24 Poems ~ 24 Hours
The ceiling fan hums as it stirs the air.
The carpet soft to my bare feet,
The linoleum cool, where my toes meet.
The sunlight brightens the room,
Giving hint of the warm day.
The cats are snuggled together,
Resting from play.
Poem 3
In this empty house
that I call home
I am often unaccompanied
but never alone,
for these walls have helped raise me
and console me in sorrow.
How could I feel alone
when there’s no loneliness here?
-h.e.m.
For as beautiful as it is outside
On this first full day of Summertime
It is amazing how cold my feet are
In the cool, damp grass
Especially on that one side of the house that gets little sunlight
I feel more alive now than I did
Before I chose to walk barefoot
Around the house
While the chill is appreciated
In the heat of the afternoon
It isn’t necessarily enjoyed so early
For now I’m actually shivering
Although to be walking barefoot
Summertime cold feet
Is still a gift
Which is prayed for
Much of the year
(Book 99 #19239)
Be it, that there are never any
Endings in my life,
Give me a new beginning.
In the beginning it’s not easy,
Not without confusion,
Not without frustration and pain.
In not being sure in anyway,
Not knowing what to do or say,
Giving gratefulness for each day.
Still, I’ll except new beginnings as a new experience…
C. Burgess (c)
She came to me
While I was sleep
Beneath my pillow
Her hand reached
Out she pulled
Two small teeth
And replaced each one
With a new penny
.
Left it all behind there.
All that sand from my shoes. All shaken off.
All that salt from my hair. From my eyes, too.
Nothing stuck as I shouted it all away.
Yelled at it, but quietly, you know, inside.
Sounded like nothing worked. Nothing did.
It died unassisted. After all I did to revive it.
Even the pain went away by itself. Overnight.
No longer mine. We disowned each other.
It used to embrace me, it was my old mother.
It was a warm facelessness, a punched cushion.
I didn’t have to make it up. Scattered feathers.
I have proof. I told everybody so.
Everyone could see how well I carried it.
Left it all behind there.
Half my life gone. Strands of moaning rain.
I had gotten so used to it, the ordinariness of it.
The cold familiar arbitrariness of it.
I used to make coloured screen shots of it.
Long rectangles and graphs of explanatory text.
Now that it has flatlined, I wonder if I’ll miss it.
I am the girl that no one gets
The four-eyed freckled geek
I am the one with much to say
Though I’m too scared to speak
I am the girl who sits alone
The one the boys all overlook
I am the girl who spills her soul
Across the pages of a spiral book
I am the girl that no one wants
The one always picked last
I am the girl that’s left behind
The one who can’t escape her past
I am a little girl no more
I am a woman, forty-three
But the silent nerdy outcast child
Will always dwell inside of me
(The prompt was to start at least six lines of a poem with “I am…” for this challenge.)
She stands on the precipice
Unsure, excited
Stomach in knots
Not knowing where to go
Step back, back in the familiar
Step forward, forward into the unknown
Looking back, seeing all that has been
all that has been outgrown
Looking forward, seeing nothing
nothing but a dark fog
The unknown calls in a whisper
Potential, Hope
Bloom Within
She leaps into the fog
I don’t think it’s magic
that lined the stars
or the pages
that led me down
the yellow brick pages
i rode until clicked and dug
my heel
poked behind the curtain
and knew at once there was no going back
where I started vanished under the hat
as long as rabbit ears ago
no magic required
but feel free to bring it as your dish if you like
Me, I’m bringing sweet potato pie.
The Road Not Taken
Two ways life invite
Two choices always hang about
Which road not taken
(Haiku, hour 3 @Mejia2019)