Exploring the Intriguing
Category: Poetry
Winter’s storms have faded
With the new Spring of our love
Being scheduled
For just about now
How is it then
That no mood has shifted
No surprise unveiled
What new plan can be established
To change the artifice of love
Into the real thing for us
Can a promise never made
Still somehow be broken
© Gayle
Force Press 2010
A friend is fighting a losing battle with Canada. Here's a poem about heading towards Toronto.
FDO
Last Night’s Travels
Driving on the highway into Etobicoke
Hoping to find somewhere to get off
Finally the sign for Queens Land
© Gayle Force Press 2003
On a rainy day, this feels like a helpful poem to share.
FDO
Sharing Rainbows
When you stare
Just hard enough
Into the clouds of a sunny sky
Notice what you can find
Nearly invisible innumerable rainbows
Bending light through their water
Opening a whole new world
Of hiding visions
Drenched in possibility
With every single glance
At any given moment
Each of those rainbows
Might be only yours
Right until you choose
Like Noah and Dorothy
How you want to share it
© Gayle Force Press 2008
I wrote this poem a couple years ago and a NY Times article today encouraged me to post it. I love the phrase and the sentiment behind it.
Remix America
Mestizo mulatto hyphenated hybrid
Mixed up creole cultural mélange of meaning
As who we are and what we used to be pale
next to tomorrow’s endless postmodern possibilities of
Perpetual people driven progress
All the ‘I’s and ‘US’s can become ‘They’s and ‘We’s sooner than YouTube presents the next
Macaca spewing hate monger would be divider
Who unites us in disdain
For his antiquated rhetoric of race,
Religion and righteousness
The 3 Rs that used to keep the South backwards,
Black folks scared and the rarely compassionate conservatives
entrenched in their oh so corrupting power
The beauty of the remix
And the America it is frenetically remaking
Is that all the little boxes
Will mean the very same thing in the end
More empty spaces we can fill
Exactly as we choose
© Gayle Force Press 2008
Thunderstruck
I was a father before I realized that thunder
Has a surprisingly large vocabulary
There’s fierce crashing thunder
The kind that wakes you from a dreaming sleep
But there’s also rolling thunder
That takes you along with it
As a wave lilting
On the edge of the sea
Soft thunder can spin you around
To wordlessly ask
If anyone else noticed it
So gentle as to make you feel
More than hear its presence
Constant pounding thunder serves as an atmospheric drum kit
Marking time in the heavens
Sharing nature’s knowledge with the mortals
Wise enough to listen
Rather than be lulled to sleep by it
And there’s booming thunder of the sort
That makes babies cry,
Shocks adults into stunned silence
And makes the old folks laugh.
It’s the sound that reminds us thunder may be a warning
For as Zeus knew so well
The thunder of the skies celebrates the onslaught of lightning
We do well to pay heed
© Gayle Force Press 2009
I'm not particularly a fan of Valentine's Day but perhaps this poem will help warm, romantic feelings linger just a little while longer.
FDO
The first time
I kissed you
When really
You kissed me instead
Everything around me
Stopped and stood
Perfectly still
While your lips
Parted mine
And my whole body
Grew so tense
But my head so light
That I thought I’d float away
If I even dared
To breathe
© Gayle Force Press 2003
Winter Coat
Winter shields the earth from us
Keeping its treasures buried
For a little while
Safe from we who need too much
Who need everything there is
© Gayle Force Press 2006
Lilywhite Jesus
It’s the lilywhite Jesus
I’m supposed to believe in
As the evidence of things unseen
That guy in the pictures
Wearing long hair with a beard
Maybe lambs or a stream next to him
Long pretty robes almost, but never quite,
Obscuring his sandaled, pearl feet
The lilywhite Jesus
Who never lived a day on this,
The only Earth we have
© Gayle
Force Press 2006
Christmas Crossing
It’s Christmas Eve and my wife is napping
At the other end of the couch
Dreaming in a Santa hat
Tonight when she wakes
And after tomorrow’s presents
I’ll try my best to remind her
That my life is more complete
Better and more real
Than I could have imagined for myself
Her presence animates my life
Not in a slavish sense of duty
But through the constant commitment of love
Densely defined and elaborate
Telling as the Rubicon, broad as the Nile
I have fully crossed over
© Gayle
Force Press 2006
Snowfull Skies
There’s a snowfull sky above
Me here tonight standing
Idling in boots and wait
For the winter defining storm
My television told me is coming
There’s a snowfull sky above
Though the stars are peeking through
This noncommittal cloudiness
That hints at the light beyond
There’s a snowfull sky above
This tin can mansion
For which I’ve mortgaged my finest flag
The soul-stirring banner of revolutionary risks
And revolutionary living
There’s a snowfull sky above
So I wander inside
Grateful for security and shelter
From the storm
The light and the revolution
That once defined me
There’s a snowfull sky above
© Gayle
Force Press 2008
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