Skagit Valley

Skagit Valley Tulips, image:  Wikimedia Commons

end of snow

tulips

inherit the earth

Copyright © 2013 Jennifer Wagner

For Carpe Diem #144.  Every year about this time the Skagit Valley Tulips start doing their thing!

Maybe She's Shy

crimson grapes, image:  public domain

there’s a musical

note

on the back of her tongue

never sung

but it tastes

like vintage pauillac bordeaux

if you let her

do the talking

Copyright © 2013 Jennifer Wagner

*The wines of Pauillac are rich, full bodied and tannic, while gracefully combining elegance with power coupled with complexity.  They have the ability to age and evolve for decades. It has been said the best Pauillac wines taste like “An iron fist in a velvet glove.”  The Wine Cellar Insider.


For Grace's Sunday Mini-Challenge:  Poets in the Kitchen at Imaginary Garden with Real Toads
and for the Poetry Pantry #141 at Poets United.

City Park

City Park, Carpe Diem

across the pond

your lonely childhood

in an empty swing

Copyright © 2013 Jennifer Wagner

For Carpe Diem Imagination #3

Catcalls from the Coffin

You must know

when ghosts jingle loose change in their pockets,

and it sounds like Heaven’s bells,

it’s really just an old thought in a dirty shirt

doused in Dolce & Gabbana to mask the death wretch.

And yet, it sends you

right back there

in those moments of what

you don’t want to be.

You leave things behind,

but ghosts,

they return

in a stranger’s hands,

mannerisms,

mouth, hair.

It seems you get pulled back

so easy.

A bad day, not enough sleep,

and you are there—

holding hands with the haunts

playing ‘Ring Around the Rosie’

or singing don’t need ‘Nothin’ But a Good Time’

by Poison,

and it is, but it’s catchy,

and you start to want them back—

laughing, like the tune meant anything good.

You’ve outgrown them,

yes,

like those jeans you wore

—back when.

But they’re familiar

and that is comforting

when you don’t know what comes next.

Until

you realize they really are too small

to fit your

Grown Up Responsible Life.

The one where it’s not just you anymore

and you know it.

Of course you do,

you’ve earned it,

every

day

by mud sucking

and light swigging

day.

You can point to every scar,

stretch mark,

every smoky kohl black eyeliner pillow smear.

You’ve fought in too many wars,

sacrificed too much to get here.

Scraped and scrapped

and dug the hell out of your pride when

you had to.

You’re that much bigger now

for all that journeying.

But Oh to try them on again,

for just a few minutes—

gazing at yourself in the mirrored

hall of yesteryear

pretending you’d still look good

in it.

Copyright © 2013 Jennifer Wagner

I'm linking up to the dVerse Poets Pub for OpenLinkNight...the doors opened yesterday but they haven't closed yet so I am sliding on in to join the party!

Abhorrent

Image by TheFoxAndTheRaven, via The Mag

what does it say about you

that i’d rather be here

huddling in rain

Copyright © 2013 Jennifer Wagner

A haiku written for The Mag 158 and for the Real Toads prompt 'Today We Scream’ brought to us by Susie Clevenger in honor of the Woman Scream International Poetry Festival to raise awareness through poetry about violence against women.  My poem refers to the domestic variety.

Image:  Woman Scream Internacional Poetry Festival