Blinds were drawn to keep
New furniture from fading
I faded instead
A 5-7-5 poem. Haiku
April 1, 2023
Tag: poems
March 7, 2023
Moonshadows
I will
Always find time
On leafless winter nights
Or hot and humid summer ones
To dance
A Cinquain poem.
December 6, 2022
ROCHAMBEAU
Slowing as the school bus in front of me arrives to a flock of parents and children on the sidewalk. As we come to a stop I wonder why the parents are present. This was not the way of my bus riding days. We were unsupervised flocks. No adults in our brood. Under watchful eyes, children embark, sliding into vinyl seats as parents wave to them from their concrete perches. Children wave back through smears and smudges. As the bus driver releases the brakes and turns off the flashing reds a dad in Adidas sweatpants plays rock-paper-scissors with his son through the smears and smudges. Through my own smudged windshield I see only one side of this game. Dad loses with the biggest smile. Maybe this is the reason why parents wait with their kids.
This is an example of a Prose Poem which acts like a poem but is in a format that looks like a paragraph and is created with sentences rather than lines. Confused?
December 4, 2022
Manah Manah (or Life in 6 Parts)
Unrequited
Sometimes I feel like I don’t have a partner
How I wish, how I wish you were here
Cause I’m in a field of dandelions wishing on every one that you’ll be mine, mine
I’m never alone, I’m alone all the time
It’s better to feel pain, than nothing at all,
the opposite of love’s indifference so pay attention now,
I’m standing on your porch screaming out
and I won’t leave until you come downstairs
Don’t tell me I lost a step, criss-crossed in the wrong direction,
found myself in a conversation from a missed connection
Been wondering for days how you felt me slip your mind
leave behind your wanton ways I want to learn to love in kind
All I need for you to admit
is that you never knew me like you thought you did
Your very first kiss was your first kiss good bye
The silence of a falling star lights up a purple sky
Angry
Fuck you I won’t do what you tell me
Even if I stuttered I would still sh-sh-shit on you
Made a beat and murdered it, Casey Anthony
I’m my brother’s keeper, every chance I can,
I pay my taxes like any working man,
and I feel I’ve earned my right to choose
you don’t get to play god man, I do
That’s a fine looking high horse
Buy you a bag of Fritos?
I wouldn’t let you eat the fucking chip on my shoulder
Joke, what a joke you made me
What’s a queen to a joker tell me?
Life is emotionally abusive
One day I’ll face the hell inside me
Growing
I knew that topless lady had something up her sleeve
I’m a little bit off today, cannot put my finger on it
Another sun sets behind me, another day comes crashing in
Me and my friends are like the drums on Lust for Life
String from your tether unwinds
‘Cause I’m not worried about your state of mind
‘Cause you’re not the revolutionary kind
I wish I had a river I could skate away on
It isn’t hard to leave knowing I’ll be getting life on track never looking back
And I don’t want a never-ending life, I just want to be alive while I’m here
You are so beautiful to me
Lessons
The past is beautiful like the darkness between fireflies
Every line on your face tells a story somebody knows
And scars are souvenirs you never lose, the past is never far
Oh but the wonders I have seen, I will see a second time from inside the ages through your eyes
Dick Gregory told me a couple secrets before he laid down in his grave,
all of us serve the same masters, all of us nothin’ but slaves,
never forget the story of Jesus, the hero was killed by the state
You’re not the boss of me now
Bitches love me because they know I can rock
I know I’m young, but if I had to choose her or the sun I’d be one nocturnal son of a gun
Life is what happens to you while you’re busy making other plans
Advice
All ya can do is do what you must
Oh Take your time don’t live too fast
You belong among the wildflowers
You’ve got to learn to leave the table, when love is no longer being served
Don’t shake the tree when the fruit ain’t ripe
Now Cinderella don’t you go to sleep, it’s such a bitter form of refuge,
Ah don’t you know the kingdom’s under siege, and everybody needs you?
Pretty, pretty please, if you ever, ever feel like you’re nothing, you’re fuckin’ perfect to me
Emancipate yourself from mental slavery, none but ourselves can free our minds
End
When life has ended and my time has run out,
my friends and my loved ones I’ll leave there’s no doubt,
but there’s one thing for certain when it comes my time,
I’ll leave this old world with a satisfied mind.
I’d trade all my tomorrows for one single yesterday
Close my eyes and I slip away
Goin’ up to the spirit in the sky
The Play List
Link to the Play List on You Tube
________________________________________
Title Song
Manah Manah – The Muppet Show (written by Piero Umiliani)
Unrequited
Under the Bridge – Red Hot Chili Peppers
Wish you were here – Pink Floyd (written by Roger Waters)
Dandelions – Ruth B
Glycerine – Bush
Stubborn Love – The Lumineers
Missed Connection – The Head and the Heart
The Wolf – Mumford & Sons
Brando – Lucy Dacus
You Give Love a Bad Name – Bon Jovi
I’m so lonesome I could cry – Hank Williams
__________________________________________
Angry
Killing in the Name – Rage Against the Machine
John Blaze- Fat Joe
Bonfire – Childish Gambino
Play God – Ani DeFranco
Take me to Church – Hozier
That’s All She Wrote – TI featuring Eminem
You So Done – Noga Erez
Snow on the Beach – Taylor Swift
I Apologize – Five Finger Death Punch
__________________________________________
Growing
Spanish Pipedream – John Prine
A Little Bit Off – Five Finger Death Punch
Darkness Settles In – Five Finger Death Punch
Constructive Summer – The Hold Steady
Sweetness – Jimmy Eat World
Revolutionary Kind – Gomez
River – Joni Mitchell
Destination – Nickel Creek
Spirits – The Strumbellas
You are So Beautiful – Joe Cocker
_________________________________________
Lessons
Darkness Between the Fireflies – Mason Jennings
People Get Old – Lori McKenna
Name – Goo Goo Dolls
The Mother – Brandi Carlile
Walking in the Snow – Run the Jewels
Boss of Me – They Might Be Giants
Bitches – Mindless Self Indulgence
Cupid’s Chokehold/Breakfast in America – Gym Class Heroes
Beautiful Boy (Darling Boy) – John Lennon
____________________________________________
Advice
Buckets of Rain – Bob Dylan
Simple Man – Lynrd Skynyrd
Wildflowers – Tom Petty
You’ve Got to Learn – Nina Simone
Loose Lucy – Grateful Dead
A Dustland Fairytale – The Killers
Fuckin Perfect – P!nk
Redemption Song – Bob Marley
_________________________________________
End
Satisfied Mind – Porter Wagoner
Me & Bobby McGee – Kris Kristofferson
More than a Feeling – Boston
Spirit in the Sky – Norman Greenbaum
About this Poem and the Process
Music has always been an important part of my life. Our family grew up with music playing on the record player and some of my earliest memories are dancing on my dad’s feet to the crooning of a classic country song from the 50s or 60s.
My dad also read poetry with me, and my mom wrote poems and I have been doing both since I could read and write.
Combining the two was only a matter of time.
This poem is based on the Cento poetry form where lines from the poems of various poets are taken directly from the poem and assembled to create a new poem. The poem created from the lines was meant as an homage to the work of the others. The same is true in this case but I have used the lines from songs.
The song lines were crowd-sourced from family and friends. I simply asked people to share their favorite line from a song with me and most did not know I was writing a poem with them.
I did not listen to the songs before putting the poem together, choosing to incorporate them into the poem without the context of the music or the rest of the lyrics, only with the context of the other lines provided to me.
I loved the process of creating this. I learned so much about my family and friends. For some of them this was a tough assignment because they do not really listen to the words, just the music; while others this was a difficult task because it was hard to pick just one line. I learned about new music and was really surprised by some of the choices. I ended up with 50 songs and 50 new insights into my friends and family.
June 26, 2022
Concupiscent
A pragmatic word
Hiding passions, desires in
Four stern syllables
A Haiku Poem – more technically a 5-7-5 poem as traditionally haikus have a cutting word and reference the seasons.
A Vocabulary Poem – I write these poems when I come across words I don’t know to help me remember their definition.
November 18, 2021
You’re interesting
Alluring, mysterious
You’re my morning fog
A haiku
A metaphor poem
October 26, 2021
My Bedroom Windows Are Never Closed
My bedroom windows are never closed
I won’t miss a moment of nature
Every season full of sights and sounds
My blanket layers always in flux.
Spring brings the early birds’ dawn chorus
April showers and peepers return
Vixens cry for their mates in the dark
My bedroom windows are never closed
Lightning bugs blink against summer screens
Katydids sing from oak tops at night
Cicada buzz loudly fills warm days
I won’t miss a moment of nature
Great horned, barred and screech hoots fill fall nights
Sun rises reveal jewel-toned forest
Southbound Canada geese honk above
Every season full of sights and sounds
Woodpeckers tap winter’s leafless trees
Moon shadows dance from a clear night sky
Woodstove heat meets snowflakes drifting down
My blanket layers always in flux.
A cascade poem
August 4, 2021
These are special requests poems, someone sent me the bumper sticker idea.
ONE
Jesus, you have everything some girls
Love to see in another human
You are determined, smart, handsome, kind
But you cannot be trusted with love
Everyone flocks to you, everyone
Else doesn’t know your truth, everyone
Thinks, that humor, that knowledge is all
You’re made up of but I know you’re
An untruth, under that guise you’re an
Asshole, a sham of a gentleman.
___________________________________________________________________
TWO
Jesus yes! to casual sex, he
Loves my breasts, my ass, my hips, my face
You do too – but not casually
But you are too serious for me
Everyone has opinions, no one
Else matters, who cares what anyone
Thinks, you want long term commitment and
You’re ready for forever, but I’m
An explorer, curious to learn
Asshole from saint with no strings attached
___________________________________________________________________
A Bumper Sticker Poem
Bumper Sticker Poems – a form I created, inspired by cento and golden shovel poetry, with the following guidelines:
- Using a bumper sticker as inspiration use each word in the bumper sticker as the first word in each line of the poem
- The theme of the poem may or may not have anything to do with the message of the sticker
- Title should be the words of the bumper sticker
- May or may not be rhymed
- 9 syllable lines
- Number of lines depends on number of words on the bumper sticker
February 21, 2021
Snow Angels
Plastic wrap gaiters secured with twine protect the transition from cotton sweatpants to leather work boots.
A well-tuned rumble shattering the muffled morning as he heads up the hill to my drive.
Snowy morning smell replaced by fumes of gas and oil immediately unearthing memories of my dad.
This vintage machine, made when machines were mostly metal, is piloted by ages of experience and a depth of mechanical knowledge I envy. It displaces snow practically, usefully, purposefully, precisely out of the way so I can move another machine about which I know so little.
“I’ll help you with the heavy snow at the end of the drive” he says while idling. “Thank you so much” I say. “Just being neighborly” he says, the end of the sentiment engulfed by the increasing throttle as he turns, heading back down the hill to home.
The cushioned silence greets me as I open the door. It’s early enough that snowblower rattles and shovel scrapes are not yet replacing Carolina Wren song.
Plodding through inches of snow, I am not yet ready to begin the tasks required to accommodate a normal day’s activities.
Heading to a flat open spot covered deep in snow, I fall backwards without worry, certain this mattress of frozen hexagons will catch me softly, conforming to my curves as much as any memory foam.
Smiling into the blue sky I move my long arms and legs in arcs, uselessly, impractically, for no reason but sensation, for no purpose but pleasure.
February 13, 2021
Sole Laid Bare
I believe myself spontaneous
Finding routine extraneous
Then my ego is bruised
After removing my shoes
My truth revealed is instantaneous
A Limerick Poem
A Picture and a Poem 