The Lightning-Struck Tree

Lightning grazes the tree,
lighting her up deep inside.
Purple light fades as she
burns, holy orange fire.

She is smiling through the
smoke, for lightning’s
careless fingers have

reminded her

that a goddess sleeps
beneath her bark.

– S. E De Haven

For this contest: https://allpoetry.com/contest/2802008-Write-to-Image—8-Only-

Prompt was this picture.

Growth

My hands raise to my face–
homing pigeons returning
(always returning)
to roost. Hide my

(horrified)

mouth behind a curtain of
blood and bone and flesh.

And just as fast, these hands
move to the keys to offer
an opinion unasked for.

Write out the hurt, the shame,
bleed pain into pixels, to carve
through eyes thousands

of miles away.

Something shifts, a weary sigh
from the old woman I am becoming.

I delete the comment, let the screen
go dark. Give some stranger

an ounce

of grace. Give myself the time I
would have wasted on a mind
unchangeable as the sun.

Instead, I wrote this poem.

– S. E. De Haven

For this contest: https://allpoetry.com/contest/2801930-Inner-transformations-for-LNPs-Part-Sinner-

Close Reading

Hold my words like
a pulsing heart, in
soft hands.

Drink deep.

And speak with my
blood still hot on
your lips.

Slip your fingers
deep in the cockles–
leave me with

no secrets.

Leave your fingerprints–
blood of my heart
and ink on the page–

leave your mark
in ink and blood
in equal measure.

Bleed for me as I bled
for you. Sing to me
as I sang to you.

And hold my words
as they hold you.

– S. E. De Haven

For this contest: https://allpoetry.com/contest/2802000-So-tell-me–poet–how-would-you-like-to-be-

Something Like Forgiveness

1.

Death falls like silence–
a lush silver rain–
it softens the edges.

I wrote that for you,
in the rosy smile of
dawn, still smelling

of the green springtime
of seventeen.

I’d healed from your
fingers wrapped tight
around my throat.

I didn’t (yet) know you lied
about the doctors, hospitals,
sweet medicines to banish

whatever demons made you
try to choke the breath
from my body. You called

yourself my friend, and I
drank the poison in your
honeyed words,

and asked for another cup,
please.

2.

Years have since softened
my edges more than rain
ever could. This quiet erosion

whispers

any hate into prayers. To the rain,
to my heart. To love that which
you named unlovable.

And I love. I love. I love.

Still, when my ears burn,
or I wake as the clock turns
to three in the morning

I wonder
if it’s still you,
just out of sight.

Is it you, still dripping poison,
while I dance in the soft silver
of endless rain?

– S. E. De Haven

Unexploded

Some people scream into
you like bullets–

they bore in like a weevil
and explode out

like a sledgehammer.

You deserve
a bulletproof
vest.

You deserve
a life,
unexploded.

– S. E. DeHaven

For this contest: https://allpoetry.com/contest/2801760-29-words-or-less—deserve—r.-m-drake-noguest

This Broken Vessel

Run your fingers over the surface–
read my pain like Braille.
My life is written in scars across
my skin, my organs.

Spinal meningitis scrawled
itself across my coccyx.
Two dots, spinal punctures.
Eighteen months old.

Tiny dimples on left instep and
beside right eye, dainty kisses
from chickenpox–they are
my special favorites.

See those starry scars where
I once had tonsils–cut from me
after months of strep. PANDAS
left me with buckshot brain scars.

Invisible, but they scream in seizure.

The firedream fever that nearly
left me cold in soil at eight years old–
see the grooves it left across
frontal cortex, across spleen.

The liver is a roadmap, a topography
of some ancient river delta. This old
battlefield, where wolf and bat and I fight.
Graffiti running the length of heavy flesh

as we each tag what territory is ours.

Lupus stares at me in the mirror
from behind my own eyes.
The wolf rises up in my cheeks,
buoyed by screaming bat.

The bat eats my liver, visits me
as faithfully as Prometheus’
eagles. Blisters my skin and thins
my blood. Oh, unholy porphyria!

Poppy has never friended me–
white milk of red flowers
leaves marks all of its own.
Red rash, swollen tongue,

and fire of the brain.

And so I crawl in skin carved
and stretched and marked.
I am the opus of Pestilence.
This body belongs in a museum–

the Mutter, specifically.

– S. E. De Haven

For this contest: https://allpoetry.com/contest/2801345-Infections–Personal—17

The Mutter Museum, if you’ve never heard of it, is a museum of medical oddities. https://collegeofphysicians.org/our-work/mutter-museum

Mardi Gras in the Country

screen-door masks, painted

with red lips and black eyes,

jaunty scarecrows in bright feathers

and scraps of cloth in violent

violet

they ask for a chicken, they

ask for okra, they ask for sausage,

they ask for rice and beer

throw them a chicken to chase

and then join their band

on foot or on horse

to the big cauldron

(they got propane now, cher)

scream of a pig, and the fire’s

rising hot–scream of a fiddle

and accordion and washboard scratch

we dance until church

(fais-do-do, cher)

we dance until we

wear our ashes

and promise to be good

(for the next forty days, cher)

– S. E. De Haven

Poem contest Mardi Gras - All Poetry

Patroclus

Patroclus, look at your hands

and see them stained carmine.

The blood of the serpents

wets you to your elbows.

Set a torch to thatch.

Burn it all for the Prince

of Peace.

Centuries later

watch men in green

beating men in orange.

Dyeing a river green

(pissmarking)

for their flavor of Christ.

Your island weeps blood

because a strong man

never decorated an oak

with your bleeding intestines.

For that crime

the Irish have bled and

starved under Royal Scepter

and Holy See.

Patroclus,

your bloody hands forged

the crowns of gold and thorns

that (still) strangle your

countrymen.

– S. E. De Haven

Poem contest What does St Patrick’s Day Mean to You (100 WORDS) - All Poetry

Portrait of the Artist, Suffering

Bitten by bat and by wolf,

dragging this cursed flesh

into another day–

I am only good for

drinking tea and bleeding

ink. Blood augury

whispers the forbidden

foods in three bold

numbers.

I write with bandaged fingers

because these words

ease the tight feeling

below my ribcage.

My liver throbs with every

heartbeat. My skin burns,

and my spleen is swollen

again.

(Keats died at twenty-four–

what did he know of pain?

A few months wracked by cough?

Silly boy. Death touched you

as a lover–while you were still

apprenticing at the school

of pain.)

Morphine closes my throat,

so I write echoes of organs.

Bleeding chrysanthemum–

exploding just beneath bone.

Words to haunt you when I’m gone.

– S. E. De Haven

Poem contest The Fate of Beautiful Artists - All Poetry

Dance with Me (Gertrude’s Plea)

Let me dance you through

the veil, and feast you in

our crimson silence.

My darling, my sweet,

let me taste your salt–

your life.

I can give you time–

suspend you like

a dandelion in glass.

Beautiful, even after

the cities of men crumble

like bone in the crucible

of my need.

I can give you stygian blue

and every other color hidden

from mortal eyes. I can give

you the scent of winter snow,

the light musk on a young girl’s

wrist and throat. I can give

you the rustle of silk, the soft

spread of legs like petals,

I can teach you the

fingerskim

across frightened skin–

pulse thump beneath

hands warmed by young

lust.

(Your thighs blush, crimson creep

as light as our dance steps.

My love, let me. Just a taste.)

Surrender, my love, and dance

with me. My rosebud darling,

my moonlight love. Dance,

sweet one, dance with me

to the veil and beyond,

Christabel. To all that

lies beyond.

– S. E. De Haven

Poem contest Dark Picture Prompts, Vampires and Soccery - All Poetry

The Death of The World

The past is a kinder DWELLING–

dawn sun through SYCAMORE–

the WOUNDED fingers of God.

WEAPONS drawn, watching

the world burn in BEVELED edges.

Fire makes its own ARTIFACTS

and the smoke, a PHANTOM.

Look what they’ve taken for GRANITE…

The cities of men, EMERALD dreams–

every AMBASSADOR watched

an AVALANCHE of flame tumble stone

easy as a matchstick GAZEBO.

The last of us, battle-BLEMISHED,

WHISKERED by flying glass and steel–

watched the sky for a PATHWAY

that never, never appeared.

– S. E. De Haven

Poem contest Strong Word Play - All Poetry

The prompt was a word bank. Word bank words are capitalized.

Sneaux Shovel

Our first snow in Washington,

in the little yellow house–

(poking up from the drifts,

a defiant daffodil.)

Daddy swept the rose red

shovel below the white (crocus)

and it broke

like sugar icing. He slid. A dragonfly

zipping over a meadow of white-fluff

dandelions.

My brother stared at the drift Daddy

left, a frosty hedge like white azalea.

Little boy punched the snow, and

it broke, falling over him like

fistfuls of Mardi Gras flour,

like magnolia petals.

He laughed, and Daddy laughed.

Me? I longer for the white jasmine

(and sweet winter sweat)

of Louisiana in December.

– S. E. De Haven

Poem contest Shoveling - All Poetry

In the House of Babel

My grandmother spoke with

an Okie twang, every sentence

a question. My grandfather’s

words were the softshoe

step of raindancers, Arkansas

pulling out his vowels.

My mother’s voice is graveled

by smoke and drink, she sounds

like a folk singer, with a dash

of small-town Louisiana.

Her brother hollers like an oil drill,

and their brother speaks with

mountain cadence. Too many years

in Idaho rotted his Southern tongue.

My father spoke Four Corners,

“youse guys” and swagger.

Jersey beaches and Pennsylvania

hills in his inflections.

The ocean sings in my brother’s throat,

somewhere between coastal California

and Ninja Turtle. And the baby sounds

like South Carolina–soft television

vision of the South.

And me? I sound like a mouse,

singing loud and high–

my words only have weight

when written.

– S. E. De Haven

Poem contest Discribe your family by what habits they have - All Poetry

Mint

Sweet breath, fresh-brushed

and reinforced by Starlite,

new suit–still smell the money

on it. Fifteen years old,

and made of firecrackers

and swagger.

The doe-bright girl waits

in a gown of sweetgrass,

standing among clumps

of silver-frosted spears.

The world smells of dewy

newness. Here, at the

empty lot beside the

armored building where

money is born.

Together, they press a love

as fresh as they are

between the pages of a book

as old as Mercury.

All they smell, all they see,

all they taste, all they are–

everything is mint.

– S. E. De Haven 

Poem contest Mint - All Poetry

The First Rain of March

March bursts forth TRIUMPHANT

in a GLOCKENSPIEL tinkle,

SURRENDER of the sheets of silver

February sleet. Spring COLORED

air, LEANING to the SURPRISED dawn–

springtime CORRESPONDENCE between

the air and earth ends winter’s SIESTA.

Zephyr’s breath is INTERPRETED

in the grumblings of an AARDVARK–

MISSING the meaning. The clouds scud

above. Rain falls to kiss Earth’s waking face.

Thunder leaves her SHAKEN and awake.

– S. E. De Haven

Poem contest March Word Bank - All Poetry

The words from the word bank are capitalized.

The Feast of Ashes

Mouth full of ashes, belly full

of mud. Sink down on a hard

bench, break bread and watch

the crumbs crawl away.

Mouth full of blood, belly full

of ash. No taste to any of the

bright fruit, the seared meat.

Air heavy with rot, a call for

more wine.

Mouth full of bile, belly full

of blood. The fare is so foul

it’s no wonder (no wonder at all)

that those with the means

(the Princes of Hell,

the Dukes and

their demons attendant)

prefer the most tender flesh

they find above.

– S. E. De Haven

Poem contest hell’s kitchen - All Poetry

The Demon Attending Mercury’s Fall – November 24, 1991

Sharks and bloody seawater,

big boats and feral hunger–

that scene is too close

to the apocalypse–to the rise

of some dark thing from

the ocean floor and seas

that foam and stink

of blood.

Space operas, slow crawl

of ships across the screen

and lightsaber song–

the demon never liked it.

The sparkle just reminds him

of the time when he hung

the stars for the infant eyes

of the humans yet unborn.

He held Freddie’s hand

(bones in a bag, translucent)

as the breath rattled in his

heavy lungs. Waited for the soul

to float away (quicksilver)

from failing flesh.

“I never said, but you were right,”

he said, though Freddie wouldn’t hear.

“About Jaws and Star Wars–

and everything.”

Outside, the Bentley waited in

the cold. It mourned as the demon

mourned, playing Freddie’s music

to the indifferent rain.

The breath stopped, the soul fled,

and all the fat-bottomed

girls stepped off their bicycles

to weep.

– S. E. De Haven

Poem contest “Jaws was never my scene and I don’t like Star Wars” - All Poetry

Five Letters, Six Chances

I imagine her in her robe, cool light of

morning on her face, coffee mug by her hand,

looking to see how many guesses it took me today.

Her midnight child, nightwalker daughter,

who has Wordle solved an hour after it’s released.

Five letters, six chances.

We are not in competition, just this same

gentle interest (genetic) in letters, in words.

Five letters, six chances.

I open with AUDIO, she knows. How long

did it take for me to get from AUDIO to the truth?

(TRUTH has five letters; so does CHILD.)

This little game, made to bring LIGHT

to the WORLD, to make a LOVER SMILE–

it brings us CLOSE.

Five letters, six chances.

Over fifteen hundred MILES away–she smiles

over her steaming cup. Slowly, her fingers BRUSH

the face of her PHONE, mining for GREEN

and gold among squares and squares of gray.

Five letters. Six chances.

– S. E. De Haven

Poem contest Wordle - All Poetry

Memories that Walk

Stare into the void long enough,
and the void blinks. Stay long
enough in the land of the dead,
and you leave with a parting gift.

Three days of fever dreams
splashing color and screaming
Paganini’s violins, and now–
I see dead people.

Usually just a wink, a nod,
the passing of familiars.
Wherever I go,
they’ve already been.

Memories that walk,

gentle things, harmless–some
wearing their deaths in toothless
mouths (like cancer boy), and
some golden and rosy in health

(like my father).

A soft touch to my head
from one, a nudge to
my shoulder. There is grief
in their eyes for me.

They grieve for the living.
They grieve for me.

– S. E. De Haven

For this contest: https://allpoetry.com/contest/2802817-Psychic-Abilities

Spitfire

Let my words catch
like wildfire and smear
your face in ash and ink
and breathe me in with
the smoke, let me keep
you company in your
lungs, and when you
exhale, let my words
catch again.

I want to leave you
spitting my fire
like the dragon
I know you are.

– S. E. De Haven

For this contest: https://allpoetry.com/contest/2803340-8-only—–write-what-inspires

Picture is the prompt.

Night Blooming

jasmine flares, SULTRY
amid the LOST and wandering ivy
WICKED city, dazzling in rain
falling like rosary beads

(MEDITATION is a hush
but PEOPLE are always loud
and messy)

WHITE flowers, LONG and longing,
fragrance spreads like legs, opens
and reveals INNER velvet, POUTY
and soft, like the WOMEN in long

skirts and propriety, WANT is just
beneath the crinoline

bees wander CLOSER, buzzing
a lazy WARNING, as the men move–
following fragrances dangerous enough

to KILL the UNFAMILIAR

– S. E. De Haven

Prompt was a word bank. Word bank words are capitalized.

For this contest: https://allpoetry.com/contest/2803312—-Word-Bank—

Inventing Cheese

Milk spoils quick,
and someone
somewhere
was the first
to eat the curd–

cheese is an addiction,
almost as bad as heroin.

To what possum-eyed
ancestor do we owe
these golden blocks,
white wedges,
thin slices wrapped
individually
in waxed paper?

Which one of us
had a flamethrower
(INSPIRATION)
erupt over her
head as she stirred
salt into the curd

and left it to dry
(to cure)
in the Mesopotamian
sun?

– S. E. De Haven

For this contest: https://allpoetry.com/contest/2802251-Connect-The-3-Things–Challenge–2-

pink sparkle fluff
floats above
velvet green ears

fireworks in spring

reach, reach
and explode

– S. E. De Haven

For this contest: https://allpoetry.com/contest/2803158-Brevity…-15-words-or-less.

Image was the prompt.

At the First Scream

It was not the noise
that moved you,
was it?

It was the silence.

Young couple next door,
just moved from…Alabama?
Mississippi? Somewhere.

Good looking fellow, tall.
Talks like Jersey. The lady?
A round little dumpling–

sassy, sun-kissed. Kids?
They had kids right?

A sleepless night, sitting
on a faded couch,

wood-handled
and printed with ducks
and reeds or plaid or

doesn’t matter in the dark,
does it?

You could hear them,
hollering,
something shattered,
a child’s thin scream.

And nothing.

That’s what moved you.
That’s why you
found a telephone,
and your fingers
found the digits.

That’s why

a police officer found
my brother and me
under a formica table

butcher knives
clutched tight,
watching

the open door

the unforgiving stairs
mother’s blood
on the doorframe

both of us, wide-eyed,
waiting with steel
for mother to come back

or for blood-handed father.

Whoever you are,
or you were,
sitting in the dark,
waiting
for a silence.

For my broken mother
to stop screaming.

Whoever you are, or you were–

because of you, I call at
the first scream. I call at
the first scream. You could
have called

at the first scream.

– S. E. De Haven

For this contest: https://allpoetry.com/contest/2802903-Night

Brown Pelican

flap and rise, break from
brown water, sweep of wing
like oars, churning air
and muddy river

lift

not an arrow, not a bullet
something meatier
a clumsy dirigible

of feathers, bone, and blood

state bird, symbol of mercy
skim the wet winds, low
over old woman river

scoop lower and steal
squirming supper from
mother mississippi

– S. E. De Haven

For this contest: https://allpoetry.com/contest/2802937-Birds-

Sybil

shivering sliver of silver
sing songs since silenced
sweet sweep of seventh
season–sing songs since

severed

sing softly, shivering
songs of silver slivers

sing

– S. E. De Haven

For this contest: https://allpoetry.com/contest/2802931-Alliteration—Followers-Only–

To Market

breath of fog
green fingers
reaching
grey light
brown dirt
on soft leather
step lightly
birdsong promises
undelivered
dawn breeze
damp as kitten nose
sniffing at skirts
as we carry our baskets
to market
our empty baskets
through the woods
to market

– S. E. De Haven

For this contest: https://allpoetry.com/contest/2802690-NaPoMo-April-1st-noguest

Picture was the prompt

The Devil’s Pyre

It’s easiest under bridges.

Liminal spaces–
something, something,
connections?

It’s complicated, okay?

But rising up under a bridge
is the easiest. From there?

I don’t know, kid. Make trouble?

It’s Carnival. Our time.
You don’t even need a mask.

Beelzebub is up there already,
face streaked with cake and wine.

And Asmodeus is doing body shots
off of anyone who’s game.

Moloch is in a fighting pit,
and Mammon is taking bets.

All we have is this time, these
precious hours in the snow

before Wednesday churchbells
call the humans to receive their ashes

and we get swept up with the broken
bottles and paper wrappers.

(Angels think they own the world!
Screw ‘em. Don’t screw ‘em. Not literally…

I mean, unless you can find one
that seems lonely. Those featherheads

are just as fallible as we are, and twice
as decadent, given half a shove.)

Just this night, before everything fun
is given up for Lent. Dance with the

mortals and be free, kid. Just one night.
Be free.

– S. E. De Haven

For this contest: https://allpoetry.com/contest/2801919-Fire—Ice-A-Photo-Challenge–3

Photo was the prompt. Along with “Setting a Demon Free”

In This Room that We Share

She is still in dream–
soft sleep in the
golden light of morning.

Hands animated in sleep,
whispering sigils around
the dust motes.

I translate from the chair
where I scribble,
in this room that we share.

Her dreams are fading
and her fingers spell
“SOON”.

Soon, she will rise,
and soon we will begin
the endless conversation

anew.

– S. E. De Haven

For this contest: https://allpoetry.com/contest/2802836-8-poets-give-my-anything.

First April Sunrise

clouds rendered in watercolor,
splashed across the dewbright
sky, silver scatter of sun

first april sunrise

winking at the green earth
and smiling at daffodils
who turn their glorious faces

up

to greet the golden cheek
of springtime dawn

– S. E. De Haven

For this contest: https://allpoetry.com/contest/2802683-Sun-Rise-on-April-1

Two

Child of the moon, born
beneath two twos, breathe
silver and reach for the next
Monday–your day.

You sit on two score,
forty years of moonshiver
and reach for the hand
of the unexpected thirteen

(one and three make four,
two twos, how could it be
anyone else for you?)

who waits to make a two
of you. Dance the moon
and drink the dew and ever
be a loving two.

– S. E. De Haven

For this contest: https://allpoetry.com/contest/2802521-Numerology

Of Legos and Lemonade

push up from the lego table
on small fists, amble like
homo erectus

taking that new pelvis
(flashy vertebral column)
for its maiden voyage

toddlers put a plastic
bandage on a lemon
and name it “lemonade”

the lucky ones spend
the next decades trying
to drink from the fountain

the fountainhead

that burbles that close
to the first breath,
the first sigh,

the first words

–S. E. De Haven

For this contest: https://allpoetry.com/contest/2802653-Connect-The-3-Things–Challenge–3-

The Cursed Nickel

She put my grandmother’s
silver in a carpet bag.

Carpet-Bagging Yankee whore–
(bless her heart)–
aunt by marriage, hateful
by birth. She left marijuana seeds

and marital drippings in the bed–
my grandmother’s bed–
and she tried to steal
the house.

Her eyes and hands
stayed busy.

My grandmother’s ashes
weren’t even cooled yet.

The audacity of this
See-You-Next-Tuesday.

I took a nickel and sang
my hate to it, left it in the
freezer for five days.

I put it in en envelope and
mailed my hate away.

It took five years.

A tumor removed, malignant
as she is, about the size

(they said)

of a nickel.

Bless her heart,
but curse
her tits.

– S. E. De Haven

Be There When I Die

Daddy, can you hear me?
Is it cold? It must be cold.
The only blanket is the snow,

and you are too bright for
the earth that enfolds you.

Can your tongue still
make my name?

I see you in my dreams,
right hand tight against
the black tears of your
pierced liver.

You tell me it doesn’t hurt.

Did the worms eat your nerves?
Will they eat mine?
Is that why it doesn’t hurt?

I can reach straight through
you. I can steal the black plastic
that holds your organs, spill
them in the dirty snow and find

the hole–ragged little thing–
that killed you. Hold your
arms open for me, Daddy.

The sickness eats my own liver
(your bad blood blooms
like spider mums, gnarling
the flesh and screaming

and screaming and screaming)

I have a little more time before
your genes coat my brain in black
blood, passed through a leaky
liver and sent upward. To rot.

And when that happens, and
the world goes dark and gauzy,
I’ll be your little girl again.
Let me stand on your shoes,

and dance with me into death.

– S. E. De Haven

Values

Open hands and open hearts
love to pour from bonedeep wells
words to write like prayers to start
lift the veils and sing the bells

I live to build and to love–
compassion is the sweetest bread.
Let me feed you, little dove,
and sing the songs of those long dead.

– S. E. De Haven

For this contest: https://allpoetry.com/contest/2802111-Contest-8-poets-

Boring

Poetry is boring, unfortunately.

Mostly, a plod
through predictable iambs,
lamentable alliteration,
regrettable rhymes.

Dull canon thud
of dead white mens’
dead white dreams

enshrined by teachers
who haven’t read
anything written after

nineteen-aught-three.

Oh.

But.

Sometimes.

A spark flies in the darkness,
and words find each other–
kiss over em dashes

and sing in color

splashing across
the amphitheatre
of dream.

Some snippet chews its way
inside and curls up where
morning thought cannot
reach, and waits for night–

E X P L O D E

in sodium pink against
the back of sleep-heavy
eyelids. Heart-racing,
you reach for the afterglow
of words you read

days, weeks, years

before.

Bad poetry is boring.
And good poetry?

It’s boring, too. Boring
past skin and bone and
blood and meat

to touch the ether of
your being.

– S. E. De Haven

For this contest: https://allpoetry.com/contest/2802079-Poetry-is-boring

My Three Faces

babe, cauled–silent–
shattered child screaming
softly suffering crone

my three faces

– S. E. De Haven

For this contest: https://allpoetry.com/contest/2802024-Beginning–Middle—End—–YOU-