I think my grandmother is convinced
that my ovaries will shrivel up
if I do not find a man by summer.

She was married by 19,
and has always wanted great grandchildren
she loves buying baby things, children's toys.
Kindergarten is the golden age of life.
I did not date in highschool,
but if she saw me looking at a boy,
she asked if he was single,
and told me to ask him over for dinner.

When I hit University,
I found a sweet, mad, mess of a boy
and she was quiet,
but we went our separate ways,
she started up again.

Scheming, the unwanted matchmaker.
Asking if the piano player at church was single,
(he's four years younger than I)
and trying to arrange play-dates for me
with unwitting high school acquaintances.

She means well, I know,
but despite the hopeless Romanticism I harbor
I know I need time, (there are still open wounds),
to fall back in love with myself,
before trying to fall for someone else.

you can wear your cap twisted sideways
sag your pants down to your knees
ride a pachyderm or a mule that brays
be whatever kind of fool you please

sing love songs in the rose garden
or complain how the dollar done fell
knowing qadafi, hussein, and bin laden
have all been dispatched to hell

you can rant and rave about raw deals
you can raise your snout and sashay about
or he-haw and buck, kick up your heels
or vote for more hope or to kick da *** out

you can lean to the left or to the right
weighing the pros and cons and hype
but you can't stay out of this fight
and claim you're just not the type

to freely elect their governments and laws
evers, walesa, mandela, and susan b
lived and died for just such a cause
to see the people's voices set free

but if you just call it mumbo jumbo
and aloofly let this moment pass
we all may be led by Dumbo
or maybe that other *******

what percentage do you claim?
forty-seven, one, or ninety-nine?
tea party? occupier? some other name?
are you just spouting a party line?

all our blood runs red
'bove us all the sky is blue
and no matter what is said
there's one thing we all should do

hadn't you better cast a vote?
against the ones who vote aginst you?
i think you'd really better vote ...
it's the least but the best thing you can do.

doug curry
10/24/2012

I think of love and how it can only exist
In your dreams as I trace their remnants,
Made feasible by the dim light of morning
Which is both drooping and waving, prepared.

I think of love and how it can only exist
In the shutter images of your unfocused eyes,
More like weather than windows, clouded
By morning with showers of yawns.

I think of love and how it can only exist
As our bed is a forest, the stirring of your
Body I follow like footpaths lit by sun,
Patches of light on us like puddles.

I think of love and how it can only exist
As it is etched into your face, those
Pillow case creases that makes me the
Cheekbone cartographer and I think

Of love and how it can only exist
In this dream of mine.

Sometimes I stare into the night sky and I realize how small we are.
I look into infinity and
It doesn’t look back because
I am a spec amongst bigger things and smaller things
And life and death are everywhere
And what am I to a universe that
We, humans, the smartest life we know to exist,
Cannot even wrap our brains around?

And then I think about homework.
But how am I supposed to even think about homework
When the sky is always present above our heads
Filled with limitless possibilities that I can get lost in for decades.
I could waste perfect days lying in the grass day dreaming up anything,
But you want me to memorize math equations?

During the day all seems so hopeful and bright.
I think of the way your hair would move in the breeze and
I imagine your big eyes filled with wonder and curiosity
As you stare into the clouds.
Clouds made of the ideas people dream up during class
While their teacher tells them how to cite sources in MLA format.

And at night my fascination with the sky becomes
Less excited and more scared.
I think not of the way your hair would move in the breeze,
But of how your hair would move
While someone else tucked it behind your ear.
And the noise you’d make as they kissed your neck
Crimson lips, swollen with lust.

Somehow the stars don’t give me dreams,
They give me nightmares.
Of you behind my back,
On your back with other women,
Or worse men.
But you’re always there to calm my fears of betrayal
And kiss me back to reality.

This life is one that,
As far as I know, we only live once.
And we can’t waste it getting caught up in the what ifs of the past,
But we can waste it getting caught up in the wonder of what else lies outside of our grasp.
And we should ponder the unanswered questions of the universe

Because when we can’t sleep at night and
We can’t focus in class and
When we are drowning in the stress that comes with the human life,
We can look up at the sky, and remember
That we are all small.
Specs to the universe and

If the ocean can rise and fall with the moon in perfect harmony
And the birds can fly thousands of miles to warmth
And our dogs can always know when it’s time to eat
Without the ability to read clocks,
Then we can always find our way out of these messes we inevitably fall in to.

I never know any of the answers,
But this life is one worth living,
And I’ll spend it trying to figure it all out.
And I’ll never do my homework.

Following the bloodstains home,
we tread the land with bristled soles,
to cleanse the souls of the wide-eyed youth,
spectacular fireworks to alter the truth,
tar the land, and pepper the streets,
concrete the corner where strangers meet,
the placebo joy of the modern life,
left vacant in the money-man's wake,
a cardboard lot left to decay,
oh, this is my Britain of today.

The newsrooms are clinical,
policies in place to reduce moral outrage,
to reduce it to a hysterical mess,
a cartoon-disaster of life's distress,
so the public in fear, exist but not live,
to fight the recession; you must give, give, give,
give, your life to your freedom
to live without choice,
you can sign a slip,
to mimic a voice
and to ensure the vow of regular pay,
oh, this is my Britain of today.

A history of salvation,
we lend heroes to established truth,
we parade on corners in our concrete joy,
rejoice in the miracle of the new royal boy,
who shall live in fat, and live in health,
sacred tender to the country's wealth,
of empire and power of totalities,
of stone-walled cities,
and Northern breeze,
the Jack tattooed on imperial flags,
oh, this is my Britain of today.

A stream of entertainment,
how it pounds the floor in seamless sound,
how it drizzles the walls in a trophy glitz,
a hypnotic and false, synthetic blitz,
of caffeine veins, and digital sea,
of attention-span in atrophy.
Wait not on thoughts, instead mind-chatter,
you say “don't talk on dark topic,
and keep depth away!”
oh, this is my Britain of today.

Following the apathy home,
I tread the land in heavy-worn soles,
to cleanse my soul of restricted air,
to dream of travel, to fortunes fair,
but in this bliss of a greener grass;
it is for Britain I hold communal mass.
For each Blair, I know, is a Rupert Brooke,
each levelled city, there's Wilfred's book,
or some Dickensian dream of caricatured past,
where only tyranny is built to last,
for each liberty taken, is Huxley's piece,
is Lessing's thoughts and Shelley's release,
and the meander of Avon through grey rain,
adds desperate poetry for the lives still slain,
so we can live in peace, and in sugared tea,
with red wine lips on the periphery;
in those day's hard living,
in those days' worth spent,
with only a book
and blood descent,
the community dances in the advent of May,
oh, this is my Britain of yesterday.