Posts for June 10, 2021 (page 6)

Your pitch is off.  Please just mouth the words.   
Speak up.  Don’t mumble.  Mrs. Neff is giving
you an F if you don’t answer in class.  Answer,
but not too often.  Answer the office phone. 
Say what we told you to say.  And e-nun-ci-ate.  

Cat got your tongue?  Penny for your thoughts. 
Don’t rock your chair when you talk. Don’t start
with “um.”  Why say “you know?”  We don’t know.
We do know when you’re lying.  No “fuck” in this
house.  Better watch your mouth, young lady.      

Memorize.  Don’t plagiarize.  Learn to suck up
to the right people.  An inevitable ”I do.”  Work
on ”I don’t.”  Try your two cents, holding your
ground.  Shadow self unearths itself, screaming
aloud.  Recall the roar, but none of the words.

You were meant to be my mentor,
instead you’re just a ghost.

I remind them so much of you.
After all, we share a name;
your first became my middle.
And we both…
have a gift for writing,
are the eldest sister,
love the same style of jewlery,
wanted to become child psychologists,
feel attraction for women as well as men,
and rescued gray cats (who have eerily
similar nicknames: bitty bit and bitsy).

I also seem to have your worst qualities: 
the dramatic streak,
the need to seek attention through pity, 
and the deepset empathy that forces us to
absorb the hurt from those around us. 

Most of these similarities were pointed out
to me by my mother with a mixture of 
wonder
and pain
in her eyes. 

I was meant to be your student,
instead I’m just your ghost. 

Spiral Bound

About 4 years later, I find my undated love
notes to the Universe
in a fat little notebook stuffed into
the passenger seat pocket of my car.

Written large, but without special presentation:
“I see how beautiful and kind you are.”
Thought I’d written it while communicating
at home with a sore throat, but the next page:
“Thanks for getting my umbrellas wet.”

Only two notes found as
I clean the car that I’ll sell before
another move out of state:

“I see how beautiful and kind you are.”
“Thanks for getting my umbrellas wet.”
For the Universe, for Kentucky, for the same place,
I write two more: “Thank you for
guiding me as I pack and unpack
umbrellas for days clear and overcast.”

And “Thank you
for the man who calls me his sunflower.”

this is not a love poem:

how do you put into words how lonely you are

asking for a friend

how do you write how fearful you are that this loneliness will never end

again

asking for a friend

will anyone relate

will anyone find meaning in my senseless ramblings of how badly i want to find belonging in someone

will someone read this poem and think it’s art

or title it a complaint by a single twenty something

will someone care that

sometimes in my most private moments i think about if i will ever find the love i crave

as if all of my desperate attempts to distract myself

is me just binding my time

till i find a perfect person to complete me

and i will no longer be sad

or angry

or broken

sometimes i wonder

if i’ve become too bitter to love

every year i spend spinning on this earth

my heart blackens

a dark hole only growing darker and more empty

i wonder

if soon a year

will turn into years

and i will still be this unhappy

this stagnant

and there will never be a picturesque wedding invitation with my name on it

littering my friend’s fridge door

i worry

that i will spend the rest of forever

forcing sleep that will not peacefully come

in an empty bed.

i worry

that i am not guaranteed

growing old with someone.

that i soon will learn if there is a difference in being lonely at 21

and being lonely at 52

i worry

that i will never have someone

to write love poems about.

Shining youth believes
Elders bravado display
Age brings certainty

Uncomfortable
Middle busily gaining
Knowledge less useful

Single shaky step
from middle path to ancient
Certainty hope lost

Consider much and you won’t
move, you’ll stick in muck.

Question every urge and you will
remain unchanged. There are a million
and four reasons why it won’t work.

Why it isn’t safe.
How it could hurt,
backfire, humiliate.
How it could endanger
your promotion, reputation,
credit rating, rank.
How it could disappoint,
appear deceptive, selfish, ungrateful.
How you could resoundingly
flop and fail.

All you’ve earned by following
the regular is where you are.
Where you were.

Nothing will emerge
extraordinary from stale
chambers of stodgy decorum.

Pressed suits and pleated pants
are fine unless you hope to dance.
Cuff links won’t allow
for rolled up sleeves.
A necktie, like a girdle, will
barely let you breathe.

Play it close and calculate
financial gains, avoid
the risks at all costs
and with luck, everything
will pretty much
stay the same.

My mama’s people farmed sugar cane in South Carolina
and cut up stalks of it
for us to suck the sweetness from,
shucked their own oysters
and ground their own grits in the corncrib.

My daddy’s people in North Carolina
wrung chickens’ necks with their bare hands for Sunday suppers,
slaughtered their own hogs and hung them upside down
from the branches of the pecan tree,
made their own sausages with black pepper and sage
and cured their own hams in the smokehouse.

My Aunt Addie thought Colonel Sanders was a carpetbagger
but considered Coca-Cola the elixir of life
and retired every night with two fingers of Canadian Mist.

My daddy drank black coffee at the kitchen table
late at night when everyone else had gone to bed,
staring straight ahead
and cooling each sip in a saucer
before he sipped it, slow as Christmas.

The leaves
Are their brightest
And most colorful
Near the end
As if they have found the joy
Hidden in returning

Anne Sexton said she felt 19 in the head.
 I used to agree with that poetic view,
Now it seems more like late 30’s
or early 40’s in my head.

When asked about post retirement health changes
my doctor said:
“Very little differences between 65 and 70.
Real changes begin between 70 to 75
but most likely more changes between 75 to 80.”

That seemed OK when receiving 
the news at 69.

The view changes after turning 75.