Welcome to the OPP world of Collective poetry!
Most collections were created from prompts issued to poets, near & far.
(Visit the page, 'Collaboratives,' which presents Contest & Special collections, here)
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Origami Microchap |
The Poems |
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An Origami Poems Winter Celebration
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 • Prompted by a request from editor, Doug Norris, the poems by Bill Sullivan & Mary Ann Mayer appeared in a South County, RI publication. • |
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Snow by Mary Mueller "an elegance of snow…"
from Waxwings by Robert Francis Who can think of snow while summer’s humid air lingers, thick with lassitude? Who can rise from beach chair nursing a muddled drink, breathing half-breaths while addled squirrels watch for falling acorns? Like the moon, it will arrive – a lucid flake will melt on a nose gather with friends on a slushy pool practice swirls with icy wind revel late ‘til morning sun. Silence, then. Still, pure. The landscape turned a painting in white. You walk in - it wakes you up. At last you breathe sculpted air. • Mary Mueller © 2011
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Winter by Marguerite Kiel Flanders January poaches my warmth.
Ice: nice, but not for walking. The white dog's bones move easily over the crusts of snow, noting where deer have been. I stay inside wishing to weep. Chill has no limit. I gather kindling, carry logs. The splendid insufficiencies of winter crack and rattle my sleep. In the morning the old dog paces, scrapes his toenails across the planks, heading for the door. I shudder at dawn's glimmer, its cruel syncopated breath. • Marguerite Kiel Flanders © 2011 |
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Snow by Bill Sullivan ...snow was general all over Ireland.
It was falling on every part of the dark central plain, on the treeless hills, falling softly upon the Bog of Allen, and further westward, softly falling into the dark mutinous Shannon waves...upon all the living and dead. - James Joyce, "The Dead" Yes, there is the sense that the end of something is here when the wind is not whistling and the snow flake's fall is as silent as a monk meditating on a moonless night. Perhaps it's the death of daring, courage and ceaseless caring, as Joyce intimates-a time when the snow's descent numbs our memories, buries our tales of heroic deeds- when caution and comfort prescribe boots and slickers- when no lover stands in the rain beneath a window, dying. But as the quietude of falling snow mutes, flake by flake, the harsh clamor of years and yesterdays, we hear the wheel groan then move- sense a beginning as well as an end-even imagine that before the snow ceased and the sky turned turquoise blue and the world's whiteness glistened in the morning sun, a hatless man stood knee deep in snow beneath his lover's window, calling, in the darkness of night, "Come with me, come with me." • Bill Sullivan © 2011
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The roofs are alive and reassuring by Mary Ann Mayer (For Pete)
You say, The snow on the roof Looks like a swan sleeping in its wing. I say, The avalanche is coming, can’t you see That iron rooster poke its head out of its clutch of white? You say, don’t worry, The rooster is just a chimney cap Can we play the snowdrift game some more? But the avalanche, I say, Makes puckering sounds In the night and I’m afraid. You say, I see a whale Taking a steam bath. I say, I love you. • Mary Ann Mayer © 2011
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Christmas in Florida by Jan Keough Here in Florida, miles from RI,
The pelicans and palm fronds, Skeins of clouds with or without rainfall Rehearse their routines on a sky worn inside-out With moist blueness. Snowmen lawn balloons, puffed by electronics , Sway at their lawn anchors And melt flat once the juice times out. Snowflake glitterati hang on trees, Gossiping about their imaginary perfection Of plastic-poured prisms bought at Walmart. Coconut palms wear twinkly girdles, The night is festooned with neon greetings And Santa rides jet skis. It’s not the same, This make-believe Florida winter Far from mittens pulled-off before a wood stove And that silent hushing snowfall Playing in the twilight. • Jan Keough © 2012
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A Room
Two musings on Virginia Woolf and her talk “A Room of One’s Own”
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• “A Room of One's Own is an extended essay by Virginia Woolf… based on a series of lectures delivered at two women's colleges October 1928. The title comes from Woolf's conception that, 'a woman must have money and a room of her own if she is to write fiction'. – Wikipedia •
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My Own Room by Jan Keough I would like to think
that a room of one’s own is something to be found like a jar or basket ready to be filled, but it is not. It is a quality hidden inside, stored, waiting - combed from choices to be untangled, and pulled away from distractions that own the mind. A room that is nothing but expansion, it’s beauty a reflection of hope. A safety, a welcoming, a presence that turns each key, each insight, into wave after wave of discovery. It is a splendor where time becomes lost like an echo. Discourtesy fades from disuse. Misunderstanding trolls shores not your own. • Jan Keough © 2009
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The Weight of Stones in Pocket by Lynnie Gobeille (Remembering Virginia Woolf)
Back lit by skies winter light
oceans ebb and flow, gulls cry, circling us in flight. I watch the stranger on the beach as she bends picking up sea-glass with her hands. Dusting off the webs of salt and sand bringing the treasure to her lips as if to devour it. Working her fingers over the smooth surface, mesmerized by the glimmer of lavender dye. “A rare find,” she tells me when I inquire. “more rare than eclipse of sun and moon.” Beloved sea-flower in her outstretched hand, ‘Reason enough,” she states “to empty my pockets of their weight.” • Lynnie Gobeille © 2009
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A Cup of Origami
Eight Poems to help you enjoy your cup of whatever...
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| Celetrates the first Origami Poems Project reading (held at Java Madness in RI 7/12/2009) |
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Cappucino by Mary C. Mueller Steamed peaks
float like meringue in the swimming pool cup that warms my hands. Ready to dive nose first into roasted mist, I pause and sip. Alchemy of capuchin – elixir of bliss. • Mary Mueller © 2009
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12-Step Verse by Kim M. Baker She sat next to me, stoked
on caffeine and cinquains, compressing her life philosophies into jazzed up lines of five. She passed me a pen and said, “Hit?” “Me? No. I’m off the ink. It ruined my life. My muse left me. Now? AA. Alliterations Anonymous.” But as she spoke, I craved a toke off that stoked poetry, a cuppa that coffeehouse java sonnet. I don’t need fourteen lines! Just one clever couplet and I’m outta here. Hi, my name is Will and I’m a po-slut! • Kim M. Baker © 2009
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Joltin' Joe by Lauri Burke Coffee's the bad boy of beverages
hanging around every urban corner shouting out with aromatic fervor bewitching promises of hot leverage. Joe will prop a girl up when she's low set blood soaring to race in sluggish veins excite florid thoughts of unleashing reins to burrow in arms of chemical flow. Who cares if Java's a fickle lover driving a gal to town he won't take home, yes, you'll limp in spent and round-heeled later no, Joe won't call or pick up the phone but when you were with him, didn't thoughts shudder in same blind ecstasy that births a poem? • Lauri Burke © 2009 |
Mass Pike Coffee: May 19, 2008 1:30 pm by James B. Rosenberg LavAzza
Italy’s favorite Breath of espresso Breath of Rome City of stones Stepping from past into future From future into past Through languid sips Of Eternity Now. Dark brown brew Nurturing moist loam Explosion of taste To remember tomorrow. • James B. Rosenberg © 2009
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COOL BEANS by Louise Giguere Etched, fetching
seafaring vessel Perked up tizzy Razz ma tazz dizzy An old tin lizzy, Let it fizz, so hip, Jazzed up java, fresh brew, Liquid lava, cappuccino syrup Espresso, latte, decaf blends In a clay-fired mug, demitasse cup, for the java, lava coffee crew Together we sip, my friends. • Louise Giguere © 2009
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HAIKU #36 by Bob Muir In my sitting place
cares will fall like autumn leaves when I sip my tea • Bob Muir © 2009
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Sweet Words by Jan Keough It is the sweet words
stirred like sugar in the cup that brews a friendship. • Jan Keough © 2009
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Sips by O.R. Gami My tea amigos
sip their delicacies without haste. Their pace laced with caffeine or not. They linger, they twirl, they flavor their world with honey. Coffee conspirators want mugs that handle every degree of need - am or pm, Starbucks bold or Dunkin mild; they steep themselves in brewed wisdom - with hopes to unwind. • O.R. Gami © 2009
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Fall Realities
An Autumnal Celebration
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| • Volume 1 of 2 - Seven Poets muse on the season known as Fall • |
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Autumn Morning by Doug Norris Fog in the harbor,
Steam on the mirror, Frost on the window. Outside, discovering The neighbor’s oak Growing in my garden And one crazy squirrel Risking everything To save a single nut. • Doug Norris © 2009
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Elvis by Tom Chandler A hundred of you
parachute into a football stadium, a hundred gilt and spangled jumpsuits with proud bellies tumble in a tangle of ripcords and billowed silk, then square away with weird precision and give it all you’ve got; who cares if you’re alive or not? • Tom Chandler © 2009
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Autumn Jazz by Mary C. Mueller This mountain night
full moon creeps at turtle pace through shadowed branches tree tops then aglow below the violin plays African, accordion his bass companion kora, drums command that wine infused with rosemary be sipped like honeydew • Mary C. Mueller © 2009
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A Little Latitude by James Penha The equator circumvents
autumn with forests as green in October as ever April is green although leaves here ever umber to leave their branches in a fall to feed the jungle’s perpetual spring to life. Around this earth it is every day every season. • James Penha © 2009
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Fall Decides by Marguerite Keil Flanders Oaks are the last to cast
their burdens. Air is full of the athleticism of change. Chickadees greet the end of the road of night with their tally: seeds and chill. The science of what must turn leaves us bereft. We wait for all to be revealed, as if choosing will shift the relentless trajectory of stars, restore what has been felled. Hawk, oak, brook, co-trustees of winter’s approach, know better. • Marguerite Keil Flanders © 2009
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Leaf Peepers by Kim M. Baker Winter has sent ahead its scouts.
Those leafy aviators so vibrant that you wince with their wicked beauty. They cackle their raucous colors down highways, along bogs, or anywhere you might be languishing in the sun one last time this season. You forget the brisk wind behind them, forget this time last year when they jumped, kamikazes in kaleidoscopic glory. The next thing you know, they are gone, riding the sky just ahead of Captain Snow. • Kim M. Baker © 2009
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Falling Towards The Questions That Remain by Lynnie Gobeille If this is where I am now…
how will I survive the winter? God, how I would like a friend to just drop in… unexpectedly, the darkness and cold will continue, the nights will get longer… Note to myself: Develop a God damn hobby. • Lynnie Gobeille © 2009
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As Fall Sets In
An Autumnal Celebration
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| Volune #2 - 7 poems, 7 poets |
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Want To Say Something About Goldenrods by Barbara Schweitzer how prolific they are, waiting to be sickled
along the town roads with the touch-me-nots; how little notice, how little difference they make in the world, invisible, void, being the fruit fly weed of New England, so heartily hardy they stand ignored like life itself – which just keeps up its end – creating replicating fornicating, all the while ignorant of and in its needs, the thrust necessarily pause-hating, so that those of us who parse and name, cede most roadways to ignorant lustful life that ingratiates itself like the actor rife with talent to imitate, then move on. • Barbara Schweitzer © 2009
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Summer Solstice by Nancy E. Brown A raft of mallards
dozes on the dock as the full moon’s light dims into dawn. This short night’s hot hazy air shimmers above the lake until sunshine splinters onto the gentle ripples. A garnet-colored dragonfly drifts onto my sleeve. Nancy E. Brown © 2009
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Ingnish Beach by Louise Giguere An August day this summer, it was as if I were
Standing on Ingnish Beach, thirty years ago the salty air, dampening, tangling sandy strands in my long hair, in all directions, like thistledown, wild and windblown, lingering, from dunes, on the breach of my breath, catches a memory, a glimpse of a lighthouse in the distance, floating sounds, or warning calls of buoys on whale watch; a quick jaunt off Cabot Trail, a stone’s throw from the opposing Bay of Fundy, is the cliff- cleave haven, a cloistered valley hide–away, raw, resolute elements Ingnish Beach – Nova Scotia’s North Atlantic air Louise Giguere © 2009
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September by Marjorie Gaunt high tides have almost obliterated
the path by bending beach grasses hiding the lavender now delicate ashen wraiths above these gray ghosts grow great swaths of yellow goldenrod glowing along the dunes staunch spartina stands tall at water's edge wearing russet tassels • Marjorie Gaunt © 2009
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Autumn Haiku by Noël Patoine Dying thrives in fall,
harvesting nature’s bounty, caring hands restore. • Noël Patoine © 2009
Autumn Adornments by Noël Patoine Autumn Adornments
Breaking my spirit s oul’s pleasure dies amidst fall, leaves the only stain brightening gray October with gnarly trees adorned. Noël Patoine © 2009
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The Nuisance of Weather by O.R. Gami You have to live with weather.
Let it lick your face elbow your plans tumble you into the jet stream. You change and rearrange the coat, the shoes, the attitude. Sunshine when you need shade, Rainfall to muddy every note, Cartons of slush in the mailbox. Long, dim days that track the floor with uncaring - Tell them to wipe their feet. • O.R. Gami © 2009
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