The Core

Sunday Scribbling Prompt: Poetry

Come in
This far, right here
no farther
you think you know?
this be the bathwater
not the baby
peel off layers, you will get
nothing but a mess on the floor
this part, this heart
this tiny place, unknowable
mine, I keep it
Scrape the outside raw
you ain’t touching it, you couldn’t
not in a million tries
a million lies
no kryptonite here
no magic dagger to pierce
no map.
disconnected, unplugged, off
the grid
mercurial
All you get
a glimpse, a peek, a hint
like a stream
direction changes
but the water still flows where it will

14 thoughts on “The Core

  1. moise

    Oh, I liked this. But what I took away was the real difficulty of knowing anybody: all we get is the glimpse, a peak, a hint; we have to follow the water to its source.

  2. paschal

    Sister Dee, I love this poem, lovely poem as poem and lovely poem of how a poem is. One of those beauties where you start by highlighting your favorite bits and then, like a middle schooler mad for yellow marker, you’ve highlighted the whole page. Did I say I love this poem? Well, that’s exactly what I meant to say. Having read and marked this poem up, I needs a new highlighter. Good to see you back out from the cyberworld that, for a time, had stolen you from us.

  3. Dee

    Thank you Anthony 🙂

    Sweetest – we all have it, that armor.

    Moise – true words, but isn’t that writing? Whatever IT is inside of us we can’t even see the whole ourselves, we just try to paint pictures as we figure out the puzzle

    Paschal, oh my. I’ll buy you a case of multicolored highlighters any day…
    I’m out of my comfort zone with this loosely strung style. I loved protractors and colored pencils when I was a kid. You could make the most beautiful symmetrical patterns – that’s what I always thought about words too. I have to shut my eyes and jump in the pool, hoping there is enough water below me to do this kind of thing. Sometimes it’s good to scare yourself just a little.

  4. present

    Lovely poem. That last line,
    “like a stream
    direction changes
    but the water still flows where it will”
    makes me think that the glimpse can mislead us. We may think we’ve seen what defines someone, when actually the peek doesn’t even begin to reveal what or who someone is.

  5. Dee

    Miss A – I have many teachers here, but the education ain’t always free. Sometimes something slips by the post and I realize I have told something more than I meant. There is a beauty in that stream of consciousness stuff but a danger too. Things slip by and the publish button is pushed before you look in the mirror and see that your skirt was tucked up in your pantyhose in the back and your drawers were showing. I liked this when I wrote it and read it again later and it hurt.

    Jeeves and Swapna – thank you so much..

    Present – amen.

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