"grandmotherly" poems
The horizons ring me like *******
Tilted and disparate, and always unstable.
Touched by a match, they might warm me,
And their fine lines singe
The air to orange
Before the distances they pin evaporate,
Weighting the pale sky with a soldier color.
But they only dissolve and dissolve
Like a series of promises, as I step forward.
There is no life higher than the grasstops
Or the hearts of sheep, and the wind
Pours by like destiny, bending
Everything in one direction.
I can feel it trying
To funnel my heat away.
If I pay the roots of the heather
Too close attention, they will invite me
To whiten my bones among them.
The sheep know where they are,
Browsing in their ***** wool-clouds,
Gray as the weather.
The black slots of their pupils take me in.
It is like being mailed into space,
A thin, silly message.
They stand about in grandmotherly disguise,
All wig curls and yellow teeth
And hard, marbly baas.
I come to wheel ruts, and water
Limpid as the solitudes
That flee through my fingers.
Hollow doorsteps go from grass to grass;
Lintel and sill have unhinged themselves.
Of people and the air only
Remembers a few odd syllables.
It rehearses them moaningly:
Black stone, black stone.
The sky leans on me, me, the one upright
Among all horizontals.
The grass is beating its head distractedly.
It is too delicate
For a life in such company;
Darkness terrifies it.
Now, in valleys narrow
And black as purses, the house lights
Gleam like small change.
3.3k
The horizons ring me like *******
Tilted and disparate, and always unstable.
Touched by a match, they might warm me,
And their fine lines singe
The air to orange
Before the distances they pin evaporate,
Weighting the pale sky with a soldier color.
But they only dissolve and dissolve
Like a series of promises, as I step forward.
There is no life higher than the grasstops
Or the hearts of sheep, and the wind
Pours by like destiny, bending
Everything in one direction.
I can feel it trying
To funnel my heat away.
If I pay the roots of the heather
Too close attention, they will invite me
To whiten my bones among them.
The sheep know where they are,
Browsing in their ***** wool-clouds,
Gray as the weather.
The black slots of their pupils take me in.
It is like being mailed into space,
A thin, silly message.
They stand about in grandmotherly disguise,
All wig curls and yellow teeth
And hard, marbly baas.
I come to wheel ruts, and water
Limpid as the solitudes
That flee through my fingers.
Hollow doorsteps go from grass to grass;
Lintel and sill have unhinged themselves.
Of people and the air only
Remembers a few odd syllables.
It rehearses them moaningly:
Black stone, black stone.
The sky leans on me, me, the one upright
Among all horizontals.
The grass is beating its head distractedly.
It is too delicate
For a life in such company;
Darkness terrifies it.
Now, in valleys narrow
And black as purses, the house lights
Gleam like small change.
2.9k
There are ten of us-
Make that eleven-
Barreling down the highway at highway speeds;
two elderly thai women,
a middle aged man
with some sort of mental disability
his eyes hunting, hungrily for someone to listen to him,
three old men in the back
talking about cars, women and building houses
(while riding the bus on their own in old ripped clothing)
and the strange mix from my stop;
two women no older than my mother
that look older than my grandma
from an obvious history of hard drugs,
and elderly grandma-type woman
who could be a therapist,
engaged as she is in reading some sort of case study.
The driver keeps an engaged, concentrated look on his face
as we zip through sunlit countryside
that I have never seen this way.
It's only 9 AM
and I'm listening to Counting Crows, Sugar Ray and The Goo Goo Dolls.
The women who are older than they should be
get off at the casino.
The man with the disabilities clenches his seat
as we pass the," entering Sequim," sign.
The Thai women put their purses on their shoulders here
and I take my headphones off,
wrap the cord around them and put them away.
Two of the men in back are still talking,
the third has fallen asleep,
his head against the wall,
mouth pointed toward the ceiling.
The grandmotherly woman gets off at the co-op
the rest of us disembark at the bus station and go our separate ways.
Jul 15, 2013
Jul 15, 2013 at 2:30 PM UTC
Sometime, I'll have a dream
A dream in which I'll be engaging in ***
With the loose folds of skin and cellulite
Around Maya Angelou's neck
I use the word engage b/c I don't think
It'll be my idea or if I would even want to be a completely willing
Participant
You know how dreams go:
You're able to detach
So anyway, all the while she'll be reciting her verse
In that overly inflected, pretentious and annoying grandmotherly Huxtable
Tone she uses and
Right as the nauseousness becomes unbearable
And I fear I won't be able to keep the contents of my
Stomach from forcing itself out and onto her face
She starts to devour the entirety of my lower abdomen
The sickness I was feeling quickly dissipating and the
Realization that she's no longer speaking and merely
Gnashing, ripping and eating my viscera
I return to an almost homeostasis
A comfortableness
Copyright © 2009-Present
May 14, 2011
May 14, 2011 at 8:39 PM UTC
A dream in which I'll be engaging in ***
With the loose folds of skin and cellulite
around Maya Angelou's neck
I use the word engage b/c I don't think
It'll be my idea or if I would even want to be a completely willing
Participant
You know how dreams go: you're able to detach
So anyway, all the while she'll be reciting her verse
In that overly inflected, pretentious and annoying grandmotherly Huxtable
Tone she uses and
Right as the nauseousness becomes unbearable
And I fear I won't be able to keep the contents of my
Stomach from forcing itself out and onto her face
She starts to devour the entirety of my lower abdomen
The sickness I was feeling quickly dissipating and the
Realization that she's no longer speaking and merely
Gnashing, ripping and eating my viscera
I return to an almost homeostasis
A comfortableness
Damon Michael Garrett
Copyright © 1972-Present
Mar 16, 2010
Mar 16, 2010 at 6:39 PM UTC
trying bad knew day think fight feeling know annoying lying time months tell like sure observe afternoon participant folds pass iron ask realization neck conversation pain poetaster tuesdays busy night lung sake sickness movies gets body reason turns incessantly awakens doesnt ones lifes gnashing try despondency
way pretentious idea cellulite strewn years fallen finally given stomach qualify spectacle necessary watching christ harbinger unconsciously thing girl loose walls unbearable start reach smile needing violent mean slowly engage engaging cell face sung struggle tone shes song cheaply correct contents normally quickly asleep close plea dark personality overly devour actions viscera completely eating list attractive liar power does figured use morning suffer
saving shadowscasting abdomen leave verse sun comfort screaming stay lift forcing worthwhile sleep reciting sets written broken semismiled dysthmically movingriding supp uses help pieces poorly lied reading blunt fine returned groups refractory fiber eyes read word puts say absorb force detach message unnoticed died block clock wish possibly late aghast fear return chum caused daily involve thanks grandmotherly hope unheeded twice starve maya enthusiasm heard hunger comfortableness homeostasis
nauseousness huxtable inflected angelous angelou itll dissipating impress giving lower relent articulate poetry doldrums wise left alot hate cheeks entirety perceived result willing mild speaking concedepretend skin alive shell death tantamount everytime ripping afloat worth adamisdronicus succession press hang jeanpaul speak dysthmic means dinner dreams sobriety bones repeatedly *** pang bc painted reallythat
May 16, 2010
May 16, 2010 at 10:28 PM UTC
Let's start our life. Let's go buy little home in a small town with a white picket fence and front porch swing. Let's have neighbors that only know me by your last name. You can be the town policeman, and handyman on the weekends and I can write for the newspaper, and make poetry about you. We'll spend our days loving each other, making big jars of sweet tea, trying to cook with fresh fruits and vegetables from our garden out back and going to the one Dairy Queen in town when we fail miserably. Let's laugh at our mistakes over chocolate dipped cones. Let's melt away afternoons dancing barefoot through our kitchen, and evenings camping in our backyard. Let's paint the house blue, and then repaint it because of how many times it led to making love on an empty bedroom floor. Let's buy vanilla scented candles from the grandmotherly figure up the road. Let's do it. You and me. And one day, I will be in the kitchen making a sandwich in one of your sweatshirts, and I'll come into the room to find you sitting on the floor. I won't ask, but give a half laugh and slide down beside you, quietly, so as not to break the daze you're in, and I'll join whatever world you've gone into. As we sit in silence, you can hear the soft pitter of rain on our roof. We'll look at each other with peace, and I'll mirror the smile you're beginning to show, because we know. We have it. You will grab me and spin me around until we collapse and laugh in sheer giddiness. We'll eat our sandwiches right there on the floor and fall into an afternoon nap. And it will all truly be, alright. Can you imagine living in that high of a frequency, in blissful euphoria with the love of you and your soulmate that God himself put in you, surrounding you wholly?
Mar 8, 2016
Mar 8, 2016 at 7:52 PM UTC
Though what you are looking for is not lost.
So you indulge
the many cosmos with the one
thing life really needs.
The presence of a cheerful excavation
An uncovering process
Top
To Bottom--
My glance is always softened
By the way this one folds
her cardigan
Alongside her sarong.
No, not so wrong,
so right. It reminded me,
The glowing pile of her identity
Trampled upon by the passion
That heated, viscous piece of time
Where
magnets Seemed most permeable.
Oh, the sound of my ego
hitting the floor,
As if pianos could play backwards
Combined with the vessel,
Into which we pour
lost moments
The sequences of ourselves most vulnerable…
Those moments of awakened dream that we spend paralyzed
Ghosts gripping, eyes bright as they are
midnight fright,
But still she is there
Angelic form framed freshly
In the moon's most grandmotherly light
Such elegant nourishment…as if to say "pinky's up now then; good show"
The space around the form is surrounded
By the ever ordered, static grid.
But also chaotic, dynamic electric fur licking the opaque edges of dark off the wall.
I can move again,
I'm on the mend.
Together we’ll face the quakes, the winds, and the inky fires
And no river will hold us helpless by it's serpentine fluid dynamics
Like the grounds they hold captured, eternally etched through gushing grace.
Why be held captured to the ground my stars, when through love we can fly?
Feb 19, 2016
Feb 19, 2016 at 1:13 PM UTC
Celebrations! Baby girl arriving
A piece of heaven descending
Upon ecstatic parents who are waiting
Cooing, smiling and her eyes shining
How euphoric and rewarding !
In parental tenderness, blooming beautifully
Inherent virtues, flourishing favourably
Buoyantly vibrant teenager, metamorphosing magically
Lithe, lively lady moulding, unfolding gracefully
How breathlessly beautiful, this transition so suddenly !
Deft, determined lady emerging on life's canvas
Out of the shadows of parental caress
Catalysing to compellingly desirable mistress
Celebrating wins, witty and voluptuous
How stunningly sensuous !
Years go by sketching contours of the middle aged
Living through love, sorrow, fear and hope
Journey of ups and downs sculpting her
Experienced, sobered, matured portrait realised
How mysteriously ageless !
Time fleets introducing a frail grandmotherly figure
Her reticent, sentimental and feeble ways
Carving her into a contemplative, pious matriarch
Toothless, silver-haired and wierdly wrinkled
How stupendous a masterpiece !
© Preeti Pathak
Jul 31, 2021
Jul 31, 2021 at 7:20 AM UTC