Category: Prompted

Poetry inspired by a prompt

Pandora’s Box of Love

Photo by Maria Verkhoturtseva on Pexels.com
Love feels like Pandora's Box of contradicting experiences
Love alights you upon a mountain top of elation
And sequesters you in a dungeon of anxiety
Love can feel like Elysian Fields
And Dante's Inferno
Love can make you feel like an accomplished genius
And the village idiot
Love gives your soul wings
And your body two left feet
Love makes poetry of your dreams
And salad of your words
Love inspires amazing highs
And devastating lows
Love is celebrated when it arrives
And mourned when it departs
Pleasure and pain separated by fate's coin toss
A game of chance we cannot stop playing

-gws

Cartwheels

Photo by RDNE Stock project on Pexels.com
I want to revisit the joy of cartwheels in summer grass
Serenaded by the wing beats of bees and the chorus of hummingbirds and sparrows
I want to drowse amongst dandelions while playing 
Warshak games with passing clouds in azure skies
I want to hide beneath curtains of willow branches
Making friends of the trees with whispered secrets

I want to run time backward
To when summer days were never ending
And daydreams frolicked in the warmth of long lazy unburdened afternoons
I want to sit suspended in the amber of youthful memory
Its glowing lens casting every scene in warm nostalgic hues
Golden hour light cast upon fading Kodachrome images 
That compose dust mote-filled summer slideshows of my heart

-gws

Portrait Poem

You smile uncomfortably 
Staring into the lens of the camera 
Your shoulders pulled high
All of your self consciousness visible in your eyes 
You don’t know what to do with your hands 
You do not know how to drop your walls on request 

I wish you could see yourself through my eyes 
The photographer’s eyes
Eyes that see the sparks that spill off of you 
Every time you laugh 
The natural glow on your cheeks 
The beauty of the asymmetrical smile
Caused by the single dimple 
That only appears when your face
Is animated by genuine joy
The unguardedness of your body language 
When you are feeling safe and comfortable 
Hands animating your stories with 
Increasing enthusiasm as you speak

I want the viewer to see the three dimensions of you
Hidden within your two dimensional portrait 
I want the viewer to want to know you
Drawn in by all the small clues of you
Leading viewers toward the vastness of you
I want the viewer to discover your dimple
Question what crinkles the corners of your eyes
Be captivated by the joy radiating from your natural smile 

If I have done my job well 
Your photo will feel familiar to a stranger 
You will appear as approachable as any friend 
If I have done my job well
I will have created a likeness of you
That asks you to befriend and love yourself 
As much as those of us who know you love you
If I have done my job well
You will have premised me to alchemize
A tiny fraction of your soul
So all who come to know you through your image
Will wonder what magic they missed in the opportunity to know

-gws

Significant Other

My significant other 
Is more other than significant now
I wish I felt better about this fact
I do not miss the now of him
I’m still in love with the then of him
When love knocks you can never know 
The beauty or horror in its entourage 
You believe love can conquer all
And learn that love is often not enough 
My significant other left
A significant mark on me
That is hardly insignificant 

-gws

The Next Chapter

And so comes the end of the heaviest chapter
The plot twisted dramatically 
In the hands of an unreliable narrator 
Linear time fractured
Slowed
Ran backward 
Perspectives shifted
Creating more confusion than clarity

Muted colors of nostalgia dull recollections 
Emotional sharpness blunted
The hollow ache of a long goodbye 
Completed with the deliberate placement 
Of an arch-ending period.

The next act begins with a page turn
“THE NEXT CHAPTER” written atop it

-gws

Crossroads

I stand with Lady Hecate in her place of power
The Great Crossroad
The intersection of past and present
Lessons and possibility
She holds her lantern aloft
Illuminating my options
I can see that each step
Each choice
Leads to another nexus
Another crossroad
For life is a spiderweb of crossroads
An infinite collection of choices
Interconnecting to plot our life's course
In this moment of perfect presence
I breathe
I reach out with my intuition
With deep faith and trust I step forward
Toward a future of my own choosing

-gws