greenstorm (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
greenstorm) wrote2023-05-23 06:43 pm
greenstorm) wrote2023-05-23 06:43 pm
Poem-a-day
Catching way way up.
#33 Thousandth Poem To My Home
A thousand days
A thousand more
My every path
Leads to your door
Familiar, beloved
Safe, and more--
The only home that keeps me.
I roamed unwilling
In times before
Each night laid down
On a different floor
Moving life from drawer to drawer
Looking for
A home that’s sure--
The only home that keeps me.
I speak of how
It was before
How it still is
For many more:
Bereft, bewildered, lost, heartsore
It cannot stand
Nor be ignored
Should be a right
On every shore
A home to suit each heart’s need.
***
#34
How do you write a poem in a hotel room?
The very idea is ridiculous.
Personality is meant to slide off these spaces
They are as unlike the inside of me as possible
And what’s a poem if not wearing the inside on the outside?
A sushi picnic on the bed,
Drinking from a water bottle,
Watching videos, that’s no poem.
It’s a space cut apart from the rest of my life
And my life is my source of all things.
This hotel is halfway a behavioural study:
Can the animal learn to talk?
Can it learn sign language?
Does it even realize we’re trying to teach it
To act like a part of our society?
After all, it sleeps here.
Walking through lilac and pin-cherry-scented streets earlier
Drums reverberating from the hospital for blocks around
And the beginnings of blisters heating the bottom of my feet,
That was a poem. That was no hotel room.
No laptop.
Now there’s a laptop
And no words.
The idea of words is ridiculous.
#35 Crazy Dog Lady
The more cynical among us say marriage started as a trade
Services rendered for services rendered
I never saw all parties honour the bargain
And it didn’t seem like much of a bargain
When you showed up it started as a trade
Services rendered for services rendered
How was I to know differently?
I’d never seen it done.
You would give your life for me
Services rendered for services rendered
I fed you and noticed you from time to time
It hardly seemed a fair deal
What happened is that you never left me
Services rendered for services rendered
Steadfastness is the scarcest service
Obligation felt even more asymmetric
Until I realized I change my life for you
Services rendered for services rendered
Chose a home, chose work, chose leisure, chose you,
Chose a life to make you happy
You have my back but I also have yours
Services rendered for services rendered
And when someday we two lie our heads down at last
We will have given our lives to each other.
(For Avallu and Thea)
#36 “Good, and you?”
I think I’m happy
Sometimes
It’s hard to tell
The well is acting up
The deck needs repair
Four goslings died yesterday
Eaten by ravens
And their death would not have been a good one.
Still, I planted my garden today
My feet are dirty
I sit in a cool room
And can go out into the bright sunlight if I choose.
I can think of people fondly
Move furniture
Pet an affectionate cat
And some afternoons I find myself singing.
#37
You wrote me a poem in high school
Scribbled lines on a scrap of paper
Thumbtacked to my wall for so many years
And now boxed away.
Years later you said it was stupid
And the sex was boring
But I’ll always remember you helping earthworms off the sidewalk in the rain
So they wouldn’t be stepped on.
***
#38
What happened to those days when we talked until first light
Lying in bed, thrumming, fireplace cold,
Hearts warm, bodies full?
Every difference was a wonder
A new room to explore in an endless castle
Where we ran through every doorway we could see.
That time is long gone now but you seem to be happy
And I open my own doors in solitude.
***
#39
A copper penny. A good luck penny.
Luck for me, maybe not for you.
We found our gods together. For awhile
You were my god, or rather
You wore him with enough restraint that i was safe.
Safe.
Even at the end I was safe.
Even in the middle I was safe.
I have no way of telling you–
Your eyes were quiet and they saw me
And I was loved. And safe.
You loved me even in my full power.
I grew new leaves and new roots,
Nourished as I was in the clear quiet water of your regard.
I loved and was loved.
I love, still, and maybe that’s a forever thing.
It’s not just your kindness.
It’s not just the way the sun played in your hair
Or how you carried gods on your shoulders.
It was just you.
It’s just you.
#40 Evidence-based
Rape the rapists
Beat the abusers
Kill the killers
Bankrupt the capitalists
Put the drunk drivers in a car and roll it off a cliff
Poison the polluters
Cut the loggers in half
And drop the landlords in antarctica to die of exposure
An eye for an eye is an honourable tradition
If practiced with sufficient vigor
It will work to create peace
Eventually.
***
#41 Ginika Ramsawak
She went into her grandmother's garden
And learned the names of the plants
Science starts with the tiny things
And she was a tiny thing
Tiny enough to follow our ancestors down
Squeezing through caves, one arm in front and one arm behind
Tiny enough to go where others had been
And others could not follow
Science starts with the tiny things
Holding fragments of bone in hand
That in time are built
Into the whole of our ancestors bodies.
Science starts with the tiny things
And ends with a handful of wonder.
With inspiration from https://youtu.be/AR7QHkUGrFY
#33 Thousandth Poem To My Home
A thousand days
A thousand more
My every path
Leads to your door
Familiar, beloved
Safe, and more--
The only home that keeps me.
I roamed unwilling
In times before
Each night laid down
On a different floor
Moving life from drawer to drawer
Looking for
A home that’s sure--
The only home that keeps me.
I speak of how
It was before
How it still is
For many more:
Bereft, bewildered, lost, heartsore
It cannot stand
Nor be ignored
Should be a right
On every shore
A home to suit each heart’s need.
***
#34
How do you write a poem in a hotel room?
The very idea is ridiculous.
Personality is meant to slide off these spaces
They are as unlike the inside of me as possible
And what’s a poem if not wearing the inside on the outside?
A sushi picnic on the bed,
Drinking from a water bottle,
Watching videos, that’s no poem.
It’s a space cut apart from the rest of my life
And my life is my source of all things.
This hotel is halfway a behavioural study:
Can the animal learn to talk?
Can it learn sign language?
Does it even realize we’re trying to teach it
To act like a part of our society?
After all, it sleeps here.
Walking through lilac and pin-cherry-scented streets earlier
Drums reverberating from the hospital for blocks around
And the beginnings of blisters heating the bottom of my feet,
That was a poem. That was no hotel room.
No laptop.
Now there’s a laptop
And no words.
The idea of words is ridiculous.
#35 Crazy Dog Lady
The more cynical among us say marriage started as a trade
Services rendered for services rendered
I never saw all parties honour the bargain
And it didn’t seem like much of a bargain
When you showed up it started as a trade
Services rendered for services rendered
How was I to know differently?
I’d never seen it done.
You would give your life for me
Services rendered for services rendered
I fed you and noticed you from time to time
It hardly seemed a fair deal
What happened is that you never left me
Services rendered for services rendered
Steadfastness is the scarcest service
Obligation felt even more asymmetric
Until I realized I change my life for you
Services rendered for services rendered
Chose a home, chose work, chose leisure, chose you,
Chose a life to make you happy
You have my back but I also have yours
Services rendered for services rendered
And when someday we two lie our heads down at last
We will have given our lives to each other.
(For Avallu and Thea)
#36 “Good, and you?”
I think I’m happy
Sometimes
It’s hard to tell
The well is acting up
The deck needs repair
Four goslings died yesterday
Eaten by ravens
And their death would not have been a good one.
Still, I planted my garden today
My feet are dirty
I sit in a cool room
And can go out into the bright sunlight if I choose.
I can think of people fondly
Move furniture
Pet an affectionate cat
And some afternoons I find myself singing.
#37
You wrote me a poem in high school
Scribbled lines on a scrap of paper
Thumbtacked to my wall for so many years
And now boxed away.
Years later you said it was stupid
And the sex was boring
But I’ll always remember you helping earthworms off the sidewalk in the rain
So they wouldn’t be stepped on.
***
#38
What happened to those days when we talked until first light
Lying in bed, thrumming, fireplace cold,
Hearts warm, bodies full?
Every difference was a wonder
A new room to explore in an endless castle
Where we ran through every doorway we could see.
That time is long gone now but you seem to be happy
And I open my own doors in solitude.
***
#39
A copper penny. A good luck penny.
Luck for me, maybe not for you.
We found our gods together. For awhile
You were my god, or rather
You wore him with enough restraint that i was safe.
Safe.
Even at the end I was safe.
Even in the middle I was safe.
I have no way of telling you–
Your eyes were quiet and they saw me
And I was loved. And safe.
You loved me even in my full power.
I grew new leaves and new roots,
Nourished as I was in the clear quiet water of your regard.
I loved and was loved.
I love, still, and maybe that’s a forever thing.
It’s not just your kindness.
It’s not just the way the sun played in your hair
Or how you carried gods on your shoulders.
It was just you.
It’s just you.
#40 Evidence-based
Rape the rapists
Beat the abusers
Kill the killers
Bankrupt the capitalists
Put the drunk drivers in a car and roll it off a cliff
Poison the polluters
Cut the loggers in half
And drop the landlords in antarctica to die of exposure
An eye for an eye is an honourable tradition
If practiced with sufficient vigor
It will work to create peace
Eventually.
***
#41 Ginika Ramsawak
She went into her grandmother's garden
And learned the names of the plants
Science starts with the tiny things
And she was a tiny thing
Tiny enough to follow our ancestors down
Squeezing through caves, one arm in front and one arm behind
Tiny enough to go where others had been
And others could not follow
Science starts with the tiny things
Holding fragments of bone in hand
That in time are built
Into the whole of our ancestors bodies.
Science starts with the tiny things
And ends with a handful of wonder.
With inspiration from https://youtu.be/AR7QHkUGrFY