Hour three Once I Was a Home

03 2017 poetry marathon prompt: photo of derelict building in high desert, snow and tumbleweeds.

Once I Was a Home
by Paul Robert Sanford

I’m not from around here.
All there is to build with here is sandy dirt and scrub brush.
Every board and nail and roll of tar paper had to be trucked in
so I could stand out in the sere landscape,
a monument to civilization and comfort.

I know who lived here.
They had coffee in the morning and sometimes raised their eyes to gaze at the mountains.
Not a lot to do here but mountain gazing and walks under the open sky.
That’s okay. I was shelter for a quiet life.

Not that there wasn’t always something to putter around and take care of.
The fine grit swept in with the wind and on shoes and had to be swept out.
Wind blew the tar paper loose and it had to be tacked back in place.
The roof was too flat to shed all the snow, and once in a few years needed to be shoveled off.

Eventually the last house before the miles before the mountains
is a hard place to live in,
especially when you are alone and older.
The winters seem colder,
and the garbage molders before being carted out.
the place gets a lived in feel, surrounded by half mended projects,
windows begin to stick open or shut,
coffee doesn’t satisfy as well.

I remember an illness, an injury, a time laid up in bed,
when anxious kin folks rolled up on off road vehicles,
notified by the local storekeeper that it had been a long time since.
Arguments, sulking, demands and refusals.
Cycles of negotiations and calm followed by alarms and visits.

Sooner or later a person lacks the strength to keep the place up.
Sooner of later a person lacks the strength to argue or fight back.
The lowlanders win and I am empty and alone.

My only visitors stay long enough to bust out windows and throw trash about.
Soon enough I offer very little shelter beyond a bit of shade,
perhaps a windbreak if the wind comes from the right direction.

Once I was a home, but that time is forgotten now.
If it weren’t so much trouble, the lowlanders would probably tear me down.
Don’t worry, give me enough years and I will fall.
I don’t want to return where I came from.
I am home to stay.

Poem 3

I’ll shag you in the next life
When I am not me but the person you shag
And you and you
We are one
But our escapades take us abroad
Into threatening definitives
Like Westerns through the ravine
Or non-westerners through the west
But
Satisfied in the good grace of a shadow
Some of the lust safely offloaded to a deduced wormhole
All textural imagining true
Porthole
Under the rhythmic bridge
Beneath the coffee plant
But mass is harder
Clear passionate
Cope, glad
Care for the crying, incommunicative baby of your mind
Try shifting,
Try fresh air
And bring down the curtains
And make common the means
Make your stakeholder trust grow
Shrink out the vast state of ramrods and respect
The tomfoolery of the self declared king
Shrink out those who make a sport of your lives
Kick them out of their deckchairs, their box
Their sallow oblivious nihilist eyes
And we will have a safe life
Not without challenge
Not without graft, I expect
In the spinning seasons
But not our own worst enemy any more
We are sick, and mercy, we can be saved
For many many many
For the rapture of admitting reality
In its dizzying pain
Its versimilitude
Grip
If not you, who else
If not now, what lemon

My Solace

 

My solace

Is where I hear no cry

And when my heart

Speaks to the mind

 

For, things done

And the things undone

The heart, which is barren

And lost all hope

 

You can start afresh

Says the mind

This time, do as you fancy

For you can please none, but yourself

 

 

 

3 “NEVER LET AN OLD FLAME BURNT YOU TWICE”

A good reminder, yeah

To those who have been heartbroken twice, thrice

I’ve had my share of these old flames’ return

And oh boy!

Was I not been burnt but engulfed in flames!

You believed them, the second time, and again,

burnt you again

Whatever for?

Why did you let  them enter your gullible heart again?

Say those titillating words (again) and again

Why entertain them again for what they did to you

the first time?

I am at a loss for words

I’m gullible, trusting, lovesick, a romantic person

I cannot, for the life of me, give reasons for the

whys, whats, whens, and whatevers

I believe that when they come back –

it’s destiny, we’re fated, the Divine intervened!

But who am I kidding?

If they did it the first time, why not a second

or a third?

Yet I’m not a lost cause.

I am aware of the heartaches, of the pains, aches

and unhappiness

Please bear with me

I am learning, and learning, and learning

Just bear with me

I can look at the ashes more clearly now.

Never, really never

(Ashes blown away by the wind…good riddance)

 

Broken Windows

Silence.
Finally.
 
I am open now, and empty
desolate, desiccated
and free from the meat bags.
 
It took them long enough
despite the hunger
the heat and the thunder.
 
Cold now,
freezing and blistery
I don’t have to worry about burning up inside.
 
There’s no more rage in here,
no more sadness and
no more laughter.
 
Peaceful.
Simple.
 
I certainly intend to continue
dragging the wind and
collecting the wets.
 
There’s coyotes in here
their cackle brutal;
you can smell the thrill of the hunt.
 
Scampering occasionally
I really don’t mind
it’s not constant.
 
I’ve been here for decades
but what does that even mean
to an old house.
 
I just wish I could see
those mountains.

A battered life

I stand in resistance 

to the forces that would change me.

Taking blows from all sides,

my weathering shows.

I am dwarfed by the mountains

that surround my fractured soul.

Peeking out from dispair

trying to fill the hollow.

Beauty in the eyes of some

though they can see I’m weary.

The blustering wind is my company

through the tormented years.

A change is coming

now that you see me.

I have captured your eye

and I’m yours for the saving.

I am sturdy and strong

with room inside for love.

Let’s begin the healing

a gift has spared me.

Three- Weathered

Sometimes I feel

Old

Weathered

An empty house on a desert floor

Looking to mountains for answers

The wind for escape

To sky for purpose

To clouds for a cleansing rain

 

Paint peeling

Windows broken

Walls crumbling

My soul visible

Exposed

Perhaps once I was someone’s dream

Someone’s home

Someone’s purpose

But now I am weathered

Beaten by elements beyond my control

Abandoned

Forgotten

Sand blasted by life

Still standing

On a weak foundation

Frail and fragile

But strong in who I am

Proud of what I once was

 

Hour 3: hanging the lights

hanging the lights

shivering in the snow
I hold one end
of a long string of
multi-colored lights
a queue of gems
they reach from me
to my brother
standing on the ladder

the cold doesn’t
seem to bother him
nor the height
nor the precariousness
as he reaches out
along the eves
and hooks the lights
on timeworn nails

he likes the doing of it
the job, the task
but seems not to care
for the result
I like the effect
of the house lit up
cheery
on a cold winter’s night

together
the laborer and the poet
we construct
a Christmas vision

wishing for buoyancy

at the edge of the sea

where the relentless surf

pounds the earth into

submissive sand

 

we sit

 

staring out at seabirds

banking in the gusts

lost

in the sudden whoosh

and hush thereafter

 

the tang of salt

that makes our eye muscles

read this.

 

wishing for buoyancy

 

wishing to lose my perspective

in the gargantuan sea

 

wishing to hear the thought train

of Neptune or Gaia

murmuring sweet somethings.

 

You

8/5/2017 8:20am
You

You told me that we were made of the same matter as stars
and wove me a blanket made of constellations that I wore
when my nights were vacant and unending.
You tilted the sky upside down so that we could gaze into ourselves;
My mirror; my supernova
Exploding into and out of this life.

Your ashes in the ink of my spine were made of the same matter as stars
but too gritty,
Abrasive and smoke scented.
A black hole of “what-if’s” and staying at your sister’s house in paradise.
Her smile is just like yours;
A gravitational pull of comfort and logic,
Except that hers is always asking,
“Why you?”