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 Aug 2014 Page Seventy Three
Pea
Mama do not find us
Do we have to beg?
We won't be found
We won't come back

River often cries
For all the unheard lies
Before the trees realize
Lie is lie no matter what size

O our shoes speak nonsense
The twelve swans you buried then
Now have come back to life
But no Mama we won't

No Mama we won't be home
For so long, so long it has no end
Mama now you can be strong
We have to go on our own

Mama don't get us wrong
We have to go on our own
We won't come back
We won't be home

For so long, so long it doesn't end
Just don't forget we won't be home
Just don't regret you have that womb
Mama now you can be strong
Now you can be strong
She was a ghost in the day
her mother drank her days away
Always trying to do her best
she got the highest grades on all her tests.
Thinking she'd never be that way
covering up her pain with smiles all day...
Her mother did get better
but never wrote that important letter
saying sorry for all the pain
that left her daughter with disdain
for the mother that was never there
all because she didn't care.
So the little girl with big brown curls..
the one that became a ghost
became the thing she'd hated most
And so the cycle began again
the little ghost had a girl
this time with big blonde curls
the mother took away the girl
treating her to the whole wide world
the little ghost became very sad
for all the things she never had..
her wrists began to drip with blood
as her soul began to drift above..
and the mother never understood
why the ghost went out this way
choosing that cold December day
(her anticipated 16th birthday)
Because all the ghost ever wanted
was to be loved, cherished, and acknowledged..
she missed her baby girl with big blonde curls...
and, glad that she would have the world.
The Karmic twist seemed so outlandish..
that she decided to just vanish.
© 2014
Daddy: I did not know you well/except for the suits you wore
they were always well tailored in the color blue
would it be okay if I told you how much I miss you...?
You always smelled of Black Jack gum
I remember running up to you
when you came home sometimes you smelled of ***...
n' I was barely four
but I remember uttering the words, "gum-gum"
Daddy, I loved you so much...
why did you have to leave/why did we lose touch?
I loved the letters you used to send
when I left for college
I thought my life would end...
but you wrote humorous lines
about long dog your wiener schnitzel pet...
you always made up stories about some guy named "Chet"
I'm so sorry I didn't get to say goodbye--
I wished and wished...
the day I found out you had died...
it was a bad joke/a terrible lie...
I love you Daddy...if you can hear me up there
I hope Tigger n' Lion's are fly'n everywhere
just like the stories you told me every night...
before you tucked me in bed with my baby bear...
n' you brushed my hair...
you always said, "Papa loves you...
Tiger, you sleep tight...
now you just  go...
n' let your dreams take flight"
This world, of beauty,
lifts myriad vacant skies
for blank world to view.
.
My first attempt at a haiku
.
LONG ago I learned how to sleep,
In an old apple orchard where the wind swept by counting its money and throwing it away,
In a wind-gaunt orchard where the limbs forked out and listened or never listened at all,
In a passel of trees where the branches trapped the wind into whistling, "Who, who are you?"
I slept with my head in an elbow on a summer afternoon and there I took a sleep lesson.
There I went away saying: I know why they sleep, I know how they trap the tricky winds.
Long ago I learned how to listen to the singing wind and how to forget and how to hear the deep whine,
Slapping and lapsing under the day blue and the night stars:
  Who, who are you?
  
Who can ever forget
listening to the wind go by
counting its money
and throwing it away?
The Rozzer stopped me
on the bomb site
off Meadow Road
you been smoking?
he asked

I put on my surprised
what me Governor? face
no Officer

he stared at me
his large eyes
searching me
let me see your hands

I showed him
my 9 year old hands
ink stained
and unwashed
since breakfast

do you know
what happens to fingers
of people who smoke?

I shook my head

they go brown
he said
brown as *****

do they?
I said
I knew they did
because my old man's
were slightly
*******
of one hand

he pursed his lips
to say more
but he didn't
he peered at me
looking for clues
of smoking

if I catch you smoking
I’ll take you home
to your parents
and that'll be it
my boy
get it?

I nodded
yes Officer
I stood looking
by him
at the bombed out houses
behind
the pub
on the corner

where do you live?

I tell him the address
of a neighbour's house
the old boy's deaf
as a post
so won't grass

well mind yourself
and the Rozzer went
hands behind his back
walking across
the bomb site

I look behind me
for the self rolled cigarette
I tossed behind me
when I saw him approaching
minutes before

I looked to see
how far the Rozzer
had gone
he went off Meadow Row
and out of sight

I found the cigarette
smouldering weakly
behind a broken brick

I picked it up
and dusted off
grit and dust
and puffed it
back to health

I held the cigarette
between arched fingers
as I’d seen gangsters do
in black and white films
then looked over
the bomb site again
sensing the start of rain.
A 9 YEAR OLD BOY AND A HAND ROLLED CIGARETTE IN LONDON IN 1950S AND THE POLICE OFFICER.
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