April 14, 2006

Word play for Poetry Friday

The warm, wonderful, and sexy Mona has challenged us all to do some creative writing on Poetry Fridays. Her topic this week? Hidden. So the rules are – so far as I can figure – that you can take her topic and do whatever the hell you want with it. Experiment. Play around with words. An orgy of language. It doesn’t have to make sense. It most certainly does not have to rhyme. Take ten minutes and write something and see what happens. Go ahead, try it out. Here's mine:


Hidden

Sunsplash drips through pores of winter-numbed skin, a sudden thawing. They rise. Tingling to the surface. The heavy scent of purple. The slippery warmth of marsh weeds. Snakes coiled in secret spaces. Memories hidden beneath muck richness. Bottle flies gather, jeweled and singing. Water lilies wave petals open, white against white. Jewelweed curves brilliant colour atop serpentine banks. Turtles struggle through murk. Water edge unfolds, a silver glimmer. Legs struggle against great swirls of mud. Cattails thirst for summer storms, sweet rain and low rumble and blue cracking wide against dark. Swallows swirl dusk, wings swooping all at once for evening bugs, the dark choreography of their hunger. Winds brush against cattail, yellow green gold, shifting their undersides, the hidden secret and sweet uncoiling uncurling rising opening the petals the muck the dark rich warmth. The snake flicks its tongue. The great blue heron climbs into sky. The low song of frogs croaks from wet green throats.

9 comments:

Mona Buonanotte said...

Wow! The goosebumps are still rising on my arm! I absolutely love your imagery. I thought of you this morning as I stepped out of my car in the pre-dawn light. The pond behind my workplace is hosting flocks of spring peepers, and their melody made me wonder if they're related to YOUR peepers, and if they sing the same song.

Yankee, Transferred said...

OK, well, after that, I think I'll just keep reading. Nice work there, jo(e), a beautiful piece.

Jessica said...

Well, THAT was absolutely amazing, dear!

Anonymous said...

I quite agree with both the comments above- it's a beautiful piece! Thanks for putting into words many of the reasons why I love nature.

Coffee-Drinking Woman said...

This post, as so many of your posts do, made me yearn to be outside. Right. Now.

Andromeda Jazmon said...

lovely. thanks for that moment, the sounds, the colors.

Anonymous said...

wonderful, absolutely wonderful.

Anonymous said...

Here's what comes up for me with the word hidden:

Hidden.

The dog scratches. I part her black fur, seeking the flea I think is there. A sense of movement among the soft tangles. I pinch, miss. The flea errs, straying onto the lightly furred belly. I grab. Success! One less flea, surely one less itch.

==================================

Later we walk in twilight, my dogs and I. She with the white ruff remains visible. The other, tawny in daylight, becomes a shadow in the night. I feel her slip through the night, reliving the history of her kind, but I do not see her. I call, and her eyes shine green in the streetlight as she returns to me.

==================================

Soon my dogs will be hidden from my sight forever, for they are aging. Will I feel them still? One I think will remain. Or perhaps she will return in another body. Will I see her spirit there, or will it remain hidden? And the other? I sense her future lies in another direction, without me, hidden from me during the remainder of my body’s lifetime. We are friends, but we are not of the same soul-plane.

jo(e) said...

kabbage: Wow! That was wonderful.