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"And the older I get, the more I'm sure
That more by itself never was a cure
Some days I've got nothing to show for except
Walking the dog and walking the floor"
Mary Chapin Carpenter
<><><>
it's been twenty years plus
who can remember exact,
the last time I had a full-time four-legged
companion to share my bed, greet my head with
wagging tail, and joy incessantly, overflowing and drowning me
with face lickings and hugs of a topsy turvy twisty body,
and smiles and curdling yowls of deep throated
cries of obvious joy and the
first thing I'll do when the nectar of next
life's staging begins to commence will be me to get
such a dog as heretofore I remember as an unadulterated purest joy,

I'll still walk the floor,
long walks, yup, outdoors, early morn,
and late afternoon day settling setting endings,
dog and me, freshly bathed, settling in to watch
some British crime and ****** mysteries sleuthed and
solved by folks I'll never meet, but whose company enjoyed
over the distance of an atlantic sea and about seven feet,
and maybe dog  curls up next to me, by my pillowed
head, or between my happy to snuggle legs,
don't matter much, dog & me,
will discuss an alternating
rotation satisfying our
mutuality,

and even when I  still walk the floor, which be a task for evermore,
he can walk beside me if he chooses, cause choice is
what's it all about

with a true companion


nml
Girl and Her Dog
Song by Mary Chapin Carpenter ‧ 2025



Everyone asks when you're growing up
"Who do you want to be?"
I never had an answer, couldn't figure out
Why I couldn't see myself as some future other
No one's partner, no one's mother
No one's answer, no one's lover
Nobody but me
But the older I get, the more I see
That more by itself never worked for me
Keeping it simple as it can be
Walking along, just him and me
Mornings here with a coffee cup
Songs in my head, looking up
If the rain holds off, we'll be in luck
But we're lucky anyway
A long time ago, I got married once
It didn't take long to find
That the words I heard coming out of his mouth
Were not the truthful kind
I thought about moving to LA
Maybe upstate or the UK
Anywhere as long as it's far away
From what I left behind
And the older I get, the more I'm sure
That more by itself never was a cure
Some days I've got nothing to show for except
Walking the dog and walking the floor
Mornings here with a coffee cup
Stories in my head, looking up
If the rain holds off, we'll be in luck
But we're lucky anyway
In summer, neighbors leave tomatoes
In fall, dust coats your tires
Spring greens up every shadow
In December, we lay a fire
I figure I'm finally old enough
To know who I want to be when I grow up
A girl and her dog riding in the truck
Wave as we're going by
Now the older I get, the less I need
Just a good old dog underneath the trees
Keeping it simple as it can be
Fitting together like a puzzle piece
Mornings here with a coffee cup
Whistling for him while I'm looking up
If the rain holds off, we'll be in luck
But we're lucky anyway
We're lucky anyway

<>
1147am mon aug 8 twenty five nml hat lipstadt
the cracked mirror
splits my face down the center.

one eye opened wide.
the other eye heavy.

one shard shows me young,
the child with dreams
filled with wonder.

the other sharp edge, old,
etched like tree bark in winter

(cuts deeper than jagged mirror glass.)

waxing moon, waning moon,
ashes and the flower blooms.

one eye looks back.
the other eye forward.

morning light, midnight,
all in the blink of an eye.

the mirror---no lies here.
Like rainfall
On a windowpane,
So crystalline, so clear,
Sliding down
As teardrops
To slowly reappear,
As puddles
In my misery,
To seep away
With time.
But emotively,
Your cloudburst,
Paints these
Fresh teardrops....
As mine.

M@Foxglove.Taranaki.NZ
10 August 2025
To be read, please, at the next "Poets Zoom Meet" in my absence.
Many thanks M.
I've walked your floor

sat beside you in candlelight
looking at photos
scattered across the floor.

you remembering names
and people and prayers
I had long forgotten.

you are the dancer
who glides this loner
through sorrows and the stars,
across the mist of moments
most treasured

where in the stillness between kisses
promises are kept
and the warmth of your hand on my cheek
felt in places to real to touch.

your love asks for nothing
and when you smile your quiet gift to me

tender one, every breath I take is loving you.
I like my coffee really hot.
Direct from the coffee machine,
Freshly brewed and steaming skyward,
Nonetheless to the nearby microwave, I digress,
For 90 seconds of steam room added bathing of my mourning
Coffee, bathing in a Vincent Van Gogh almond blossomed mugging

During said 90 seconds, I flutter and putter among the kitchen
countertops, hithering and dithering all about, wiping, swiping
crumbs of prior day's excessive remaining excesses, carcasses of
grains and grams, fruits and vegetables, restocking coffee beans,
watering said machine's infernal thirst for double pure ground water,
ect. etc. etcetera

all of the above takes a little over a minute, whence I return to my still
pre-re-intializing heating microwave clock is  advising twenty four seconds till my additional brewing will be finite finished…

gawd, what the heck am I supposed to do for the next 24 seconds besides rock back-and-forth watching my coffee cup turn Vinny's
almond blossoms slightly more yellow?

Nah.

the internal ding resounds, with a write a poem dummy!
and so I did, even if it ain't exactly short and sweet or more
pissy than pithy

Ha!
while dashing off this scripty nitty gritty writy,
guess what?
my cafe au lay
grew cold again,
and so  the
poem repeats
itself...grrr...
now, me extra very hot & pissy
<>
"for the vanity of man is as porous as dust...and, in their supreme wisdom, because of this failing, the Gods have decreed, that mankind deserveth no more, no less than his designated allotment of being.
And such it shall be."
writ by
The Marshal Gebbie
June 2023
<>
rise up, rise up,
son up, sun up!
see for yourself a newly birthing day,
the early rays licking the unlocking of a grinning earth's face,
humbling humans and their perpetuity e~mo/notions of eternity.
how are the daily~we, to measure ourselves, versus our ancestry,
by whom shall we~be set forth as examples to our posterity
what tools we fools think, we possess, an etch~a~sketch,
to imprint of who we are,
what we were, and
who we might become, and
be  beauty becoming,
marking our time with ensigns of
words of integers in some giant network
authored, offered, up unashamedly

and even though the sun
does not always greet & meet
the discombobulated human riffraff
every diurnal,
daily identical,
when it shines,
it shines for us all
in an equality of glorious,
it shines upon us all in equality,
it, great equalizer, who restores and
replenishes our colored planets blue green,
a methodology of air, soil and water interactively,
for we are all chemicals, forever effervescent rebirthing

and so it goes.
our cells, are a
rare earth depository,
we plant ourselves
eternally, fed by
foodstuffs of
our ancestors cells,
their brewed ***** dust,
and thus each of us singly
is thus remembered, reconstructed
as are we, both, individually and collectively,
from dust we are, to dust we return, this matériel future prepped


postscript

We Hebrews have a knowingly foolish,
a most beauteous custom, gifted to us by
our forefather Jacob, who when espying a
solitary grave by the road, a nameless marker of
piled-on stones, marking an unknown person last remains,
added one more, add-on to ensure this nameless one yet remembered,
so we too do not pass by without adding a stone, a tiny pebble,
we encumbered, to solidify, perpetuate, renew, ever sustaining,
cannot pass by without adding another rock,
another pebble, that time will surely shift,
but as long we follow this custom,
spiting time's erosive nature and until today,
yet the same, for at a cemetery, every grave,
all marker, ego big, humbled small, topped,
festooned, with small stones, we top them
signaling that this, very spot here, here!
for now, until for ever
shall never
be forgot

<.
and so this peculiar, deteriorating canister places
one more smoothed handy beach pebble, upon
this, his unmarked resting spot
nml
<>
Monday morning
7:10am
an august, August dream day
specified as the 11th day of this
eighth month in one particular
calendric methodology
and as the
17th of Av 5785
in his ancestral calendar
sJews place stones on grave markers as a long-standing tradition symbolizing remembrance and respect for the deceased. It's a way to show that the person hasn't been forgotten and that someone has visited their final resting place. Unlike flowers, which are temporary, stones are seen as enduring, representing the everlasting nature of memory
Historical Roots:
The practice may have roots in ancient times when graves were marked with piles of stones
and still I have to stop and think, is it forwards, backwards, and do they know about Daylight Savings TIme, saving who from what,
I jokingly ask myself, to give my sweet angst, a a better coloration,
though these days, constant comets pass over us daily

but he is savvy smart, and yes, extraordinarily ****, and  knows my routines (he thinks), better than me, so when I drive  to  run in Santa Monica, alternating days, he texts in simultaneous harmony a minute after my too early alarm has me stumbling into semi-Cali-
quake-fulness

we are years apart, not so many that it's remarkable, just big enough gap, to make life problematical; his  career launched, serious guy,, me well, i'm a perpetual student, when not modeling, and my mom, GBH,  and my over pestering, now single parent, demonstrate her mathematical abilities by telling me how closehow close  is 30 is when one subtracts  my "aging pores," & how little sleep she gets because she in in her EST zone

but when he calls, he calls at irregular times, "to better gauge my mood," how he, my day surveils, so he can adjust to my chemical imbalance, an area of his expertise; and its sweet, and it works, and too often, I ramble while listens, for his day is ending, and mine is far from fulfillment

he is European, full of genteel words and english language quips,
especially since he believes he can still sway with his sophisticated
endearments;  but what he doesn't know in the late afternoon, his bedtime, while  he is conducting a sweet nothing roundup of   adoration, my hand slips between my legs, and my envisioning of his lean, broad body being in my interior so tight, for I have crossed my crushing legs behind his back pushing him inside, it nearly makes  breathing impossible

HE LOVES MY SOfT TONES, at this hour, my distracted noises, til he says you sound so tired, I'll let you go; and I willingly, comp-licitly, give him my heated best love notes, and teary gasps, when I mumble
see you soon, thinking in my dreams, for I know his schedule, and exactly when I'll be landing and exactly how long it will be,
till we, are within each other, without any interference, of lairs and
sun flaring interruptions,
from time
and space, those scientific laws of this tiring
annus horribilis
(a throwback poem from High school)

I'm the most popular girl in my homeroom.
Of course, that's my own bedroom -
cause we're on COVID lockdown, zoom.

My bedroom is the math class, which doubles as the gym,
it triples as the theater - you should see the shows I'm in.

They're only in my mirror, so my cats get free admission.
My sudden popularity's due, to a matter of attrition.

If I play my cards right, I can probably be prom queen
I'll hold the ceremony in the garden, so the travesty goes unseen.
a throwback poem from High school
The World is giving us many clues
to find the meaning of life.
But we ignore them.
The weather is not independent,
But a part of a bigger,
tricate system
Of patterns;
Variables,
Of cause and effect;

The tide goes
In and out all the same.

We need the rain
For the sunshine to come out again.
Miraculous —

And we need each other
For healing to be reclaimed.
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