The art of the broken things

Today, I am a sharp point in middle
of everything -

flower beds
that need mending,

crowd with paperwork on table.
My hands are brittle dry

when a bowl crashes
on wooden floor, a blind spot

when you are driving the car
& don't check rear & side view mirrors.

What do you do?

You pour your paint
as you would

water delicate buds, 
giving everything that you have-

I trace the jagged lines
How beautiful they surge, 

gold-veins tracing 

sun's amber  

falls on cracks & ravines-

healing, i become more than beautiful 

Credit:   Colossal

Kintsugi (or kintsukuroi) is a Japanese method for repairing broken ceramics with a special lacquer mixed with gold, silver, or platinum. The philosophy behind the technique is to recognize the history of the object and to visibly incorporate the repair into the new piece instead of disguising it. The process usually results in something more beautiful than the original.

Posted for D'verse Poets Pub - Hosted by Mary ~ Thanks for the visit ~

If you come across the Messiah

Courthouse across Toronto City Hall

Squatting on busy street corner
Eyes luminous as grey clouds 
Ask him what is he doing here ? 
After all
When the last of lashes ended
When the last of thorns struck 
His sacrifice 
is laid above the glass ceiling
Every Sunday mass 
When chapel doors open to everyone

But here in train pack or city swarming 
of people of every skin color & hair
Would I know you?   
Would you be the one standing with a bullhorn
and a street placard, 
Repent!
Or giving out flyers to pedestrians ?
Or playing an old rusty guitar to faceless throng?

Are you the old man muttering to himself
Frail as fractured mirror, hair in disarray?
Or blind young man with a beautiful golden dog?
In the sudden warmth of morning sun
I see shadows hovering, ambivalent of dove's return.

Sliding between 
moderation and free will
I touch my mother's blessed rosary & water
Perhaps I am saved by her faithful prayers.
She tells me a faith healer has eased my father's pains. 
As I pass by

a man with vitiligo, huddled beside a dirty plate,
a woman with empty street cart shouting-
Any old shoes !  Any old clothes!

Beggar, 
If you come across the Messiah, please let me know.  


Process Notes:I have used the following words from the list provided by Anthony Desmond: Luminous, Glass, Door, Plate, Vitiligo, Messiah, Warmth, Shadow.   

Posted for D'verse Poets Pub - Thanks for the visit ~ 

What the spring flowers ate

Grace@ Everyday Amazing

Not half-baked crumbs but bird seeds
scattered by squirrels & robins

Rain trails soaking ground
green & lush

Once more, earth is red
wine as pink-blushed faces appear

We own the wild fields & all 
the mornings
misty & pale
Or golden as russet trees

I hear their rowdy chatter, tumult
of awakening, tea-leaves
I pour on small cups to welcome them 

Heat arrives in waves
The blossoming is profuse, a murmuring 

We run in meadows 
barefoot
& the afternoon
sparkles warm as honey
  
My belly is filled with oats & butter-
flies, I am lifted, 

carefree lass
straining to flower's every word

before the dying 
sun


Posted for Imaginary Garden with Real Toads - Play It Again & Kerry's Pathetic Fallacy
and Poets United  -  Happy weekend ~

What the sky scatters (aside from my thoughts)

A Glass Raindrop Installation by Stacee Kalmanovsky

Rain, drenching fragile cherry blossoms
Blue in death-tide, white-knuckled in bosom.    

I write on the clouds on my way to work.
They have secrets, I tell them to loudly slurp.

I am an onlooker as passengers knit their time
With books, games & music as train stop grinds. 

I see graffiti on the walls.  Is the fruit too ripe?
My bag is heavy with lunch & rewrites.  

A man comes on board, too eager to preach
His religion, I close my eyes & disengage.

I paint the afternoon sun with emerald glade
Spring is shy maiden in the middle of the lake.

I lose my thread of thoughts, floating between
grooves, until my pen plucks them in midstream.

Crescent moon, meteors flashing the night sky
Perhaps the dome of heaven is so close by.


Posted for D'verse Poets Pub - At the Slant- Using slant rhymes 
And Poetry Jam - Rain - Happy weekend ~

Terzanelle: Dreams of black forest

A Chandelier that Projects Tree Shadows

At night the white walls comes to life
As roots crawl steadily to sky
Crowning tepid air with sharp knife 

Branches writhe to drumming cries        
Gnarled arms embracing black forest
As roots crawl steadily to sky

To pounce on pitiful harvest
Where once dawn rules, shadows now reign 
Gnarled arms embracing black forest

Thick with mourning of past in chains   
Filled with panic of scented prey  
Where once dawn rules, shadows now reign

Toss in bed, legs restless betray
Feverish trance of a lost soul 
Filled with panic of scented prey 

You hear mocking sounds & loud groans      
At night the white walls comes to life 
Feverish trance of a lost soul            
Crowning tepid air with sharp knife

Posted for Imaginary Garden for Real Toads  - Challenge Poetry Form - Terzanelle 

& Hannah's Transforming Friday  - Black Forest of Germany

and Poets United ~

Terzanelle:  This is a marriage of the Italian Terza Rima with the French Villanelle and can present a challenge to the serious poet. It consists of five stanzas of three lines (tercets), and the final stanza having four lines (quatrain).  To read more including the complicated rhyme scheme, please click on Real Toads ~

Happy Weekend ~

Storm in my bowl

I am clay, bursting as spring leaf

       Soft buds, pinking rain-grey sky

           One hand is painting red chests of birds

                  While another is counting stars above green-gold trees

                      My eyes imagine what else is there

                        Possibly, impossibly

                   The ember, inside me, glows into tracing

               a pattern - each yes, each no

             another ladder or side street or maybe a bridge

         I am still learning or seeing anew

    Outside this bowl

I am striving to fill from river's thirst

The clay leans into my quiet moments

    & gathers my stormy thoughts 

           Into a shape, a footprint distinct & fresh - 

                Perhaps a fish swimming far & further away-

                         or a blue-lit storm rocketing to the sky

                                I am rolling, eyes shut, rocking to the waves-

Living Clay by Johnson Tsang

Posted for D'verse Poets Pub - In answer to Marina's question:  2) What else are you, that no one has seen before?

While I value steadfast & secure family life, I have made some bold choices in the last 9 years of my life.   This included migrating to Canada in my mid-life & starting afresh, & just last month, starting a new job in downtown Toronto.    Also, I am stretching my artistic side, learning poetry & exploring other stuff like  collage, mixed media, etc.   

Thanks for the visit ~

Conversations with lace maker

I step into my grandmother's small room and 
ask her 
How do I choose man to love ?

My grandmother's face is a clock
ticking slowly over tea cups & crochet of white circle patterns  

She tells me:  
Choose someone who will treat you 
like a delicate lace

yet believes that you are more than just a good woman-  

Someone who will 
energize your orange-gold wings to scale the sky-
Or spin your feet to wheels to reach far corners of the earth-

Does his words make
you think of planting seeds & searching for lost ships ?
Or make you feel beautifully alive in dying light?

Did grandpa make you feel that way?  I was curious.
He was my wing man & light of my life.  I have lived a long life, 
but I want to die already, she says.

Her rough & twisted fingers are knotting the patterns
webbing a silk of flowers between spaces & threads - 
stitching fraying edges into womb of her belly-

I say, Grandma 
Men like Grandpa are hard to find. It's like searching for a needle 
among yarns, threads & silver pins in a box.      

Her voice is firm above rustling of cloth:  
I don't waste my time looking for the needle, but use the threads   
& what I have to work my pattern & finally having used all 

The needle falls into my hand to sew the last button
of my lace work.  

I peer at the intricate lines on her face
- this woman who has survived WW2  & countless fires - 
is a bedrock to her 4 sons & 2 step-children

And I want to be lace maker just like her.   

Posted for Imaginary Garden for Real Toads - Bits of Inspiration - Lace
& D'verse Poets Pub - Conversation/Dialogue in Poetry - Hosted by Claudia  ~  My grandmother died many years ago but she lived to 93 years.    Thanks for the visit ~

Roots

I sign a form 
to give away every part of me when I die

My twigs for shade from yellow-humid sun
My red blooms for tea & medicine
My thick leaves, dried & tied, an omen for blessings

Take these fibrous sap 
Sweeter than young tender coconut
Silk is my color, golden ripening 

My flesh, pickled spicy & thinly sliced, a feast    
My oblong seeds,  blossoming wings & words
My trunk, weathered storm, a ladder, a boat or ship

I see on desert or barren land 
My eyes craning for glorious sunset, pared succulent & ripe

Roots dig
deeply entrenched into a river

Underneath parched lands or dusty streets
A long shadow, healing & crowning a sky

For all my children's
children to remember me by-

Mango Tree Flower

Posted for D'verse Poets Pub - Thanks for the visit ~

Two subway train vignettes

In train crowd, there's always one firecracker
Everyone avoids like sudden gust of cold wind


Today, it's an earnest young man pleading for coins
But his speech is stump by megaphone 
announcing a derailment on northern station.


He steps out the train.   I hear distant sound
of rain flinting the concrete steps as door closes.      
 

~0~0~


She is counting, not the platform stops
but knots & turns of her crochet needle-

The red yarn is net of fishes
or stars    

It's hard to say
with her fingers trilling to a robin's song- 




Posted for Imaginary Garden for Real Toads - Kerry's Challenge
& 55 Words Challenge
& Poets United

Thanks for the visit ~