Tag Archives: Short poetry

08.31.17
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Doggety Dirge

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There is an empty space of bread-box size,
Six inches from the floor and always close.
It was occupied by gentle brown eyes,
Soft nudging on ankles from cold, black nose.
I take my walks all alone and unleashed,
The crumbs under table stay where they fall.
Only the sea smell comes home from the beach,
The bright steel bowls take no space in the hall.
No nails will scrabble to joyfully greet,
The UPS man hears silence, escapes.
Gone, snarfle and crunch of phantom small treats,
The solidity of memory unshapes.
—-Long, small shadow is not where it belongs,
—-At this moment, we are in-between dogs.

Daisy 2000-2015

She was my Special Dog, and really the Best Girl.  We’ve been waiting to get another dog for life things to pass (vacations, etc…) but I am getting antsy for another four-legged best friend.  The empty spot hasn’t filled in, even after all this time.

(And here’s the sonnet!  Some of the iambs are suspect, but hey, we’re working to a deadline here.)

08.30.17
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Retreating

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A writer’s weekend away
Was exactly what I wanted,
But you might have mentioned
Your condo is prehaunted.

It’s a real distraction
To have noises in the night,
And the patting on my leg
Gave even me a fright.

But beyond the Scooby scares,
The worst thing for an empath,
Was the pervading sadness
Lingering in the guest bath.

Despair so deep, it broke me.
I had to pack up and leave.
I fled for home in tears–
It took three days to grieve.

So….thanks for your largesse?
I really appreciate the thought.
I won’t be going back to work
In the Condo of the Lost.

My husband, the Navy vet, tells me that sea stories always start with “This is no shit, man…”  I didn’t think that was an elegant title, so I went with “Retreating.”  I’ve had odd experiences before in my life, but this one topped them all. The pressure of an unseen hand on my leg woke me.  The electrical appliances and lights did a lot of flickering and malfunctioning.  My spare battery pack wouldn’t take a charge (I’m using it right now, it’s fine again).

The hardest part, though, was definitely the emotional imprint left on the place.  I don’t know the whole story, but I can guess.  It still seems very sad, but it no longer seems like my tragedy, as it did while I was there.

I did manage to get some work done, but not nearly as much as I’d hoped.  Next time I get a weekend free, I’m staying in a nice generic hotel, preferably built very recently.

08.28.17
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The F Word

 

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Today? I wrote for kids.
Fairies, elves and dragons.
Tomorrow, I’m writing horror
And this might sound like bragging–but–

I will use the F word
In so many creative ways.
Noun, verb, adjective, interjection…
I can F for days.

Some will get the vapors,
Others just turn up their nose,
But when you’re writing messy life
The underbelly has to show.

In my real-life conversation,
I don’t F this and that with ease,
But my characters F an awful lot
When faced with extremity.

I guess what I’m saying is
You can’t sanitize real.
My pretend people have to tell you
Exactly how they fucking feel.

It’s sort of funny to me how people extrapolate what and how you write to your own personality. They expect Steve King to live in some sort of Addams family monstrosity, when he’s really someone’s Grandpa and puts a sheet on his couch so the dog doesn’t get hair all over it.

The imagination is an amazing tool, and you don’t always get to pick which doors fly open in the middle of the night. I have these flawed people come to me nearly fully formed. It’s my job to put them in situations and see what they do–and it’s not always nice. *shrug*

08.27.17
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Methaphor

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Checking you out checking out
Maximum packs of pills
Some cold you got there, lady

Bags of refined crystals for me
Socially acceptable RDA implosion
Dying slow, but dying too

You don’t smile, you don’t have one
Fingers to face, worrying at it
Eyes here, there, at me, don’t see

I tug my shirt over my tell
Breathing hard from standing still
Hungry to hate, settling for you

I’ll go straight to the needle
Finger sticks to pay a different piper
Both buying to use ourselves up

I used to self-medicate depression with sugar. I had a high-stress career and a lifetime of bad habits behind me, and I’d buy a couple of candy bars on the way home from work just to deal with the anxiety.

At one of my stops, I ran across a couple, both buying four boxes of generic Sudafed. Not rocket science to figure that out. With age I find greater compassion, and I realize that we all cope somehow.

I’ve broken the candy habit, for the most part, and I’m not on my way to the DIABEETUS.  The depression is mostly mild and comes and goes.  I still want a bag of candy, I just don’t buy one.  I hope those folks are in a similar place.

08.25.17
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An Eclogue for Friday

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Well, Fred, how are the sheep?
Fine so far, nary a peep.
What’s that in your lunch today?
It’s supposed to be leftover soufflé,
But after four hours, it’s sort of pourable.
Hmm. Guess soufflé isn’t portable.

After the week we’ve all had, I thought we deserved a nice bucolic eclogue.

Bad Poem-a-Day August is winding down, only six left to go.  There’s that sonnet that I’d like to finish when I can concentrate, and who knows what else?  Not even me.

08.22.17
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Vegetation Lamentation

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To say a child grows like a weed
Is rather unfair to the kid.
While children eventually do move out,
I’ve never seen a weed that did.

We weed and weed, and still we weep.  Oregon is where noxious plants settle to raise their families.  They move in and holler “Sanctuary!  Sanctuary!” whenever we start pulling them up.  We feel so sorry for them and their little tykes, we just don’t have the heart to—yeah, you’re not buying that, are you?  Would you believe we have terrible allergies?  No?  Hmmm.  At least they’re all organic.

08.21.17
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#nopesauce

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I said no mayo
but you knew better than I
food that was, is trash

I have been Team #nomayo my entire life, and not because I haven’t tried it–I’ve unwillingly tried it 100s of times.  Eventually you master the Scrape & Drown.  Scrape as much of the mayo off as possible, then drown the contaminated food in any other available sauce.  You can still taste the biohazard, but you can trick yourself into thinking it won’t kill you.

08.20.17
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I Saw the Future, and I Did It Anyway

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I balanced that egg on the mustard,
Trying hard to fool myself.
No surprise later that day
When it catapulted off the shelf.

SPLAT! On my foot it fell
From its too precarious nest.
Vaulting over the relish with gusto
When the fridge door I did wrest.

Oh…okay…I loudly sighed
As I wiped the yolk off my leg.
At least now the problem’s resolved
Of storing that extra egg.

I like to give the universe opportunities to surprise me by violating the laws of physics.  It hasn’t happened yet, but I hold out hope.

08.18.17
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Forty-three

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in this middle age
I find a crucible of
molten metal me

Middle age is often an inflection point where a person decides, again, what direction their life will take.  I like this image of the crucible.  The metal has the potential to become something strong and beautiful, but must be handled with care lest it reduce its surroundings to ash.  Mine has not yet been cast, but I think I see the shape of it shifting underneath the surface.

(Coincidentally, element 43 on the periodic table is technetium, a transition metal that is radioactive and mostly not found on Earth, but rather in red stars.  Transition, indeed.)

08.17.17
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98.8% Is Fine

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The Ancients thought the solar eclipse
Was the wrath of the great I Am.
In modern times, there’s wrath indeed–
In this God-forsaken traffic jam.

Oregon normally has a population of around four million people, not counting Sasquatch.  On Monday, thanks to the solar eclipse, we’re supposed to have an extra million visitors in the state (and not evenly dispersed).  The traffic started yesterday, and the logjam of RVs, rental cars, and out-of-towners will only get worse.  (If you’re wondering why Oregon is especially blessed with solar tourism, we are the closest destination for all of Asia.)

We live just outside the band of totality.  I am NOT driving the 20 miles to be in totality on Monday.  We’re going to hang out with our neighbors, drink up the champagne they don’t want to move to Idaho, and not be in the car for six hours.

Side note:  That little orange dot in the glasses is the sun.  I hope everyone feels like they got their money’s worth afterwards.