Sign of life…or what?

Pic courtesy Max Healthcare

I

I had grown comfortable in my body’s skin
embracing its dips and swells
accepting its shortcomings
celebrating its earthly triumphs
singing its somewhat off-key song uninhibitedly
but it decided to turn rogue one day
it remembered not how much it was loved!

II

Wasting pains rack my body and my soul
I had nurtured it with love and care
my sun sign became my marauder and guarded me not
muscles and nerves frustratingly fail
tyrannical torment impales my limbs
my army of cells feeds on me
when guards become thieves, all seems lost.

III

Your words of love fill my lungs with new life
my anguished body bedrenched with exertions
feels safe as it trembles in your fatigued arms
my craven heart finds solace in your warm smile
hope flutters feebly flapping fragile wings
with you as my bodyguard, I guess, I might just make it.

Written for dVerse MTB. Today’s host, Laura, has challenged us to this:

And so for today’s MTB prompt you should choose ONE of these threesomes:

1. Sun; moon, earth
2. Godhead Trinity/God/Father, Jesus/Son, Holy Spirit
3. Yin, yang, oneness

OR Choose ONE of these compound words with the derivatives:

1. Body, guard, bodyguard
2. Dragon, fly, dragonfly
3. Free, lance, freelance
4. High, light, highlight
5. Rain, bow, rainbow

We are writing without any set rule for rhyme or meter:

• A poem with THREE separate and distinct stanzas
• Each stanza numbered or subtitled with the reference word
• Include the reference word within the stanza if not subtitled

Someone very close to me was diagnosed with cancer last month. This one is dedicated to her and her husband.

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My body

My body does not remember
the pain inflicted on it
though the scars in their ugly permanence
evoke memories I’m unable to erase.

My body does not remember
the abuse I made it go through
the sag testimony of the flab
that was shamed for being there.

My body does not remember
the infrequent bursts of joy
they were so insufficient
I can’t recall their taste.

My body does not remember
the touch that made me quiver
but it does remember the touch
that made me cower in fear.

Written for dVerse poetics. Today’s host, Sarah, says: Anaphora is a powerful way of creating emphasis, and I think it gives a feel of a litany or a great speech. It’s something we all use quite casually in our verse, but tonight I want you to really lean into it, and work that repetition.

I’d like you to pick one of these verbs as the repeating verb

• remember
• dream
• eat
• choose
• love
• fear
• hope
• paint
• lose

Malleable (NaPoWriMo) Day 1

When our eyes first collided, of all the clichéd places, across the library aisles, there was no bang and clang, except my accelerated heartbeat! His bourbon ones fringed with thick inky lashes gazed at me from under bushy laughing brows, mine; nondescript muddy brown, were expectedly affronted. Not only because our fingers were clasped across the same book but because I thought he was laughing at me. But the intensity of his eyes was like a frission up my spine. I left the spine of the book. That’s when my gaze fell on his hands, I visibly gasped. Nut brown and muscular, they were in stark contrast to his fair skin.

“I am a blacksmith”, he said as if reading the questions in my eyes. I shrank back, not knowing how to respond.

When finally I was able to unstick my tongue from my palate, I croaked, ” But what are you doing in a library?”
His unrestrained laughter had the librarian scowling at us.

Our relationship was doomed before it could start. My prejudices got the better of me. But he wooed me relentlessly, leaving exquisite iron figurines at my doorstep on the first of every month.

After six months when the bell rang, I found him at the door, beaming and his hands behind his back. With a flourish he went down on his knee and presented me with a perfectly made cast-iron skillet! In awed silence, as I held it in my hand and felt its weight and admired the seamless craftsmanship, he quietly lifted the lid. Inside, nestled a beautiful handcrafted platinum ring!

The prompt for today is based on Robert Hass’s remarkable prose poem, “A Story About the Body.” The idea is to write your own prose poem that, whatever title you choose to give it, is a story about the body. The poem should contain an encounter between two people, some spoken language, and at least one crisp visual image.