Housewife Haiku

There is a layer
of dust which coats the front room
Quick - shut the drapes

___

Food is wonderful
There's no way I will cook it
every single day

_____

Cat puke on the floor
barely digested morsels
with luck, he'll recycle.

__________

Eight licked stamps, two spoons,
a box worth of cracker crumbs
where is the mouse pad

_________________


Pillows leak feathers
Silk sheets have no elastic
Close the bedroom door

______________________________

Children with dirty
faces are a gift from God
Please do not adjust
_______________________________________

Where I want to be when I don't want to be here

Recent Pics - 2 Poet Places and 1 Small Yellow Finch

Richard Young

The first boy I ever lied to my parents about is dead. That's how old we've become. And my mother has outlived him. That's how strange and fickle death is.

Death has to do with age to some extent, but death is also random and fingers the young before the old sometimes.

This is not to say I wanted my mother to die before my first real boyfriend - only that I would have wanted my first real boyfriend to have outlived my mother, which is different.

In a perfect world, my old boyfriend would still be alive, as would my mother. And whenever she died, he would have died 35 years later.

I am searching my imperfect memory for pictures and thoughts of those long ago days. I remember he had long hair - blonde, unruly and curly, curly, curly, and a ready made smile which lit the world. He was heavy set, but compared to me, Twiggy was heavyset, so that's probably not a true memory. He played bass guitar and sang in several different bands over the years I knew him and I would sit at the edge of the stage and revel in my "she's with the band" groupie-ism. We laid on top of his car back in 1969 and watched Neil Armstrong walk on the moon. He was tripping and he saw more than I did, but I had chills, anyhow. We went with a bunch of people to his parent's cottage in Michigan (that's where the lie to my parent's came into play) and everyone drank and smoked and partied until most of them threw the hell up. It was fun. It was especially fun because I didn't throw up and it was my very first "vacation" sans parents.

We held hands alot and swore undying love - and then, I forget why, we broke up and moved on. But we remained friends. I got pregnant by someone else and he stuck by my side when a lot of other, less open-minded friends did not. He still dragged me to band dates - I still sat on the edge of the stage, and scandalized the nuns and all the little Catholic girls because of my advanced state of unwed pregnancy. I gave birth and he met a new girl - she, too, became my friend. I believe that she, too, is dead now, although I do not know for sure. We lost touch sometime in the mid-eighties. They were divorcing and she was the victim of a little known genetic disease which had slowly robbed her of her ability to function physically and a demerol addiction which quickly robbed her of her ability to function mentally. The last I heard she was being placed in a nursing home and then silence from everyone.

I did not pursue news of either of them. I had my own angst at the time and it was easier to wait for a phone call which never came.

And then, a few days ago, thanks to Facebook, I thought I had found him. There was a friend of a friend of a friend on mine and they had a link to his old group, Fawn. I joined the Facebook Page, I wrote to the friend of the friend of the friend and asked for news.

And the news was neither expected nor was it good.

RY died 5 years ago, at the age of 54, of Hodgkins Lymphoma.

May he rest in peace and may he be walking on the moon, smiling that 1,000 watt smile down on us all.

One More Revision

My Sister and I


We were the worst Girl Scouts. We did not sell
our cookies we just freely passed them out
to long-haired boys we barely knew and hell-
bound men on low-slung bikes who'd hang about
a day or two until their engines cooled;
until their fresh-inked dragons scabbed; until
our sainted mother dragged us home. She fooled
no one. She wanted us to cry; to spill
our guts; to crack like china; crumb like cake;
surrender unto Mom; to never cling
to strangers but to her; to cower; quake
on sheets still wet with Daddy's sweat; to sing
through tears that only she could make us shed.
She swore to Christ we'd bleed as she'd been bled.

NagsHead 2010 Slide Show

Cleaning House

Arghhhh....Half the poetry links on the sidebar here were no longer valid.

I'm old. I've outlived my internet poetry publications, apparently.

Anyhow, I've gotten rid of the deadwood and added a few new ones. Very few, however, since I've virtually stopped submitting poetry altogether.

It's such a small world - and an incestuous one at that.

Having spent the last few years involved in it to greater and lesser degrees I've found that I either don't agree with an editor's politics and therefore do not wish to be associated with his/her ezine or that I don't like them or they don't like me or their friends don't like me and so what's the point? Regardless of how an editor might strive to be impartial it's hard to believe that seeing a known name doesn't bias a person in one direction or another. I'm afraid to send to the editors who don't like me for fear they'll dismiss my poetry based on my name and I'm afraid to send to editors who DO like me for fear they'll accept my poetry because they don't want to hurt my feelings.

For awhile I was concentrating on anthologies but that soured quickly when I would get my "contributor's copy," (which a few times I had to PAY for) and found that I was disappointed in the quality of poetry provided within it's pages. Makes me think that I'm "that bad," too, and it creeps me out.

Don't get me wrong, I like being published, I just don't like the idea that somewhere someone is sitting there reading my poem which happens to be on the page opposite their poem and they're going, "Damn, she's bad. What the heck is she doing here?"

I've also reached the conclusion that no one reads poetry except other poets. Not that that's a bad thing, necessarily, it's just that I really wish it wasn't the only thing.

Besides, I'm in one of my black-Irish phases where I hate everyone.

What I'd like to do is never leave the house again.

Except to get White Castles.

And maybe Fudruckers.

If they only delivered life would be perfect.