the poeming iv: the final round up

since october 1st, i’ve been participating in a daily poetry activity called the poeming, an annual event where poets work with one title from a selected author to write found poems. this year, the referenced author is christopher pike and my assigned book is “the return.” posted here are the poems from the last week and a half of the challenge. you can also read them in their original posting order and with the right spacing without excess periods at katwiseman.tumblr.com.
10.22.19
the truth
“it’s not that i have faith,” she thought
“i just know that your time of death
is no more important
than when you change clothes.”
—
lying on the sand,
soon she was the water.
the motion of waves
more than enough to wash away
the stress
her worries
—
she swam to paradise.
…………………………wherever i am is paradise
…………………………i am joy itself.
and fear
is the only thing
that can hold me back.
(397–403)
10.23.19
horror can attract as well as repel
she felt herself walking,
pulled by invisible strings
as if in a dream.
her angel, long gone.
it drew her —
straight to the spot,
a stain on the ground.
on her knees,
she touched the dark stain on
smooth concrete:
blood.
only blood turns concrete permanently dark
only blood refuses to fade
only blood
never forgets.
her hair slipped
over her shoulders as if
the strands strained to soak up
blood that once flowed.
soak it back into her head,
deep into her brain.
suffuse them with the
life and death
of that night.
whatever happened here,
happened in the dark.
(405–406)
10.24.19
untitled 4
i live in the reality of my own creation,
both my own god and
devil
(415)
10.25.19
untitled 5
my heart pounded like a piston
in my chest
when he
smiled
at me
(415)
10.26.19
i’ve always wanted to see the solar system
we hung suspended above planet Earth,
our eyes sensitive to colors and feelings
humans failed to perceive.
i saw a physical
and spiritual
dimension:
clean desert covered with dark astral clouds, and
parts that shone soft, white, radiant.
points of brilliance,
beautiful to behold.
(421–422)
10.27.19
to the moon
there was no obvious sensation of speed,
no wind in our hair,
no roar of rocket engine.
yet the flight was exhilerating.
i never felt so free,
so possessed by certainty
that all this was my creation
(as much as anybody else’s)
a playground for all.
—
i slowed as we neared the silver globe and
we danced about
on a crater-marked field.
(423)
10.28.19
a wave of sorrow like sour candy
when you died i looked for you
in the sky.
i reached out,
across the light-years
my love for you like the light
of stars around us
—
and now
i am found.
(426)
10.29.19
the starry journey
the portal to infinity yawned before us,
drawing me like a magnet.
not stumbled upon by chance,
i had to go in.
as stars vanished behind me,
so
did
i.
how to describe the knowledge of anything
without the presence of a knower?
i was not singular.
many people were i,
yet we were one.
i was enlightened and ignorant at the same time
(it was not possible to have one without the other)
no light without darkness
no day without night
no compassion without suffering
everything a weave of colored threads
forming an unfathomably rich tapestry.
how foolish we were to try to explain
the mystery
of life.
i felt so close to god right then,
i imagined myself a perfect fool and i
was happy.
(427–428)
10.30.19
her new novel, “the color of pain”
stories filled with
ghouls and vampires and psychos,
murder and horror.
why would you ever think
you have an angel
for a muse?
(437–438)
10.31.19
close to déjà vu, yet different
the feeling in the room
was as if the sorrows of yesterday
and the hopes of tomorrow slipped
from their time frames
and crossed paths.
seemingly by accident,
without reason, and also
because it was meant to be.
(472)
—
poem source citation: pike, christopher. remember me: remember me / the return / the last story. simon pulse, 2010. print. pgs. 397–472.
featured image: found on tumblr, source unknown.
