Saturday, January 15, 2011

10 Poems - On Being Trapped


In a Mind Rush

Pounding thrashing
scattered clashing
cymbals in blood
light bright, sound
blare,limbs paralytic
in the chamber of
mind rush

~


In Tract Housing

My parents drove
Each Sunday
To look at houses
I walked with them
The good child
While my brother
Waited in the car

Walked through other
People's lives
Found the bedroom that
Would be mine
Peered at their trees outside
Left with their cooking
Smells in my hair lingering
As I slept in the room
I shared in our apartment

Each Sunday my parents
Drove to look at houses
Fragments of other lives
Clinging to my shoulders
Inhaled into my lungs
Houses large and lovely
Streets where oak trees reached
To meet each other

Until one Sunday
My parents drove
And stopped at acres of
Plowed overturned land
Separated by plywood sticks
Numbered close and
Anonymous as soldier's graves
We walked all of us through
The mud until my father stopped

And pointed at the stick in
Which we would live our future
In that cemetery of surrendered
Imagination I held close the collected
Flotsam of floating memories
Of all those other houses
Held close the keys to my
Eventual release from
Mediocrity of the stifled soul
Trapped within the pride of my parent's
Achievement

~

In The Hourglass

I used to look at hourglasses with a passion and a joy
Peeking back from time to time it was a favorite toy
The lovely way white sand gently dropped grain by grain to
Intrigue me with crystal curving wasp waisted rushing through
I used to look at hourglasses joyfully from the outside in
Bewildered I am unclear when it began that I started to see them from within

~

In Longing For A Teacher's Approval


I loved Mrs K. with a fifth grade girl's single minded devotion
She wore dangling turquoise earrings and spoke of traveling each ocean
She said that I was special and let me write away at will
I loved her for the lacquered chopsticks in her hair, but more for how she saw me still

A child, she called me an artiste and flattered a young adoring hungry mind
So when her good graces threatened should not surprise anyone that I became unkind
Because I loved Mrs K. and she a little bit loved me
I overlooked the many ways, in fact I'm sure I loved her for her eccentricity

On the day she did a random search of book bags and picked me
Emptied it out onto her desk for all the class to see
A pencil with a chewed off tip, a crumpled paper, an orange rolled off to the side
Nothing yet embarrassing, nothing necessarily would I hide

As she went around the room and asked my classmates for any feeling
She stopped and found a side pocket drew out a comb stuck with hair and sent the class off reeling

Because I loved Mrs K and wilted at her disappointed stare
A lie slipped loudly from my lips, "It is not mine, not mine, that disgusting comb right there

It is my little brother's I'm carrying it for him today
And to my shame I did not recant as she told me to go get my brother and bring him there that day

My brother was so happy when his big sister appeared at his first grade classroom door with a note from Mrs. K.
He skipped down the hallways holding my hand softly singing all the way

Once there he stood crew-cutted smiling at Mrs. K's desk alone in front of the room as did she in a booming voice to him say

"You are a dirty little man" waving my comb in his face and never once, then or since, did this little boy, his big sister betray

My blood beat thick and hard from my heart up to my throat to pound into my ears
As I sat silent in blatant betrayal's shame in the name of misplaced love trapped freshly squirming through the years

~

Within The Skin

Here within the skin
Runs the wild blood
Of endless pampas passion
Pounding toward the outside
From the held depths of within

~

In The Box

Waiting among the jumbled masses
Yearning to snap, to crackle and
Ultimately to pop
Needed only the catalyst of milk...

~


In From The Rain

In came I at the end of the storm
Soaked through to the skin with icy rain
I six or seven weeks old abandoned once again
Too young to believe in the spoken eventuality of spring
Of which the elders told mystically the unseen shifts would bring

Too young to conceptualize the marsh grass
dry, the blue skied sun ablaze in the sky
Too young to believe in clouds of butterfly
Driven forward by the simple wish not to die

Came I to the door and mewling stood
Until it opened and into gargantuan
Heated arms lifted and I folded into them apparently for good

Was I wise?
When in I came
Warmed in those flanneled human arms
Dried with a towel from icy rain
I lie on floors polished to a shining glow
warm, clean and fed I see myself grow

Outside the glass the wind howls
The trees now iced and bare
Would I have lived to test the mythic spring
I know not that, know only this one thing

That should the time actually come when
All outside transforms to warm, scented green
It will through 'pain' of clean impenetrable
Glass by me, safe, ensconced, separated,
Looking out from within - be not ever felt, yet ever seen

~

In Fear Of And For You

They've grown tired
Of telling me to leave
Of feeding me words only
To watch my tongue to roof of mouth cleave
They've grown tired and accustomed to see
The yellow purpled fields of fists
You leave on me

They've somehow accepted that the light in my eyes is burnt out
My voice unsustainable though it might infrequently shout
I've watcherd their sympathy, fear, concern melt finally to steely disgust
They do not understand that stay with you, for you are weak,
I forever must

~

In The Big Cheese

Higgly, piggly my friend Jim
Marched to the cheese though
We all tried to stop him

Higgly, piggly, my friend Jim was sure
That he could safely eat, leave and return for more

Higgly, piggly, my soon to be late friend Jim
Stuck, crushed, bleeding out onto that hunk of cheese
As life drains from him

~

In The Lifting Mist

T here in the misted fields of
R endevous to come
A rmed only with poetry and Jane Eyre
P roclaim boundless affection
P roclaim forever love
E ver resilient, ever sacredly faith full
D amned in the shimmered reality of the later, lifting mist

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