24 Poems ~ 24 Hours
He saw water wherever he looked. Yet his throat was parched, his head was spinning, his bare feet smarting against the and as he walked- to life, or to death?
Not a mere mirage
Sweet cool water, cool palm shade
Paradise at last
Versatile giant, the elephant in the room,
Piano in my head, my sensuous corner,
Improvising tunes on patterns of black and white,
Nothing memorable but the lovely mellow tones,
Rippling arpeggios, majestic chords like cathedral chimes.
Such a slow-passing long time since I played her.
Remembering why I need her and why she’s mine.
Her sound my soul in song
Singing lullabies, carols, hymns, arias
Pink glow of satisfaction, release, healing, peace.
Making life whole, my sensuous fulfillment.
On the move
Not able to settle
But will write any way.
A little here
A little there
Hope to make it
To the finish.
copyright 2016 Roxann A Harvey
She held on
Waiting for retribution,
While the minutes hours days
Grew
Around her a wall of fortitude,
A labyrinth, so complex,
Until there could be no restitution,
Her softness locked away,
Hidden,
Unyielding to any man who encountered,
Her stolen gaze (his) reminder,
Of the pain she never escaped.
One boy, one special boy,
She peers at me over her coffee cup with a cheerful but cautious sense of evaluating some livestock not in its prime but available at a good price.
Her wrinkles and fit frame, my unlined face over soft bulging tummy and under bald pate.
The memory tunes begin to roll though us.
One boy, one special boy, one boy to be with forever and ever, or at least what is left of it.
Put that ring around your neck, tell the world you’re mine by heck.
High on a far and windy hill, two lovers meet and their hearts stand still.
All that crap we scarfed up in Jr. Hi in the pop music of the day,
the mantra of the love paradigm of the time
then we rollicked through the crucible of the Sixties,
sex, drugs, rock and roll,
no rules no limits
sleep with a stranger!
Now we are old, and we meet, older and wiser, the margin for error thinning as the coming shadows of old age draw near.
We have no time to goof around, and we revert to our childhood monagamy, sizing up each casual encounter as a potential lifetime pard, a person we may push in a wheelchair and clean their diapers, and pretty dang soon.
Do we put a ring around our finger or our neck that will capture us and make us captive to someone who only has a few good years left?
And the women are all fit and financially secure, doing hot yoga and marching up forest paths while I recover from divorce and disability vague diseases.
How sexy is diabetes, vertigo, bipolar disorder, erectile dysfunction?
I still know where a clitoris is and what to do with it to give joyful pleasure, but my adversary in this game is too smart for me, and passionate desires of the flesh are under control, cannot be used to further my case.
One is the loneliest number you can ever do.
Get used to it.
I was somehow afraid
That I’d blow their minds,
(Wide, WIDE!)
And they’d never recover,
If I let them see.
So I hid favorite parts of myself,
Masking truth to keep them comfortable
In what they thought they knew,
All the while, knowing I was selling myself out
By hiding my tattoos.
I stood before Darkness
As a light from God.
The God everyone knows.
Yes, that God.
I stood there,
A talkative child
Eager to share
His love.
But Darkness was empty.
A bush full of thorns
And thoughts of evil things.
Yes, Darkness is as Darkness does.
We lay now
Where we once stood,
Firmly, grounded,
The pride of our birthright
Draped upon us like a cape,
Where we, Earth-bound,
Flightless beings,
Desirous of glory,
Waved our banners,
Over every conquered land of our brethren,
As if they were badges of honor,
Erecting the fallacies of man
Over the blood-soaked soil
Of our ancestors.
Where now, layers of concrete, buildings,
Noisy traffic, technology, and paved streets,
Can numb us from our past transgressions,
As we continue the onslaught.
We no longer hear the groans
Of the souls before us.
The screams from the great womb of mother Gaia
as she is defiled.
We don’t remember
Until we are laid to rest
Beside fallen warriors,
Buried, forgotten,
Under our vanities
Where we can no longer escape their cries.
Laughter of children
Wave after wave
It heightens and fades
And begins again
The merry- go- round
Turning faster and faster
A world of imagination
As one dreams of space travel
Adventures abound with every visit
And each piece of equipment
Monkey bars transform
Becoming whatever will best suit the scenario
The swings- the swings were my favorite
I loved to start from still
And pump my legs to create the movement
The pace quickened, and I would fly
Back to my free form pseudo poetry for now. This describes an event that happened a few days ago, when I was on the train to London from Edinburgh.
I am usually not a fan of children while travelling
They are perfectly cute when at home
But while on the road
They scream and shout and whine and cry
Worst of all though
Are the cellphones and the Ipads and the computer games
Beeping with Candy Crush and Temple Run and god knows what the next fad is
To be honest, it is not just the kids
But it is the kids I pity
The kids who miss out on so much
The joy of the outdoors, of board games and books
With a mix of pity and irritation
I sat across a family of four
A four hour journey from Edinburgh to London
Armed with Advil and a lot of grit
Waiting for those contraptions to come out
And the beeping and bickering to start
Yet, to my surprise,
The only clinks I heard were those of Connect 4 tokens
And the pop up wooden chessboard
Was the closest thing to a contraption
And instead of burying his head in phone texts
The boy wrote his sister a letter
I won’t lie
They screamed and fought all the same
But these children gave me something more
For in them, I saw my own childhood