Today’s Blue Plate Poetry Special!
Ingredients: Comment under this post with a phrase you want in a poem, and I will write the poem for you and post it in your comment.
Price: Absolutely free of charge
Nutritional Value: Nil
Emotional/Intellectual Value: Priceless
Get your order in before we run out!
Rural Oklahoma Museum of Poetry 
I thought I left a phrase for you, but something must have intervened! How about I try again with: “something must have intervened.”
Patchwork quilt on the clothesline, fading sun like denim
hung time and time: She reaches for the material without
knowing why, without need of the touch, the pattern
of her days sifting moonlight into juniper berries into dust
into the warmth of the lower left hand page of the margin
in the book unclosed. Something must have intervened.
I can only say… I am sorry to have missed out on this one. What a great thing to do Shaun and you are so very clever. were you to be so inspired. My phrase: Very Light her fingertips..
The envelope of the afternoon lay there
in the room, a question to the light on the carpet,
the curve of her shoulder the only shape
that made sense. What is the correspondence
between how very light her fingertips tapped
the minutes into a melody and how very sure
I was that we would forever be delivered?
no longer a participant in your worm exchange
artificial love is a sad lifeless bait
You left the fishing pole on the bank,
felt the mud swallow it, felt the lake before you
shrug, its waters a sure sign that it was
no longer a participant in your worm exchange,
spleen, blood, bile, and rectification of water
moccasin shooting beneath the willows,
into snake lines of loss and memory.
Artificial love is a sad lifeless bait.
super great blue plate special !!!
every line is perfect !!!
He set the espresso before her on the kitchen table (for Jen)
Each room of the house was a pattern in the lace
of the morning. The bedroom was almost a rose,
and the bathroom could be a leaf, the living room
a thorn, the dining room the stem that disappears
into itself and into the rose, the leaf, the thorn.
The kitchen felt faded like the handiwork
in her grandmother’s shawl, yet his hands
were a warm reality of their art. When
he set the espresso before her on the kitchen table,
she wondered at the strength of its delicacy.
This is tender and beautiful – thank you for sharing your gift with us.
alizarian crimson and French ultramarine (for Arden)
We follow the trail that is not a trail to the edge
of the pasture and then climb a tree that is not a tree
to the tip of the sky. We swing over to a cloud that is not
a cloud and catch the tip of a red-tailed hawk song,
a mixture of alizarian crimson and French ultramarine,
the chorus a rainbow of lugnuts and bronze hands,
the feathers of the day like the time I made lentil soup
and you found your way back to me by its taste.
I love it! And I may have to paint it.
Oh cool. I want to see that painting!
the smell of browned butter
In the side street, he parked next to
a shuttered shop, the sign faded into
some robot language of IG AC EGA, origins
becoming unknown with time, like a memory
he treasures until he’s unsure it really
happened. In the alley, a paraulata ojo de candil
showers like a homeless man in the running faucet.
Overhead the plane he missed mocks him.
He walks up two flights of stairs
to a place still alive in the neighborhood,
the smell of browned butter the only clue
that he actually knows where he is going.
I twitched twice and then was still.
I twitched twice and then was still.
Around me, the smell of burnt rye grass
wrote a letter to the day that would never
be answered. I noticed a fallen branch
of the wild dogwood, white berries crushed
beneath my knees, white light of this time
like no other, when I am going to create
a story with no words and write it with no
alphabet and send it without moving at all.
Because there are times in everyone’s life that are sad and just a little bit lonely.
The heron will warn you that it is flying overhead,
or is it a warning? Maybe it is a recognition
that you are on similar paths and all you need
to do is look up because maybe you don’t very much,
because there are times in everyone’s life
that are sad and just a little bit lonely,
and no path through welcoming meadow and lush wood
will mean anything if that were not true.
love these words shaun…i guess maybe i shouldn’t stay anonymous :)~jo ella
“We planted most of them right-side up.” (for Tony)
The lightning claimed the darkness
so that it was no longer ours. We wondered
about the end of spring and the length
of days. We ate grilled cheese sandwiches
on Sunday afternoon, when it stopped raining.
I have found you one more time We will
straighten the clouds together. We planted
most of them right-side up, because in this way
we can find them in the blackest of days.
I love it!
the ole Angus barn harboring dust covered relics
Leaves curl up like the tips of your fingers
toward morning, still lost in sleep, the dream
of the past becoming the daybreak, smelling
of dust wanting to be less contained, like people
want to be, like the horses have learned to be,
like love at the end of our days shimmering
through our children gone into the world,
beyond our house where they are never beyond,
the old Angus barn harboring dust covered relics
contains us all and even more . . . to come.
Shaun, as we remove layer after layer of dust, cobwebs, and rusted nails we are aware of the strength and importance of this old barn. I love this poem. When restoration is finished it will hang there until another generation or owner decides to remove it.
As a girl the Angus barn was my most favorite place in the entire world for within I could close my eyes and see Daddy smoking a cigar as the cow kicked the milk bucket, smell the freshly baled alfalfa in the loft, and hear the deep sigh of my horse as he relaxed beneath my soft bristle brush. As a woman its still a mystical place feeding my soul.
“a work in progress” (for Deb)
In the camera’s eye, in the eye
of the storm, she views the place
of secrets with a subtle knowing,
like the wren sensing catspeed,
the flood retreating at no human
wish, a work in progress, going
at the pace only she can know.
I just love it! Shawn, you poet you, are a wonderful wordsmith. Let’s stay in touch. Thank you for your woven words, Deb
Ok Cool The phrase: “like the black on that little black dress”
We came around the building, ten steps
from the door, ten steps from the other
side of a town I never thought I would return
to, and there I was knee-deep in history,
in yellow flowers in the ditch, scattering
gravel with my boots, until you said,
“Remember that night at the football field
and the sky before the storm.” Oh yeah.
Like the black on that little black dress
you were wearing, I thought, and I opened
the door back in town and you were inside.
Lovely, lovely, lovely. Thank you!
4 am musings
Sweet immediate fingers of October scuttle
across your shoulders like a spider
frightened by your sudden movement, like
a dream that wants to awaken in your body
without letting your mind know, without
the chill of 4 am musings, without
the restraint of of a life no longer
circling you with its cagey lease.