"drafty" poems
Love set you going like a fat gold watch.
The midwife slapped your footsoles, and your bald cry
Took its place among the elements.
Our voices echo, magnifying your arrival. New statue.
In a drafty museum, your nakedness
Shadows our safety. We stand round blankly as walls.
I'm no more your mother
Than the cloud that distills a mirror to reflect its own slow
Effacement at the wind's hand.
All night your moth-breath
Flickers among the flat pink roses. I wake to listen:
A far sea moves in my ear.
One cry, and I stumble from bed, cow-heavy and floral
In my Victorian nightgown.
Your mouth opens clean as a cat's. The window square
Whitens and swallows its dull stars. And now you try
Your handful of notes;
The clear vowels rise like balloons.
8.2k
In the absence of everything,
I felt a sheer yet painful bliss.
I longed for stimulation.
A soft breeze from a drafty window,
the whizzing of a broken furnace,
the shriek of the floor as it was pranced upon.
But all of these things would not be enough.
I am lonely because the hour is lonely.
But maybe we're not so lonely, because we're both here together.
The hour and I are not alone
because we both are lonely.
Feb 26, 2015
Feb 26, 2015 at 3:29 AM UTC
In the dour ages
Of drafty cells and draftier castles,
Of dragons breathing without the frame of fables,
Saint and king unfisted obstruction's knuckles
By no miracle or majestic means,
But by such abuses
As smack of spite and the overscrupulous
Twisting of thumbscrews: one soul tied in sinews,
One white horse drowned, and all the unconquered pinnacles
Of God's city and Babylon's
Must wait, while here Suso's
Hand hones his tack and needles,
Scouraging to sores his own red sluices
For the relish of heaven, relentless, dousing with prickles
Of horsehair and lice his ***** *****
While there irate Cyrus
Squanders a summer and the brawn of his heroes
To rebuke the horse-swallowing River Gyndes:
He split it into three hundred and sixty trickles
A girl could wade without wetting her shins.
Still, latter-day sages,
Smiling at this behavior, subjugating their enemies
Neatly, nicely, by disbelief or bridges,
Never grip, as the grandsires did, that devil who chuckles
From grain of the marrow and the river-bed grains.
6.3k
Quiet crickets.
Quiet light of moon
Quiet cars along the road
--Go'n be home soon
Quiet AC on too late
Quiet humming charger in the outlet
Quiet bathroom 'cross the hall, water dripping from the faucet
Quiet floors while set'ling in
You're too old for all that whinin'
Quiet creatures awake before the sun
The signals when it's shinin'
Quiet indistinguishable shadow still yet so foreboding
Oh, you're just a pile of clothes that I never got to folding
Quiet drafty window singing with such vigor and such soul
Catch a chill from that night air
Might catch a runny nose
Quiet thoughts-that handsome stranger, worries, deadlines, dreams, 'n stuff
Quiet bedtime playlist streaming
Clearly you were'nt good enough
Quiet poem bursting from me my
Admonition of defeat
quiet quiet.
too much quiet-
quiet, would you let me sleep?
2:46am 8.30.18
Aug 31, 2018
Aug 31, 2018 at 2:51 AM UTC
shirelles
monday night
alone in a big house
light the candles
another one of my rituals
born one hour,
dead the next
to make room
for other
prayers
postures
pen tips
but the way candles
flicker in the sweet
soul
is not another ritual
warm life
to the tune of golden
notes
swimming through
once bleak
once empty
once impure
air
and suddenly, I am baptized
more than I ever was
in that sterile, dead
chlorine
more than spent hymns
in drafty cathedrals
so, the sound lives.
my bed would tilt
at twelve years old
I'd wake
startled of the
psychic death
spread like bodies after
a paid for war
I'd scream like the cats
fighting by the window
at my aunts house
I would huddle with
my childhood
hiding from the puberty
that stalked me
like a jungle cat
the mind reeled with
my spent pulse and
at night
under shamed
covers
bitten fingertips
the white light
on the street
looking on
Nov 11, 2015
Nov 11, 2015 at 2:30 AM UTC
Here come those drafty air follicles of madness
That makes me want you again
Like a drug seduced elixir
Oh tie me up with your insanity
So we can do it all again
Unwrap me from this loneliness
To melt in peace sustained
Like a drug seduced elixir
Won’t you tie me up again?
I want love to be a seed of invisibility
To wash me dry and clean
Like glistening oil on suntan skin
Let it heat me up and soak all in
Oh tie me up with your insanity
So we can do it all again
Unwrap me from this loneliness
To melt in peace sustained
Like a drug seduced elixir
Won’t you tie me up again?
Oct 19, 2011
Oct 19, 2011 at 5:19 PM UTC
The long bleak halls that bear surprise,
of mirrored shadows' invisible eyes;
Cast visions that will soon repent,
from illusive dreams' opaque fragments.
The drafty corridors in frigid cold,
where icy shards loom large and bold;
A mansion where no one knows his place,
exuding its echoes from time and space.
Perhaps the wayward hours will appear,
holding to account these walls of fear;
While they search for evil's antidote,
the complexity of answers remain remote.
Yet hopeful images still seem at play,
as smiles overshadow those paths of gray;
Conquered souls are willed to start anew,
when destiny's light shines into view.
As witness to evolving notions here,
once the winding road becomes so clear;
Are glorified by heaven's pearly gate,
from captivated souls consumed with faith.
Nov 15, 2017
Nov 15, 2017 at 3:06 PM UTC
You left nothing, only the Stevens book
That read: There is not nothing, no, no never…
Nothing and a yellow bicycle:
Two tires on a rickety frame.
When I do pick up a poem,
It’s to hear the gravel cadence of you,
Softer, informed by everything that spins:
A world, a bicycle, a chestnut tumbling
Downhill the city’s painted a roadside path,
My collarbone’s begun to mend.
The house gets drafty late afternoons
So I learn to cook:
Turmeric, cayenne. Hing & coriander.
cardamom. Cumin & mustard seeds.
Hing’s a pungent flower called asafetida
And corriander’s just cilantro.
Icy fingers spindle wheels on window panes.
I leave the teakettle to boil.
Spokes of trees shiver in the silverish dusk
Taking lessons from everything bare,
I let in the cold to hear
No stones turned in the drive.
May 10, 2010
May 10, 2010 at 7:48 AM UTC
Like sugar from a shaker, snow falls on Saul the baker
delivering steamy biscuits from the shop he calls his home
to a drafty run down mansion where the princess on her pension
can be testy with her tension, hence she's living on her own.
Today he took her order, "One fresh bagel, for a quarter
'cause I haven't seen the likes of one since I left my childhood home".
Well he'd never baked a bagel, but he's not one to finagle
and wanting just to please her, finds a recipe from Rome.
And he's thinking to himself, "I must be way out of mind~
no woman's gonna want a baker's life"
but he carries deep inside his heart, the will to be a friend
hoping someday she will come around and one day be his wife.
So to win her deep affection he packs up his best confection
takes his chances on the back roads, now iced over in the storm.
Finds her waiting in the foyer with her thrifty 5 cent lawyer
complaining 'bout the day old bread and... "this bagel isn't warm!"
So..... he heats it on the fire, 'cause her heart is his desire
but she won't accept the bagel for it's not quite the right form
And he's thinking to himself, "I must be way out of mind
no woman gonna want a baker's life"
but he carries deep inside his heart, the will to be a friend
hoping someday she will come around and one day be his wife.
So he runs back to his bagel board and pounds the dough and rolls a cord
and shapes the perfect circle to a bagel lovers dream,
He boils and then he bakes it and to her mansion then he takes it
piping hot but now she wants it with churned butter from fresh cream!
Well he's starting to get antsy but he knows the farmer, Clancy
whose butter is fresh-churned and known by counties far and wide.
He heads out to the pasture and he buys what he is after
and returns to find, 'tis so unkind, the princess, she had died.
The baker in his stricken state swallows the bagel off the plate
he calls the cops, pulls out the stops and serves the day old bread.
He gives the details more than once of how he ate the evidence
and though he thought his story bought, they arrested him instead.
"Tis a likely story", was the only thing he heard
although they'd bought his baked goods, they could not buy his word.
"The Baker is a Butcher", is what the tabloid said,
"better to take your bagel cold than take it in the head."
But all was not as it appears, she owed the butcher in arrears
and when they went to check her craw they found a hunk of mutton.
It ended all without a trial, the butcher he did reconcile
and posted "Pay the butcher now and do not to be a glutton."
And Saul was thinking to himself, " I must be way out of mind",
no woman's gonna want a baker's life",
but he carried deep inside his heart the will to be a friend
and it turned rather nicely as she willed him in the end.
Sep 17, 2013
Sep 17, 2013 at 8:55 PM UTC
Upon waking yesterday morn, the temperature was 8 degrees;
cancellation of events and slippery icy roads, disliking winter!
T'was out driving and dealing with the limited visibility; freezing.
Wasn't fun maneuvering usually two lane streets; turned one.
I'm sitting here wide awake and staring at ice crystal windows,
went to bed last night, temperature was frigid sub zero; No joke!
The furnace had a busy night keeping this old drafty house warm.
My cute little budgie who "was" chirping, is now sleeping on perch.
Giving a memory of yesterday brief thought and still find it funny.
Went shopping after losing the debate of exiting a warm vehicle.
Over heard a conversation regarding me, based on the "assumed".
The two ladies(without a doubt) read what's posted on net sites.
Standing in the next aisle, ears slightly alert, hearing my full name.
Should I walk up to say, "hello!" or tell them to mind own business?
Found it amusing and a bit flattering, despite negative words used.
Did they see me enter the store or did they even care that I heard?
If I were indeed the "rumored" witch, I'd melt every inch of snow.
Why did these villagers "presume" I'm holder of necromancer's card?
Defective reasoning of me practicing "voodoo" and casting many spells.
A bit of food for thought; It's one-dimensional and illogical thinking.
Jan 7, 2014
Jan 7, 2014 at 3:53 AM UTC
halfway home from
that concrete-bowl arena
teeming (heaving) with
stinky-sweat-soaked rednecks
layered in sawdust and grease
a messy blackface mob
spreading spit tobacco
over their naked bones,
they sneak around
through the drafty back hallways
casually scattering
dad’s old shotgun shells
fresh cigarette ash
mamma’s whiskey labels
and let-this-be-broken pregnancy tests.
rusty dogtags clink together
sliding between camouflaged denim
mocking quick African rhythms
circular saws scream over
the echoing footfalls of
steel-toed boots padded with
suspicious glances
and my lonely power lines
are laying lazy across the
sweet, forgiven sky
honeysuckle weep
as they hug the barbed-wire
the sunset smells something like grace
Jan 23, 2013
Jan 23, 2013 at 12:54 PM UTC
rain drips from the dead limbs of trees & i think about those old monsoons. the road trip was dead silent this time. those two years were a storm. he said we're going back home, i said my body's tired of making homes out of empty houses. my final house with him was drafty & small. i'm moving out but i'm done trying to find home. all i remember was how his chokehold blossomed into warm embrace.
Mar 19, 2015
Mar 19, 2015 at 7:21 PM UTC
Should my anticipation run behind, when the air so cold runs dry? My mind is a wonder in this ponder ahead of me. For some reason my heart says you're a bit overwhelmed but I can't help but rely on will dwell.
Some of the sun spots reflect the conscious of hell we rebel. The eye of the drafty wind. My mind wonders as I see the sun bleed, my heart sinks as the hours pass. You remind me of the constellations breading. The halo is gorgeous as your amber glows the Tuesday moon bringing in the Wednesday revenge, a perfect circle to a perfect gratitude of the lust we shared in a wanted haunting. Your strawberry kiss gathers my mood swings. It's heart carries a stone the size of the moon. Pity from far but a sight to see the circle of life surrounds the familiar meaning of how much you mean to me. Some days I can't remember some days I would like to forget. When lovers split into million pieces call me out as I blacken into fading out the cool breeze cold chill spinal tap heart attack buried deep in my bones a diamond in the ruff. My fractal eye frame this sight picture it twice keep me in mind what you see is what you find. Finding myself blind I'm reminded all the time. I'm bloodshot dry Trying not to cry. My reasons why are believed lies. with just one look no second guess. You'll see my regret. You'll see me die a little in my sight. the half heart you shared the day I felt I would care... I would reside my life just to keep you near of a grateful insight. Standing in line waiting to see you see my side. I found my peace you had fit the feeling of being complete embraced me. to let it be. hesitation aside I would rewind my life just to keep you close by, but the patterns we can't hide from this manifested tide. A rush of love a loss of touch we reach for the sky but the stars just keep pushing high as we keep stretching our time is space.
Jan 30, 2011
Jan 30, 2011 at 11:33 PM UTC
i was 15 when Kokopele knocked me up
and i was ripe, though unready --
every day i visited my spot
at first to relieve, but then to sate allure --
invisibly appeared,
mysterious pleasure day and night
throbbing at the thought
of that strange spot.
i clawed to sate in dream
what goddess women understand
in noontide reveries,
sultry swells of swoon
i don't know how my belly grew
was it at that drafty wall
or by the reeds..
there were several spots it seems.
i am ashamed
i was told to be ashamed
of this belly i love, and body
cravings carved into my soul,
covert sudden lusts
set in stone at 50,
children grown and making music of their own,
in tents along the streams'
comingled murmur moans,
he visits each in turns
to teach the spiral dance
and finish in the seeded womb.
flowers glow to settle racing heart with truth
infant recognition of an origin's choiceless birth
and now, i am in force --
become katcina cougar, proud Kokopelmana:
the role is taken by the horn --
eat my cornmeal cakes
with crooked somiviki smile while i make you mine
you can scatter but i will find you hiding
purring soft to catch you firm --
every boy and man will learn
.
Nov 23, 2012
Nov 23, 2012 at 11:13 PM UTC
I shiver
here
in this foreign, drafty room -
so sleepy -
feeling hollow,
alone and empty,
my thoughts drift to you.
Inside this ballroom,
off in the corner,
I feel my face start to
flush and flame,
and from my heart,
warmth start to radiate.
No longer cold but smiling.
All from
the simple thought
of you.
Oct 13, 2014
Oct 13, 2014 at 8:35 PM UTC
Standing on the intersection of
a Monet, a van Gogh, and a Picasso
Nice piece of real estate!
Water lilies ~ Charrette de boeuf ~ Tete d'homme
Let's start with the lilies:
I'm impressionable and I gaze lovingly into the pool
I see my reflection slowly unfurl in the shimmer of the pink petals
As in a dream ... I float on
The watchmaker sends an instruction: rotate clockwise
Now an ox cart:
I seem to be walking in Poe's imagination
Crows flitting about as the ox champions
His burden on a drafty day
Another instruction from the watchmaker: continue clockwise
And now Tete d'homme ~ cubism:
My world deconstructs
Line by line, shapes and forms
Fracture into the subterranean unconsciousness of my mind
Leading to another instruction: close your eyes
Shift
Your
Perspective
Watchmaker says: open your eyes
Uncentre
Misalign
Unhitch
Watchmaker says: ens causa sui: 'a being that causes itself'
Now I've got Dali giving me niggling doubts about the nature of time
Sartre with a side of Darwin and I'm being and nothingness
Ground yourself Mullin!
Open your eyes ... this is reality
There's Rodin in a battle of good versus evil
Munch and no screams! This is good
Gaugin sharing his garden view
I'm in my happy place again ...
That's better
And here's Cezanne, Degas, Renoir, and Pissarro
Bringing me back into a recognizable reality
My eyes and my mind are in alignment here
But I can feel that watchmaker winding me back up
My iris constricts and my pineal widen
Third eye ain't blind
Hope someone is around to catch me
No worries, I'm sailing with Renoir and
I've found A Muse (Constantin Brancusi)
Ain't life a musing?
Nov 12, 2014
Nov 12, 2014 at 10:34 AM 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
you blew a hole through my chest
with your shotgun smile
as i sipped from a cup
of ruin and destruction.
maybe that's how i contracted pneumonia
on the seventeenth of september
and maybe that's why my lungs are corroding
and my voice is gone.
because there's a hole in my chest
the size of you
and it's drafty today
as the wind whistles through me
singing a song
that sounds like crying.
(a.m.c.)
Oct 5, 2014
Oct 5, 2014 at 10:41 PM UTC
I remember the slamming screen doors,
the rattle of the stained glass monster,
and the drafty shadowed nights beneath chenille bedspreads.
I remember the sun soaked cloak room with its reek of wet woolen mittens,
the un-impeded flight down stairs in tomato basket bobsleds,
and the bouncing at the bottom in a frenzy of strawberry carpet burns.
I remember church bingo basements smoky on Friday nights,
Saturday morning sounds from her kitchen,
and a mile of sulfur dusted sidewalk in between.
I remember the damp musty smell of the low lit basement,
the passing of Black Label beer through semi-circle windows,
and the nauseating hangover from Mogen David wine kept in the cellar.
I remember hearing how they kicked in the door while she slept and beat her
and took her things, her rings, the gifts from my grandfather,
and how she stubbornly refused to leave the home my mother was born in.
A half century book ended on one end by the great depression,
which she survived,
on the other end the kicked in door
which she did not.
I remember my mother’s wavering voice when she told me she was dead,
how Uncle Ed found her sitting in her chair, rosary beads wrapped
around arthritic hands.
I remember hot on the left and cold on the right,
the smell of her sweat,
the breeze off the lake,
the creak of the old steam radiator,
and the way she slept in her chair with her mouth wide-open.
The way Uncle Ed found her.
Aug 23, 2011
Aug 23, 2011 at 12:57 AM UTC
I.
Please give me shelter
from the rain and snow
Give me a place
where I may grow.
I'll mend you up,
make you look new.
Strike a fire in your hearth
and make those coals really glow.
All I need is some solace,
and a place of sanctuary.
I dearly need to get out
of the rain and snow.
II.
Grant me to watch the roses
creep along your stoney walls;
you look so ravishing
sitting abandoned in these feilds.
There is Perfection in your windows,
Triumph in your thatched roof,
Wisdom in the worn walkway
leading to your door.
I see love in your sturdy structure,
And as those roses grow up you,
you grow more upon me....
III.
The seed of my affection
becomes a burning infatuation.
I've plummeted into a
great sea of flames
contorting and licking and biting and twisting
pulling at me like the waves
caressing your near by shores.
I long only to stroke the stones
of your existance, to run my hands through your dirt
and through your grass.
I long only to exemplify you, worship you
To me- this home, this shrine, this temple,
you are omnipotent.
To be held above all else,
a treasure to be beheld by only myself.
IV.
As time creeps along
your walls commence to crack.
Your straw turns soggy and brown.
You are leaky and drafty.
and your door hangs crooked
as you begin to slouch and decay.
Yet, I shall stay.
I wrinkle and become stiff and grey.
I will not leave you, I refuse to stray.
For you've given me shelter,
you protected me from the snow and rain.
So for you, my love shall never wane.
Apr 30, 2014
Apr 30, 2014 at 2:22 PM UTC
This dream of consciousness will not end alarmingly,
though it leaves lines on Billo's face
smushed against pillows placed
strategically
The strategy?
To look tragically well put-together
to get her to lie in the bed I made hastily
Well - I say this, but the presentation's done tastefully:
Big blanket tucked
IN with style
OUT of luck since I've not been...
...touched in a while
I grinningly smile - it'll all be ok
(I'm not much for physical lovin' anyway)
...beyond hugging and kissing and getting to stay
for the night curled up close whispering "sweetie, sleep tight"
I've not got these dreams, but I've some aspirations
No sweetie, I'm not sweaty,
- I've no *** persperation
My room is too cold with the wind's drafty laughter
My bed is too cold since I've not quite yet asked her
to lie with me and lie to me that she is the one
and I will be won over,
over-nighting done right
...
Left to the imagination, day-dreaming's my vision
Pigeon-holing my gamboling gambling rambling
Not quite in shambles, see?
I get it: regretting is letting me settle into misery
"Mysterio the (not-so) great" is dutifully bound to wait
Patience is love doctors' medication - "Just wait!" they prescribe
and in time their patients' trepidation will end.
Inner peace outer space and I pace.
(without her face to grin at)
synapse fired
for nodding off on the job
**** awake, up for work
Woken, spurred
on toward spoken word
March forwards - four words
Reverse reverie never hurt
"But I don't dream!" I think
Does it stop me from trying?
From lying to and by myself,
in doubt in a drought
Good - buy myself a drink:
rootbeer, two shots of espresso
let's go, caffeine-Billo tag team
on the rocks, off the clock
(talk about self-deprecation, why don't you)
Chew on the cubes with contextual frustration
The drink's gone, I think long and hard at long last
ARRRG I yell in a fit mentally I'll
sleep on it.
Feb 19, 2013
Feb 19, 2013 at 4:35 PM UTC
inhale
exhale
skin breathes
your scent envelopes me
i'm choking on every word that
i've never said and i begin
to spit shattered shards
of thoughts into the
palms of my
hands
and this is
when you notice
me heaving and you
roll over onto your other
side facing the steady walls
so you can be a 33 year old man with no
attachment to an 18 year old who mistakenly
emptied herself into your salivating, ravenous
mouth and you inhaled me with such
pleasure it almost had me thinking
that perhaps i mistook your
distance for sadness
as soon our time
holed up in the
nostalgia
of your home town
would come to an end
and maybe your feelings grew
much taller than even our abhorring of
love and strings being tied to you and
anyone else but i think now i understand
that inside of you is a tragic, drafty cavern
filling it all the way up with every thing you're
not has become such a habit that when your wolf-like
eyes rested upon something youthful and impressionable
it was simply second nature for you to devour all of me and
then leave me with a cavern of my own, you know i've seen
a mirror since we had to part ways and if i hadn't known
any better i would've said that i've started to grey
around the edges and my teeth looked rather
sharp, if i looked a little closer i may have
even said there was a canine-like
resemblance that now suits me
beautifully, naivety is dead.
Jan 11, 2015
Jan 11, 2015 at 4:54 PM UTC
my bed became a sanctuary of nothingness. But I fear emptiness. Its close. A paralysis of indecision permeates like frigid winter through drafty walls. I decide to sleep in.
Occasionally turning to see the clock- minutes, hours pile up like ***** dishes.
During broad daylight, the distant noise of a cessna impedes into my room, defining a vast separation. One, maybe two people up there have an interesting life, an important destination. Listening to their flight gives me something to do. When they are gone, I have nothing left but a fingerprint stained glass of water.
By late afternoon, the lost day vaguely disturbs like seeing one shoe on a highway.
Either painful or a waste, nothing good about it.
Finally light dims. A broken clock is right twice in a day, but since I'm the one who stopped, the clock catches up with my uselessness in bed.
The period on the sentence that I have, truly, accomplished nothing.
Darkness justifies my nap. A relief as I can finally end the day with some sleep.
I dream of being infinite, traversing the universe a narrow beam of light. You pass me by a little faster, but turn around so we can create time together, to become here.
I dream of when we camped by a river's waterfall. Half awake my eyes can see the tent filled with soft green light. No light source but bright enough to see by, everything in the tent and you sleeping peacefully. Logic corrects me, says it a New Moon and I shouldn't be able to see anything. My eyes agree and slowly darken, blind to the color of love's aura that I can still feel.
I wake. Pour one bowl of cereal instead of two, remembering when you looked up from breakfast and said, "let’s ride our bikes across the country," just like that. And just like that we did, halfway anyway. 1500 miles was just the beginning. I love the places you take me.
I call you up. "Let's not call them dealbreakers, ok?"
Jan 18, 2013
Jan 18, 2013 at 8:52 PM UTC
Our winter nights as children
would find us lying next to the floor vent
of the heater, at most two of us at a time, in our old drafty house, just to stay warm.
Dad would line the windows
with plastic and stuff towels in
the cracks of the panes to
stop the cold air from coming through.
A few times, we only had
the heat of our oven to warm up the kitchen,
Several bedrooms were locked up
to conserve what heat we had,
dad would always drip water from the faucet
to keep the pipes from freezing
My parents couldn't afford much
in those days, not on a mechanic's wage,
and feeding a family of eight
Our warmth was what we had,
our bond in the winter months
It' was not much warmth, but it was ours.
Our walks to school were even colder,
bristling through the knee deep snow
in our second hand, Goodwill jackets
and two pairs of thin gloves and socks
to keep our fingers and toes from freezing.
Every morning, my mom would prepare us
either a hot, steeping bowl of oatmeal
or cream of wheat, the smell of dad's military
coffee lingered throughout the house,
long after he left for work.
It was those mornings, I remembered most though,
those 6 am mornings, in a old, drafty house,
you could hear my dad shuffling the newspaper
just before my mom would knock on our bedroom doors to get us up
Its been a month of your passing,
I can still hear you rustle the newspaper
and I can still smell your burnt military coffee
every morning since and I still don't want
to get out of bed
We didn't have much warmth in that old, drafty house, but it was all ours.
Nov 26, 2016
Nov 26, 2016 at 2:34 AM UTC
I step outside
just in time, Father
for the leaf to fall from the tree
and the air is much too nipping, and biting,
and apple-pie
for me to hide from it
please, tell me a story,
all about it
about how the world ends and Your foot goes a
"stomp!"
over on the olive mount
and no more doors ever close like
sesame
sesame
sesame
ses—
I go along with things
just as if they are meant to be
and when autumn's chill catches
I hope to have You sewn onto my sleeve
not that I'd ask You to shrink for me
though I know that You would dare to do so,
and have
and prob'ly will again
and I can walk the earth like You
with intention in my feet and it will be so
meant
to
be
when the sun is just an augur
I hope to be sewn onto Your sleeve
and I can drop and fall like an autumn leaf,
and spring up again in the next wind You breathe
You bend down to hear
a calm in the torrential,
praying me a good prayer
unproved to me yet, but I know it
it's inclemence and drafty doors
and hot cinnamon in apple-pie
Nov 1, 2021
Nov 1, 2021 at 2:55 PM UTC