dVerse The Poet's Toolbox Submission: Repost of The River

The River

I stand in the river of
my actions and it drips,
drips, drips down and I
doubt if I was right, but
then I stop.

Because I know I was right,
right, right, and that I hav
                                          e
                                       don
                                     e no w
                                       ron
                                         g

                                         I
                                        sit
                                      and I
                                        thi
                                         n

                                         k
                                       and
                                       I lis
                                        ten
                                         t

                                         o
                                      my t
                                    hought
                                      s as
                                         t

                                        h
                                     ey d
                                     rip, d
                                       rip,
                                          d
                                       r
                                 ip, drip, drip,
                               drip, drip, drip,
                                   drip, drip,
                                        drip.



heidi
written 1990?
submitted for dVerse The Poet's Toolbox


I have been writing more than I am used to lately, so I am reposting a poem that I posted in the early days of this blog, but that I wrote when I was19 or 20. I loved playing with the way the words looked on the page. (I was also heavy into alliteration). I hope you are having a lovely Valentine's Day!

Also, please check out Break the Chain from One Billion Rising

Three Word Wednesday Submission: Wednesday Afternoon

Wednesday Afternoon

This afternoon, my sweet girl was anything but...
she went from silly to distraught to grumpy to...
all from the burden on being too hungry and too tired.

She has the cumbersome job of being five.
So much to learn. So much to do.
So many rules to follow.

At bathtime, she becomes defiant.
My desire to be a good parent is second to my
desire for a 10 minutes of quiet.

Dark thoughts creep in the side of my mind,
not morbid, but not happy either.
I am walking a tightrope.

"Aoife! I am getting very frustrated."
"Are you mad Mommy?"
"No."
"Are you sad?"
"No, but I have lost my sense of humor."
"I will help you find it, Mommy,
what does a kumor look like?"

The rampage of my impending bad mood stops then.

"I think you just found my kumor, baby.

Thank you."

heidi
written 2/13/13 for Three Word Wednesday

The words this week are Cumbersome, Morbid, and Rampage. No more to say as I am trying to get this submitted by the end of the day.

dVerse OpenLinkNight Submission: A Brief Conversation Between Two Social Workers

A Brief Conversation Between Two Social Workers

It was one of those days when Anna was wondering why she had decided to become a social worker.  Although, if she were honest with herself, she would have to admit that this problem was not only a social work problem. She also realized that she had hired Kim because Kim was thoughtful and took the Core Values seriously. However, Kim thought too much before acting. They had even addressed it in Kim's last evaluation. Of course, Anna did not write "You overthink shit, Kim" in the eval, but there was discussion of  "taking too much time to come to an appropriate decision." Maybe she had sugarcoated it. She was going to have to rectify that quickly.

"Kim, you overthink shit in a crisis."

"What? What are you talking about?"

"This is not the time to be considering the dignity and worth of the person..."

"Well, I think this could be argued as a social justice issue..."

"No! No arguing, Kim. Those are no longer oppressed and vulnerable people. They are no longer your clients. We cannot think of them as human being who have inherent dignity and worth. Those are motherfucking zombies, and what they want is to eat your brains. We are not going to let that happen, okay? You and Jake and I are going to secure the shit out of this place, and then we are going to figure out, quickly, how we are going to the hell out of here!"

Anna was aware that she was swearing too damn much. It was going to be a swearing kind of day.

heidi
drafted June 4, 2012

Submitted for dVerse OpenLinkNight: Week 83, which I hope is okay because it isn't poetry, but, with the exception of "how i met rachel" my posts over the last week have been damn depressing and I was in the mood for something funny. I also am very interested in critiques because I want to go a little further with this, but, it kind of ends for me here. I have left the few notes I wrote trying to get the story straight, and they are why I think that there is another story along these lines. Also it includes my favorite things, social workers and zombies. How kick ass would that story be?

Notes:
Zombies attacking social service office.
Client zombified.
Social Worker worries about ethical consequences of killing zombies (dignity and worth of the person).
Supervisor trying to help social worker through crisis while trying to not get brains eaten.

The Sunday Whirl Submission: One Moment in One Day

One Moment in One Day

She sits on the bed, looking through herself in the dresser mirror. She can see in the reflection the building chaos peeking from the dustruffle. There is a bottle still half full of coagulated, useless breastmilk. She thinks "I should feel something. Some thread of something." Yet, there was only a vast deep emptyness, a rut where her soul should be. Still not seeing herself, she looks in the mirror and knows that she should get up, bathe, cry, eat, do something, do anything, but mostly move. That doesn't happen.

Outside of this room, outside of this house, people court life. They go to work and complain about their jobs. They eat out and worry about their weight. They play ball with their kids and allow the sun to witness. They fuck and they make love. They laugh and they cry. There is an evershrinking number of them who think about this woman.

There is one man who does think about her. He journeys from the house into the open world and still lives a life. It is a dry, lonely, confusing life. He answers "fine" to the incidental "how are you?" He knows that he lies, and you know too, but, what are you supposed to do?

There are terms that describe what is going on. Terms as sad and tragic as dying coral and just as baffling. And, as we watch this sad tableau searching for the tiniest wisp of happiness, not seeing the plumes, there is a small guilty relief that it is not us.

And me, writing this sad story? I want to rewrite and make it all better. Think of something genius to help this family that I am overidentifying with, but that ending is not in me. Not that this is a rare occurance, often these things run away from me.

Maybe I can save them tomorrow.

heidi
written 02/11/13 for Wordle 95 of The Sunday Whirl .

This is my first attempt at this prompt, which I found through Whimseygizmo's Blog. Each week there is a word bank posted and you write using some or all of those words. I have been wanting to write more prose lately, and have had a heck of a time doing it. So, I used this opportunity to exercise those muscles. I also want to write something funny, but obviously did not do that today.  This week's words were: bathe, term, court, open, bottle, dry, coral, ball, plume, rare, incident, and thread. You can click on the links above for both blogs that I have mentioned here. Thanks to Brenda for the post and the opportunity. I look forward to next Sunday (and maybe something funny.)

dVerse Poetics: The Art of Letting Go Submission: Last Love Letter

Last Love Letter

My cousin was a year older.

He was the second grandchild.

He was the younger brother

I was the first granddaughter.
 

My cousin lived three hours away.

I saw him and his brother

only some weekends. Two or three a year.

He was a sweet, quiet baby.

 

 

When I was six, I wrote him love letters

on scrap paper.
 

When I was ten, he taught my brother

how to turn his eyelids inside out

that made me run screaming.

We played baseball with socks wrapped in electrical tape.
 

I privately competed against him.
 

He was a funny, reserved, young man.

He once wanted to be a store Santa

because young women liked to sit

in Santa's lap for a picture.
 

When I was twenty-six, he died.

and I forgot everything but the pain.

and a vigilante hummingbird.
 

I forgot his smile.

I forgot his laugh.

I forgot his wit.

I forgot his love for his nephew.
 

I forgot.
 

I would have traded anything to have

him back.

To hug him the last time I saw him.

To Tell Him I Loved Him.
 

And I cried

cried

cried

cried

cried
 

Tonight I found some pictures.
 

And I remembered:
 

How he was sweet

How he loved his nephew

How he was funny

His desire to be Santa

My notes

Baseball

The woods

Football

Hawaiian Punch

Hot Chocolate

Puddings

Hide and Seek

His eyelids

His smile

Him.
 

and i cried.
 

heidi

originally written:3/13/97


I am reposting this for the dVerse prompt Poetics: The Art of Letting Go. Claudia challenges us to write about the art of letting go, which made me think of this poem. Writing it after he died was a way for me to let go of the hope that he would return home and we would find out that his death was an elaborate hoax (although maybe not totally...I still sometimes think I see him on the street.) So, for my sweet Ronnie and for your consideration...

Kellie Elmore's Free Write Friday Submission: I Lie in My Bed

I Lie in My Bed

I lie in my bed
with you
to you
and then sleep whirls in.

I lie in my bed
and I dream
of a life without you
and of vague single happiness.

I lie in my bed
next to you
and the cold chills
my bare skin.

I lie in my bed
awake again and your stillness
conjures a siren's song with one rephrase
escape.

I lie in my bed
but the sheer curtains float
at my open window, blown from the winds of
a coming rain.

I lie in my bed
thumbing the opal on
my wedding ring
and I am trapped.

I lie in my bed
and the allure of leaving tortures me
as you wake and ask how I slept.
"Fine" I say

as I lie in my bed.

heidi
written 2/9/13 for http://kellieelmore.com/2013/02/08/fwf-free-write-friday-word-bank-5/

 Word Bank: Opal, Vague, Whirl, Dream, Sheer, Conjure, Bare, Allure

I really wanted to write a small short story with these words, but this is what came out. Hmm, funny how that happens. I'm not sure what I think about it yet. I live in fear of being melodramatic, especially when I write poetry. It is way too easy for me to go overboard, and ruin a good concept. Thanks for stopping by and I would love to hear from you.

Mining the Memory: dverse Poets Meeting the Bar submission: how i met rachel

how i met rachel

"Heads down," and Mrs. Tew
turned out the lights.

Full of the righteous ire of
the falsely accused six year old
I want to cry.

20 little girls sitting with their heads
on their desks.
The room is quiet.

I look at the desk next to me.
The new girl sits there.

She has very curly hair
in ponytails.

She is smiling at me and
she waves at me.

I don't want to be nice.
I don't want to make friends.
I want to be angry.
I want to be out of heads down.

I frown and turn my head the other way.

Not knowing
how soon we'd be friends
or just how much
I would love her.

heidi
written 2/7/13 for http://dversepoets.com/2013/02/07/mining-the-memory-dverse-poets-meeting-the-bar/

I realized as I wrote this that I never fully appreciate the people who will become the most important to me when I first meet them. I always seem to meet them grumpy. I have been wanting to write a poem about my friend Rachel and decided to use this prompt to give it a try. I am not sure what I think about it yet and welcome all (kind) constructive comments. Thanks for reading!

Semper Ubi Sub Ubi

Semper Ubi Su Ubi

I put on my last clean pair of pants,
and loaded my sweet fella in the car.

Grocery day and we're recovering from the flu.

Everything has piled up.

It will be nice to get out of the house.

Halfway to the store, sweet fella learns the lock to his new booster seat
and unbuckles it.

I pull over and buckle him back in.
It's cold and my heinie feels...
wet?
I brush my hand across my seat...
nothing wet.
I feel the carseat...
nothing wet.
That's strange...

I get to the store.
They know us here and
they love little fella.

I put him in the basket.

I tighten the belt.

A cold blast of air as we walk across the parking lot.

My butt feels wet again.

As I walk in the store,  I brush my hand again across the seat of my pants
and I feel the huge hole across the seat.

There is some comfort in the fact that I wasn't wearing dirty underwear,
not much though, since I was wearing none.

heidi
written february 7, 2013

(based on a true story)

Insight

Insight

 

So my first 15 minute meeting with a literary agent

Was supposed to help me get information as to what to do if

I ever thought I was ready to submit for publication.

 

She read some of my tweets, which I thought were funny,  and said

That I should try to target parents (did she not notice the fucking language?)

And that she really didn’t care how beautiful my children were…

(Bitch, that’s cause you haven’t seen them.)

She said that I lacked insight.

She didn’t read my poetry because she didn’t like the titles.

She said I should focus more on prose, but didn’t read any of the flash fiction I brought.

 

Wait, did she really say that I lacked insight?

Just by reading my tweets?

Did she not look at her shoes when she put them on?

One of us had on cute, leopard-print, ballerina flats, and the other one had on shoes that wished they looked as good as sensible shoes.

I won’t say which.

But I think you know who in that room lacked insight…

heidi
originally written 10/21/12

this poem us based on a sadly true story. no shoe deserves to be that hideous.  I think that the eight month writing block that has ensued was due to a pretty deep depression over that sad footwear. hopefully, i'm over it now. thanks for reading.

 

dverse Open Link Night: Repost of She's Still the Same Girl

dverse prompt and poem repost:
She's Still the Same Girl

Driving to the office, I tell myself
Whatever they say, whatever they find,
she's still the same girl that she is right now.
You're not going to come home with a
stranger.
You'll love her the same.
She's still the same girl.

I am worried as I sit her in my lap and they prepare her for the test.
She does not like things on her head.
What if she fights?
What if she gets too upset?
Should I just leave with her?
We've gone this long
unsure.
We'll get tests later.
She'll still be the same girl.

Once again, my sweetheart surprises me.
She laughs when the nurse gets Eeyore ready first.
He's so cute! Silly Eeyore!
My girl sits still and even falls asleep towards the end.
I always seem to underestimate my baby.
She's so wonderful.
She's still the same girl.

Then we go and wait.
The doctor comes in.
It's not the news we want.
It's not the challenges that we wanted for her.
My baby.
My sweet daughter.
She is playing as we talk and I love her so much and...
She's still the same girl.

heidi
written 9/7/2011

I have been really blocked since June, but I am trying to start back up. I also think that is has been long enough that I can appreciate some constructive comments on this poem. Thanks, and I hope you like it! heidi