24 Poems ~ 24 Hours
Usually I eat alone
sometimes I write notes
sometimes I read
sometimes I do nothing
observe other diners
polite to the server
do not leave large tip
even though I used to be a waitress.
for nine year I toiled in a restaurant
Howard Johnson’s on East forty-second Street,
I was in a union,
once was the shop steward.
Tonight I toil over words,
the poet as a young waitress.
the old woman as a young poet.
I forget why I do this
just a diner in in the city.
![nighthawks-artist_Edward-Hopper[1]](https://thepoetrymarathon.com/wp-content/uploads/nighthawks-artist_Edward-Hopper1-300x166.jpg)
Foxes are sly
they move fast
Black bear black bear
come follow me
I have something for you to see
Bring your little friend
her sweetness will help
together we will work
to clean this mess
tagging of all the walls
In this city
as you can see
symbolizes future problems
we must not flee
so let’s work together
and clean it up
in unity
How we do it does not matter
The bear will be loud and bold
A young girl looking so sweet by his side
The Fox Moving quietly
The people will not see that we can divide this world
In reality
A Special Place
There is a place where dreams can all be found;
Hope and despair both dwell within its walls.
Enduring fear screams loud without a sound,
Love is alive inside its magic halls,
In fact, in here, the world’s not always round.
Brave heroes can be found here by the score
Race cars and rocket-ships are all here too
And visiting is free, through open doors,
Reading is encouraged – that’s one clue –
You could just read the letters down for more.
A corner
Beside a wall
Beneath the trees
Greenest corner
Behind the rose shrubs
And lily patch
A green iron bench
Young couples
In a secluded midnoon
Schoolboys bunking
The old gentleman
No one talks to at home
A broken hearted woman
A phone call
The stories this bench knows
Are a secret anthology.
It isn’t the number of people that determines the number of refrigerators,
It’s the number of households,
Or, to put it another way,
The number of Moms.
One mom can set up the rules for a single refrigerator for the clan,
but that requires discipline and order.
Kristen needs to fill every available space in a refrigerator,
Which makes it hard to share to start with,
and a teenager adds a wild card.
Jasmine’s hobby of throwing out all her fresh vegetables when a few were tainted was spin,
and the day somebody threw George’s food in the trash
because, presumably, it looked old and unfamiliar,
showed you need empty space, margins, if the food is not there for everyone.
The microwave is a hoot.
Paul puts things in to heat and forgets them,
Others come down and find tepid water
in a ding ding dinging unit
While Paul sits unperturvbed and unheading
typing at the kitchen trable.
The six inches of counterspace in front of the microwave
is hotly contested for use because it is also on the path from refrigerator to stove.
Put something here and you can’t open the micro.
But we managed pretty well, considering.
The sink is a mystery.
Paul, drought conscious,
stands by helplessly as people rinse and rinse and rinse and clean water goes down the drain.
Paul, who saves his bath water for flushing and watering,
When the dishpan was full of hot soapy water, dishes got washed and stacked into a magic mountain on the drying rack,
Precariously growing as one oddball thingus after another took up permanent residence.
Otherwise dishes could stack up
and were washed by pouring detergent directly on them,
requiring more water to rinse escape down the drain and into the sewers.
Kristen’s mojo requires washing the dishes clean,
arranging them in the dishwasher and washing them again.
“The spirit of her Austrian mother haunts her and drives her in this.
Much could be told of the trash,
the separation into compost, recycle, and garbage,
and the need to keep tasty treats out of the garbage and into a smaller can with a lid.
Dogs otherwise unexpectedly emptied the garbage and spread it around the downstairs,
on an intermittent reinforcement schedule,
Which basically means without warning.
The stove was home to serious but unscheduled cooking of viands of all kinds of smells.
The smell of cookincooker has no pilot light,
g goes right up the stairs to the second floor,ccwhich is either homey or something else, depending on your taste.
Somebody left the electric sparker on and burned it out, so one burner has not pilot light,
a risk you assume when you have humans and teenagers in the home.
We didn’t know anybody felt crowded out until we reduced the population from six to four and George started cooking every day.
All in all, schedules matched and mismatched so that there was little competition for kitchen time,
Remarkable in itself,
although the day the adult tried to retrain the teenager in how to boil an egg was hard to refrain from comment.
If time allows, we shold think of the island,
a generous sweep of granite topped counterspace
which form time to time had so much fruit and veggies and such piled on it that it was a home for fruit flies.
but its highest and best use was for the buffets Kristen stocked
whenever we had comedy shoes on the stage,
which was, in essence, at the other end of the large room
which contaiThned the kitchen with no intervening walls.
The home was chosen for its capacity for home shows, but that would be stretching the kitchen metphorically and literally to examine those in depth.
Cabinet space seems plentiful, but again when there are four each bottles of olive oil, soy sauce, vinegar, and what not, the need for cupboards is infinite.li
Stashed below the counters were pots and pans of many and varied sizes, that nobody clearly remembered ownership and orgin, and that caused no problem at all, if memory serves.
OVerhead was a large flourescent light which was bright enough that nobody noticed that it was dark on the counters under the cupboard, except Paul, who used to do lights in theater and was always crazed about shadows and bright spots.
Of course all the available couner space was cluttered with not only the microwave but toaster, juicer, a holder for the big knives, big spoons, and all the things we take for granted in a modern kitchen, which grew there organically as the countertop gave birth to them one by one.
Paul had wisely left it to Jazz and Kristen to negotiate the kitchen, being the two moms of the household,
so dishtowels and the silverware drawer and garbage liners simply were wherever they belonged and maintained themselves by some mystery of ecology never revealed.
there are three bathrooms in that house, with four people sharing one of them, a man and a family of three women,so it is magical that there were no wars, but that is not our subject today,
Nor the garage crammed with items not yet unpacked from moving three years ago.
Nobody starved, sometimes food was shared and there was takeout, so the kitchen was interesting but not an epic feature.
What is dust? Is it something I know? Is it a thing or an it or a no?
How do I get it? Where is it found?
Why do we have it and where is it bound?
Take it away it do creeps me out, put it, hide it, don’t leave it about.
Take it with you when you leave, don’t bring it back, I have plenty, I won’t ever lack
Scorching dust drifts across blacktop
Shimmering mirages just out of reach,
Slipping closer to the horizon each passing mile
Desert heat searing nostrils,
Sweat drips from nose, sizzling on pavement below
They call 50 “The Loneliest Highway in America”
A straight shot across barren nothingness
Sagebrush and distant mountain peaks gilded white
A lone vulture seeking roadkill screeches,
Shattering high desert silence
Chastising solitary traveler for disrupting serenity
Stretch lazily in the oven-like breeze
A quick pee
Then back to chasing mirages, full speed headed west
As vulture bids a not-so-fond farewell
Deep booms shake the Earth
as trains belch out smoke
formed as a result of their undigested
coal lunches.
Clanking and screeching of
metal dragged against metal
blending into the cacophony of sound
erupting from every corner.
Elbowing, stomping and kicking.
Frantic agitated people
raged inside until,
deep booms shake the Earth.
the swing
somewhere near
my childhood
a swing hangs
from the branch
of an old tree
which leans
over the edge
of a cliff
often filled
with mist
an ancient house
hides nearby
only a few
family members
know of this
tree’s odd power
to transform
simple oscillation
into time travel
& space flight
