Retroflexed Triflections
A summer
of poetry blog challenges
in three parts
by Steve Lavigne
copyright 2012 Steve Lavigne
Discover other titles by Steve LaVigne
The April 2012 Um-Yangian
Fork and other poems
The Unpublishables
Table of Contents
One - Trifecta weekly challenges
Triumph
Absence
Dinosaur
Black
Firework
Good v. Evil
A skinny long haired hippie
Blind
Venus and the Sailor
Radical Departure
Home
Operation Surgical Strike
Normal
She realized early on
The Score
this soap bubble, glass ball
With This Vorpal Blade
without you
The narrow back alley
Two - Trifextra weekend challenges
motherless
“3 wishes”
on the count of three
Bills, clippings, yellowing photographs
Broken butterfly
Sevenling (in 33words)
Grasping the last strains
In three words
Jesus
A fabulists’ contract
Trifecta: The Novel
Riding this chain clanking
Daughter
Three – Other challenges
Her world, a helicopter seed spinning
Bliss
t-shirt
Robin red breast
Sevenling
Lament
Symbolism
My nonet
1 – long ago
Carnival
“when words slip free”
You’ve been gone so long
Change
Change (2)
Follow
Riddle
There’s a line
fire
random thoughts at 4am
summer school
One flew over the cuckold’s nest
Dessert
One
Triumph
A triumph, this waking
well rested
not overly or under
done
much as the brown eggs
on the stove
which were hand delivered
with a soft affection
from a friend.
A triumph, my reaction
to the overly exuberant
shouting and chattering
of morning children,
no bleary eyed cringing
or flashing anger
this time
just a gratefulness
shaking me like
ripped foil
or the subtle hint
of your perfume
as I remember
how it warmed
the nape of my neck
like a passing breath.
A triumph, as I wake
and rise
yet again
intimately aware
of the children,
your empty chair,
the empty place
we still set there
and how they
never seem to notice
your absence
anymore.
(Use the Third definition of the word Triumph in a poem - responses must be between 33 and 333 words)
Absence: the devil’s love song
I.
The envy of those lacking it
is profound
and supremely
misdirected.
For we all miss
something,
even the devil
who’ll bottle up your soul
giving you one lunar month
to accomplish
his little task
in order for you to receive
your fondest wish
or be
forever his -
one more star
set
amidst a twinkling of stars,
the devil drinking you in
on his divan
with a fine brandy,
your soul glistening like a jewel
reflecting brightly off his snifter;
the devil always wondering
if there is more.
II.
Before we met
did you really feel
unfulfilled
with all that you
had accomplished –
creating light and dark,
time and space,
you,
yourself-
and how do you explain
this fountain of us,
this flowing of us through
and over the other,
each so sweetly moved
and changed
and now that you are
gone
this absence,
this emptiness
in the background
of being
and the silence
is too much…
III.
The dog sat in the middle of the road
and picked at a burr in its paw:
it licked and bit and chewed
long after the pad and the paw were gone –
the burr remaining
steadfastly
in his mind, his imagination,
his dreams.
(Use the Third definition of the word Absence in a poem - responses must be between 33 and 333 words)
Dinosaur
These old bones
trapped in the stone memory
of its youth
is a prime example -
the quick brown fox
of the mind
not quite so eager
to jump or mend
its broken fences
anymore
except perhaps when I think back on you
long necks nuzzling
in the twilight,
our slow, distal lumbering
into solitude
and all the while
Hold me one more time
I need that stinging newborn wetness
straight from the shell when I'm with you
feeling
to make this old dinosaur whole
medley
still singing
in the landscape
of my brain
(Use the Third definition of the word Dinosaur in a poem - responses must be between 33 and 333 words)
Black
A haircut?
"No I want them all cut"
and I am become a bad joke
incarnate,
youth’s anti-hero
dressed in black,
dark cape billowing over my lap
and cinched at the neck
with white tissue.
The anti-grav chair swivels
and pumps
and exhales a hissing,
disembodied head floating
unmoving
in the mirror.
Silver scissors snip
and
clip
and tilt a clean
conformation
to the greater plan -
my woolly imagination
chafing
on the proffered
platter
asking
how they could have
ever done it,
the outlaws,
bob marley,
john the baptist …
ask samson,
it says,
ask him
about the
time
he
stooped
and
stopped
being
"the Boss",
go on,
ask him, ask
him
and see
what happened
when
he grew
it
all
back.
(Use the Third definition of the word Black in a poem - responses must be between 33 and 333 words)
Firework - every 5th grade chorus is singing it
Hey paperbag
grocery store
lady
never thinking bout all the plastic bag
kids you left ripped and fluttering
in your chain link
fenced
in
world.
Hey mr. card sharken
foreclosen
2nd mortgage
man
rememberin
when you were
a rocketman
and everybody but mr. welk
was cool
with pimp hat, rainbow star glasses
elton
coloring
that acne
constellation
of uncertainty.
Boom Boom Boom – that was your heart beatin
Moon Moon Moon – just something to get beyond
never thinking you could outshine
it
and not
even one old greasy spark left
to complain
about your underfunded
hopped up
space program
to be
Boom Boom Boom – don’t you remember
that was your heart beatin
Moon Moon Moon – just something to get beyond
never thinking you could outshine
it
Boom Boom Boom – listen
that's a kid's heart
beatin
no rainbow glasses
needed
Boom Boom Boom – cover your eyes
they’re fireworks
making their own stars
Boom Boom Boom – they're
fireworks
of shooting stars
out shinin the
Moon Moon Moon – brighter
than any night
you could have
ever
created
(Use the Third definition of the word Firework in a poem - responses must be between 33 and 333 words)
Good v. Evil
Good and evil
is like porn, he said,
I knows it when I
sees it –
if only he hadn’t gotten tripped
up in his black
work robes,
who knew the sildenafil
for his heart condition
would cause a massive erection
and lead one eye
witness to report
fallen on broken in half
dick syndrome -
but his wife evidently did,
her triumph
as she had readjusted his dosage with a
bush v. gore mentality –
finally those years of non-stop
tongue wagging from the bench
would be put to some real cunning
lingual use –
she would get satisfaction
in due course
(Use the Third definition of the word Triumph in a poem - responses must be between 33 and 333 words)
A skinny long haired hippy,
by all accounts,
communing with nature
during storms,
disrupting commerce,
messing with business
as usual
and redistributing
a sense
of abundance
to the yearning masses,
of course,
he would get in trouble
with the authorities,
into a bit of a jam,
as it were,
in that rock and hard place
tomb
and what father when his son
calls collect doesn’t
answer
but after 3 days
of clinging mortal stench
even his most beloved
was sent packing
and you just know
the smile jesus wore as he
rolled the rock aside –
"my son, my son,
why hast thou forsaken me?"
still ringing
in his ears.
This weekend's prompt is borrowed from Benjamin Franklin, who once said, "Guests, like fish, begin to smell after three days." We want you to tell us a story about a guest, invited or otherwise, who begins to smell, metaphorically or otherwise, after three days.
Blind
I.
This blind love
as natural as the tongue
of a bell striking back
when struck
and we don't think about it much
unless that bell calls us
to eat
to wake
to work
to love
and there you are
my cavern wall
and I yell at you
waiting to hear
your echoing voice
so alike
yet so different from my own
yelling back
at me
II.
The chipped, blue
metal cup,
cold
from being left out
all night,
is colder
than the water drawn
from your deepest well.
Do you rinse
the cup
before
drinking
from it?
Is it in
its nature
to let you
do so?
III.
blind trust
without
foreknowledge
vacuum
pregnant
with your
birthing
it
Nature,
like a temple bell
calling you to prayer,
abhors nothing
except
mind
not searching
for meaning
(Use the Third definition of the word Blind in a poem - responses must be between 33 and 333 words)
Venus and the Sailor
The blouse is falling,
slipping
down the smooth skin
of a shoulder,
so you know it must be
the last and most proper of her names,
Love –
love as in goddess of the ample
hips,
hips as large as a house
on a hill,
a promontory
sidling him in
between her and the half moon boulder
earth,
the quarter moon waving
seas.
Looking at her
is her power –
the sailor out to sea
must always know
where he is planted,
sometimes it is even called
home.
(Use the Third definition of the word Ample in a poem - responses must be between 33 and 333 words/ write a poem based on the painting Venus and the Sailor by Salvador Dali)
Radical departure
It's a radical departure,
you see
we're old now
and can no longer blame it on
youth or youthful
indiscretion -
your dress still so white,
my black tux graying on the edges
with experience.
Did you ever dream when you were 18
kissing someone your father's age
at your mother's age
being given away
at such a strange altar -
the ring bearer wearing her own
ring of three daughters
scampering like bunnies
between metal folding chairs.
Your side of the aisle,
my side of the aisle,
clattering together with palmed
conversations
pinching us in towards
the old, lisping preacher,
who studiously ignores with far sighted
obtuseness
the next ceremony scheduled to begin-
a long wooden coffin slowly
emerging into the nave
like some decked out toboggan.
Yes, we swear, we'll give each
other a healthy head start
on this next slippery sloping ride
we're about to begin.
Yes, each of us swears,
we can no longer blame it
on youth or youthful
indiscretion -
each of us swearing we swore
that oath before,
but neither of us
quite so sure anymore
as the memories
not quite as good
as it used to be.
(Use the Third definition of the word Radical in a poem - responses must be between 33 and 333 words)
Home
And death will bring it
as it brings us
home
to this deathbed,
two sides of one door
each the same as the other
after long absence –
coal black rock
shiny under pressure stirs
and shall we burn it
in this hearth,
the only one we have,
this home?
(Use the Third definition of the word Home in a poem - responses must be between 33 and 333 words)
Operation Surgical Strike
The video game console where the operator
earned his second armed services medal
watching from the heavens
with his surgical strike drones
protecting an anxious population
watches the unsuspecting enemies and
their sitcom life on hi def screen –
work, dishes, church, bedding
the wife, family time with the children
all observed, recorded, analyzed.
In Pakistan, when the brown American
and his 16 year old son
were targeted for elimination,
the wedding party strike was deemed unfortunate
but necessary in the media -
the operator’s suffering at killing
the family he had come to know so well
an exemplary act of service to his country.
And what kind of world do we live in, he thinks,
when here in Arizona, Northern California