24 Poems ~ 24 Hours
If I could make the clock unwind
If I could rewrite the story
the circumstances
Everything that’s happened
You’d be here
I would do so much different
I would spend more time with you
less with what didn’t matter
I’d treat you
like the queen you were
instead of the hag
I pretended you
to be
If only I could make the clock unwind
but that’s what makes regrets so bitter
Some nights it is present in blue-black night.
Other times, it cannot be found.
I search for the Big and Little Dippers,
but the haziness of smog and cloud
leave it hidden.
For me the season I prefer
depends upon the sun
a gentle calm awakening
a nurturing, as one.
The seasons of a flower
wander through the year
but underneath a pattern
in geometry, a sphere.
Flowers, blooming flowers!
Grown from buds too small to see
So tightly wound, then opening!
Gently folding free.
With an envy ( hard to reduce) she looked at mums who rare,
but at least touched their kids with a smile or stroke hair.
She asked teacher once: “May I borrow a book somehow?”
A rhetorical question. Asked in vain in sum…
Field work urges, harvest demands extra hand,
year by year peasant is chained with a land.
At age of twelve she suppressed her calling for education
and submitted to mediocrity and self-degradation.
I’m sanitising the sideboard where I lay my paper down
I’m bleaching the steps at the front and back doors
I’ve got bottles of disinfectant ready for murder, if I must
I’m keeping a squeaky clean house because it’s the Season of the Cane Toad
I take my dog’s temperature each time it comes indoors from playing
Just in case, I run random blood tests on the cats in the neighbourhood
They’re quite put out but who takes much notice of a whining cat?
Only dogs who aren’t too tired to chase.
It’s their refusal to back down, sitting there
with that hang dog expression upon their already thinned lips that shits me
Bloated, up to a ruler length, they swarm the fields, the streets, the outsides of chip-shops
and pizza-joints, the back exits of hospitals, the exhaust-pipes of trucks.
Never seen a cane toad in a cane field yet.
No matter how hard I try to keep the place clean, another one will pop up,
usually in a shady corner I’ve forgotten or missed.
The pacifist in me disappears and I am hell bent on their destruction.
Where do they go off season?
Do they all vacation at another location?
Were they just temporarily camouflaged, or were they being
Rendered by some invisible string theory?
It’s been a long toad season,
And the poison is an ever bitter bite to taste
Thought they would go when the rains failed
But they stayed, and grew fatter in secret.
Recently I’ve seen reports on the news
that every country now has toads
Foreign travel has been banned
But I’m not sure whether it’s for them or us?
People met by destiny
To create their own fantasy
My fate conspired me to meet
Bring sweet melodies in my beat
I submerged and soaked in you
With amiable feeling and memory’s crew
We created a mark of our love
Upon a tree, where living a dove
No matter how old are we
We lavish fondness as I like to be
Ages passed and centuries will come
One day our faces would be hidden in a slum
When someone looks at the tree
Feel the wings of love are always free
“Something is a-foul
at the downtown waterfront!
I tell you, no word of a lie!
The geese are lined up in families!”
she says. with a sorrowful sigh!
“Geese are lying from shore to shore
and,
Swans from pier to pier!
I wonder if I will ever see
the beach again this year?”
With a warning “Honk!” and
an offensive “Hiss” from its beak,
Let me tell you, foul communication is NOT
for the very meek!”
I love the regal beauty of bird
and their calls from distances away-
But, can I now ask you…What is making them stay?
A little less bird and a bit more beach
would satisfy me lots,
As opposed to this, The Season of Birds tying my stomach in knots!
Poem By Ingrid Exner, Poetry Half Marathon 2020
Here they come
chatting and gawking
touching and sniffing
pulling and binding
Next thing you know I’ll be in a pretentious basket
on display at some forced farmers market stand
naked and twisted
next to the purple basil
flowers still intact
silently screaming
Oh, the life of an “exotic” plant
Will it be the blades of your dull knife
or the char of your fancy grill that spells my demise?
Or will I just be forgotten in the bottom of your crisper
Another victim of on-trend seasonal shopping
When will my 15 minutes be over?
Please, I implore you, just go back
to your avocado toast
Season of the Silence
I hear the silence
of the fans
in the parks
in the arenas
in the stadiums.
I hear the silence
of the owners
and the athletes
as they weigh
their options.
I hear the silence
of the season
that begins late
and finishes early—
the televised season.
I hear the silence
of the virus assessing
the behaviors of the fans
and the owners
and the athletes.
I never realized there was a term for my lifestyle
Guess they call it ‘social distancing’
I call it normalcy
Not that I’m misanthropic, I just don’t like people much
Especially when they congregate in large groups
Individually they’re ok I guess
But once there’s more than two or three I tend to look for some way to escape
Give me a backpack and a lonely peak
A desert
A barren wasteland
A deserted beach
The joyous cacophony of morning birds
Howl of wolves
Bark of coyotes
Rustle of leaves through trees
Scent of evergreen
Pristine mountain streams with water so cold it stings when you splash it on your face
The open ocean stretching to meet the sky at the horizon
Keep your parties, bars and festivals
Your silly groupthink premanufactured dreams
Your trends, fashions and popular fads
Your pandering and posturing
Apparently it’s the new normal
But it’s the old normal
Just with more masks,
More suspicion and paranoia
And extra hand washing
Don’t tell me to stay inside,
But I’m happy to stay 6 feet away and not shake hands
Happy to keep to myself and not deal with traffic
Or wait 5 minutes in line
Limited access to supplies can be a pain
But social distancing is just fine