#POETRY Last Day 30/30

So this was just as challenging as it was last year.  So I leave you with the last two.  Enjoy.

If I Can

If I can steal away
for a few precious moments
hold fast and take breath
into this full-throttle paced life
step back from the storm
watch it pass
there might be some space left
to create something new
out of the rubble
into something greater than I ever dreamed.



The Wooden Door

Two hearts stand guard atop
Weather worn wood
Outlived the lifetimes that carved it
Patient.
Hinges rusted paint faded
Once someone's dream house
returning to the woods now
Moss topped roof growing sprouts of birch trees
Weight weary
Abandoned or forgotten
The lives that once lived there
Gone.
Still the door
Stands watch.
Splintering
Waiting for someone new to enter
That never does. 
Wrecking balls and junkyards
unless the woods reclaims it
as one of it's own. 

#POETRY 21

Twenty-One

I just got started:

Community college class-load

Part-time employed

Starving student vegetable rice dinners

Cheap tennis-shoes

Growing out dyed hair

Retro-fied hippy wardrobe

Minimum payment on maxed out credit cards

Running slippery rain hills

Boyfriend at the 4-year university

Push start Volkswagon Super-beetle.

I went on to waste my time in various ways,

70's disco themed parties,

Hippy to office appropriate to yoga culture

Moving states,

Changing boyfriends and bedroom furniture

and jobs and careers,

Having choices.

You no longer have choices:

Ended in dirty lands

Filthy wounds

Too soon is a fucking understatement and a crime to say.

As I saw your name and age

Amongst the list

Of 33, 31, and places like Idaho

Hunting, Simi Valley

Families never getting their prayers answered

Hopes smashed

Dreams of college education

Gone.

What happens to that money that should have gone

To community college class-loads

Vegetable rice dinners

And cheap tennis-shoes to run in

Slippery rain hills?

Your names now on a list

That is far too long

And too often forgotten

When we can’t be pulled away long enough

From being entertained

To recognize the sacrifice

The loss of dreams

The elimination of choice

So we can still think we have one. 

#POETRY "To the Maidens"

To the Maidens;
You less than skinny,
stockings runned, pock-marked, less than perfect beauties
You who can not compete with airbrushed lies
But live full out in your speckled skin wonder
Worsened by the unknown chemicals in food
Supposed to feed but poisoning us.
Those earned feathery eyes
Sparkling behind oceans of tears,
Shed in moments of pain or joy
They do not compare
To the soft weather of your hands
Worked to keep mouths full
Of sunshine and hope
Tired, oh yes,
 but in those moments of wondering,
 Whether to ball into rage or comfort, you make choices
To laugh,
To breath,
in spite of polluted air and better beauty products
made only to consume what has already been consumed
hips made to sway
lips made to smile
cracked open you are and you run anyway
on feet bounding through blistered dreams
cause this, girls, is what it is to dance
and this, is what it means to live
in a world that doesn’t believe you’re worth saving
Hair, wild, burning through forests of
Doctors making surgical options
To make a better you,
And politicians making god-like decisions
That they were never hired to do,
And believers so lost in their own pollution
They forgot the holy words left by their savior’s blood.
But these are stitched into your fingernails
Hollowed into your marrow
Gray mattered gospel it can’t be broken
They try to erase you and yet the angels sing praises in your name,
The vibration of their voices shake them all awake
Crumbling institutions that can not save,
Because we knew that already.
Holding onto pieces doesn’t put them back together
It just makes us stronger.
These tree-trunk legs were made to work
And dance and hold ourselves up when no one else did.
This, you fire-dancer, keeper of the down-trodden, lover of the beast, speaker of the truth, shoulder-crier, breathless rebounder, giver of all you have got and then some more,
you are what makes this world bearable. 

#POETRY catchup 22, 23, 24

Suntanning

Let us just call it
what it really truly is
hot red angry skin. 

Lollipops

Childhood sweet delights
Sticky mess when stuck in hair
good until the stick.

Treehouse

My husband wants one
A chance to live in the wild
But I am the wild. 

#POETRY or lack thereof

Can't live without you

Tasty delicious
once black now creamy goodness
my morning coffee.


An Love Letter to Chocolate

So many ways you have come to me:
hot chocolate with marshmallows
milky goodness or dark mystery
bitter bars used for cooking
melted goodness for dipping
sometimes dipped and then hardened over bananas or pretzels

heated by flamed marshmallows between layers of graham crackers
poured over ice cream
sometimes in your appearance you are hot fudge
liquid sipping kinds

round confections
surrounding liquid caramel
infused with things like
nuts, vanilla, coconut, raspberry, mint, cocoa nibs, chilis, lavender sea-salt goodness,
oh chocolate, you had me at hello.

#Poetry so far behind I don't know where today will land

Sixteen
We've been here before
and yet we repeat the same words
hoping they'll mean something else
but their truth holds stronger
than those items on the old crazy glue commercials.

And all those needs for normal
all those holes trying to fill
with cigarette smoke and clairol hair dye
short skirts and big hair
only further pollutes the environment,
kills the fish and the river and even the trees.

It's never going to be enough for them,
there's no one coming
there is only hard work, painful stories and wasted days
drink the coffee and put down the hair gel
put down the cape and pick up the reigns
you're gonna ride right out of here
but you have to find the horse first.

Seventeen
You will bandaid the broken
Wipe away tears along with the makeup
And hold onto tokens of achievement
they will get you where you need to go.

Eighteen
Legally responsible
Rented Room
Receptionist
Working Upward
One Day at a Time.

Nineteen
OOOOOOOPPPPPPPSSSSSSSSSSS
seemed like a wonderful idea
but this is really not a wise
or wonderful decision
but boy you will learn
and you never have to return if you don't want to
but 19 and 31
young and healthy
and practicing junkie
do not mix
but this is a lesson
that some of us have to learn the hard way.

#POETRY 15 of 30

Frosting
Birthday party
Friends
Bouncing Baby Boy
French onion dip deliciousness
Birthday candles never lit
Freezing in Southern California


Water
Badminton
Wandering mallards
Bocce balls
Women talking
Brilliant Ideas
Words of Wisdom
Barbecue
Wind

No one lit themselves on fire
No one shot their eye out
No one got food poisoning
No, it was a good day.