Monthly Archives: August 2014

10 Poems in 20 Minutes (Day Twenty-Six)

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Twenty-six days, That’s double thirteen, perhaps today is unlucky. Perhaps I’ve gone mad.

10 Poems in 20 Minutes
Day 26

Poem 1:
I sat at the wobbly dining room table
For learning this small blue handbook of catechism
He asked me questions I’d often asked myself without answer
Then he waited for a response
What do you think this line here means
How does this fit with this
I had answers
But in my father’s presence
Thought they were wrong
I played dumb
Hid my face
Said I don’t know, and waited for it to be over

Poem 2:
He said you’re weird
I whispered you’re dismissive
I wanted to say, never call a person weird
For then you’ve shut out their point of seeing
And called how they view wrong by association
You wire them to think like you that way, horizon bound

Poem 3:
If, instead of hiding the pain of what just happened
We shouted it to every passer bystander
Today, someone told me I was hopeless
This morning, I got turned down for a job
Last night, I couldn’t think of a reason to live
I don’t think they’d care anymore than they do
Only so much room in a circle

Poem 4:
I had forgotten my manners
My filters for speaking to people I don’t know
Someone, so footballer who looked like he didn’t take off the pads
Asked me if I was doin’ good
Without thinking
I must have been tired
I said, to my shame, stuntedless,
Do you mean good in the metaphysical sense, or if I am healthy, or if I need help with what I’m doing right now?
He just looked at me
And said I like metaphysical

Poem 5:
She did not tell for impulse of shame
That she was barely hanging on
If she had said
I might have said
Grab my tree
Together we’ll swing

Poem 6:
Easter egg hunt inside the fellowship room where all the neighborhood in decline kids came
She set out little figures to color and decorate for those little ones, you know
She said out loud, in front of the mostly brown, that she was running out of the little white ones
She thought most of them would choose the color they were
She said that probably says something about the country
I went to find another packet of the little white people Christians

Poem 7:
He said I tell people they’re nice
Then they act nicer
I asked if that made them nicer or just acting like it
He said it makes them nicer

Poem 8:
Granma doesn’t know she’s lost it
People in their 80s you know, sometimes forget things
Where’s your Grandpa?
We won’t tell her he died again
It’s comforting to know that by then, I’ll have forgotten my brain is dead

Poem 9:
Geese quack
Back track
Wait I didn’t mean to say that
Chickens cluck
And slip up
Oops didn’t mean to say that

Poem 10:
I’d like to be somebody one day
Not today
I didn’t do my hair today
Make me important tomorrow
I want my face everywhere
Confirm I exist

10 Poems in 20 Minutes (Day Twenty-Five)

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Twenty-five days in a row of writing poetry in twenty minutes. My god. I should do something to celebrate or some such nonsense. I’ll do some sort of tribal victory dance.

10 Poems in 20 Minutes
Day 25

Poem 1:
I could be doing my favorite thing
But not care
I could be missing three fingers
But I would meh shrug
For the listlessness has overcome me
I could be caring

Poem 2:
I show you my heart,
Because you asked.
I pick up this squirrely strands, mismatched, slippery, falling
Shove them in your general direction and say,
This is who I am.
Because you asked

Poem 3:
I scare myself
What I would do if I really cared

Poem 4:
I want to wrap my arms around something warm
Hear another heartbeat
And not be scared
Not have to move.

Poem 5:
He won’t like me because you’re weird
That strange word for everything other
Encompasses all the others
Gives you an excuse to say no

Poem 6:
The wonderings forms me stronger
If I had done this it would be better
Makes us strength in memories in the past
Improves us now, so we can say we did
Kicks us to keep getting better
Not to accept the same
The hopeless say not what if, but when

Poem 7:
An old kindergarten paper with my pink paint smudged glitter hand print
In that kid like font on special printing
I put my now hands over the then hands
Not much growth

Poem 8:
When I get old
I’ll creak and crack
My mind will too
And I’ll forget to move my boundary in lines

Poem 9:
He wanted us to go in front and talk about our papers
I didn’t have a real argument
I didn’t want to stand
I cut class
So no one asked me to defend myself
What’s there worth defending

Poem 10:
Lemme explain to you why I won’t ask a guy out
I told him
I’m stuck in generations
The grandmas tell me never to cross your legs
The mother’s tell me not to depend
But they both stayed with their husbands out of understood duty
My dad opens car doors for me, so I pause at any frame
But no one’s asked me
No one told me
How to bat eyes, and spritz, or smile, or grind
And I can’t do anything without knowing it’s ok first
They just forgot to mention
Hell if I’ll ask

10 Poems in 20 Minutes (Day Twenty-Four)

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Twenty-four days of live action poetry written under a time limit. Twenty-four is a good number.

10 Poems in 20 Minutes
Day 24

Poem 1:
She told, she’s had people abandon friends who are dying in hospice
They don’t know what to say so they don’t sit
Sit with me a while
For my cubicle death soul and his
Squared off vigil

Poem 2:
Find me a river
Let’s go dancing
Turning waves
Shot of breath
Breathe shorter and shorter

Poem 3:
I stalked up to the front of the class
Hi prof
You don’t know me but
How to tell a stranger you know, who has power over you
That a greater obligation calls your attention
No matter money spent
Regardless of infinite prior knowledge
My dad, he’s in surgery, if I get a call
I’m leaving
They have to say ok
Then as you walk back
Remember they’re a person
And ask if you’re all right

Poem 4:
I tell me at times
That I’ve got a good soul
And that I’m not quick to anger or threaten
Abhorrent violence
But how far has that been tested
If I could push a big red button
Could I know what I’d do
If I wasn’t there

Poem 5:
I only did as a child
Swung onto a held hand till the shoulder socket ached
Waved to strangers
Wanted to be big
Couldn’t hold on till I could ride a ride
Knew it would be better, not hoped

Poem 6:
Favorite hymn, I want that one played at my funeral
Because this guy, she said, wasn’t a believer
Had no hymn picked out
But the priest knew he was saved
Sung the brother’s favorite hymn instead
Respect the lived idea’s of the passed
He wouldn’t have wanted not to be in a church

Poem 7:
Waiting for this head space to clear
Then I see everything all filtered
By what I’m going to need now
In this certain position
From this different angle place in my head

Poem 8:
The pride comes from hope the second time around is all better
He sideline sits. Watches the big bulk son hit and scrape
This is glory

Poem 9:
I like to take an action many before have
Kinship over time with similar thoughts in mind
Like watching fire
Combing hair
Carving apples
Spilling cups
Clasping hands
Picking teeth
And slaughtering chickens
All to survive, we do it all to survive

Poem 10:
I’ll get up early tomorrow
Watch the sun come up over dingy dinghy neighborhood
Uneven concrete blocks
Tilting blue spruce pines
Remind myself that beauty hits everything
But it won’t be pretty tomorrow they’ll be clouds
This place will still be the same
Birds behind shutters