Aunt Dianne

Poppy seeds separated by flour and sugar just for me once a year
She sings happily while baking
Swaying from oven to cabinet then reaches for the phone
She says goodbye and returns to her song,
She sings as if she’s an actress and it’s 1935
Living in a black and white screen for all the world to see
It takes her back to when she was younger
Like a spirit resurrected from the dead
the musical notes drift through the air
She waits for Dean Martin or Cary Grant to sweep her away
So much of me is her that she will never be gone
Not in 50 years, she’ll always be in those songs
The songs that one day I’ll sing while constructing the perfect poppy seed cake

The Cats

Hair crazy, eyes crazy
Time tugs on her face, trying to drag it down to the floor
Vacant windows to a house that’s empty
She plays with a string, amazed that it can be wrapped around a single finger
A finger that once didn’t have arthritis
A hand that once was used to carve and paint
She sits and waits to seep into the earth
Sometimes it is time for the time to pass…
She can’t escape and so she waits
People coming and going, hoping and crying
Making up their own story that allows them to sleep at night
Sleeping in a room filled with things that were hers
Things that she built that reminds everyone how the great can fall and will
This event we are watching will soon enough be what we become
And no one even bothered explaining to the cats that she wasn’t coming back

Buachaill Éireannach

The layers of what people judge us by are scattered on the floor
Sacrifice to the gods for a good time
The curtains defend us from sun reflected walls while we lay in bed
Putting together the fragments of the night before
I smile at what I chose to pick out and what I chose to leave behind
I do not resemble your other lovers
Nor will I ever
I am a rain drenched afternoon and you are the sunniest day
If only you could stay, instead of go away

Thrifting

I flick my finger through some gently scratched records on the floor like a rolodex. Trying to find who I know
I see bands and singers I don’t know, they remind me that I am still young
Young enough not to know how important they once were, before they were disposed of
“I still get to hear it was before your time“, how lucky am I?
I weasel my way in between plastic hangers of clothing and catch a whiff of perfume bought in the 50’s
Or recently, maybe she never changed her scent…
And I think, I think a lot.
I wonder where she wore this dress, those shoes and that hat
and was it the best day of her life?
Did she wear them while someone first told her they loved her or did she lose someone she loved?
Did she wear it for a day and then toss it away?
She might have been he, he might have been confused
And the dress verified exactly what he suspected
He was a cross dresser whoever would have guessed it

My World

I turn left at the duck pond to no surprise I see ducks
Some are night swimming, some sleeping with one leg up
I find that it’s beautiful yet beautifully strange and I wonder
How I thought they slept before this moment in time
I want to turn around and take a picture but that would be odd
So I decide against it and keep the tires in rotation
Like I am a dj spinning music
The music that makes me forget how long it takes to get from place to place
So I take a right and I’m almost there in my Flintstone mobile
I feel the tires rolling under my feet
A floorboard stands in the way of me and the street
That doesn’t matter I still always feel them moving as if it were because of me
I look up from my feet and see remains of water, compliments of rain
As I look at the football field lights I see something familiar
A painting I know
With every light from the football field it hits each moisture cluster on my windshield and gives me my own starry night
All that’s missing is a whimsical stroke of a brush and it would be complete
And then I wonder is Van Gogh still painting away
Is this one of his paintings? And I’m in it?
I laugh to myself at how deeply I think into some things
things as normal as rain and lights
And then I realize that this is my world and this is what I see

Thank you Bed.

I crawl into my bed where I don’t have to be judged by anyone
No thoughts need to be had just how long I should sleep
Forever I wish
But to be honest I won’t
Who else can you find that will never judge you?
No one. You can’t, that’s my point
And that’s what I like about my bed
It’s not living or dead and it stands on 4 legs
On the side of my wall where I put my feet when they’re hot
When I wake in the middle of the night and can’t fall back asleep
It doesn’t critique the way I am
Where I put my head, arms or legs
My legs that always embrace random pillows they find
taking some captive while leaving others behind
Even the pillows don’t tell me that who I shouldn’t be is me
There is no one to tell me that I can’t take the feather down and entwine and whined
Until they are all mine
I usually put on music and listen to a song
Or singer I should say
“Serenade me I ask” and they always fill the request
Helping me block out the thoughts that try to stop my dreams
The dreams that make my eyelids flicker at the seams
as I drift off to sleep…

A Poet

The light shines down on him and falls inside every mark of age on his face
Which in return outlines and illuminates his cheeks chin and forehead
He recites a poem about nature that sounds like every poem I’ve ever heard about every flower ever described before
He speaks with no emphasis, completely mono toned
It makes me wonder what he sounds like when he talks to an old friend
Blabbing on the phone
Does he ever get excited, heart beating quickly and speech fast
Proving that he’s human, that he’s not constructed of mechanical parts
Is he just a simple man that says what crosses the streets in his mind
He’s not simple enough because he still has things to say
He recites another poem and his voice still sounds the same
mouth forming shapes that he learned as a child
Half moon, circle, then oval… as he speaks the words come out
These letters that come together point out the differences of now and then
And they drift through the room in and out of everyone’s ear like an aroma