"housekeeping" poems
There is one thing that ought to be taught in all the colleges,
Which is that people ought to be taught not to go around always making apologies.
I don't mean the kind of apologies people make when they run over you or borrow five dollars or step on your feet,
Because I think that is sort of sweet;
No, I object to one kind of apology alone,
Which is when people spend their time and yours apologizing for everything they own.
You go to their house for a meal,
And they apologize because the anchovies aren't caviar or the partridge is veal;
They apologize privately for the crudeness of the other guests,
And they apologize publicly for their wife's housekeeping or their husband's jests;
If they give you a book by Dickens they apologize because it isn't by Scott,
And if they take you to the theater, they apologize for the acting and the dialogue and the plot;
They contain more milk of human kindness than the most capacious diary can,
But if you are from out of town they apologize for everything local and if you are a foreigner they apologize for everything American.
I dread these apologizers even as I am depicting them,
I shudder as I think of the hours that must be spend in contradicting them,
Because you are very rude if you let them emerge from an argument victorious,
And when they say something of theirs is awful, it is your duty to convince them politely that it is magnificent and glorious,
And what particularly bores me with them,
Is that half the time you have to politely contradict them when you rudely agree with them,
So I think there is one rule every host and hostess ought to keep with the comb and nail file and bicarbonate and aromatic spirits on a handy shelf,
Which is don't spoil the denouement by telling the guests everything is terrible, but let them have the thrill of finding it out for themselves.
23.7k
We two kept house, the Past and I,
The Past and I;
I tended while it hovered nigh,
Leaving me never alone.
It was a spectral housekeeping
Where fell no jarring tone,
As strange, as still a housekeeping
As ever has been known.
As daily I went up the stair,
And down the stair,
I did not mind the Bygone there—
The Present once to me;
Its moving meek companionship
I wished might ever be,
There was in that companionship
Something of ecstasy.
It dwelt with me just as it was,
Just as it was
When first its prospects gave me pause
In wayward wanderings,
Before the years had torn old troths
As they tear all sweet things,
Before gaunt griefs had torn old troths
And dulled old rapturings.
And then its form began to fade,
Began to fade,
Its gentle echoes faintlier played
At eves upon my ear
Than when the autumn’s look embrowned
The lonely chambers here,
The autumn’s settling shades embrowned
Nooks that it haunted near.
And so with time my vision less,
Yea, less and less
Makes of that Past my housemistress,
It dwindles in my eye;
It looms a far-off skeleton
And not a comrade nigh,
A fitful far-off skeleton
Dimming as days draw by.
9.4k
When you are over me,
I'll pluck my poems from your hair
and shake them from your sheets;
I'll take longer than I should.
Aug 7, 2011
Aug 7, 2011 at 4:39 PM UTC
Once an addict always an addict
And I'm back in the attic
Blowing dust off picture frames and knickknacks
Stirring up old feelings and panic attacks
These memories so fragile
These demons so quick and agile
None of it ever goes away
Just covered until a cloudy day
When my soul decides to do some housekeeping
But this is something no spring cleaning
Could ever completely sanitize
Until I come to realize
That this is no longer me
Just remnants of what I used to be
Jun 4, 2015
Jun 4, 2015 at 12:35 AM UTC
A desolate shore,
The sinister seduction of the Moon,
The menace of the irreclaimable Sea.
Flaunting, ****** and grim,
From cloud to cloud along her beat,
Leering her battered and inveterate leer,
She signals where he prowls in the dark alone,
Her horrible old man,
Mumbling old oaths and warming
His villainous old bones with villainous talk--
The secrets of their grisly housekeeping
Since they went out upon the pad
In the first twilight of self-conscious Time:
Growling, hideous and hoarse,
Tales of unnumbered Ships,
Goodly and strong, Companions of the Advance,
In some vile alley of the night
Waylaid and bludgeoned--
Dead.
Deep cellared in primeval ooze,
Ruined, dishonoured, spoiled,
They lie where the lean water-worm
Crawls free of their secrets, and their broken sides
Bulge with the slime of life. Thus they abide,
Thus fouled and desecrate,
The summons of the Trumpet, and the while
These Twain, their murderers,
Unravined, imperturbable, unsubdued,
Hang at the heels of their children--She aloft
As in the shining streets,
He as in ambush at some accomplice door.
The stalwart Ships,
The beautiful and bold adventurers!
Stationed out yonder in the isle,
The tall Policeman,
Flashing his bull's-eye, as he peers
About him in the ancient vacancy,
Tells them this way is safety--this way home.
4.2k
Take me back to a different hotel every night and living out of a suitcase. Getting comfortable in our naked bodies around each other; comparing breast size and stretch marks—examining ourselves like the men who’ve carelessly fondled us before for our likes and dislikes. Sharing a bottle of lukewarm tequila in the world’s smallest bathtub and then I sing you to sleep. Highway cars buzzing past and there’s only one road to get lost on, but we manage it every single time. Your car becomes a dressing room at gas stations where people stare with disapproving glares and worry for the safety of their wallets; because we don’t belong here but we laugh—still drunk from the early morning hours and just trying to find the next check-in spot for the night. There never is a real destination but home always seems too close and we both hate that part. It doesn’t feel right when it ends or when I have to crawl back into my own bed without a time frame to be out by in the morning—before the housekeeping maid comes banging on our door,
yet again.
Dec 12, 2020
Dec 12, 2020 at 1:06 AM UTC
She raised me to be God fearing
And taught me right from wrong
Where have our lives gone wrong
After all the tender rearing
Now she needs my fatherly care
To cook for her and pay the bills
My giving is plain with no frills
It's hard for me to truly be there
She prays to her God in Heaven above
I work quietly with nothing to say
Unsure if she loves me to this day
She failed to teach me to say one word, "love"
Jan 25, 2014
Jan 25, 2014 at 9:38 PM UTC
It was raining the Saturday I hired the carpenter, but I think it was acid rain from all the poison you let escape into your body.
He was a drunkard, and he apologized through sips of alcohol. It was the color of your blood when I found you in fits and I begged him to wash them out of the carpet, but through every sip he said your name just like the walls do.
I begged the maid to clean up the razors but she never did.
The maid came in two hours late and she didn't seem to mind my frustration. Much like you never seemed to mind when you said the right things all too late.
She swept secrets under the rugs and listened to the creak in the floorboard whenever any weight was put on this old wooden floor that reminded me so much of your weak shoulders when I needed a place to hold me.
The builder was far too early, and the maid never cleaned up in time. The builder tried desperately to rebuild the walls, but they shook at the weight of another's skin on mine, and the builder whispered "I think you need him back." I dismissed him, and the force of my door slamming (much like the force when you left that night with everything but me) was enough to destroy every wall.
Gardeners came in flustered at the work ahead of them. There were scars on my heart running up the sides like vines and it was far too thick to be cut down.
I envied the fresh dug up dirt encasing the weeds that I so badly wished would hold my body too. You see I tried to burry myself in your mind but you kept pushing me out and now the dirt is the only thing that promises certainty.
Nov 23, 2013
Nov 23, 2013 at 1:50 PM UTC
< - - Housekeeping - - >
Why is there no checklist for life?
Can you say … recipe for disaster …
If you’re planning to fail …
… then you’re failing to plan
I cut my teeth in a house where we could eat off the floor if we so desired
The floor was either that clean or some other innate wisdom was built into that statement
And I thought my inane wisdom came from ...
Do you, don’t you want me to love you?
#9 #9
Now somewhere in the Black Mountain Hills of Dakota
**** Sadie you broke the rules
Singing in the dead of night
Obla-di
Why don’t you stare into your own Glass Onion
… Beatles
(My head is spinning, ooh...
Ha ha ha, ha ha ha, alight!
I got blisters on my fingers!)
Sep 17, 2014
Sep 17, 2014 at 5:03 AM UTC
He asked me some typical housekeeping things.
Like whether or not to put his shoes at the door,
if there was anywhere he could change,
and if I had any tea that wasn't decaf.
They were easy questions,
but I stuttered through them
like a car engine underwater.
Apr 3, 2017
Apr 3, 2017 at 9:31 PM UTC
I pulled back the thicket
Brambles and thorns
Bordering my mind
Inch by inch
To let you slip inside
Hi
I hope you don't mind
The pestilent storm of neuroses
The angry winds whipping around
Eroding my cognition
(They all say
I ought to stop overthinking
They don't know the half of it)
Pardon the mess
The litter of apprehensions
Flotsam and jetsam of rumination
Tangles of tangents
Smog of chimeric thoughts
Sticky rambles festering in the corner
Acidic drizzle
Of obstinate wayward tunes
Insecurity and fear
Eating into the pillars and foundations
If you don't mind terribly
The clatter of sleet
The noisome fumes
The skittering vermin
The sheer clutter
That would make packrats shake their heads
If you don't mind
At all
Would you stay?
Apr 7, 2015
Apr 7, 2015 at 7:24 AM UTC
She kept up with her housekeeping.
Typically. Very Neat. Shelves everywhere.
Today, the melon baller was out of place
and she was busy batting flies.
Actually, there was only one fly.
Senses deceived.
The humming was too loud to go undisturbed.
Attention becomes focused digitally
on enhanced minute wrecks.
Hours spent trying to get the flies.
Illusion.
One fly.
She didn't know. Suspected worst.
Kept at it.
The sexless man walked in with a tophat. Brimmed.
Asks why the dishes weren't done.
Too Busy.
Why the floor not swept.
Too Busy.
Vacuum.
There's flies to get. I'm busy.
The house is a mess. The house is a wreck.
Dec 1, 2013
Dec 1, 2013 at 8:20 AM UTC
There is a dead fly
On my windowsill,
He's been there for some time.
I refuse to move him.
I refuse to let others
clean him away.
He died, you see, on a day significant to me.
I doubt he chose that spot to die,
And even if he did, 'twas not for my benefit.
Nevertheless, he has something to teach me,
About moments, and moving on,
And striking a balance between good housekeeping,
and philosophical thought.
Oct 27, 2013
Oct 27, 2013 at 7:03 PM UTC
When Peg laughs like Liz
deep woman-hearted laugh
eating beef jerky on Mesa Verde
the good hearts and smarts of women
come back to me, not guessing
any better than they at the time what love
meant, leaving them behind in sandstone time
going to my own cement, sandstone
or good mountain grave
having seen the sharp-shinned and sparrow
hawk flying and at rest, not at peace,
seeking prey from a ponderosa snag.
I left my woman behind to float
alone down the long canyon for feathers
and signs, she's making camp
the moon half full, the sun half high
sky full of planets birds and stars
I look up from the rocks
elements
housekeeping, thinking
love that's learned to love
from earlier loves
laughs remembered, heard
in the laugh of the woman who is my wife.
Aug 11, 2015
Aug 11, 2015 at 8:30 AM UTC
Cinnamon-Raisin French Toast.
Maple syrple, microwaved hot.
Secret ingredient,
Secret no more!
A splash of vanilla in the batter.
We chat about this n' that.
About the play,
She didn't love it.
About the daughter-in-law's cleaning skills,
A good housekeeping award, she ain't gonna win.
Her grandma from Austria,
Seeing ugly would call it
Unlovely.
I am thinking,
Your genetic humanity, betrayed.
What a great poem that would make....
She is thinking, boy,
You needs haircut bad.
But she don't nag,
As my hair has drifted to one side,
Instead she just calls me
Gumby....
There is always a way.
There is always a way,
To say it softer,
Say it easy on the ears,
When you can't say nothing.
It takes practice.
It takes into account,
Nobody at this here breakfast table is
Perfect exceptin' for the
Cinnamon-Raisin French Toast,
Which has left the table.
It takes a splash of vanilla in your
humanity,
To say it right,
When sometimes, what needs saying is the
Unlovely.
Sep 29, 2013
Sep 29, 2013 at 10:27 AM UTC
HouseKeeping
I want the Key
Not just the key
The master key
Unlock every door and more
Of course I act like I wouldn't care
Who had it or where
But secretly I want the key
And all the doors it unlocks
And all the rooms that entail
And the prowess of the detail
Nothing stops me
Nowhere
Cause I have the key
I unlock the doors
I don't wait for anyone anymore
Hush now don't say a word
Someone could be listening
Can I trust you'll listen later
Or will you name my crime
The dime you'll pass
To try and save your own ***
I understand I do
You do what you have to for you
So now that you know I won't deny
I've never been to keen to lie
I admit my crime
I give my wrists
To pay for all my wits
I don't regret at all
As the door closes and I fall
Apr 18, 2012
Apr 18, 2012 at 2:29 PM UTC
While Waiting For The Train #4
Sitting here, thinking about work
and the inherent contradictions
of housekeeping.
Or, should I say:
Sanitary Engineer,
Building Maintenance.
In reality, all it is
is an old fashioned janitor.
Or, as some of my friends say:
“Old **** janitor!”
Affectionately,
but also with an edge.
oo0oo
But this isn’t what I am thinking about.
No, it’s more the routine
and its mindless activity.
As we often say:
“It’s the same old, same old”;
or, “SSDD”;
same **** different day.”
Today for example,
it was a Thursday Monday.
It’s always a Monday of some kind.
And Monday kind of describes the job too.
oo0oo
This too, is not what I am thinking.
It’s more the executive decisions
a janitor must make.
Decisions that determine
the ‘smooth’ functioning of a factory,
office, or where ever.
You laugh!
But really, it’s true.
Ever go to the bathroom
and there is no toilet paper?
See, I exaggerate not.
Or what if there were no
forks, knives, or spoons
in the lunch room.
Then what?
Are you really going to eat that
crispy green salad
with mushrooms and feta cheese,
smothered in ranch
with your fingers? Please!
oo0oo
But, even these earth shaking decisions
are not what I am thinking.
It’s those ever present,
critical questions:
sweep, mop, then pull trash?
Or should I pull trash, sweep
and then mop?
This monotonous rotation
determines the rotation
of the earth around the sun;
the phases of the moon
and when will I clean the bathrooms,
causing the most inconvenience
to everyone.
This by the way, is most satisfying
and one of the few perks of the job.
Sweep,
mop,
pull trash;
sweep, mop, pull trash.
Or, pull trash,
sweep,
mop!
It can give you grey hairs,
all this responsibility
and decision making.
oo0oo
Sitting here, now on the train home,
a brilliant,
not to mention uplifting,
idea rampages through my tired mind.
Tomorrow
I am going to be rebellious-
an open radical!
A free thinker!
Tomorrow, I have decided
will be “Liberation Day”.
“Janitors of the world unite!”
Tomorrow there will be a revolution,
as I,
the **** Old Janitor will:
mop,
pull trash,
then sweep!!!
(written as~~redzone 5.14.09 - Aztec Warrior)
© 2014 redzone
Oct 29, 2015
Oct 29, 2015 at 11:10 AM UTC
Sometimes the case of the letter
makes all the difference.
God or god.
An important personal I or a misplaced letter i.
Summer the girl or summer the season.
The uppercase letter delineates between importance and the ordinary.
Perfectionism is a haunt of mine.
It is a ghost that follows me
And does not stop no matter what I'm doing.
It kills a day in a blink.
It turns anxiety inside/out.
It takes away my care for something good;
Even the smallest of outcomes.
F@#k it.
That is perfectionism in two simple words.
If I cannot do it right then I refuse to do it at all.
How dangerous is that?
Or rather... how stupid is that?
I see my world in black and white.
Absolutes.
You are either right or wrong.
Good or bad.
Smart or stupid.
I have a ridiculously logical brain.
Logic is the glue that holds the shards of me together.
Without this reason,
I probably would have landed in the crazy house a long time ago.
Logic is my reality.
If I can reason it; it exists.
If I cannot; it must not be.
And there is the problem.
There is nothing logical about my past.
Although it seems that abusers have a handbook;
the logic chapter is always found
To be ripped out, shredded, and burned.
They left that part of it up to us to figure out;
To understand their evil.
That is what makes us crazy in the first place.
So the harder I try to understand;
The crazier I get. Literally.
I cannot reason what was done to me
And so sets in denial.
I can't understand it;
I can't make it right.
So f@#k it.
The abundance of f@#k its has really slowed me down.
Nearly to a halt and I'm not just talking about my mental healing.
This is my real life too.
Housekeeping, taking care of myself,
Dieting, exercise, blah blah blah...
you get the picture.
If I can't do it right and perfect;
Then I won't do it at all.
All great thoughts to live by.
This thinking is not something easy to change.
It is a deep part of who I am.
It is also something that makes me feel normal.
Normal exactly long enough until
I realize that normal people don't do math and physics problems for fun.
But I digress because my weirdness belongs in a whole other post.
I have steps to take.
One at a time.
Crying just one time worked for me.
And then I did it again.
Getting up early once
Led to me getting up early again AND working out.
It doesn't have to be all or nothing
Sometimes it's alright to be somewhere and in between.
I don't have to be completely healed or entirely wounded.
I'm still crazy;
Even with the steps towards tears and feeling.
But I have progress now
Because I have downgraded letters;
Even if it is just one.
Now I'm just crazy.
crazy with a little "c"...
Aug 9, 2013
Aug 9, 2013 at 6:44 PM UTC
I've slept for two days minus some hours I went out to buy cat food
Today I went to the pool in the rain, and chugged along back and forth
out of breath, encased in a partial wetsuit, watching the water steam at
times, and then glitter, with bright designs as the sun came out for a moment
And I return home to a monumental mess.
Somehow it just didn't matter, this mess as I struggled at work, fighting
a lame diagnosis that "you are just too anxious for this job because you get nervous
before evaluations" from a man easily as anxious as I am, but much less aware of it
The work rained down on me like a waterfall, and I couldn't stay dry
Weekends gave way to endless work sessions and some sleep
Suddenly, as if for the first time, I see how much paper is strewn on the floor,
arranged by cats who inhabit this place far more than I do.
The piles of unsorted things I would "get to on vacation" are now
there, waiting to be gotten to.
It's clear I am one who values work above housekeeping and the happiness of the
little creatures who inhabit my world before order.
And that's just fine with me.
Dec 17, 2012
Dec 17, 2012 at 6:49 PM UTC
I¹m not sure how I came to be obsessed with Dorothy L. Sayers and her
beloved Peter Wimsey. At any rate, I was determined to go on a pilgrimage
to England and walk in the places where she walked and to see the place
where her ashes lay. And to ostensibly find a signed copy of one of her
books every copy of which was beyond my economic horizons on my internet
searching. So I went to London I saw her heroine, Harriet Vane¹s
Bloomsbury. I went to Russell Square and stepped back into a time when
hotels smelled of potted meat and wet wool and it was always raining. I
saw where Harriet and Peter set up housekeeping after their marriage.
Finally, I wnet to St. Anne¹s Church in Soho DLS¹s final resting place
where she was warden for some 12 years before her deaeth in 1957. It took
three trips to the small tower where her ashes lay under the concrete before
I could get inside and stand in that place, but I finally got there What
is it that makes us feel connected when we stand where someone else is
buried?
And wandering around London on our second day there I stumbled into a
small book shop and, wonder of wonders, I asked if they had any Dorothy L.
Sayers¹ books and they said ³Are you her to look at her private library that
they had recently purchased at auction?¹ So I now have three of DLS¹s own
books and I have one signed and annotated in ink by her from her private
library. I have the books sitting in my living room in a small house, in a
small town in Indiana. But I have a part of something in my bookshelf I
take it out periodically and ****** it and feel like I can reawaken some
lost show in some other place and time.
May 12, 2013
May 12, 2013 at 5:50 PM UTC
I’ve dreamed I was falling asleep
And shaking myself to keep awake.
There’s only so much weirdness
And crap a poor dreamer can take.
It was all involved with friends you see
That I don’t see now, because they
Were stranger than my dreams
Or maybe I was. Back in the day.
I would be partying with them
And walking remembered streets
But I’d look around and everybody
Found other people to go meet.
Then suddenly the Hollywood
I knew and loved for twenty years
Became Kansas City boulevards
And Hollywood totally disappears.
Or maybe I’m coming home
At the end of a tiring long day
And look around, find myself
Saying, no way. No effing way;
This is not my apartment!
It’s fine, I kind of like the place
But someone is pulling a joke
The housekeeping is a disgrace.
Then someone would come in
Who I was supposed to know
And this chick is my roommate?
Oh, no. This woman has got to go.
But before I can get my head
Wrapped around standing up
My family is there too, cooking
Handing me a steaming hot cup.
Well,, now I can’t offend them
So, I sit my *** back down.
I don’t want to seem ungrateful
Like some unfunny kind of clown.
****** I leave to go for a walk
Thinking I am in Tucson but then
This is the Country Club Plaza
And I’m back in Kansas City again.
One time I was building something,
Under an expensive sort of contract
But none of the sub-contractors
Or the assistants knew how to act.
They were putting the thing together
Like a Rube Goldberg machine.
I was going ballistic on them all;
The ugliest thing I had ever seen.
These are the dreamworlds for me
On a regular, but often bizarre basis.
Streets change while walking
And people I know change their faces.
Or I am tasked to do something
Involving technology or looming mass
I end up getting no help at all
And wind up falling right on my ***
Nov 17, 2015
Nov 17, 2015 at 3:53 AM UTC
GOOD HOUSEKEEPING
Not stated
( though it’s understood )
she will not say a word
like dust
swept under a rug.
Good
Housekeeping.
His anger
ripens
into the bruise
she wears upon her skin
a jewellery
of fear
written upon pale flesh
his hieroglyph of hatred.
Love’s lustre
tarnished from the first
the tattoo
of boot and fist.
Holds her hand
under the grill
until her eyes bulge
gulls screaming overhead.
The bilge
of his vile
vomiting insults
upon her scared face.
“Slut...slut...slut”
his screams in a rut
matching each word
to each rising fist
a blow by blow
account.
He the liturgist
in the nightly rites
of violence
uglier than can be imagined.
Lilies cower
in a vase.
He the high priest
of her despair.
An ugly bruise
upon her soul.
Her eyes now
null and void
slit wrists
upon polished table tops
in a room
now sunlit...now unlit.
Aug 17, 2019
Aug 17, 2019 at 3:15 PM UTC
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Sep 3, 2015
Sep 3, 2015 at 10:47 PM UTC
You don’t know what it’s like to dig and dig and dig in the dirt with bare hands
digging toward fecundity
I am trying to find the honest words
Buried under our mother’s bones
But all I have now is the dirt under my nails, and
because I am a woman
I set my bucket of soap and water down hard
I scrub the blood out of the wood
My knees tear open from supporting my own weight and soak the floor
Every clean movement forward is erased by the brushstrokes of my own body
Please
Don’t tell me you know something about housekeeping
My body is an apology I can’t scrub clean
Mar 20, 2017
Mar 20, 2017 at 4:45 PM UTC