Our First Birthday…

So, this poem is more like a collection of my thoughts.  I am not schizophrenic or anything– I have a twin sister, so, that is the “our” in the poem.  Two years ago today, my mom was diagnosed with a uterine sarcoma… the “a” seems so trivial; however, it claimed her life, and because of that it really should be “the…”  Oh that little articles that emphasize so much specificity.  Anyway, it was two days before our 30th birthday…

I really do not think life gets easier; however, I have had to make is liveable for myself.  What I would not give to have her back, but I know that is not an option.  Lately, I lie awake at night with the image of her and the death gargle on my mind– what I would not give for that to completely disappear.  Anyway, here is a poem (or something to that effect) for our 32nd birthday…

Our First Birthday…

There will be no phone call at dawn….singing.
A tone omitted in the annual chorus…
No card with your handwriting on it…
No cake you have arranged to pick up….
No birthday bag with tissue paper, creepily placed.
Misplaced on our first birthday…
We have been ripped from our mother’s womb, again.
No longer can she cradle her thirty-two year old dames.
No one to grab our hand and say “we girlfriends, aren’t we?”
How we once scoffed “mooooom,” when she said that,
but now, what an melodious memory to our ears.

Dad will try his hardest to make your seat
at the restaurant table present.
Gifts, he will try to buy with your ghostly advice.
Mom, could you come visit today, we will wonder.
Just a hug or a “be careful driving home” would be enough
this year. I promise, I will not grimace with your motherly
gaze, telling me to phone when I get home.

There will be no phone call at dawn for the rest of our breaths.

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A Poem: Golden Home…

So, as my mother’s journey with cancer will soon end, I look at her still as a heroine– she fought her hardest and endured so much along the way.  I will miss her more than words can even articulate, but I try to look at it from the most positive perspective that I mentally can.  She will always be my mother and best friend, but my heart will always be broken from the eventual loss.  Live life to the fullest and praise ever day upon which you awaken.

Rachael

Golden Home

for Mom

My mom saw her first wren

In the yellow toes of spring’s

Gleam; today is a breath

She may be denied tomorrow.

The crow tones his darkness

In the vernal sky, and we know

That shade.  Chartreuse limbs

Frame the sun with their

 

Vitality as a foulness attempts

To loom its wings.  The wren

Is fearless, and knows her place

Amongst the forget-me-nots’

Shocking petals.  She waits

With her golden home in mind.

My foot walks against greenery,

Trying to photograph our journey

Through another blessed day.  We

 

Held a torch to hope; a candle

That will soon dim, but not

To memory.  The wren melodiously

Hums from my window—tulip

Petals leaning toward their

Seasonal demise.  I see the crow

Flow through the night, but

I know my breath will continue

When you have perched upon

Your golden home.

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Shards in the Parlor: A Villanelle

Shards in the Parlor

Her weeping wail came crashing upon my threshold,

I thought I heard it on that crucified Friday.

I hide the daguerreotype that reflects on the parlor mirror.

Sweet Anna listens to their accusing shards and I

Knit my hands in the boned rosary.  I think I felt

Her weeping wail come crashing upon my threshold.

I heard that she had their hands crocheted at the playhouse.

Holy Mary, we are of the same forename.  Surely,

I hid the daguerreotype that reflects on the parlor mirror.

The Confederate drum still weighs heavily on my vision,

But I did not know such a savage slept upon my linens

As her weeping wail came crashing upon my threshold.

My son, I heard, has disguised himself in a Northern exile.

The crocheted lady has lost a son, the peddlers have said.

(I hope I hid the daguerreotype that reflects on the parlor mirror).

I mold my hands in prayer that I do not find myself

Upon the federal platform on which they are nailing.

Her weeping wail came crashing upon my threshold,

As I hid the daguerreotype that reflected in the parlor mirror.

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“Grizabella, the Glamour Cat…”

for Leona 🙂 

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“Grizabella the Glamour Cat…”

Andrew Lloyd Weber

“Remark the cat who hesitates towards you.
In the light of the door which opens on her like a grin.
You see the border of her coat is torn and stained with sand.
And you see the corner of her eye twist like a crooked pin.

She haunted many a low resort near the grimy road of Tottenham court.
She flitted about the no-man’s land.
From “The Rising Sun” to “The Friend at hand”.
And the postman sighed as he scratched his head:
“You’d really hat thought she ought to be dead”.
And who woud ever suppose that that was Grizabella the Glamour Cat.

Grizabella the Glamour cat, Grizabella the Glamour cat.
Who would ever suppose that that was Grizabella the Glamour cat.”

-from Andrew Lloyd Webber’s “CATS”

*Grizabella does not appear in T.S. Eliot’s  Old Possum’s Book of Practical Cats

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“The Old Gumbie Cat,” by T.S. Eliot

For Ava…

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The Old Gumbie Cat

by T.S. Eliot

“I have a Gumbie Cat in mind, her name is Jennyanydots;
Her coat is of the tabby kind, with tiger stripes and leopard spots.
All day she sits upon the stair or on the steps or on the mat;
She sits and sits and sits and sits–and that’s what makes a Gumbie Cat!

But when the day’s hustle and bustle is done,
Then the Gumbie Cat’s work is but hardly begun.
And when all the family’s in bed and asleep,
She tucks up her skirts to the basement to creep.
She is deeply concerned with the ways of the mice
Their behaviour’s not good and their manners not nice;
So when she has got them lined up on the matting,
She teachs them music, crocheting and tatting.

I have a Gumbie Cat in mind, her name is Jennyanydots;
Her equal would be hard to find, she likes the warm and sunny spots.
All day she sits beside the hearth or on the bed or on my hat:
She sits and sits and sits and sits–and that’s what makes a Gumbie Cat!

But when the day’s hustle and bustle is done,
Then the Gumbie Cat’s work is but hardly begun.
As she finds that the mice will not ever keep quiet,
She is sure it is due to irregular diet;
And believing that nothing is done without trying,
She sets right to work with her baking and frying.
She makes them a mouse–cake of bread and dried peas,
And a beautiful fry of lean bacon and cheese.

I have a Gumbie Cat in mind, her name is Jennyanydots;
The curtain-cord she likes to wind, and tie it into sailor-knots.
She sits upon the window-sill, or anything that’s smooth and flat:
She sits and sits and sits and sits–and that’s what makes a Gumbie Cat!

But when the day’s hustle and bustle is done,
Then the Gumbie Cat’s work is but hardly begun.
She thinks that the cockroaches just need employment
To prevent them from idle and wanton destroyment.
So she’s formed, from that lot of disorderly louts,
A troop of well-disciplined helpful boy-scouts,
With a purpose in life and a good deed to do
And she’s even created a Beetles’ Tattoo.

So for Old Gumbie Cats let us now give three cheers
On whom well-ordered households depend, it appears.“

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A Poem: “Clara Schumann’s Requiem”

Alright, this is written in the form of a symphony… so, if you do not know the symphony format, you may have to look it up.  You may also have to look up Clara Schumann, the wife of the composer Robert Schumann, for this poem to make sense.  I hope you enjoy! 🙂

Clara Schumann’s Requiem

I was buried

In a tonal, cherry

Container.

I still remember

The twin- handed dances:

 

I.  Allegro con brio

 

Obese gaze from the soul’s eye

And I had to alter the pitch.

My virginal shell—

Fifteen times evolved

Before this pining lad dissolves

Under the Steinway’s modest hood.

 

Mr. Schumann, by nine years—

My musical antique,

Said, “I leave Chopin’s name

Dwindling in Poland’s sand.”

Because I—

Caress the ivory amulets

And play upon an acoustical cloud.

 

II.  Adagio con expressivo

 

We are the twin instruments—

Two matrimonial harmonies

Flourishing five-finger patterns

Upon this pianoforte.

His cotton-kissed palms

Conjure a branched

Family tree.

 

I do not have to castrate

My breasts

For him to hear my soul.

He seals his dual inlets

To capture orgasmic glissandos.

Melodiously whispering:

“You are my geometric vireo—

A conscious muse.”

 

III.  Minuet

 

Schizophrenic Gemini

Consuming a plethora

Of man-ruining rum—

Into the labyrinth

Of concrete slabs.

 

Dictating, dueling blades—

To fatally unfasten

The piano’s appendages.

He awkwardly waltzes

To a dehydrated hospital

For a decade’s season.

 

Johannes lullabies

The soul for me—

Sizing up my blue eye

Over a piano soliloquy

And Earl Grey tea.

 

IV.  Allegretto meno mosso

 

Robert and his obese gaze—

Deadlocked in a piano bench.

He was my left wing,

My musical twin

Of the Steinway’s

Two-handed dances.

 

I lounge on a counterfeit carpet:

The portal to the spirit’s hearth.

With Johannes’ abrasive beard

Against my rusted cheek—

 

It was his lullaby

That wrote his soul for me:

A reincarnated requiem

Of my cadential chord.

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“The Effort of Speech between Two People,” by Muriel Rukeyser

“Speak to me. Take my hand. What are you now?
I will tell you all. I will conceal nothing.
When I was three, a little child read a story about a rabbit
who died, in the story, and I crawled under a chair :
a pink rabbit : it was my birthday, and a candle
burnt a sore spot on my finger, and I was told to be happy.

Oh, grow to know me. I am not happy. I will be open:
Now I am thinking of white sails against a sky like music,
like glad horns blowing, and birds tilting, and an arm about me.
There was one I loved, who wanted to live, sailing.

Speak to me. Take my hand. What are you now?
When I was nine, I was fruitily sentimental,
fluid : and my widowed aunt played Chopin,
and I bent my head to the painted woodwork, and wept.
I want now to be close to you. I would
link the minutes of my days close, somehow, to your days.

I am not happy. I will be open.
I have liked lamps in evening corners, and quiet poems.
There has been fear in my life. Sometimes I speculate
on what a tragedy his life was, really.

Take my hand. Fist my mind in your hand. What are you now?
When I was fourteen, I had dreams of suicide,
I stood at a steep window, at sunset, hoping toward death :
if the light had not melted clouds and plains to beauty,
if light had not transformed that day, I would have leapt.
I am unhappy. I am lonely. Speak to me.

I will be open. I think he never loved me:
he loved the bright beaches, the little lips of foam
that ride small waves, he loved the veer of gulls:
he said with a gay mouth : I love you. Grow to know me.

What are you now? If we could touch one another,
if these our separate entities could come to grips,
clenched like a Chinese puzzle … yesterday
I stood in a crowded street that was live with people,
and no one spoke a word, and the morning shone.
Everyone silent, moving … Take my hand. Speak to me.”

 

Probably the most beautiful poems I have ever read… so beautiful to me, in fact, I had to memorize it.  I hope you find solace in it like I once did and still do.

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A Villanelle…kind of…

Seedless Grape

He left me in Italy, meditating on a seedless grape.

My goblet is parched of Venus’s disease.

I never knew the moon photographed our farewell.

 

Wine blushes my collage of snow

In a summer moment.  Paganini’s caprices play where

He left me in Italy, meditating on a seedless grape.

 

Stars mimic the trusted wishes in boredom, while

Sadists whip their lights for reply.

I never knew the moon photographed our farewell,

 

Mocking me in a pregnant phase.  Her ladies

Waltz in a tub for fertility.  I remember

He let me in Italy, meditating on a seedless grape

 

With a satin ribbon hugging my finger.  Roman

Empires barricade the sun’s rays, because

Our farewell was photographed by the moon.

 

Monochromic kaleidoscope pining for color

In a vineyard.  Blots upon my white sundress, where

He left me in Italy, meditating on a seedless grape

With the moon photographing our farewell.

 

*Just found this poem on an old flash drive… completely forgot about “her.”  Yes, I sometimes refer to a poem as a spirited entity; are they not after all?

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A Postcard Poem… where is the speaker?

I Pined for the Seaside

Blessings from the isolated state

In the midst of seven peaces.

Last night, I went to a luau,

And wore a tiara of orchids.  The pit

Slowly roasted a leg-bound pig.

There is fire everywhere for an island;

I have not footed a shoreline since Italy.

 

A girl’s grass skirt was dehydrated

In flames as her hips waved

The smoke’s aroma.  There are tiki

Torches lit on elemental corners.  Air

Is cherished around every neck.  Fragments

Of screams echo Pearl Harbor.  I held

A lei and a white candle to the ocean

 

For solace.  I waded in the lava at noon

To keep my travels, stationary.  I saw

Pele throwing magma in the volcano;

She was weary with heart, but red

Is her color.  I pined for the seaside,

Then.  I remember how you love your foot

Touching sand & water:  between two worlds.

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A Poem: “The Oak and the Cactus”

The Oak and the Cactus

 

The cupule of the oak bestows

From its veins: the autumnal rain.

So much volume to bear,

And its noise crashing

Against vernal lure.  You

Stand with your wooden

Pose, unknowing of where

The air blows.  Strong limbs,

Motionless to the gales from

Where the cactus grows.  Tears of

Acorns are dispersed to grass,

And there they sleep for the

Squirrels.  You hold your

Barked patience well—only

To feel the prickly aridity

Of an adjacent plan, overlooking,

Somewhere…

 

The cactus knows her heat;

Water is lured inside of her.

The spines on her bulletproof

Greenery sparkles against

The sun’s granule.  Sand

Is shoed against her base

From the herbivores that try

To divorce her liquid.  The shade

Of her dry fragrance comforts

Her well.  In life, she turns

To her binding spines to pain

The benign.  She holds her

Water—welled in emotions

That the oak generously bestows.

Lady cactus, charred in dormancy,

The spines will only mar the patient

Veins of the motionless oak

For a season.

 

*I wrote this poem kind of for my husband and myself:  our relationship.  Of course, the oak and the cactus are metaphors.   I hope you enjoy! 🙂

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