A daily poetry practice to generate and sustain the Life/Lines among us, for published and novice poets alike
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Prompt
Write a short poem (rhyming not necessary) that includes each of the following 5 words (anywhere and in any order). Poems should not exceed 7 or 8 lines.
Pines
Frets
Awake
Disintegration
Memory
Send us your poem via our Submissions page or post on Twitter or Facebook using the hashtag #lifelines.
Today’s words were contributed by Steve Givens, who retired as associate vice chancellor and chief of staff to Chancellor Mark Wrighton at Washington University last June and now spends his days as a freelance writer, poet, songwriter, blogger and spiritual director exploring the intersection of creativity and spirituality. He writes a blog at GivensCreative.com.
Poems submitted for April 29
I know not why he frets
About the disintegration of pines
When we are awake
Without memory
— MAV
***
The disintegration of sleep and dreams
as the pines fret in the storm, memory
moans itself awake and you curl into a ball:
Blizzard and wind around the old house’s
windows. The upstairs bedroom walls
heaving like diseased lungs. Two quilts
not enough and from down the stairs
the radio, the light, your mother alone
and reading by herself, the storm
keeping us all at bay.
— M.E. Hope
***
I pine for pines
Fret over frets
Where's my guitar?
Awake, Memory!
Preside over my disintegration.
— Rita Winters
***
While awake poor Joe pines and frets
His disintegration leaves memory of old regrets.
Sad moments shake him -- cold, afraid.
Sleep lets happy dreams invade.
— Phil Coleman
***
Awake our memory to our past history
A time when other epidemics made for worry
Look how our past heroes went beyond their frets
To stop the disintegration of their society with their sweat
Their pines for the future wanting some rest
Through God’s help we’ll get through this and be blessed
— Maureen Kleekamp
***
Disintegration of memory,
keeps me awake at night.
My wife cries and frets,
I hold tight to my pets.
and my heart pines for blessed delivery.
— Kelley Lingle
***
My fingers slide down the frets of the guitar, the music
killing me softly, reminding me
that I am no longer who I was
even yesterday.
My heart still pines for old comforts.
Memory was supposed to glue each self to the next but
now there is only disintegration,
each day fresh and uncertain, and me
remade,
curious,
awake,
scared.
— Jeannette Cooperman
***
Dementia
I cannot remain awake
All things disintegrate
Even memory
Do not fret
Forgive, as I forget
Do not pine
I believe I know your face
You're one of mine
— January Kiefer
***
Alzheimer’s
Thoughts were disintegrating,
memories fretting and fading
as if left out in the sun too long.
Bleached, devoid of all color
after a day of running
amidst the flora and fauna.
The world is wide awake
but her conscious mind
is still sleeping peacefully,
amongst the pines and cedars.
— Susan Lively
***
Awake
before the
disintegration of memory
savor all the frets
of nature before
it pines
and so do you
— 2020 04 29 by Lloyd Klinedinst
***
Frets and pens thank God for pines
And strings
If it weren’t for disintegration
Of memory
I’d claim
Awake
— James Goodman 2.29.20
***
He pines and frets
awake early on the last Wednesday in April
the month of poetry in quick disintegration
his memory and energy flagging
an inner voice wondering:
can the prompter respond to the prompt?
— Steve Givens
***
One poet pines while another one frets.
But they're both awake!
Oh, I'm always going through
my own personal disintegration.
I thank God for the memory--
at least I get to write it down.
— Matthew Freeman
***
YEARNING
As she comes awake
She frets about the dream
Tries to pull on a thread
In her memory
Pines to recall more
But now it’s absent
Total disintegration
Of her recollection
— Betty Springfield
***
Disintegration begins when you awake.
Dream, a costume, falls, disappears in memory--
like the lines of a play.
All the frets, pines of love return,
burn themselves into the conscious, churning mind.
In smoke, mist, mirage you find yourself
on an island of tempest, in a Midsummer Night's Dream,
in the mirror of the solid world hurled into evening dress.
— Dan Cuddy
***
The car broke down on
Pine Terrace.
Why Pines? It was cheap leveled new
street tree stuff.
That song about places?
just a few frets away.
The audio
a stronger memory than
the visual.
The dog is meanwhile
awake.
Not seeing
disintegration.
Nose out the window
Taking it in
another way.
— Patty H
***
He pines for clarity
Memory disintegrating with lighting speed
Frets about lost language
Was i ever awake?
Did loosing my culture give me life?
— Braveheart
***
the disintegration came on cats feet
slowly creeping through the pine
in my dreams I seemed awakened
in my waking world supine
the felines hide in memory
sneaking slyly through your head
stealing thoughts like balls of yarn
and tearing them to shreds
the frets come later……...
— T.M.Wilson
***
Disintegration as I
Fret and lay awake.
No memory of pine's scent.
— Basho
***
memory frets
as pines awake
in the north wind
amid mental disintegration
a face from youthful days lingers
— John J. Han
***
LONGING
As he drowsily slouches his thoughts of her fading
To sleep as he pines away for their love unabating
An awake tortured memory causing doleful frustration
He frets she’ll take leave in his mind’s disintegration.
— Ted
***
Album Review
Disintegration: the first album by The Cure
that came to possess me. In the darkly lovely
“Lovesong,” Smith pines goth’s glamour.
“Pictures of You” is want and memory
trapped on film, and “Fascination
Street” is a fretful dream from
which I never will awake.
— Julia Gordon-Bramer
***
The world is awake
Frets over things no one is aware of
Memories are the only companion
In the disintegration of the life.
Dreams are like pine trees
Straight and tall with sharp ends.
— Jey Sushil (Track for International Writers)
***
Playing of frets
and
Disintegration of misery
Awaking of pines
and
Recollection of memory
— Mason A.
***
The pines are lost in
Happiness, their ploy to outrun
Disintegration. Memory returns me
To Ponderosa Steakhouse. Mom's
Upset because the steaks are cold.
Dad frets because his hair's grown
Long. But I awake to the smell of
Coffee and charge the clippers.
— John Randall
***
In the Wee Hours of the Night
The disintegration of sleep
has left me awake
to stare at the pines in the yard.
My mind frets
when my brain asks,
What is a pine?
But in my memory
I know.
— Terrie Jacks
***
Will the memory of this pandemic fade
When we can once more fret over dinner reservations?
Or will we stand as tall and awake as the pines
Survivors, remembering the disintegration of our culture
Resolved not to return to us versus them
But to learn think see live as members of a community?
— Carol Haake 4/29/2020
***
Often he awakes,
smelling the pines
from his forest walks, years ago.
The intense earthy musk
quickly becomes faint wisps.
As does his memory.
He frets.
What were once strong trees
now only bits and pieces of needles and bark,
disintegrating
to the earth
— David Bates
***
LOSS
It is the memory
That is awake and frets
About this and that…
Wondering through forests of pines
During the disintegration of the mind,
Losing all sense of remembrance.
— Elizabeth K. Brooks
***
As she
Pines away from anxiety
Wide awake
And insomnia frets her night
She wishes
The disintegration
Were a distant memory
— Anika
***
We lie awake our memory fine
We long for BC* with life in line.
In shelter we do not pine away,
Disintegration will not forever stay.
We rise above it all
If you fret your will fall.
When AC** occurs we hope to be more understanding
In a world with more regard for beauty outstanding.
* BC=Before Coronavirus
**AC=After Coronavirus
— Jan Newman LA 72
***
In the house I cannot leave, what presents itself as silence
fills with murmurs and soft stirrings: the whir
of the refrigerator, the radio playing softly,
the ticktock of the camelback clock.
On my kitchen windowsill, sunflower seedlings
emerge leaf by leaf, on their way to fulfilling
their destiny. In time they could fill a meadow.
At least, that is what I dream for them.
— Mary Ellen Benson
***
She frets;
She pines
for that moment before
her memory lapsed
and she knew no more.
Awake,
asleep,
disintegration creeps
and she can not fathom
why that grown boy weeps.
— Laurie J
***
No One Knows
This mama pines for sensible,
fair governance, frets about disintegration
of rules, laws, edicts impugned by individuals
who think they are immune.
Will we awake from this crisis to learn protection
for the masses is just a past memory?
— Linda O'Connell
***
the disintegration of the memory
of your tongue
is taking longer than planned
it jolts me awake, still, sometimes
while the pines outside go on
shedding their needles until
the earth beneath them looks
like a barbershop floor
that no one frets over, or bothers
to sweep up
— Anonymous
***
Baby, hungry - frets
Mama, barely awake - beneath the pines
Family, - disintegration seems at hand
Alas! she turns, looks behind -Finds strength
From her memory of the ancestors –their power to stand
— Griot Lois
***
Before March 15,
I listened to guitar frets buzz,
Smelled Carolinian pines,
And was awake to the calendar.
Now, weeks follow
Music's disintegration into memory.
— Rebecca D.
***
Then I Got Lost in the Woods
Fret the foreboding sunset
Falling slowly below the pines
Merely awake and walking
Muffled crunch of snow underfoot
Memory lost in panic
Hot billows of breath then
Disintegration in cold air
Like smoke signals unreceived
— Erin
***
Pines cast their fragrance,
hold fast to the pungent Earth,
plunge roots deep into the pedosphere,
fret by nature’s forces,
into disintegration,
fragmented layers of leftover life,
awake down there
dark in the dark
and memory pines.
— Bernie Mossotti 4.29.2020
***
He pines awake,
Frets over memory.
Disintegration station:
Party of none.
— Anonymous
***
Sonnet of April 28-29
In morning things are well but at the least
Drop of grief it’s to the verdant meadow.
I pluck a leaf and ask to be released
From too much duty—things that breed a fallow
Heart, and suddenly I hear the murmur
Of Keats’ flies and find I can believe
In sadness there’s a kind of grammar
And then I know tomorrow I must leave.
And so I fret—and look out at the pines,
While sitting at my solitary station:
My memory of why I wrote these lines--
That I might stay my soul’s disintegration,
That to what matters I might stay awake--
True to myself--whatever it may take.
— Robert Henke
***
Remembering
The sweet smell of vanilla evokes a memory
Of long summer days in the Ponderosa pines.
Each morning we’d awake refreshed,
Ready to fill ourselves with joy.
High in the mountains where nobody frets
Mother Nature aids in the disintegration of cares.
— Karen Engelkenjohn 4/29/2020
***
Yesterday, my mother called.
She pleaded to be released,
fretful of a perceived madness
and that death, there, was a conclusion.
Today, her mind disintegrated,
yet she vividly recalls a foregone family home
and pines after long departed siblings -
once more.
— L. Dennis
***
A Song for My Grandfather
My grandfather lived with us when I was young. Between us, there was not much said.
But I remember nights, upstairs after dinner, when he'd sit there alone on the edge of his bed.
And he'd play his battered, old, pine wood guitar. Seems he knew just a handful of songs.
So he played them over and over, again. And in a half-spoken whisper, he tried to sing along.
They were Irish songs. The real Irish songs. Those he learned when he lived there as a child.
I was awake on those nights, and listening. And the music and memories were carefully filed.
So when grandfather died, I took his guitar. To save it from disintegration.
No one else expressed any interest, at all So, it was mine, without hesitation.
Now the body was scratched. The pines’ stains were faded. And the frets were all badly worn.
But I could hold in my hands, my grandfather’s memory. And play the real Irish songs from
before he was born.
— Kevin Farrell
***
Her First Mother's Day
The infant frets, almost awake.
A new mom pines for a full night's sleep,
a fleeting memory of being one half of a carefree couple.
When late nights meant fun; now, they mean feeding.
Her husband never stirs when the baby cries in the wee hours of the morning.
She picks up the baby, cradling their son with a fierce love she never knew existed.
Murmuring words of encouragement, she sees his diaper is dry, and she gets ready for him to latch on.
She feels she's found her purpose in life: to be a mother.
The disintegration of her selfish, childless life is complete.
— Kim Lehnhoff
***
Fingers flitting across frets, embedded in the shaved corpses of pines,
Awake slumbering memory--long thought lost to dementia's disintegration
— K.R.
***
Quarantine Dreams
A man lies awake, despite being tired.
From the depths of his being a memory has bubbled to the surface.
Talking, laughing with friends and family, and the grass and the trees
murmur and whisper along with the party as the wind glides through the meadow.
Who were those people? When was that?
The man frets, and he pines for this his fragment of a departed moment.
But to no avail; he cannot stop its disintegration
As the sandstorm of time sweeps it away.
— Anonymous
***
Of all the dreams that hurried me awake
my favorite was the last, which moved me deeply,
and which I barely remember now, by evening,
having surrendered to the slow disintegration.
All I can conjure is a blurry face, a memory of
pine trees, a memory of ash trays, and
the bitter certainty that I had played my frets past
their capacity for sound.
— Gwyneth Henke
***
“In the pines, in the pines, where the sun never shines;”
The redbird’s voice chimes in through the window
Of my memory,
And my fingers stop dancing across the dulcimer frets.
Awake? Or dreaming? Hallucination?
Or disintegration?
“And I shiver when the cold wind blows,”
The cardinal chirps, and I say
“Hey Dad!”
— Christopher Ray, MD
***
Who Pines
Some lie in bed as other people
too awake to sleep, shape whole lives
as a reckless tongue frets a spine. It comes down to
this slow disintegration of memory and desire, where
something like living can almost become enough.
— Casey Hampton
***
I'm awake to the memory of dreams whose disintegration is part of getting up.
Pines stand dropping needles in the wind.
A squirrel frets about something above the neighbor's yard.
I enter the morning.
— Margaret Fourt Goka
***
The mind frets
The memory a disintegration
Into fiction
Bedtime stories
Play on a loop
Even the pines
Are still awake
—Ally Betker
***
I am grateful for being
awake.
How
strange to be grateful for this.
Why, it never occured to me that I could have been born
asleep
when I even have trouble disintegrating the day’s memory
into dreams of dark pine woods.
Who can fret about the future like too many candies
To choose from
Where hope grows as close to heaven as desired.
What an improvidently
overlooked
Good.
— Ellery Saluck
***
Memory disintegrates
Along the lines of
Sleep and consciousness,
Those lucid dreams
Where one frets and
Pines for the past,
Taken by a clock that only
Measures time awake.
— Mary Elizabeth Horner
***
Quarantine Dreams
A man lies awake, despite being tired.
From the depths of his being a memory has bubbled to the surface.
Talking, laughing with friends and family, and the grass and the trees
murmur and whisper along with the party as the wind glides through the meadow.
Who were those people? When was that?
The man frets, and he pines for this his fragment of a departed moment.
But to no avail; he cannot stop its disintegration
As the sandstorm of time sweeps it away.
— N Kennedy
***
pines shake themselves awake
from a moon haunted memory.
the man inside frets as each
star blinks out, praying against
myths of disintegration.
— Sabrina Spence
***
Putting on the meadow green
An interloper
With no hesitation in the least.
The irony of security
Asking him to leave
Like a dead leaf in a gust of wind,
While hailing a brotha, a friend,
a member
Despite the other's
Entitled disproving murmur.
— J. Thomas
***
She fears the disintegration
Of her mind
And memory;
Asleep while awake.
She pines and frets
Over her past while she still can.
— J. Thomas
***
All these frets and pines
about the disintegration
of our way of life and the
superior nature of the US of A—
does memory serve no purpose?
Will we never awake to the fact
of being alive?
— Jane Neidhardt
***
Scars
My fingers dance the frets
Of my dulcimer, playing over and over
“In the pines, in the pines/where the sun never shines.”
It’s 4 a.m. and I am still awake.
The disintegration of all have known
Forms a new memory: Someday
Cannot come too soon,
Someday, we will remember
As we look at the scars left by this.
— Jo Schaper
***
Normalcy is in a state of disintegration
Awake in bed and frets with indigestion
My mind pines for the days of celebration
Memory of this virus I will gladly abandon.
— CAT
***
Gently murmur the trees
that outside a meadow grow.
Branches and leaves sway north to south
against a low periwinkle sky.
I breathe in lightheartedly and
revel in a cool breeze passing.
All from above has, at least,
lengthened me from this April's woes.
— L Dennis
***
Every day, a little more disintegration
of his memory. He forgets words and places
and people's names. He knows the birds
and when they return in the spring. He watches
clouds and recalls how he flew
among them in a glider. More often asleep
than awake, he pines and frets
about the days going by, too fast and too slow.
— Mary Ellen Benson
***
Headline image: Yash Jain on Unsplash