"itineraries" poems
Trying to reach out to life
Feel distanced from me
I have travelled a distance
Went beyond the road I planned
Life will not let me walk back
The erased road remains a memory
Now I have to move ahead
Without looking back
Life has strange ways
Where you travel without itineraries
Jul 10, 2015
Jul 10, 2015 at 2:47 PM UTC
A born salesman,
my father made all his dough
by selling wool to Fieldcrest, Woolrich and Faribo.
A born talker,
he could sell one hundred wet-down bales
of that white stuff. He could clock the miles and the sales
and make it pay.
At home each sentence he would utter
had first pleased the buyer who'd paid him off in butter.
Each word
had been tried over and over, at any rate,
on the man who was sold by the man who filled my plate.
My father hovered
over the Yorkshire pudding and the beef:
a peddler, a hawker, a merchant and an Indian chief.
Roosevelt! Willkie! and war!
How suddenly gauche I was
with my old-maid heart and my funny teenage applause.
Each night at home
my father was in love with maps
while the radio fought its battles with Nazis and ****
Except when he hid
in his bedroom on a three-day drunk,
he typed out complex itineraries, packed his trunk,
his matched luggage
and pocketed a confirmed reservation,
his heart already pushing over the red routes of the nation.
I sit at my desk
each night with no place to go,
opening thee wrinkled maps of Milwaukee and Buffalo,
the whole U.S.,
its cemeteries, its arbitrary time zones,
through routes like small veins, capitals like small stones.
He died on the road,
his heart pushed from neck to back,
his white hanky signaling from the window of the Cadillac.
My husband,
as blue-eyed as a picture book, sells wool:
boxes of card waste, laps and rovings he can pull
to the thread
and say Leicester, Rambouillet, Merino,
a half-blood, it's greasy and thick, yellow as old snow.
And when you drive off, my darling,
Yes, sir! Yes, sir! It's one for my dame,
your sample cases branded with my father's name,
your itinerary open,
its tolls ticking and greedy,
its highways built up like new loves, raw and speedy.
2.3k
it starts with a chug
a push of steam leaning into the next chug
more resolved even desperate
building momentum with each turn
three thoughtless words
leave the station blowing spiral exhaust
picking up sentences along the way
passengers climb aboard destination cars
riding click clack click clack lyric tracks
as they squelch an urge to peer ahead
for the blind belly-gripping corners
hiding morbid thoughts of finding themselves
somewhere in an ominous tunnel
with a villain from chapter 3
but they come anyway
paying good fare
with cash and unbartered time
reserved for such a season as this
infinite itineraries through
countrysides and comedies
mountains and mysteries
prairies and poetry
highlight endless whistle stop fantasies
predestined by curious minds
throwing line by line hypnotic leisure
into the rhythm of the wheels
beauty is revealed
through the picture windows of books
yet
in the midst of gorgeous landscapes
undreamt dismantling jumps
hardened steel guides in these words:
*...I would have been referred to religion,
the cemetery where questions of faith are answered....*
the pleasant journey
comes derailed on the slip switch
possessed of both genius and sadness
for cemeteries are only death if
they are the end of the vision
tombstones create blind men
of brilliant skeptics
when
Lazarus lives
the tomb is empty
and the end isn't
faith puts the train upright
setting the switches to forever
bypassing graveyards
and riding to the unquenchable light.
Mar 22, 2014
Mar 22, 2014 at 3:55 AM UTC
variegated dreams
overturning the ashened night
wake, wake
branch and twist
to the music
of the tide
escapism of this world engulfed
with itineraries and haste
leaving fragments of vivacity in its wake
like riding a comet through life
stop, stop
smell the roses
make shapes out of clouds
within the starry night
rest, rest
blooming minds
drudging through the snow
whilst in drought
turning page after page
within this infancy
of human kind
sleep
and read but a line
Apr 3, 2013
Apr 3, 2013 at 12:26 PM UTC
I know not every girl has a 'break up' box.
I know I do.
It's full of useless pieces of paper.
Movie tickets.
Parking receipts.
Itineraries.
It's full of meaningless pieces of junk.
A broken bracelet.
A sad Domo figure.
A bottle.
Useless. Meaningless.
They meant so much to me.
As did you.
That parking ticket was the last thing I got before you broke me.
That bottle was the last thing your lips touched before you left.
That bracelet you won for me at a pub quiz.
That movie ticket marked the first time you held my hand.
And now, I look at this box.
One that held so much pain.
I wish I could say I feel better, now.
But,
I feel...
Nothing.
Aug 11, 2014
Aug 11, 2014 at 6:06 AM UTC
Much in doing..
all the trip planning
detailed itineraries
of course, maps
without which
we are surely lost..
distances and times
contingency insurance..
What of all this
preparation..?
much effort dedicated
to here and there..
if we could
locate ourselves
on the roads between..
there we find
no places and times..
freedom arrives
ourselves the
destinations...
Oct 27, 2012
Oct 27, 2012 at 10:31 PM UTC
these winding, blind itineraries
and their purposeful turns;
bends on the wry pavements,
their naming of things
awaiting the return of memory
with an auspice, or a head with bounty,
i am but a bamboo in
the wind — slender gymnast
supple ground's tenement,
or daresay honestly, a creeping into
the world with roots close to
heartland, this poem
now, without feet and my eyes
with surgery-precision ruptures
the softness of all things held close
and divine like a secret,
swimmingly
light coming in
unabashed rooms
here now is a poem,
a homecoming.
Oct 30, 2015
Oct 30, 2015 at 10:57 AM UTC
Time is short, Jesus said:
Before the **** crows thrice,
Eyes burning like ten thousand suns
Weeping at the wailing wall, stretching
Across a valley of broken sighs.
Time is short, how could we forget
The child we smothered, inside of us;
Dumbed him down with memorization,
With bus route schedules,
Black-booked itineraries.
Time is short, and full of woe
As the evil of the day triumphs again,
And our grief is always sufficient unto us:
It fills up the raging emptiness-
When it comes knocking on our door,
We no longer act surprised.
Jan 13, 2011
Jan 13, 2011 at 4:08 PM UTC
let me
i want to be
me and you
so
stay the heck
here
and stop making me be afraid
that with every day that goes
you go as well.
i only want to trace itineraries on your forehead
and lose my dreams in your arms
and exhale wishes on the steamy window of your car
and cry green tears tasting of gin and tonic
which you will hold in the palms of your hands
and when you have no more room
you will hide them in jars
in the room at the back where there's always cold
because the heater doesn't work
i can't be like this if you are not here
and my cheeks tremble only when i feel your presence in the room
if you need the certainty
that i will be here when you come back
well then,
just so you know,
i will be
waiting
everyday
at our place
especially at 9.36am
and i will think about
how lovely would have been for you to kiss me then
but i will smile because
you were so
happy
that you didn't know what to do
stay here
don't make me ask you
again
Sep 11, 2019
Sep 11, 2019 at 10:28 AM UTC
I whirled muckle of
itineraries to reach Eden—
then I found your eyes.
Feb 5, 2017
Feb 5, 2017 at 4:04 PM UTC
*i am a renegade rooster
confused by their programming
so many offspring how are we to tell
which is our own and which belongs to another
was it our forefather's fermentation
or the density of transubstantiation
entities dance on liberal paint cans
sandblasted fragments of remaining still
the handstands advanced their own itineraries
and i wonder what literary blunders did you muster today
existential snails dive as deep as whales
and move as swift as Haley’s twin sister Taylor*
Nov 7, 2017
Nov 7, 2017 at 11:20 AM UTC