"crocheted" poems
Eighteen misses and three survivors
Two broken marriages with one spiteful lost love
Two warring sisters and too many brothers
Numbers don’t always make the lives of another
Crocheted angels and heartfelt hugs
Gone are the days of each of those
Responsible, avoidant, and spoiled
Resentment, confusion, and miscommunication
Ghosts of the past
Harried, busy, and distant
Buy back the time
Patience, hope, and acceptance
Crowding the cast
Three lives play out creating six more
One life still here caught in time
One life locked in with ghosts of the past
cc062611
Jun 26, 2011
Jun 26, 2011 at 2:11 PM UTC
It turned cold quickly
Almost skipping Autumn
Reluctant to wear a jacket
Or a hat, or gloves
Too distant for my arms
To keep him warm against my chest
He said he never wore a scarf
But if he did, he would go Dr. Who style
I had to laugh as i looked up the reference
Fifteen feet of mismatched stripes
Maybe not the stripes, he said
I happened upon a huge skein of yarn
It felt like a warm blanket in the oddest,
Most interesting colors
Manly, neutral, and perfect for Fall
So i crocheted a scarf and pictured him warm
The pattern in those colors was a mess
I chuckled at why they would make such an ugly pattern
I crocheted every stitch with love
Through arthritic hands that felt no pain
I crocheted a scarf, stopping only when it dragged the floor when i put it on
Two feet short, but ridiculously long
I bordered it in shades of green to match
Not realizing it was variegated into Brown's and maroons along the way
But it matched the odd mix of colors
And finally made it almost pretty to me
I covered myself in perfume
And put it around my neck
As I turned I caught a glimpse in the mirror
It wasn't a horrible amalgamation of hideous colors
It was camouflage, with a matching border
I laughed so hard, and felt so bad
My hillbilly in camouflage
Wearing a scarf way too long
Maybe he would hate it
Maybe he won't wear it
I knew better
So, I packed up his bag of gifts
And sent it to the frozen mountains
He never wore a scarf
He opened it and put it on
It smells like You, he said in blssful remembrances
It's definitely camouflage, he laughed
It's perfect baby, I'll wear it whenever it's cold
And in the picture he sent
I saw its beauty
It wasn't in the patterns of crisscrossing colors
It wasn't in the accidental way
The border perfectly complimented the body
It wasn't in the fact that he would be able
To wrap himself up in me to stay warm
It was in that picture
It was the joy that filled his smile
It was in his eyes that danced in love
It was in the fact that he believes
Because i made it, it's perfect
Yes, i accidentally crocheted a thirteen foot camouflage scarf
And he loves that I can keep him warm.
Nov 4, 2014
Nov 4, 2014 at 4:23 AM UTC
Trust is fragile
Trust is made from the finest glass
Crocheted from the Ice Flowers
Pieced together with hundred hours.
Trust is tender
Trust has the wings of a butterfly
Blessed with the heart of a hummingbird
Invisibly, with delicacy, Trust is dispersed.
When Trust shatters
The sharp pieces stream together in your heart
As it will take hundred more hours
To find every fragment, yet hundred more days
To make up the Ice Flower with hardest ways.
Mar 25, 2015
Mar 25, 2015 at 5:09 PM UTC
It's like that time the windows blew open,
And the gust carried snow in towards us,
Us huddled on the couch under that calico crocheted blanket,
And I looked at you, corners of my mouth pulled down,
And you,
You sighed, and shrugged,
Removed your arm from around my comfortable shoulders,
Struggled up and over to wrestle the pane
And lock the shutters,
And when you sat back down, you looked at me,
And all I had to do was smile.
It's like that time when we packed a picnic to the park,
And we only made it so far as the lake
Before our stomachs rumbled and your grumbling gave us an early lunch,
And then after, lay in the grass, pointing out
All the obscurities of our imaginations in the clouds.
It's like that time I came home,
So tired and worn out,
Hair askew with a smudge of dirt on my cheek,
And the lights were out, but you had lined the hall
To the bathroom with candles,
And as I made my way through their soft, whispering light
Towards the escaping tendrils of steam,
You jumped from the dark,
Stifling my shriek with a hug.
It's like that time I realized that I loved you,
It's like that time right now.
Nov 13, 2012
Nov 13, 2012 at 12:53 PM UTC
In a Somerville coffeeshop, waiting for his single origin light roasted Pour over,
Frankenstein reads a philosophy magezine, seductively planted by the lounging area.
"One lives two lives."
The magezine reads,
"That which one spends in their physical body,
and that which begins the moment one leaves that body,
lasting until all witness to ones first life has spoken its final word".
The baristas eyes widen when he sees Frankenstein,
The barista says nothing.
He knows better than to raise the dead.
Frankenstein is often confused
for his monster.
Condensation rises between crocheted mittens, Frankenstein Lingers on the Cherry notes in his Coffee, while it combs icicles into his snow white mustache.
He likes this new version of an afterlife. It empowers him to take advantage of the time he has now, to make his second life last as long as possible.
He's in the middle of this thought
When his face slams against ***** snowbank.
Dog **** mixing into the icicles of his moustache.
A familiar mob of torches and pitchforks only see the monster.
They take turns kicking.
Kicking
Frankenstein wakes to a lynching.
When he lives
He is not a monster.
Feb 12, 2018
Feb 12, 2018 at 8:06 AM UTC
Dusk’s last breath puff up the curtains
in a flash of the post traumatic kind.
A crocheted-cliché, peach-purple duvet
drape the mountains in war paint;
redwood generals’ shadows on attention,
disorderly pine infantrymen struggle
against the wind,
some broken,
most wounded,
shattered limbs on display.
The war hero sighs into the bowels
of an instant noodles cup; dumplings shiver
((uncooked liver)) when he whistle-whispers
untold stories of courage,
guts served on blood-soaked battlegrounds;
no-one listens,
save spiders
with hairy legs
that hang on his every word.
Feb 15, 2011
Feb 15, 2011 at 9:47 PM UTC
She was a mischievous child.
Young, beautiful, playful, curious.
And at the mere age of six,
She had a secret.
Her eyes were two twinkling, shooting stars.
Stars that she had mischievously reached up and snatched from the sky one night with a butterfly net
When no one was looking.
She kept them safe, tucked away in secretive sockets so no one would know what she'd done.
They were her secret to keep.
The world spun on, and she aged and aged.
Her life went on.
She married, she worked, she had children of her own,
And not a single soul did she tell her secret of stolen light to.
Finally,
It was her last day on this planet.
She lay in her bed, covered in crocheted blankets, adorned in wrinkles
With her six year old granddaughter sitting at her bedside.
She felt herself starting to die.
She mustered up all the strength she possessed to sit up one last time.
She leaned over towards her granddaughter.
She put a bony, gentle finger to her pursed lips, and winking at the darling youth.
And then,
Mischievously, with a knowing smile,
She reached up and plucked the two twinkling, shooting stars from her eye sockets.
She extended a frail hand, palms filled by two orbs of pure shimmery light
And with a tender, placid touch
Set the stars into the sockets of her granddaughter
For the girl keep for her lifetime
Just as she had.
She slowly, calmly, laid back down.
She winked again at the youthful girl, who, in turn, put her finger up to her pursed lips.
Then, leaving her long-protected secret in the hands of her darling kin with new sparkling eyes,
The aged mademoiselle gently shut her eyelids over dark, empty sockets
For the very last time.
{alaska}
Dec 18, 2013
Dec 18, 2013 at 9:37 PM UTC
i am wearing a purple hat
that someone crocheted
and i don't know where the **** it came from
i found it on the floor
of my bedroom
but i feel like jo
from little women
so basically like a badass ************
don't bother me
i've got an amy to take care of
*****
Sep 18, 2013
Sep 18, 2013 at 6:51 AM UTC
She counted the night away
the neon street lights disappaiting,
sitting on her grandmothers crocheted bed cover
her pink knickers hid her body wide goosebumps,
the froid unheated bedsit
plied with her emotional turmoil,
vexed boyfriend and always tomorrow.
Jan 30, 2014
Jan 30, 2014 at 2:48 PM UTC
I am a raccoon masked self sabotage tycoon specialist with a self inflicted past-biased hit list peeked at through urban eye sags pulled down by years of troubled pleasantries now darkened with giant grey glass fingers touching the skies and casting shadows on their own concrete feet providing my disguise wrapped in a capitalist bow tied blessing,
Oh forward progression,
Pathetic Fraud 101 is in session,
Catch me if you can,
I am my own cynical supremacist nemesis thief in the black and white mellow drama trauma,
I play all the rolls,
And these places take their toll on my soul because fossil fuel herds have replaced the sea you see,
Peel your eyelids back and allow me to derail your ignorant yarn sewn seam day dream from it's crocheted track,
Societies a chemical fire train wreck attack,
The difference between metal and wool is fire and flesh,
They're bound to mesh within a Chinese children tears committee calamity tragedy,
You think your H&M; hemmed subliminal photo-shoot suit is moral free?
Or is it that you refuse to look past your own pictures hung around your face by D.O.S. operated framed fixtures screaming "ME-ME-ME-ME-ME-ME-ME!"
Or whatever O.S. you bless your shrine with,
Our world is a glass screen neon pawn lit mess with a p.o. box address,
Completely impersonal!
The true core of this horror lies within your head on your bed that morning you woke up and realized
"I can't fix it!"
I applaud you for having such a great start!
You're heart will settle and the city sunsets will become beautiful once you're full of this revelation:
"I am not my own salvation."
May 20, 2013
May 20, 2013 at 5:47 PM UTC
bye, bye, pie in the sky
I made a dream
I made you out of nowhere,
Out of the mountain snow and out of the air.
I was spinning your head
On my spinning wheels
Out of warm sunshine and out of cool moon beams.
For months and months,
I was spinning your head.
I was weaving your hair
Out of silky threads
For weeks.
Carefully pedaling my old fashioned,
Singing
Sewing machine,
I spent nights
Stitching adornments on your pockets,
Embroidering your cuffs.
Crochet crazy,
I crocheted laces for your sheer enjoyment
And for your windows,
Hooked on the crocheting hooks
Way up high.
I knitted sweaters
For your sacrificial lambs
Of colourful wools.
You are almost finished,
My just a dream, just a dream,
I'll let you go
With the African hot wind.
I am all done
With you.
Sorry, I couldn't hold on
To my golden
Knitting needles
Any longer.
(1-16-07)
Oct 14, 2010
Oct 14, 2010 at 3:38 PM UTC
Our bed is the prayer rug where I found God.
Yeah, THE God –
Not circumnavigating morality
Or bones of old saints
Lonely illusions of the sad and middle-aged
All Fat Tuesday freakshows in comparison
Our bed is the altar of sacred rites –
Marked with the devil’s big black Sharpie
And the intricately crocheted lace of sin
Nightly baptized in warm, honey-coated nothing
Pink patterns of iron and salt on linen
Painted idols on the shrine –
Absolution pours through drafty windows
Older than our bodies
Glass frosted by years without suds
Only rain
A holy city of yours and mine –
With gentle pyro ways
Stone and mortar become flame
The balustrades collapse
You light candlewicks with your fingertips
May 11, 2016
May 11, 2016 at 10:31 PM UTC
My Mom called me a clever girl
It felt like a slap in the face
She said, “My sister did that, too,
Wrote silly poems and crocheted lace”
Since Alpha, her older sister
Had a bad rheumatic heart
Too weak to help with the farm work
She cooked a little for her part
While Mom, the Swedish farm girl
With a rope tied around her waist
Up at four to reach the barn
Six feet of snow was every place
She had to milk the cows then
It was bone-freezing cold
Her older brother Forrest
Plowed the fields at twelve years old
Their father died and left them
To run the family dairy farm
Soon after Alpha passed on, too
Depression inflicted more harm
That year was 1931
Ancient history one might say
Grandmother never recovered
Her depression years there to stay
Cokato, Minnesota
Who could blame my mom for running
Her mother could not forgive her
Til she installed indoor plumbing
She had run away to Oakland
A California nursing school
Her mother called her **********
And disowning her was cruel
But she was the lone survivor
In her family of five
So she nursed her future husband
After World War II arrived
They married and moved to Boston
The Yankee soldier and farm girl
It was 1950’s suburbs
To my father it was rural
Theirs was such a raucous union
Like a constant fire alarm
That when I could I moved down South
My dream came true-I bought a farm
How history repeats itself
And leaves its own impression
Alpha was reborn as me
But treated for depression
Dec 5, 2015
Dec 5, 2015 at 12:25 AM UTC
The miraculous Quinoa has been exported out of the local market.
The westerner deems this as their super deed.
The idea that the Inca finally died at the grocery shop
grew root,
furnished beneath the serving glare of the exceptional crocheted beards.
Jun 16, 2013
Jun 16, 2013 at 8:40 AM UTC
Wild heart
Gypsy soul
Traveler of the outskirts
Dancing through the darkness
Stars dangle in my hair
Tasting midnight on my lips
You mark me every time
Teeth. Hand-prints. Essence.
I never leave whole
Pieces of me, of you, crocheted into grandma squares
Dot the journey between us
Hansel and Gretel style
"Pick them up"
You pick them up!
Connect their edges
Our nimble fingers weaving through
A wash of color and heartache stretches between us
In order to grow we must hurt
One of your smiles nips at my pinky as my needle moves
I miss their edge
Moaning softly, shaking memories loose
Warmth easing through the distance between you and I
"Let's wrap up in each other"
But we are not done!?
..."We never will be. I want you now."
Nov 16, 2013
Nov 16, 2013 at 11:49 AM UTC
The day I turned nine, I hiked up
my honeysuckle tutu, and raced
to find you –
there, sprawled out on the hissing
asphalt driveway, with precise strokes of neon
sidewalk chalk, you were writing the words
“I love you.”
We dotted our names with lop-
sided stars and scribbled
stick-figured versions of ourselves years and years
in the future. And when the first zig-
zagged bolt crossed the sky, we screamed
and then laughed, loud
barking laughs at the heavy raindrops.
The night I turned twenty, I cried
myself to sleep, and tucked the paper under
my crocheted blanket. With eyes
closed, I counted the colors behind my lids –
three, four, a kaleidoscope.
Your name still appeared though
– inky, blurring into the foreground,
along with that childhood chalk.
Mar 7, 2012
Mar 7, 2012 at 10:19 AM UTC
Sistah soul
Foundation like my soles
Warmth like the sol
Strings attached like you sew
Invest your feelings so you stow
My sol shines from you
My soul is proud of you
The arch of my feet rely on you
You keep me from shivering
You keep my feelings rendering
And my feet from blistering
My soul
Sol
And soles
Solely my soul sistah, lover, friend, and homie
Just you and I knitted together
Hope you and I stay crocheted forever
Tethered tightly
And sewed by our souls staggeringly
You are my Soul Sistah
Dearest
Cheerful
Merest
Miracle
Spiritual
I love my soul
I love you so
Dec 29, 2013
Dec 29, 2013 at 8:16 PM UTC
The State is stitched into itself, crocheted
by two hooks of its own creation
into a multiform mirage; man obeyed
his design --- he flirts with devastation.
Despite the deathly brinks, he continues on,
blinded by an insatiable desire.
In West California, sprawled on a lawn,
a boy laughs at his power over fire;
cross-legged monks in Sansara's clasp
sit in bare caves while snows rage outside:
they boy's enamored with all he can clasp,
the monks yawn, meditate: endlessly they've died.
Sep 29, 2012
Sep 29, 2012 at 2:35 PM UTC
Love like a crocheted scarf
that hugs my heart,
time taken dearly to give warmth.
Dec 10, 2014
Dec 10, 2014 at 8:21 PM UTC
As my brother and I drove away from my grandmother’s funeral he asked me if maybe grandpa called her “Anne” instead of “grandma” was because he didn’t remember who we were.
I think I’ve cried more about Hannah than I did at my grandma’s funeral. Which is kinda ****** up cause Hannah isn’t dead she just doesn’t want to date me anymore.
So I feel like kind of an *******
I’m kind of an *******
Hannah’s not her real name.
I have this blanket. On my bed. My grandma crocheted it for me – to give to me on my wedding day.
I’m not married.
You could probably guess that.
And my grandma is dead now.
You could probably guess that too.
The blanket sleeps on my bed.
My bed sleeps in my memories of
where Hannah used to lay.
Soft slumber and figures puzzling together in the warm darkness – thick with breath
The blanket following the soft curves of her body and now I’m thinking of my naked ex and dead grandma in the same sentence and we should change the subject.
My grandparents slept in separate beds and I always thought that was weird.
Grandma was like peanut butter on homemade bread
The fancy peanut butter. Not that Jiffy crap.
It was the bread that made the difference.
give a loaf of it to each family for Christmas
My cousin got the recipe but she doesn’t make it right.
We made ramen once. Hannah and I, not me and my grandma. We didn’t use a recipe and the eggs made her sick.
I had a cold when I hugged my grandma and I fear it made her sick.
She died two days later.
Grandma once said you’re never too old to hug your grandparents.
Feb 23, 2018
Feb 23, 2018 at 11:36 AM UTC
I remember her red dress,
Of how when night came its thin straps slipped over her thinner shoulders
Falling slowly into a wrinkled circle on my floor.
I remember her seeing me seeing her put it on
She stood in front of our ice curtained window the next morning
And even though that dress was too short for autumn she would wear it anyway.
I think it was because she knew it drove me crazy.
I remember she would hide it underneath her long winter sweater
Like she was keeping safe a secret that was only just for me.
When she put on that sweater the light from the dawn
Would sneak out through the tiny holes in the fabric
It would look like sun-ray freckles kissing her skin
Her pale and previously unmarked body.
She pulled it over her head ever so slowly.
The leisurely motion in some way made me image a 9 year old boy
Who I imagine for the first time that winter hesitated
To pull but his snow boots over thickly crocheted Christmas socks.
His feet look like her head in some way.
Both are somewhat unwilling to slide into warmer weather clothes
Both hiding a secret heating joy.
Apr 14, 2013
Apr 14, 2013 at 9:43 PM UTC
Words and phrases
runs counter as daffodils
defiantly shy from beauty
listening to the vetch's forlorn,
sometimes we face long standing fears,
in time we question
if we really belonged to this ungainly,
the word of fable instinctively protests,
unfolding its quilt
pledging Crocheted yarns of winding roads,
we then assuredly dream of
open spaces.
Dec 17, 2012
Dec 17, 2012 at 3:44 PM UTC
*He built houses out of
Tiny twigs
Along the etched lines
On the palms of his
Rugged hands
To give me somewhere
To call home again*
They say most things are better,
When shared with another.
Well,
No one else comes to mind when I think of
The ideal and only person
I would be willing to share
All of my love with.
All of my life
My joy
My sorrow
My everything.
He is the ultimate answer
Love is the ultimate answer
He and love
They are the same
And they are
Everywhere
In everything
In every ounce of my boiling blood
And every fraction
Of every fiber
In my timid being.
He is overwhelming
In the same way in which it feels
To be in a beautiful foreign country
For the first time
He is addicting
Like the first three
(And next four)
Cigarettes you smoke
After telling everyone you have quit
He is irresistible
Just like that
One certain scent
The one that always brings
A flashflood of memories
And feelings
And beauty
And safety
Back up to surface until
Every inch of your skin
Is tingling
With raw sensation
A thirst explodes out of
the deepest part of you
As it brings you back
*To the very last time you ever
felt something so special*
Which is exactly the reason
You will do anything in your will
To get
One more lungful
Just to bring you back
To that beautifully indescribable place
One more time
*He crocheted me with kisses
And wooed me with words
Penetrating the years of fear and hurt
Built like a fortress around my heart
And sending every nerve in my body
Into a ****** tangent.
Under the right light,
It's as if I am adorned
With flowers*
Because of him.
Jan 30, 2014
Jan 30, 2014 at 12:40 PM UTC