"Two wrongs may not make a right but a thousand wrongs make a writer.”

Tuesday, December 29, 2020

Boyfriends

Don't google old boyfriends.
They've gone old
and gained weight.
They have daughters
And sons
They're happy.

He wanted to take you to the ocean
lull in the sand and try again.

Don't google old boyfriends.
And may they not google you.
They see you as then,
carefree and tanned
with hair down your dress.
Happy.




Thursday, December 24, 2020

Time

 I

The Last Snowfall

 

The child playing

in the driveway

while his dad shovels

will remember snow.

 

II


The Mirror

 

The hair that falls out in the shower

is still black.

Why in the mirror is it not?

The face cream claims to lift.

It’ll lift your lids right off your face.

Why in the mirror does it not?

We worry about bills and cancer

and if the car will start 

and the junction in our lifeline.

Put a dimmer switch in the bathroom.

Life is too short to worry about our health.

 

 

III


Gravity

 

The door swings empty. Dust settles.

Flesh accommodates.

The old lady stumbles but she recovers.

I hurt therefore I am.

 

When you crossed the hospital lobby

Did you think to escape?

Pick up your feet.

 

Make a wrong turn and you could come up missing,

walking back at yourself in the elongated mirrors

hung in corners. Don’t breathe.

 

The ventilator hisses and pumps,

tireless machine needing only an outlet.

The incident, unforeseen, took her down

one day before she was to come home,

one from which she could not recover.

 

It’s raining again at the window bed,

steady as the pocket watch ticking unseen.

It paces us through gathering events.

In a place like this

the only time I ever saw my father cry.

 

Out of time. And when was it ours?

Sometimes we can’t go home but would it matter

if we don’t recover?

We get along. Dust settles.

 

 

Three connected to close out the wretched year we call 2020. Inspired by Poets and Writers  to post one more time before the end of the year, this is for the Writers Pantry.


Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year to all you poets and writers!

Thursday, December 17, 2020

The Door At The End Of The Hallway


Door one is for those with questions about their disability check.

Door two is for those who didn’t get their disability check.

Door three is for those who can’t find a doctor to treat their disability.

Door four is for those who have been denied their disability.

Door five is for those who were Sectioned Eight, no disability.

Door six is for those seeking legal advice.

Door seven is for those whose paperwork never not submitted, go back to door one.

Door eight is for those who got kicked out of the shelter, go back to door six.

Door nine is for those suffering hallucinations, go back to door three.

Door ten is for those deemed a danger to themselves by door three.

Door eleven is for those who exhausted one through ten.

This poem is linked to dVerse and the inspiring post from Peter Frankis in Australia,
commemorating poetry, line breaks (when and how to take a breath) and endings, metaphorically and visually.

And, finally, may none of us have to frequent this hallway. Breathe


Saturday, December 12, 2020

Concurrence

Snow fog encases each blade of grass,
each winter’s branch in wispy ice
as the hunter hidden in his blind
rests his weapon on the sill.

The rising sun lifts the fog—

a breath, a pause, a trigger pull.

A rush of wing, a whoosh of air

the ricocheting echo fades.

Steam releases from the kill

and quiet calms the forestland.




This hunting season inspired poem is linked to Earthweal (poetry for a changing world) and their open link weekend.


Thursday, December 10, 2020

Stepping Off The Sidewalk

 

To melt and be like a running brook that sings its melody to the night - Gibran

 

There are words you can hang

that will tell you how to feel.

Who to love. What to think.

Hang above the entryway

or in the hallway

where I saw my mother walking

toward me in the mirror

like free-flowing water.



My take on Stepping Off The Sidewalk

No Way Out


Stranded in the time of Covid-
one way in, one way out
but torrential rains washed out
the culvert and the deliveryman can't find her.

Nothing to drink but a neighbor's Folgers
nine months pregnant when water rushing
down the ravine cracked the culvert,
the plundering of man with his man-made things,

the high-brow engineer with a clipboard
couldn't stop the rush to nowhere
as hurricane after hurricane
follows the same path north
to clip this saturated land
from where now there is no way out.