Category: poem

• girl says

  girl says:
  “don’t worry!!!”
  emphatic, confident,
  exasperated.

  girl knows!
  she is grown.

  parents know
  these assurances
  are trouble.

  May 21, 2010

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• high heel shoes

  high heel shoes
  scattered across my floor,
  I used to hate that height
  but now I buy them
  taller taller…

  I like the feeling of
  a head held high
  I am who you imagine
  on this new road
  you see me
  walking tall,
  hips swaying,
  lips glossy,

  yet it fades when I return
  empty the suitcase, scatter
  heels across the floor…

  May 19, 2010

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• late night city gossip

  Here on our Patterson hill
  see the lights of downtown
  pulsing,

  the men with knives and guns
  the sporadic sirens
  all demanding,
  the streetlight orange rowhomes
  the white marble stoops
  all conspiring.

  The hound dog neighbor (Hannah)
  wailing,
  she’s heard all about me,
  these city streets,
  their brick cobblestone cement,
  whipersing,
  the gossip never ends.

  [ps: found this little poem in an old journal, circa 2006 or so]

  May 18, 2010

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• Sticks and Stones

  this certainly isn’t the worst day
  but it is a spitting Tuesday, dark, gray,
  November where the leaves have lost
  themselves
  and given up and died.
  i see them lying in the street wet, glistening
  like they’ve been crying.
  i see the trees now twigs
  perfectly skinny but strong,
  and ripe for a hanging.

  we all hurt each other daily
  with slices and cuts and stabs of words.
  the constant sticks and stones
  that strike so regularly and steadily
  it reminds me of Chinese water torture,
  so much so
  we don’t even notice anymore,
  it’s just the background white noise that is
  slowly driving us mad.

  it is certainly not the worst,
  it just is one of those every days
  like the spitting rain,
  relentless
  drips.

  May 17, 2010

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• the pacific northwest (and a haiku to Mt Rainier)

  i have returned full of Chinook salmon and pictures of mountains…. that Mt Rainier~ captured my imagination like none other (except perhaps Denali, but i don’t think i truly appreciated it then). so happy and can’t wait to return someday….

  timber trucks whipser
  legends of a mountain top
  so serene and blue

  capped white she rises
  older than my brittle bones
  prouder than Tatoosh.

  May 16, 2010

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• happy mother’s day~ "a mother’s heart"

  Happy Mother’s Day~ spent a lovely weekend with my family and am so thankful for my mamma. She is the bestest!! A poem from my great-grandmother Alice that is especially appropriate. Shows that some things never change…. [taken from her book of poetry The Fruit Thereon]

  A Mother’s Heart
  A mother’s heart is tuned to listen for
  The groping sound of hands upon a door —
  The midnight striking of the mantel clock —
  The turning of a key within the lock.

  A mother knows when waiting hours are past
  And each loved one is safe at home at last.

  May 9, 2010

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• Travels in Europe, 12 days by Coach (haiku)

  talk of days before
  as if lifetimes ago but
  i’m still on the bus.

  [NOTE: my cousin and i did the whirlwind American-style tour of Europe~ 8 countries in 12 days… the kind of bus tour that all Europeans make fun of. i was reminded of this when talking with a German friend the other night who, currently living here in the States, now understands why we do these fly-by-the-night breeze-throughs of Europe; we don’t get enough vacation time to do it any other way!! and let’s face it, when you have limited time, you want to see as much as possible. anyways, the feeling on our coach bus was like the scene out the window~ days blurred past us faster than we could dare process, yet somehow we were always back on the bus….]

  May 7, 2010

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• the re-reading of The Love Song of J Alfred Prufrock

  wrote a rough rough sketch of this several years ago, just after college i guess. revised slightly here today. here’s a link to the poem, one of my all-time favorites: http://www.bartleby.com/198/1.html

  the re-reading of The Love Song of J Alfred Prufrock

  the silence after
  roars like a night train
  it shakes the house so
  that Eliot and I
  curled in our green tea
  must turn twice, and again

  i sense your
  presence absent
  who to guess that nothing
  could be so heavy to move
  the weight of all that air
  blowing precarious

  to and fro, to and fro

  May 6, 2010

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• Paul Simon is wrong

  Paul Simon
  says he has poetry
  to protect him

  I have these
  fingers that must
  press a pen
  must tenderly pour
  over a page
  or a keyboard and
  the poetry treats me
  like a patient
  bled dry by leeches

  no no Paul, these words
  offer no relief

  they just keep sucking
  me dry until

  May 5, 2010

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• alone with time to think

  slight respite
  from a day wrought
  with surprise, I
  believe this silence
  punctuated with breaths
  this alone on the floor
  time to think is
  an exceptional rarity
  to be cherished
  held carefully in quiet
  long hands
  with tiny spots of age.

  [biographical note: I have just, in the space of one week’s time, found and moved into a new place, received news of my sister’s engagement, been offered multiple jobs, and been told the date of my half-sister’s wedding. I also eagerly await news of my cousin’s new baby and am dealing with the realization that I will be 30 this month… among other things! This follows 4 months of relatively static stale nothing after my life fell spectacularly apart in Jan. As you can imagine this quiet time is welcome today!]

  May 4, 2010

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