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Maria Etre Apr 2021
To the (ad)ventures
about to happen
I can't wait to
skip you
to the
best
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5
4
3
2
1
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doors are paved
buckets are heavy
fingers are glazed
pockets are ******

give and take
wife and man
pride and joy
hope and plan

air is toxic
back is failing
sleep is painful
bed is creaking

start or stop?
lows or highs?
smith or serf?
debt or worth?

car not starting
strap not locking
meds not working
wheels not stopping
for J.C.P.
--
the ones that teach you,
who lift you up over
their heads
in good faith,
these are their stories.
Robert Ronnow Mar 2021
Carrying a sleeping baby.
Cleaning after a successful party.

Camping beyond mountains more mountains.
Playing trumpet on the streets of New York City.

Eating although the food supply is deeply compromised.
Flying with Democrats and Republicans, evangelicals and atheists.

Flying like a fruit fly that won’t quit mating.
Cool as a hummingbird in the stream’s wet spray.

Abstaining wholly, absent from worldly life.
Two dogs fighting but not biting hard.

Chanting as if the planet were mending.
Gourmet dining, devout prayer, loving Mary.

Evenings watching tv. Scotch and Star Trek.
Taking off Emily Dickinson’s clothes.

Meeting in the meeting house, arguing and praying.
Planning a legacy as if you knew enough to control events.

Pursuing happiness as a naturalist or humanist.
Spinning with the planet, performing the history that surrounds us.

Killing many Germans, saving many Jews.
Doing less until one thing’s done well.

Fainting from staring at candles through stained glass windows.
Morning, a billion trillion nuclear detonations per second warming your
        bones.

Manipulating symbols, solving equations.
Disregarding tweets and facebook persuasions.

Sitting with a tiny Buddha near a rushing stream cutting a gorge.
Running, disciplining myself, making myself healthy.

Ingesting drugs, throwing die, drinking sludge.
Growing varicolored corn.

Participating in the cause because it’s impossible not to participate in
      the effect.
Running over a chipmunk, groundhog or a skunk.

Lying face down in the emergency room facing doom.
Waking up Monday thinking Sweet Saturday! but soon remembering
      your trick knee.

Turning the towering young thunder of my anger against my sons.
Regretting the callow dispassion with which I met my parents’ quietus.

Lawn mowing, leaf blowing, yapping dogs, napping old people.
No jets but a rooster mornings, cows and goats.

Al is painting an apartment. Sirma is cleaning the floors. Felix is taking
      out the garbage.
Deciding tentatively I slightly prefer Heifetz’ to Oistrakh’s Sibelius.

No cedar waxwings, no chickadees, but beautiful moon!
If you’re alone as you get, why are you crying?
—Collins, Billy, “Taking Off Emily Dickinson’s Clothes”, Sailing Alone Around the Room: New and Selected Poems, Random House, 2002.
Michael Ryan Feb 2021
New Job.
New Drive.
New Interest.

It's all so new,
yet so-so familiar.

All there is, the heat -
encased in a fireplace
or a furnace.

Smoldering,
the ashes
never filter through
these windless lungs,
instead of oxygen
the flame kindles
on anxiety.

Life is going splendidly - no hiccups -
Breathing is easy
but all that rushes in
is the flagrant blossom
of ragged thoughts,
all the possibilities
for how helpless
the wind is
when it's always being
knocked out.
I started a new job, I started driving, and there's a girl of course that I like too much.  There wouldn't be much of a story if there wasn't the drama of a boy likes girl, right?   Everything can and is going smoothly, but when I am home I feel like it's all falling apart.
hello,
how can i help you?
...
sure i can do that,
do you have an account with us?
...
i'm not sure Sir,
did she leave a hint?
...
well, i would but
i'm not your wife.
...
it means i have no way of knowing
what her favorite book is,
can we try another form of info?
...
that's not listed here either Sir,
aren't you a grown adult
or do you get a kick out of
lewd prank calls?
...
you won't have to,
i don't need this stress.
for B.J.P.
--
the ones that teach you,
who lift you up over
their heads
in good faith,
these are their stories.
mimi Jan 2021
Good grades will get me into next year.
Then be able to graduate with a 4.0 GPA.
I wouldn’t have to worry about student debt
Because it’d be covered by a scholarship.
I could finally get into an Ivy League Law School,
Get the credentials for a high-paying job,
And have a family I’ve always dreamed about.

But does having good grades make me happy?
Do I find any joy on not getting to sleep,
Trying to figure out what x+y equals
Or writing essays on Abraham Lincoln?
We all know I’m never using this in real life.

So sorry I’ve failed you mamí,
But a 9-5 job isn’t the life for me.
Sometimes I feel like moms try to live their lives through us. I get they want us to do better than them but what if that's not the future for us?
kiran goswami Jan 2021
Her job always has had an inflated demand
and ironically surplus production too.

The men’s job, I wonder if
it is their hobby or job.
So, the men’s job has demand amongst themselves
and production too.

Hers is a common and a well-reputed career,
until it is achieved.

The men or at least a man
might choose not to opt
for this career.

She, however, has no choice, as always.

So, she looks at her ancestors,
Her great grandmother who was a wife.
Her grandmother who was a wife.
Her mother who was a wife.
Now, she too has chosen this job.

There is no other choice, of course.

This job has not been her job
since history began.
This job has been her job
since her-story began.

Her job does not require
travelling nations and crossing borders.

Her job requires
staying.
Confined, caged, in-home.

That’s home for him,
not home for her.

That’s her experimental laboratory,
She conducts experiments.
That’s her cricket field,
She plays.
That’s her hospital,
She cures and treats.
That’s her restaurant,
She cooks.
That’s her engineering workshop,
She creates and invents.
That’s her writing room,
She writes.

And that’s her prison too.

And in this prison,
she is her own jailer.

Her job requires only
a few tasks to be taken care of.
Tasks assigned to her sound easy and self-fulfilling.
But she must do them dutifully.
For she, is a wife now.

Nothing more,
Nothing less,
a wife.

But her husband,
is not just a husband.
He is a man.
The man.
A child.
An experimenter,
A cricketer,
A doctor,
A chef,
An engineer,
A writer,

A politician and A king.

And his kingdom,
belongs only to him.

In this highly reputed job,
this only job that she is supposed to have,
and stay loyal to,
with her body and soul,
she is expected; expected of a lot
but never supposed to expect from
and express to.

So, she is expected to not wish.
Because wish leads to worry or somehow even vanity.
Wish kills her work
and that is her tagged happiness.

Thus, she must work,
so, she is called happy.

She must be a wife,
so, she has something worth living.

Her job is the one that requires
her to reach nirvana,
before she starts living.

It is not forced upon her
to choose this job.
It is bought to her
in a jewellery box,
as a necklace,
that she continues to wear
even after it hides the tattoo of her personality,
carved on her neck;
chokes her every time she tries to speak
and eats her words before she births them.

She still, however, continues to wear this necklace
because she has been conditioned
“Beauty is pain, Pain has beauty.”

Songs like “beloved wife” and “my wife”,
make her love her job, but hate herself.
So, she listens to them over and over again.

She avoids reading the newspaper or watching the news
because she knows that if she reads them,
no husband, not even her own,
would be able to look at her in the eye.
And she will not be able to look at them without crying (or killing).

In her job, a resignation letter is the same
as being expelled.
So, it is made sure
that if she takes such a step,
she is not capable of moving anymore.

But out of all these, what makes her job the funniest
is the irony within.
Like she has freedom
but should not be free for her freedom.
Like she is protected but from others
in danger of her own self.
Like she has all the happiness
but she shouldn’t smile too much or make any noise when she laughs.
Like she is a wife
but she is not loved and has done nothing to deserve that love.

What was her mistake that she should not be loved, you ask.
Well, nothing and perhaps everything.

Sometimes, when she is tired and exhausted of her job,
and you go ahead to ask her
“what is more difficult, to be a wife or to be a mother”
She would look at you, for not more than 10 seconds,
and say,
“to be a woman”.

If there is something, she needs to be wary of,
It is people and words.
Because there are certain words,
that if used for her,
would disrobe her in a public square,
where her husband
would be a witness
or perhaps a member of the disrobers.

So, all she should be wanting
to be called
is a word or a name,
to get disrobed by just him
or disrobe herself only for him.
There is much scope in that.

In her job,
she is expected not to wish.
But she does.
She wishes too much sometimes
and on somedays,
just one thing.

She wishes not to be his wife
or ‘a wife’ at all.

But she does nothing more than to wish.
She cannot do anything more.
Because her job always has had an inflated demand
and ironically surplus production too.
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