24 Poems ~ 24 Hours
Afternoon Waltz
Slapping soaked rags to the floor
She lifts her Crocs and settles
She stretches across the kitchen
Waltzing the Blue Danube
Coffee stains disappear with ease
While sticky juice droplets
Require another pass or two
Until their cling is forever gone
Into the bucket she rinses
And slaps to continue gliding
Now The Waltz of the Flowers
She danced as a child
In time the rags are dark
The floor showing no signs
Of early morning breakfasts
She twirls for the applause
The time is, 2PM or, frankly, central time 12:00
My clock chimes on my laptop undisturbed
By my being.
I’m at brunch
With two delightful beings
Who would rather discuss the world
Than anything else
Be it, 2, or 12, or 9:00
In Tunisia they bake their bread in the sand
We would never
Something about zoning violations
Or even pettier
Just to avoid court letters
For 6, or 8, or any o’clock
Simple method though, this sand bread
Easy ingredients and large enough to fill
The mouths of many, so families
Can work and be healthy
And share bread at no demand of the clock
They skipped meals, I know they did
And they would send their kids to school without any bread
No, not the ones in Tunisia
The ones in Chicago
Pricey shoes but no food
And we could compare sand bread
Simple ingredients
But the same comparison still
No one would let you bake it here
No not here
And the families with kids who have shoes and no food
The system keeps it simple
Keeps it simple
Do one thing without the other and have the roof over your head
Let your child suffer a while and eventually you’ll all be fed
But just like sand bread
Those grains baked into the growing flour
Have to be beaten out
By knocks on doors and reality bruises
Something wonder bread kids live without
But do you know how many ingredients are in wonder bread?
The exact opposite of simple
And those kids spend the rest of their lives doing too much
Thinking they are getting ahead and exhausting every extreme
Never seeing the simple joys
Of flour, oil, and salt
A different sort of clock
The time it takes to bake the bread is the time it needs
No one lives within their means
And the systematic racism keeps the time from being
Anything but run down
Steam rises from summer sidewalk, fat droplets fall from humid air
evening rumbles with heat lightning and frogs rumble with mating calls.
August won’t ask for a raincoat, and July won’t keep still in a jar.
Frogs
Are caught
By children
And kept in jars
With luck, they return to the pond in evening
Their life spared adds new mystery next day
When children once more
Catch their frogs
Once more
Jars
The children worked and tilled the soil,
they had to do the work and toil,
they did the jobs and got the pay.
It wouldn’t always be that way.
Upon their eighteenth year on earth,
they had earned what they were worth.
It was then that they retired,
some other child would then be hired.
The adults they then were left to play,
do as they wished with friends all day.
When babies came the children got,
to teach them things that they’d been taught.
The adults drank cocktails by the pool,
there was no time for going to school.
The kids made sure their folks were fed,
never grumbled about going to bed.
After this single switch occurred,
little grumbling was ever heard.
The grown-ups knew they had it good,
the kids knew someday soon they would.
The previous rules had all been wrong,
keeping adults at work too long,
while they had longed to simply be
able to be wild and free.
The choice had come to try to see,
if all the youthful energy,
could help the world efficiently run,
while preserving most of life for fun.
After just one generation,
there was a real United Nation,
nobody cared or really knew about the “Great Switcheroo”,
It simply was the way things are.
Peace on earth had come that far!
dial it back
The dial rests in my hands –
all of time rests in my hands,
all
I
need
to do is
turn it
forward
or
back.
All of time rests in my hands.
Mine alone.
Only my time alters in this strange new world.
I have to choose where I go –
when I go –
forward
or back
but once.
Only one turn,
one use only.
All else in my world would be altered.
No going back.
Would I turn the dial to 17 or 18?
Would I try that world –
that life –
would I meet you at that age?
Just to see what that would be like?
Those years were bitter and cruel for me.
Would it be worth it?
Losing all I hold dear?
Would it be worth it?
Or would I spin forward
just enough that it wouldn’t matter to anyone but us,
leaving us to ourselves,
our life,
our lives?
I hold the dial in my hand,
truly bound at a crossroads so heavy
as to buckle me under the weight of its possibilities.
I crush it to powder
with the weight of possibility,
choosing not to make a choice as the safest way out.
It was the first time I had ever taken that path.
R. L. Elke
©Aug 5/17 prompt 13
The block party was beginning to wind down
The evening had long since drew down her curtains into the dark of night
the percussion of frog ribbits moved everyone to a relaxed beat
Steam rose from the remaining still-sizzling burgers and hot dogs on the grill
Fireflies were caught in jars poked lids, carried by the most careful of the children
Stories were shared by the oldest of neighbours. People who had long moved away or passed on to the hereafter were made present again
the ghosts shared a beer and toasted to living
The fireflies called out for help
The gnats came and tried their best
But it was the mosquitos who buzzed and bizzed in everyone's ears
That drew the night to a close
the fireflies were let go, one by one
by the sleepy eyed parent of each child
The grill was extinguished with the last of beer
The block celebrated another night, and the ghosts made their way home
(This isn't done by any chance, just really burned out now, will revise)
Staring at nothing,
lost in her own world
Misty-eyed, glazy
Indefatigable sorrow, unrelenting,
deafening
Silent sobbings
The eyes, the eyes, says it all.
Will there be no let-up?
Will it be a continuing restlessness?
It was half-expected, the excruciating pain,
Yet still she’s hurting.
Unsuspectingly the torrential tears, non-stop
Welcome or not, it’s the relief that’s due her
The outpouring of hurts, pains, aches
The free-flowing saline fluid, unburdening
Loosening the heaviness inside.
At that the dam abated
Just like when it started, unceremoniously
And with it, de-constriction.
A hiatus, albeit temporary,
A relief, a great sigh of relief…
Until the next onslaught…
evening comes as loneliness waits
wrapped in its raincoat – as fate doth fake
promises of youth purloined
amidst life’s mystery all sadness is born
elbowing in upon my gait – as if to say no longer can you wait, to find things that once were sought, attainable now but only as in thoughts. when night and loneliness loose their steam, you seek to dismiss it as yet another daytime LIVING dream
peculate’d or so it seems, visceral desires, safer when unseen
redolent of sweetness and touch
breaks the seal of a concrete jar encased in steel
Ghosts of crows
haunt the apple tree
in your back yard.
It was your backyard
when you were a child.
Now it’s no one’s.
Neither are you.