If you're tired, dear one

When your eyelids fill with twilight, the afternoon a song when your mind-machine won't run the program any longer let them flicker closed in a supple dreamy peace; If you're tired, dear one, you can sleep

If the motor in your sacrum gets to whirring unannounced, if the chariot of your body calls for endings unforeseen let it fire up and run you, any path that you please; If you're over it, dear one, you can leave

Should you feel the water rise, hear the rumblings at the dam should you chance upon the sate or the undue let discomfort be a pilot, let it lead you to the aches; If you're finished, dear one, you can break

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A. Wylde

April 1st, 2024 NaPoWriMo 01/30

Ode to my old sweatshirt

Vividly, even recklessly you dazzle the bees would think you Meadowsweet you sketch and render, portray me in soft light engender a memory of me steady, complete

And I enjoy you so gingerly, but often you hold me as your edges unravel and even as I love you, so do I break you down it's a mortal path we jointly travel

There, a scrape in your benevolent elbow, and what a mighty brave face for me you wear I'll spent my Saturdays darning on the loom your comfort teaches me the tools for repair

And in your effervescence I am seen, even known a character beloved, whose old sweater characterizes paint me a Dahlia, Azalea; your keen glow even the sullen storm cloud in me it well disguises

We both know this won't last forever, and yet we cling to Loving Spring anew together again making promises we can't bear to keep smarting at impermanence, mending fraying ends

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A. Wylde

April 12th, 2024 NaPoWriMo 11/30

Alterations

A stitch in time saves nine, and often nary a stitch will do dawdling, dragging, tedious is the weaving thin red threads of our fate in and out, in again, and out again again, steadfast, resolute so goes the repair

What’s left is neither old nor new but changed and it’s in the observable bits that we learn to be reminded in the same way you can still see the healing, but can’t still see the wound every needlepoint a singular pang, the torture of being changed

And when a stranger asks uncouth, tilts jaw to point and jeer we won’t belabor our vices, demystify, undress our snags, provoked only tip the corners of our mouths in quiet acquiescence, nodding gently; hear tell we prefer the alterations freed from flawless, we get to be real

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A. Wylde

April 2nd, 2024 NaPoWriMo 02/30

Excited to announce that I was so taken with the poems I wrote for National Poetry Writing Month this April, that I decided to turn them into a chapbook! Despite having written poems since the age of 9, this is the FIRST chapbook I have ever released.

This limited run of physical copies will include only 50 chapbooks, each one printed and folded with love by me, and each chapbook is numbered and signed.

www.awylde.com/store to purchase www.awylde.com/free-downloads to download & print free

Cover art by the incomparable Ashe Walker <3

Lessons in Sijo

Intrigue coaxed me into coffee so we could share a morning cup Enchantment had me drink myself silly so we'd never tire Serenity stopped me in my tracks re-feeling all I'd thought

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A. Wylde

April 29th 2024 NaPoWriMo 29/30 (Day 28 Prompt)

That you don't know

If you know, you know. More importantly, if you don't know, you don't know

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A. Wylde

April 29th, 2024 NaPoWriMo 28/30

Newcomer

One thing with older men is if you can get them talking about their house or their yard, so that one’s not too hard I know enough now to be dangerous and I think if you can surprise someone you are halfway to winning them over and I don’t need friends but I do need neighbors who aren’t motivated to scare me away Still I occasionally fear I’ll be found out, walk away wondering if I pulled it off was the comment about cement slab just enough, or ever so slightly too much?

One thing with young wives is if you smile so polite and know all the niceties to repeat and not the house, but the home is a safe enough inroad I don’t need to be invited to the book club but I wouldn’t turn down a recipe for shortbread I can do the baking and making alone, and maybe it gives us just one more thing to try and talk around and it’s always the trying, tiring, but I keep on trying anyhow

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A. Wylde

April 28th, 2024 NaPoWriMo 27/30

Limelighter

Do you dance anytime that they ask, is it that? will you rise on command to amuse? And only the laughter, only the eyes seem to settle the restlessness in you brief, fleeting, you exasperate newly choreography you'll demean then deploy

Do I wait to be wound like a toy, is it that? do I suspend until I get to put on? And only the charm, only the wonder seem to soften the disquietude in me steady, lasting, I hold back, interlude games I'll rebuff, then play to win

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A. Wylde

April 27th, 2024 NaPoWriMo 26/30 (Day 25 Prompt)

Trouble Breathing

They say grief is just Love with no place to go my Love lives inside my lungs some days, heavy, heaving, trouble breathing I'm scared to touch it for fear that it breaks rushes down the drought-dried hillside and washes me away and it lands, still the measure of it, the scope I Love as big as I ache, tear as ragged as I run myself I grieve as much as I hope and the losses are numbered, ambiguous and opaque and they turn up in my airways some days and if grief if just Love with no place to go, I transmute wine back into water, hold my breath but open my eyes I choose the feeling, both drown, and survive

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A. Wylde

April 27th, 2024 NaPoWriMo 25/30

Frozen, Dormant, Vital

Not under the weather, I'm along for it's ride low when it's lifeless, bright when it shines & leave it to me to live in extremes frozen from Hudson to James Bay dormant the long Bitterroot winter & home is a place now, precise vital only in the abiding sun an uncompromise a one of one

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A. Wylde

April 27th, 2024 NaPoWriMo 24/30

Personals

Existentialist seeking idealist for swap willing to split dread

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A. Wylde

April 26th, 2024 NaPoWriMo 23/30

Arriving with the Arrival

What a gift to have been in the Spring Waking bleary-eyed in bloom Rising from the deep dark alongside the blossoms and every year, beginning again at the beginning New when all of life is renewed Wide-eyed, eager, once again a child Reborn in the present, stretching new limbs, All of nature in infancy, in tune arriving with the arrival

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A. Wylde

April 23rd, 2024 NaPoWriMo 22/30

A Lover, a hue

Golden, paring back the edge to see if it's only a leaf, and you're pure all the way to the center; maybe most wouldn't recognize such a precious metal, unrefined

Perhaps eggshell, a silence in your strength, backlit by sunlight, crystalline warms the room; fragile, yes, tender but staunch, as if any moment you'll disembark

Daffodil, such a brilliance, not unaware of, but unmoved by the darkness; as though your morning birthright is the bright eye full of radiant shine, you will it

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A. Wylde

April 20th, 2024 NaPoWriMo 20/30

Lunacy

Whatever your torment, however you bleed if you bellow, wail, curse or threaten whatever toxin your anger engenders whatever demon takes root in your gut whatever your torment, however you bleed you cannot aggrieve the fair moon

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A. Wylde

April 20th, 2024 NaPoWriMo 19/30

A Soundtrack

There are two copies of my favorite CD, the byproduct of my parents mixing their collections just like me I put them next to each other in the 5-CD changer, an early effort at the circles, repetition I will come to need when I read scary stories of horrors that happen to other little girls I picture them in that little back bedroom here, I don't know why I do that I love green beans and hate the taste of antibiotics, and I keep getting sick, keep needing the pale pink, disagreeable I drag my stuffed rabbit by one ear up the three stairs split-level, divided, a place I only go back in dark dreams I open the door, my rabbit still in tow, looking out at the lawn where I guess all the pictures would eventually be laid to rest thrown in spite, melted snow, ruined, lost I don't remember much, but I do feel it I remember two copies of my favorite CD in the 5-CD changer playing back to back, a soundtrack and when that player eventually swallowed both copies, scratched them irreparable, swallowed my safety I don't remember much, but I do feel it a belly full of horrors, a terrible, terrible unease

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A. Wylde

April 18th, 2024 NaPoWriMo 18/30

Out there

Slow, patient and rhythmic even predictable but don't act too small not small enough to become encircled

Leave the crumbs, don't bother to run but don't stray too far there's nothing else out there

Quick, agile and fearless even foolhardy but try, you can try again never a feast without the hunting

Let them tire, don't covet the chase but do more than evade there's something more out there

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A. Wylde

April 12th, 2024 NaPoWriMo 12/30