Here's a few more in the short poem series I've been writing. I usually write each of these in a bout 2 to 3 minutes while standing. And then edit a word or two when I get home. I have two more to post, "Vacation" and "Excuse". I had written two other series but I hated them and I punched the part of my brain that created them.
Awakening #1: Stranger
If you wake next to a beautiful stranger,
stay your hurry.
Especially if they wake and see you
as another beautiful stranger.
You’ll need this for a later tomorrow
when you wake to sallow sunlight,
no impression, no legs in your legs,
and you must retreat back to dreams
to cotton enough beauty for the day.
Awakening#2: Sunrise
If you wake and the sun won’t,
the moon will take your complaints.
Because she always has and will.
This is her plight, the business of third shift.
Her light is on, speak or sigh.
These are the same to her.
Awakening#3: Age
If you wake older by more than a day,
if somehow you’ve kept age on a leash,
it will pile up on you.
One morning, or after a surgery,
or in a mirror, or a wake,
or while lifting an everyday thing,
it’ll rush in on you like a sudden storm,
like bills, like new glasses showing
how much has been hiding.
Awakening#4: Parts
If you wake, or at least, parts of you
wake, maybe a foot but no leg,
every other finger, the lips but not heart,
the ears never start, or your hands
feel cold and strangered against you,
or just the side of the mind that dreams,
and you wander the day without reason,
or maybe just the body wakes enough
to mime it’s way through a full day’s existence.
Awakening#5: Roethke
If you wake to sleep
and take that waking slow,
you are in the wrong poem.
Get out.
Awakening#6: Sleeping In
If you forget to wake,
who will find you?
Hopefully, you live with a family,
or collective of roomies,
but if you’ve become alone
by circumstance or a social withering,
you’ll be lucky to have a nosy neighbor,
or hungry canine.
But if you never wake up
I hope you are stuck in a dream
so pleasant you’ll never mind
unendingness.
I loved #3
ReplyDeleteVery true how that happens. For me it's always in the mirror of airplane lavaratories after a red-eye. Just a bad thing.
#5 was pretty funny, in a poet nerd sort of way
the last one scared me and made me determined to go out and find a wife or something.
I like number 1, i am not smart enough to understand it perhaps on a deeper level, but it made me smile and I like to think I understand it.
ReplyDeleteLOVE these. Who knew cotton could be a verb.
ReplyDeleteAaron,
ReplyDeleteYeah, that is so poetry nerdy. It's funny. I just let whatever happens happen with these poems and I couldn't resist.
As to #6, you have a hungry canine! Isn't Winston enough of a wife? A wife you have to clean up after and tell to stop chewing your stuff?
Allen,
Yeah, I like number 1 as well. Maybe there's some deeper stuff going on but mostly it's just what you probably think.
Rachel,
Yeah, i frequently mess with verbs and nouns. I have to hold back because I can use it to excess but I like when it works and becomes unexpected.
seamus, I love this series. Most especially the first one when they wake up and see you as a beautiful stranger too. It made me smile. Actually, they all did, but that one most particularly.
ReplyDeleteShiloh,
ReplyDeleteI think number one is my favorite, too. Sometimes I like the series based on the first poem. These poems were just a distraction at first but a few of them might stay. Make it to a final cut. I'm glad you liked.