

and one sweetly hovering honeybee

Hard and hurtful once lured by the beguiling warmth

We must choose the limb to chew off to spare our

 

freedom.

 

You were my lesson

To enjoy the drawl but not submit to the voice

To know the sweetness of honey, without succumbing to its

 

taste.

 

To stoke my own energy,

To comprehend that I don’t need yours.

Orbiting in the clouds of your unfathomable passion taught me

To look for the fire in

 

Myself.