He’s a shoulder.
Should this, should that,
should her.
Cold shoulder.
That showed her.
He should should should
offer a shoulder
and murmur
‘How do you feel?’
*
Rachel McAlpine
Poems
Bliss
One night I shall despise him but this night
he is the great white tame hawk
perched beating at my teeth.
He is the scimitar I carry trembling
down the cliff of my sleep.
One day I shall be ashamed.
I shall speak.
*
Rachel McAlpine
(Title is same as the title of a short story by Katherine Mansfield that inspired this poem.)
Spirituality is not
Spirituality is not
a gift shop.
Not yodelling or mazes
or crystals or church.
A reluctant noun,
it would rather be
a private verb,
a silent move
like go or flow
or sting or stray
or love.
– – – – – –
Rachel McAlpine
Some can only sing in a choir
Some can only sing in a choir.
Some can only sing solo.
Some know when to join the crowd
and when they need to follow.
Some have a Yea-Lord back-up choir
they cannot see or swallow.
– – – – – –
Rachel McAlpine
Missing HTML page title
O total Untitled,
would I had time.
O tragic Untitled,
you won’t make a dime.
O tacky Untitled,
why underline
your bright blue crime?
—–
Rachel McAlpine
Message from computer
Entering system dump routine.
A panic server was not specified in the boot-args,
terminating kernel core dump.
Waiting for remote debugger connection.
Wait away, wait away.
—–
Rachel McAlpine
When God is an abstract noun
When God is just an abstract noun
we cram the floating word
with metaphors, provisos, parallels,
pro bonos, caveats, and dreams –
with fluff not concrete, yet
it tumbles right out of the sky.
When God means whatever,
God is a word to beware.
——
Rachel McAlpine
Stuff in a blog
Let’s not pretend
that stuff in a blog
is poetry.
A blog is a diary
upside down, a silo
where notions wait
for processing
or better times.
Crammed tight
they twitch
in the dark.
They long to sprout
and see the light.
Let’s spill them out
and set them free.
At worst the birds
will feast.
– – –
Rachel McAlpine
Just add water
And a blog is a coat
of many pockets,
a continent
of join the dots,
a magic painting
wanting only water.
Poems in the cloud
Blog poems rise
like steam from a heated heart.
Ghost poems floating
like bubbles from a spring,
one long knotted rope
of cirrhus scarves.
Drifty. Cloudy. Quickly
off the screen.
