24 Poems ~ 24 Hours
I care
She passed on this day
Thirty-six years ago
I will remind no one
Only I seem to care
She let go on purpose
Testing them forever
Perhaps this time will work
Only I seem to care
Buried in a silver can
Their grief withheld
Maybe later they will sob
Only I seem to care
I wanted you to know
As a witness to my loss
And to tell her once more
Only I seem to care
Dogs like pink
Dogs like pink he tells me
After sixty-nine hard years
With several dogs I never knew this
He is young at seven
We hardly know each other
Three days will be a short visit
I work to join him in play
Making memories for our sake
Wait, Grandma, watch this
He taps the screen
Building his Minecraft world
Not understanding I smile
Daddy is allergic to cats
He begins to confide
Smiling as he looks up
From his blocky construction
Will I see this child married
Having his own babes
Who know things he will not
Asking him why
Poem 24
Son
He is his father’s son
I look at him so many times
Stealing glances
And it always makes me smile
He might not always know it but he is his father’s son
His walk, his lips, his mannerisms, his tastes
But he is also an image all his own
that I can attest
He is the best of us
The happiest of our experiences
This son of mine
A treasure to behold
And he doesn’t even know how much he’s worth
This son of mine — his father’s son indeed.
6:35 Am
Eyes blurring
Limbs hurting
Mind fuzzy
Brain drifting
Will power
…. fading
Maybe I should give in
And let sleep in
Stuck, trapped, gasping for breath,
Slave to a system waiting for death,
Alone in this life everyone’s the same,
Wasting the years for someone else’s name.
Forty hours a week until you drop dead,
Destroys the imaginations inside your head,
Born a worker bee forever enslaved,
Barely a tear shed at your grave.
Fall for the line that this is your life,
You chose the story, you chose the wife,
The lies that surround us keep us in line,
An obeying servant by natural design.
But your mind is free, let it wonder at night,
Escape the prison when out goes the light,
Push your head above water or else you’ll drown,
And don’t let the bastards grind you down.
Unique word count – 95
Write a poem about someone or something you miss. The fact that you miss this person or thing can be mentioned in the poem or it can be left out.
Grandmother
By Patricia Harris
The stories you told
Grew imagination.
Love came
Unconditionally.
My mind focuses on the
Moments spent
Learning to read
Learning more about
Life’s stories.
In the night,
I wonder if all my stories
Will come together
To be your pride
In what you left behind.
Bleary eyed I sit a-typing
plagued as every writer before me
has been with the writing
sitting up when sleep beckons
in her ghostly form
her sweet smile curves upward
and I am reminded of the cool
relief of her embrace and how
it feels to sink into
the mistiness of her fragrant form
to refill the need
of the mind
to seek the land
where stories are born
deep in our dreams
we swim the ether and course the waves
to wake in the warm sand of morning
the sun shining in our eyes
the keyboard at hand once again
the stories
the words
pouring forth
fresh baked from that special place
I need to go
As lady sleep is calling calling
I find myself faling falling
In the morning the words will come again
The words sitting in my head
All waiting to pour themselves out
As though they write themselves
Hold me now, sweet lady
I am ready for slumber
no more will I linger in the world
of the real
sweet lady calls me
willing I go
Fracturing of the mind
Oh how poetic
Mass of chaos
Blowing in the breeze
Seems like everything is lost
So much pressure to endure
Out of touch with time
Need to break free
Fly away in pieces
“Every peak is a crater. This is the law of volcanoes, making them eternally and visibly female.” – Adrienne Rich
for every
emotion to hit its peak
it is
required to first be a
valley a moon’s crater
to achieve this
we must travel to the depths where it is
the frigid cold like the
underside of the pillow the law
of progress the reality of
sleeping amongst volcanoes
we are tired heroes in the making
trudging the depths of them
the valleys chiseled in the face of the moon eternally
reliably and
without question our progress is visibly
goddess warrior female
“No one who survives to speak new language, has avoided this: the cutting away of an old force that held her rooted to an old ground / the pitch of utter loneliness…” – Adrienne Rich
if i always knew how to say no
i wouldn’t always have to be the one
the lonely one who
survives
if we work together to
learn to speak
our worlds would be new
this crafting of a new language
that a survivor has
when denial of reality can’t be avoided
the pain this
utter maw of pain the
darkness cutting
through stripping away
the truth of
our experience an
eternal longing these old
wounds have this force
to be understood that
propels us to be held
by a greater Her
a god if you will that is rooted
like a mighty tree to
all that is right and true an
ache that is worn down old
grooves permeating the ground
of our spirit the
axis of a universe that will sway and pitch
to deliver us safely and free of
doubt the utter
truth of a woman’s loneliness