10 Poems in 20 Minutes (Day One Hundred)

This is the final day I’ll be writing ten poems in twenty minutes. From now on I’ll post the poems I write, but there won’t be a time limit or set number.

Thank you so much to those of you who’ve read my poems, because it means a lot to me.

For the final day of ten in twenty, I thought I’d write each poem about someone I know, I won’t dedicate the poem to them, because it may not be flattering, but I’ll try to keep it true. Here we go.

I Wrote 10 Poems in 20 Minutes
Day 100

Poem 1:
My Mother
You told me first,
I was beautiful.
You didn’t mean it from the mirror’s point of view,
You meant it because I was yours.
You had made me, and I look like you.
You love me for looking like you,
But not for who I am.

Poem 2:
My Father
He says, I see you all grown up
And I get flashes back to when you were little
He said, it’s hard to tell the difference, and remember.
But you’ve never remembered,
You treated me as background and expected.
I don’t think it’s purposeful, you talking down,
You do it to everyone who’s not as smart as you,
But the little girl in the white cherry dress who flounces,
She doesn’t have a chair in your mind
To sit and talk over the table.

Poem 3:
My Sister
She wants to make me perfect
Who she wanted herself to be
And mom reminded her, I’m the Mom here.
She was so proud I turned out well,
A nicer version of mini-me, you said.
But you taught me that people who love me
Tell me what to fix,
And disregard you if you make a mistake.
You taught me with your being,
That I should be better,
Unacceptable, as is.
That’s never gone away.

Poem 4:
My Brother
I don’t know you yet
Except that when I got back from school
You shoulders turned to boulders
And you couldn’t sing falsetto anymore.
You don’t seem to care much,
About grades, or propriety, family, or kindness,
I hope when you find something to care about
You can make something of yourself.
But the way you don’t seem to mind Mom’s insults
Makes me think you’ll be happier than us all
For living through the torment of being alone in the house.

Poem 5:
My Step-Father
I look at you and sneer.
I don’t remember why I feel revulsion anymore,
But it’s there unerring and unending.
You never placed yourself in another’s position,
Never thought, if I do this, she’ll feel this,
Or if I say this, x will happen.
There’s one good thing that comes from your being in the house,
Always angry, fuming, smoking, not drinking beers,
I can read a temper from across the room
I easily pick out who can hurt me from expressions alone,
I have you to thank for that.

Poem 6:
My Friend A—
I thought you were so strange
But you taught me that if you think someone’s strange
You’re in the wrong.
Your mind is faster than mine,
But not nearly as funny.
I’ve never gotten tired of you,
The only thing I fear when I’m talking to you
Is that I’ll have to leave soon.
You are light.

Poem 7:
My Friend B—
Someone once accidentally insulted you
While I was standing there holding grape soda
And you looked right at them,
Said, “what do you mean.”
You stood there, with brown ringlet hair
And questioned them until it was clear what they had done,
What you felt,
And what they meant.
That’s a power few women have.
I salute you for it.
You have no sense of the gray
You cannot say,
Perhaps.
You’ve never thought
To say
That’s beautiful,
I see your beauty. To the painting on the wall.

Poem 8:
My friend C—
I like you because you talk to me
Tease me,
Make me see myself as ridiculous,
And can photoshop cupcakes into robot’s hands faster than I can.
I like you because I can never know for sure
I don’t like you
Because you keep yourself so far away.

Poem 9:
To My Dead Dog
I never really liked you, you know,
I can talk to her because she’s dead,
But we understood each other
Understanding is a better kind of magic than love
It kept us going
When you couldn’t get up the stairs, or out the door
When you howled in pain from the cancer in your spine,
When you lost control of your back leg,
I brought you food and water dishes,
Petted your graying beige fur
And I sand to you all the songs in the world.

Poem 10:
To Me
I don’t know what it is you’re doing.
There’s so much more you should be
Could be
Would be
If you weren’t so damn scared.
But that’s fine,
Stay in your house,
Cover yourself in quilts of blue flowers
Forget all you might have done,
If you could have just.

10 Poems in 20 Minutes (Day Ninety-Nine)

Oh, of course, on the second to last day of me posting ten poems in twenty minutes for one hundred days, my internet goes out! I wrote these yesterday, but can only just now post them. Bah!

I Wrote 10 Poems in 20 Minutes
Day 99

Poem 1:
After I drink wine
My cheeks go all red
And my hands seem to twitch on their own.
This I do no like.
Those are my hands, I tell them what to do.
They should stay put, if I want them to stay put.
Instead of flipping about.
I don’t like this loss of control.

Poem 2:
If I have a house of my own
And they come to visit
On my land in my place
I think I’ll finally yell
Those who I hold no strings to,
I’ll get to say no,
You may not speak to me like that
Without hint of reprobation,
Because it’s my house.

Poem 3:
Perhaps she doesn’t notice.
That she’s talked the whole way home,
And I’ve only said one word responses
Looking away.
Maybe she thinks I will tell her this,
But I doubt she thinks of me at all
Except as a bit of cloth in a seat
Who absorbs information.

Poem 4:
She holds back information
She says to be kind,
She doesn’t want to hurt us.
I think she doesn’t want to talk to us
After she tells us,
She doesn’t want to be a messenger.

Poem 5:
My sister had to tell my mother
She screwed up with me,
She said she felt really bad.
She didn’t know how to properly apologize
And she can’t say she won’t do it again
Because she will
Because she doesn’t think
When all she does is for herself.

Poem 6:
It won’t listen
The part of my head that says I like him,
You shouldn’t
There’s nothing there and no good reason.
It will only end poorly.
But it hasn’t happened yet
So I get to dream for a minute,
Oh, of all the beautiful dreams,
That can’t yet be proven false.
Dreaming backwards is regret,
Either way, I’ll still think on it.

Poem 7:
She sat with her dye job pink hair starting to fade back to bleach
And I thought, she looks like a bull dog
All the features scrunched up
And she doesn’t have a neck
And she’s shapes like a square.
I liker her for it.
That she doesn’t seem ashamed.

Poem 8:
I hate it here.
I have to ask for money, but don’t because I don’t spend,
Because I have no friends,
And I’m too shy to make new ones,
So I stay in my room
And hate myself for it,
And hate this place,
And this pretend freedom
Of, oh do what you want, but you’ll be watched,
That comes with living again with parents.

Poem 9:
Three lamps stand on my dresser
Two don’t have shades,
The one works,
Because I live out of boxes,
My mother’s boxes,
And pick clothes out of what I can see,
What I find in my boxes,
My packed life from before I became,
Oh such a disappointment.

Poem 10:
I understand you now,
Come back and talk to me,
We can party
I will love and dance
And I will have a chance to smile again.

10 Poems in 20 Minutes (Day Ninety-Eight)

I Wrote 10 Poems in 20 Minutes
Day 98

Poem 1:
We drove in her car
Because she wanted to be nice
I said I like this song on the radio
To say something other than nothing
And she said, I don’t like that blue-eyed soul,
To her daughter, sitting next to her,
Staring at her with blue eyes,
She said, I only like real soul,
Soul music.
“I didn’t mean that as a slam,
Well it came out as a slam but I didn’t mean it that way.”
I laughed.

Poem 2:
Veterans day I kept my mouth held in place
I shoved it shut with patriotism
I bit my tongue so hard I showed stars
Because I can’t tell the room full of people who fought
For duty, honor, pieces of paper,
That they’re wrong
I’m outnumbered,
Not that brave,
And in the eyes of the bearded, torn jean hem, proud men,
I’m a girl who’s seen nothing.

Poem 3:
I write in the margins of my pages
I love you I love you I love you
So if someone reads me later,
After I’ve become famous, wealthy, and glamorous
They’ll know I was just like them once.
No, that’s not true.
I write it to say I love you to someone
That won’t hurt me back,
I say I love you to the recyclers who pick up my papers
After it fell off my desk.
I say I love you to no one,
Because I crumple up whatever I wrote.

Poem 4:
Dear Wes,
I’m sorry I never got the chance to be your friend
We could have been good
We laughed the same,
And you were so tall.
But I didn’t know how to say to you
Be my friend,
So I kept quiet
Silly and quiet,
And thought what great goofy hair,
As I watched you lope around after graduation.

Poem 5:
Ask me once, then leave me alone
So we can do anything but
Have to listen to how awful and negligent I’ve been
With my time and with my great gifts,
You could have at least picked up a summer job
For the cash.
I could have, but I didn’t,
And I’m sorry.

Poem 6:
I travel to my father’s house alone
For Thanksgiving, for the holiday.
I’d never thought this before, but now I have,
If it’s bad I’ll just leave.
I can stay in my car or with friends, for just one night,
No one will mind, and
My father will never tell my mother,
I have a way out,
As I never did as a child,
A way out, cold.
Would that there were cars and roads for all my problems,
I’d be gone.

Poem 7:
I forgot what the sun looked like
For about a month there
And I realized I hadn’t looked beyond a window in years.
So I stepped out from my work,
And thought, hey, look at this,
It’s still cloudy, I haven’t missed a thing,
So I went back inside,
Bunkered down,
Back to work.

Poem 8:
My dad would offer to play games with me
When my sister went to her room,
But I wanted to play with three
Not just Dad.
Even though she regretted it later in life,
How much more time I spent with him,
While she had her books.

Poem 9:
How had he forgotten our awful vacation
Full of yelling
And a man unexpectedly quitting smoking
A teenage girl who knew better
And the younger brother who never stopped crying,
Oh that’s why he doesn’t remember,
Mom took him away, because he was crying,
Away from the yelling.

Poem 10:
I’ll cry soon, totally lose it
And just burst out, with all the pent up rage
And anger, and hate, and slights
The small bitterness done me everyday
Each different way she’s made me feel small,
They’ll all come out,
But probably on myself.