My Poems

by

Beached

How many beaches over time
have borne the weight of
corpses?

The sands, depressed,
express
the wells of sadness
at the bottom
of our
hearts.

We know,
the departed
left their souls
forever on those
desperate, washed out
wastelands—

Time and time,
men, women—
the sweetest child,
found nothing, but a cold
damp pillow, on which to plant their
faces at the last.

The past, becomes the present—
will be the future.
All of us must
learn the lessons of the dead.

It may not be a beach,
where we come to rest our head,
but the earth awaits,
our rotting flesh,
or ashes,
scattered for posterity.

Kat Mortensen ©2015

Inspired by this work by Elan Mudrow.

by

The Keepsake

A weighty book,
dragged, from a dusty shelf,
its pages fall
open, where once was placed
a near-bloomed rose,
between the sheets.

Attar stains—
rendered, from petals,
mar tender lines
of a lost-love ode.

Crushed, the rose,
secures a claret bosom,
within its velvet-edged
shroud of decay,

recalling,
distant summer days—
remnants of a faceless
old flame.

Kat Mortensen©2010

by

Selkie

(Inspired by Joyce’s Ulysses, which I struggle to read in its entirety, but on which I have not completely given up.)

SELKIE

I am drowning in the sea-green sea;
hark to the cry of the selkie, feasting on whelks,
she calls to me,
The sun pools, on the cool, lime water of Dublin Bay,
we race to the rocks and slide in
to the green-gelled, algae, the flotsam that floats
on the surface.
The selkie, her dugs full with the milk
of the ocean, her hair, slimed with the green-gel;
I am drowning with her! I want to drown
in her. I’ll give you a shiny sovereign
for her.

Kat Mortensen©2010

by

Stage Fright

Stage Fright

It was Orwell’s year of ‘84
when I made my debut
on the stage
of a converted
warehouse
called “The Copa”.

This was no place
for Hayworth or Astaire—
au contraire!
This, was a dark place
of denizens
eking out weekends
before “Manic Monday”
came round again.

It was a contest—
Karaoke before it
landed from Tokyo.
I was wigged-out
with black tresses;
swathed in layers of
black dresses,
Cleopatra’s eyes and
claret lips—
Post-punk in
a mainstream milieu.

I stepped up
to the standing mike
on the stage.

The night’s deejay
stuck the needle
in the groove
and I was on:
mouthing and moving
whining and whirling
to a pop-punk-goddess.

The bridge:
I swirled and swayed,
away from the microphone,
lost in my reverie
and the eyes of the crowd,
but Siouxsie’s song
moved along
without me.

Lips, losing sync,
hips, pushing forward
to reach that mike—
too late!
Dubbing disaster!

Big-boobed, Appolonia
won the prize
(no surprise).

So I went home
to the rehearsal space
by the bed
in my rented room,
swiped off the hair
that was fake
stripped off the cake
of makeup
and fell back
into obscurity.

Kathleen Mortensen©2009

by

Rumbula (Into the Woods)

In the beginning, there was the river
and the land.
The pines grew tall,
and then, the Fall
of Riga.

Beneath the canopy,
blank men mapped out their grand design—
made ready, the earth,
for its execution.

The cold months came; empty promises
were made.
The ghetto-dwellers prayed,
in hope of pity.

This was not the plan.

They walked for miles that day; some fell down
to their knees. They reached their destiny,
beneath bystanding trees.

Reports rang out, until there came no more—
fresh graves filled up, with corpses by the score.

“Pack your bag, my son; we must soon, leave this place.
Try not to be afraid; wipe the tears from your face.
Today we leave This World; no more the Juden slum.
Be brave, my boy; be brave, and greet The World to Come.”

Kat Mortensen©2012

by

NaPoWriMo: Day ? Confessions of an inconsistent poet

So, this whole NaPoWriMo thing has gotten off to a bad start for me. With the start of the challenge coinciding with the Easter weekend, I have had little to no time to sit and really think about poetry or writing at all.

Both my husband and I are members of our church choir and Easter Weekend for us began last Wednesday with an all-or-nothing rehearsal. This was followed by singing at a mass on Thursday evening.

The weekend itself consisted of choral accompaniment to three services for the Triduum: Good Friday at 3:00 p.m., Easter Vigil on Saturday at 8:00 p.m. and Sunday morning at 11:00 a.m. Needless to say, we have sung more than our share of Alleluias.

All this is to tell that I may need some time to either catch up with the NaPoWriMo challenge, or jump in at this point. I’ll have to see.  I have not ruled out a graceful exit altogether, if the poetic muse has indeed left the building.

In the meantime, I have just about managed to keep things on an even keel over at “My Life In Runes”, so if you enjoy quirky haiku, high-tail it over there and check it out!

Thanks for reading, and a belated Happy Easter to all!

Kat

by

NaPoWriMo – Day 2

What You Are

As a child
the stars held little interest for me,
except to sing of their twinkling.
I didn’t care that they
lit up the sky at night;
(I was born under the sign
of a bright moon.)

As I grew,
I knew that Polaris
was the great North Star
(maybe that’s why I wore
those runners).

Like all around me
I was aware of the Bear—
the Majors and the Minors,
the two big pots
dipping into nocturnal ink.

Then, in my youth,
the myth collapsed—
I learned it was all just gas.

Now I’m older.
We live where the sky amasses itself
like a cloak, when the sun
drops out of sight.
We look up
and embrace the gift
of each gold star’s tiny light.

skat©2015

by

NaPoWriMo: Day 1 (early poem)

End of the Line

I suppose it’s too late
to live in that old train station
that was being sold in that two-bit town
with the tourist-trap theatre.

Remember those dreams we had
of painting the rotunda white,
hanging nautical prints
from Scandinavia?

I’m sure, we could have
run a B & B.
We’d have redone those peeling walls,
damp-proofed the sagging roof—
filled every room with flat-pack IKEA,
shook out folksy chintz
onto the beds.

I’d have carted fresh-washed sheets
out back to that line that drooped
over the old rail-ties
buried under unkempt grass.

You’d have kept the books—
our hard-earned living on track.

We both know,
a loved one died.

Guess that’s why
we missed our stop.

skat©2015

This poem is in response to the first prompt at NaPoWriMo.