Little brainstorms (2-minute poems)

If you fancy writing some fiction or poetry, or reading other people's, head over to JD Mader's website, 2minutesgo... 

Some little brainstorms... 

 
1 THE MESSENGER
 
In the gust
dust swells, panic caught,
misses a cue in the line.
 
A tumbleweed plays,
scrawls out your name
in the dirt,
 
leaves a memory
imprinted that neither one of us
wishes to recall.
 
I watch it skirt the road,
free, feeling it knows I’m right here,
just waiting for it to leave.
 
 

2 IN THE HOUR
 
Wait on pause,
take a trip,
think it out,
delay the plan,
relate the way,
time it completely wrong,
say it in song,
say it isn’t right.
 
You can choose the date
or pretend to lose.
 
We fathom the night
in the close of day.
These are the hands
that wound the clock,
and clocking out,
they forgot to pray.
 
 

3 FREEFALL
 
It’s a freefall,
endless. We are inclined
to be as we ever were,
without pretence,
No disguise.
No more than three words.
 
We are as the land wishes,
as the trees grieve,
as the ground breathes.
And nothing echoes aloud
except that which burned before,
ever here,
always now,
despite the years
flown
by.
 

 
4 MINDS
 
In the mind of the other
we are one. As we might be,
as we might see, and be here,
waiting, knowing, seeing,
as calm as a blackbird.

 
 
5 ELFIN FORESTS
 
Elfin forests,
crystal clear streams,
an endless dream of being,
where the twig-strewn ground breathes
in summer’s sway, where our feet tread,
sink into earth, just resting.
We are breath. We are here. We be.
 

 
6 THE CATCH
 
In the unsung song we hear
the passing of a thought, a treasured
heart, a memory. The thing that fell foul,
the betrayal, the slip, the echo
of the abject thing. The bird caught,
the tripwire; this endless rebegin.
And we are heard sliding.
Here, there is no catch word,
no rail, no mat.
We are falling. And we are free.
 
 

7 SINKING
 
In the morrow we will begin,
counting numbers,
drawing circles with our fingers.
This sand sinks, scuppers,
water fills. It’s a cue to bury it all,
seal it over, never
to be found.
 

 
8 THE ANCIENTS
 
The ancients stand tall,
stretch stone arms to the sky.
We are small. Astounded.
Can only stare up at the moon,
its sound rays crowning them,
the earth gathering dust.
 
 

9 SERENADE
 
A moonlight serenade
without harp or drum,
no voice, no harm, no motion.
Only quiet. And light. And devotion.
In this setting we are might,
we are ever, we are chosen.
Seated, the same. Just bones.
 

 
10 THE APPLECART
 
The applecart. Rocked. Smoked. Out.
The whodunnit. The mystery. 
Seeing all, he fans flames to the sky,
listens, draws a picture, imagines ruin.
It feeds it out, off the scale,
watches the burn.
 

 
11 LIKE BATS
 
Shadows mock the living,
line the roads for the forgotten,
the lost, the fragmented.
There once was water here.
Now there is an absence of it.
Where there was flow all is still.
In the moonlight, jagged bats flit,
avoid the cage drawing near.

 
12 REPEAT

Echoes.
In the walls.
Beneath sound.
Without a wakening.
They wander out,
forsaken.
They wander in
with a newfound thing.
Here is breath.
Without echo.

Copyright Vickie Johnstone, December 10, 2023