Tuesday, November 26, 2013

Proven

International District, Seattle WA
Photo © 2013 Jennifer Wagner



Afterward
she felt just like
the used condom,
            discarded
amidst the cigarette butts
and partially eaten food.

The refuse
stacked up,
lining the side streets
and back streets
of the insides of her,
piling up
on her chalk outline.

Wasn’t she
what had been done to her?

But the point of no return
to what               
she thought of herself
was the road less traveled,
            a cross in the path—
and the journey upward,
a process
littered
with the things
she has chosen to leave behind;

and that has made all the difference.



© 2013 Jennifer Wagner


A little bit of a spin off Robert Frost’s The Road Not Taken.


Monday, November 18, 2013

bliss




a love note/poem from my hubby
via refrigerator magnets
photo © 2013 jennifer wagner



a soft tangerine moon
glows there
where i put my hand over your heart,

feel your breath slow and even
chest rising, falling
            rising, falling

and i can’t catch myself, either—
from drifting off
into the green poem
of us

where you
lift me up to the branches
to catch my footing,

where the
light shines through
its trembling leaves.

i hold them tight,
let the sun play in angled drops
on my face, close my eyes to
feel the favor
of your smile,

and then open them again
to focus
on eden appearing,
in the closing
of the blue distance.



© 2013 Jennifer Wagner


dVerse OpenLinkNight 

Monday, November 11, 2013

Simply Jesus




your blood blooms still 
© 2013 Jennifer Wagner





When there’s not enough hyssop
to cleanse me of all these flaws—
I think I must live with them,
make slow improvements
with the
tick tick tick
of time’s cruel elements.

I know too well this unruly thing
inside me is me,
but there, too,
is the me that hungers for her first love

somewhere buried beneath
bruising, hardening, scarring
it throbs,
however disjointedly.

I am not a girl of
ritual, rules or religion.
I only know that at fifteen
I just wanted
to hold Your hand.

And now,
beyond church
and the things they add to it all,
and bitter politics
and the things they take away from it all,
and morality,
and all these rules I break—

I stand here today
wondering
when did I ever get the idea
You were not enough?

In dark,
in cloud,
in lightless days,
Your blood blooms still.

And I remember
I never needed
anything else anyway.



© 2013 Jennifer Wagner






1 Corinthians 2:2-5.  And I, brethren, when I came to you, did not come with excellence of speech or of wisdom declaring to you the testimony[a] of God. For I determined not to know anything among you except Jesus Christ and Him crucified. I was with you in weakness, in fear, and in much trembling. And my speech and my preaching were not with persuasive words of human[b] wisdom, but in demonstration of the Spirit and of power, that your faith should not be in the wisdom of men but in the power of God.


Friday, November 8, 2013

it's about more than winning


photo © 2013 Jennifer Wagner






baseball is about more than just the money

baseball is
a metaphor for life
           
baseball is
to return home
good for what ails us
romantic
an art
           
baseball is
poetry




© 2013 Jennifer Wagner



For Form for All:  List Poems and the Poetic Heart of Google.  Sam Peralta has us using Googlism to create poetry.  Our instructions were to visit the Googlism site and type in a word of our choosing and craft a list poem from the results.  Fun! 

And for Clint, my 13 year old crazy-for-baseball, grand-slam-hitting kid.  You amaze me and make me so proud!  (Photo:  Desert Fall Classic Tournament 2013— opposing teams taking a knee together).  


Wednesday, November 6, 2013

Sea Elf Blooms the Desert


Chihuly’s Fiori di Como 
 cartoonified photo © 2013 Jennifer Wagner


Sea elf
took his
raspberry lantern
and journeyed to the desert lands

to look for
new places to play,
new tunes to be hummed,
and friends to be made.

He crafted
his hut
next to
a whispering tree
and blew
his glass bugle
in a mad-fantastic
symphony

of starlight
and twilight
and the moon (to make them swoon)

and if you don’t believe me
you should see
the cobalt blue
of never-give-up
sky anemones.


© 2013 Jennifer Wagner


Above is a cartoonified photo I took of Dale Chihuly’s Fiori di Como at the Bellagio in Las Vegas.  Chihuly’s work is amazing and even more inspiring to me is his story of losing an eye in an accident and a few years later injuring his shoulder but continuing on with his glass blowing dream.  Click the highlighted links to see/read more if you’re interested.  Amazing, inspiring, beautiful stuff.


For Claudia’s Poetics-taking a ride on the color wheel at dVerse, which I am too late for so I'll be linking to OpenLinkNight, which I’m a bit late to as well, but hey the doors are still open!