Poems for the Other Half of April

Ok, this month was WAY harder than last year.  So yes, 30, was finally written, although I've been writing it in my head and heart for a few weeks. 

Poems for the other half of April

18.Moonshine

Sometimes we all look at the moon

And wonder

And remind ourselves of all we do not yet know

19. Beach

New suit new flip-flops

Packing car with what will be

Mostly unused stuff

20. Beach 2

Parking lot night mare

Rage against tourist filled cars

Spot found near Egypt.

21. Beach 3

No fire pits left

Mini hibatchi saves day

Marshmallows later

22. Beach 4

Spread out beach blanket

Lasts thirty seconds before

Sand encrustation

23. Beach 5

Sunscreen applied thick

Dreams of sun-kissed golden skin

Water calls, laughing.

24. Beach 6

Salty water up

Nose forced by nature isn’t

A good neti pot.

25.  Beach 7

Wave walking only

occurs when your feet fly up

Head under water

26.  Beach 9

SPF thirty

Never works against suns lips

Stained red kisses

27. Beach 10

Sun creeps down blue sky

Rays hit water flashing green

Bye red lips lover

28.  Beach 10

Heated skin cool night

Air chilled but not enough to

Stop marshmallow death

29.  Beach 11

Good bye sun and sand

Left red and sandy trudging

Moon lit beach sweet dreams 

30.  Home

When you said you were going home

It did not come as a surprise

But sadness crept into my heart

Knowing you would be far away.

Far away has been where you have been for a long time

And no one can blame you for being there

Especially when your puppy has been kept in a cage

By caretakers who refused to let you feed or water yourself

Kicked you every time you came near

And kept moving so you wouldn’t find them

So you gave it up when you had no other choices

We will all reach that point

Where aging parent s need the care

They freely gave to us as infants

You just didn’t have the opportunity.

So when he gave you something no one else could

A safe place to land

The choice was never a choice

And when you spoke your truth

About what you were returning to

And getting another puppy

That was really when I knew

So go home

Home to the place you once lived

Let those walls you daydreamed behind

Feed the fire that’s been tending in your soul

Let the carpets be the trampoline from which you launch

Grow the grass

Cut it with a lawnmower

Build a dog house

Make plans over beer and barbecue

And go get your puppy

Let him run in the grass

Feed him and water him well

Let him lick your face

We all know he’ll poop in the house and it will smell sometimes

But you’ll never regret letting him in the house to love you

The caretakers will come and try to tell you what to do with him

Some will be kinder and you’ll take what they have to say to heart

You’ll have to let him play with other dogs

It’s how they learn, sometimes the hard way

But know that ultimately, it’s your puppy,

That can grow into a dog

That stays loyal to you even when others walk away

Because you know who you are

And that was never a choice.

@2013 Jennie Olson Six

National Poetry Month 16 and 17

Inspiration

Inspiration lost
still putting pen to paper
hoping for the words.

Long time in the head

fracture spin think think think what did oh really not a chance to change mind spin splinter why how no no no and again repeat spin fracture think think ponder reality disconnect disconnected alone what no one likes me repeat spiral fracture think think react spin what again wait breathe pause spiral pause spiral think interrupt pause breathe past no now yes pause fracture interrupt breathe out let out not here not now think now feet ground root now breathe now think legs now head up breathe out let out not now now here breathe now let go now today good today breathe break a pattern breathe think breathe live breathe inhale now inhale yes exhale yesterday think yes breath yes now yes today yes everything yes life yes breathe yes.  now. 

NPM 7 of 30 8 of 30

To A New Terrain

This shifting speechless
tearing new path left behind
all I didn't need.

Chicken Bones

The reminder of
there was a living being
you tore through and ate.

Awake (Wednesday morning poetry)

Awake

Awake:

Perchance to not dream.

What if what appears is

An illusion created?

Fear molded complicity

Fables taught as facts

Perceptions as reality

All lies.

Waking up to dream:

As, what is appearance,

Creation of false reality,

Sparks the light inside

Emerging to awaken the flame

Of our collective consciousness

And set our souls on fire.

@2012 Jennie Olson Six

#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 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.

#POETRY co-written by Tiffany Tang

I'd post a link to her blog but I can't find it!
We wrote this on text messages back and forth.
We may add more later.


Death

Death sits on the couch,
doesn't like the drapes,
hates the furniture,
and wonders when his time will come.


Death sits on the couch,
contemplating suicide and thinking,
"Well, that's just redundant."

Death sits on the couch,
realizes that so many wait for him,
but never get beyond that thought,
and then it's their turn.

Death sits on the couch
He watches me as I move in and out of her room
We eye each other
As I pass into the hallway
Is he here to comfort me?
He can't
He's too bony
Not a good hugger, Death.

a blog post a little #POETRY

My thoughts for the day:  I still stick my foot in my mouth, I just have learned not to chew on it.  This pretty much applies every day.  And it's a little atrocious sometimes.  But I've also learned to keep my mouth shut and THAT actually helps.  A LOT.    Now here's the Poetry, I'm behind 2 days so it's 2 days worth:

Update on the Psychosis

I didn’t feel like

Writing shitty poetry

so here’s to crappy….

Almost

51 degrees

Light rain

Bus stop

No umbrella

Useless shoes

Ruined hair

Sopping wet

Bad cell reception

Missed call

Cancelled date

Wasted bus fare

Thunder claps

Lightening flash

Seek cover

Puddle rivers

Storm drain tsunamis

Lost shoe

Frigid toes

Coffee comfort

Card declined

No shoes

No service

Bus early

Tears

Sobs

Kind eyes

Deep breaths

Kind offers

Wiped tears

Warm cup of tea

Grateful hands

Phone Frenzy

Sympathetic ears

Rescuer coming

Many thanks

Cold wait

Warm car

Comfort heat

Safety net

Homeward bound

#POETRY Day 11 of 30

To the Self-Proclaimed Wine Steals Whore:

You may make out with them in the parking lot,

Share wine and tales in the same room as some of your former consorts,

But unless they see you for the diamond you are

Tell them to pay their own damned cork fee!

#POETRY 9 and 10

Tuesday Morning Blues
Going for that big long drive
Might be the wrong town....



Ants

I guess you thought that
Occupying my kitchen
Wouldn't make me mad...

#POETRY Happy Easter

Easter

Baskets.

Candy-filled, hollow chocolate bunny, peeps, rabbit-poop jelly beans.

Easter outfit. 

New shoes.  Dress. Usually floral.  Sometimes white.

Church.

Easter Hats.  New outfits.  Long sermons.  Boredom. 

Maybe sun.

Maybe rain.

Easter Egg Hunt.  Pretty hard boiled yuck.  Plastic-filled goodness.

Flowers.

Japanese Cherry-Blossoms.  Daffodils.  Pansies.  Easter-Lily.

Dinner.

Ham.  Potatoes.  Salad.  Easter candy dessert.

Memories.

Childhood. Family. Rituals.

Resurrection.

Liberation.  Freedom. Relief.

Re-born.

Forgiveness.  Release.  Absolve.

Ascension.

Into Something Else.

Phone Calls

I am not sure about you.

Nor sure why you are really calling.

But it is good to hear your voice.

But I hesitate. 

Blood relations are complicated.

And non-blood history makes it ever so twisted. 

But still, it is good to hear your voice.

Phone calls make it convienient for those who

Do not wish to traverse miles to see one another

And for those who can’t really bring themselves

Face to Face with their failings. 

#POETRY 6 of 30

Obstacles

In a strange mix of common numbers and fondness for all things verbose we intertwined.

You started showing me the shards early on.

A blanket of ocean sized love could not put out the fireworks that light up and burned the ground of a rational human being when the flint accidentally got ignited. 

These are the scars that don’t heal right.

This is the place where creativity and positive thinking collide with the reality of brain trauma and broken love that turns nuclear and lays waste to three hundred and fifty thousand miles of hope.

I, unfortunately, am not known as a quitter.

I, actually, know how to surrender. 

To put up a white flag and hope that someone else is watching.  Even when that someone else can’t be defined as an actual person or existence because, lord knows, no one can agree on anything including defeat. 

Surrender is not releasing the idea of hope

but rather leaving the idea of your definition of hope behind for someone to replace it with something better. 

This is not an easy task for the controlmonger.

Don’t let that idea sink in for a moment.

This is called claw marks scraping the sides of anything I let go of,

This is called taking a forty-thousand pound chest breath,

This is pulling eye-lids back and understanding that they may never grow back.

But for you, you broken-winged demon, determined to get back to hell, fire-breathing, raging ogre showing your best ugly,

All of which are also contained inside of me,

I see rain coming.

Sprinkling at first, then moving to showers.

Covering wetness to put out fires of unrequited pleas for mercy

soothing flares of sadness

putting to bed all of your unholiness that never were your truth.

I can’t promise you that you’ll forget hell,

But I can promise that you don’t have to live there.

POETRY 4&5/30

Emergency #1

They say don't try this
at home but some can't resist
the need for stitches!


Emergency #2

Noodles falling down
over clean floors please don't feed
ant infestation.

Rabbit

Tonight is a lunar eclipse, I think, I'm not sure.
Dates are hard to come by and keep
when you're out of your world or even in it.
They say you can sometimes see the man in the moon
but all I can ever see is the rabbit.
A rabbit with his head tilted towards the top
ears back, gazing up just like we do
when all our tears melted the ice
and drowned us in the rivers of our sorrows
we have no choice but to look up.
There are no free flights on this voyage.
Your frequent flyer miles will not give you a free ticket,
and while some of us may upgrade to first class
you will pay to check your bag and for your package of peanuts.

Tonight we speed through space in a traveling machine
that a human invented but most humans don't understand
including me.
I don't understand flight.
Planes, I don't get it.
Cars I sort of understand.
Boats float.
And sometimes there are trains run by engines of steam
I sort of get it.
I'm not that kind of smart.
But what I do know is that we all travel on this thing together
no matter what method we choose,
wrecking on the highway,
full barrel four legs flight on a horse bound for no where,
two wheeled hot steel between our thighs.
Slow down open road
come slowly wind
arcs are necessary in this kind of hurricane
that goes too fast for scantily clad rabbits
hurrying to find shelter, comfort, warmth,
a place to lay down and die when the road is too much and the flight too long.
They missed me during beverage service.
I had to wait in line, got some drops from an empty can
but won't wait for some perspective on why I drive,
drive, drive, drive, drive and drive some more away
from stained shirts, broken wheels and heart beats that stopped too soon.
Found behind prison walls, institutions and closed doors
of rooms contained in hallways of places that should be called hom
and what we're all looking for
A little peace
A little quiet
A little safety
But we don't always find flying on the freeway of broken dream bottles,
shards of ungranted wishes by grey-bearded wizards who never visits
but his words dripped by acid tongues,
too twisted to spell reason
too forked to speak truth out of either side of their mouths,
perpetuating tales that didn't exist for anyone claiming to be related to love.
Love, the unrelenting and most powerful,
love, the most sought and least understood
the thing we all wait for but don't realize
that when we look up
like rabbits
ears back
faces bright towards the moon
and we see the deep breathe of the rabbit,
shining back from the moon that,
like the light reflected,
so do we
like the moon reflects our light back to us
we can catch this and reflect it back to each other
we are what we've been waiting for
ears back
face up
lighting up the night sky
shining
almost bright enough to outshine the sun.
@2012 Jennie Olson Six

Wind

Photograph by rps.net.

Tiny leaves come tumbling down the street
as if to warn me with high, sweeky voices
"The wind is coming! The wind is coming!"
And around the corner, the wall of you hits me
as if to threaten of things to come
and your potential for destruction
and like that you are gone
only to rumble throughout the trees
filling the air with the sound of your fury
and your possibility.