Don’t try to change
my mind
like God changes
the wind
when he finds himself
lying on his stomach
on a lazy summer day
longing for clouds to billow
and twist like earthly balloons
into cotton-candy animals
and dream of far-away days
when all he had to worry about
was forming mud-pies
into imaginary children
who could be his friends
instead of today’s looming
clouds of destruction
that threaten to blow it all
away.
The world outside
where children giggled
and mothers shushed
was never kind
so her music
rarely left her porch.
Yet I longed to enter
her lavender house
through ribbons
that fluttered
instead of curtains
where I could see
her dance in purple
eating lilac cookies
with calming tea.
And we
could be the change
inside.
Summer offers
her warming light
so playful children
can butter their chins.
Finally going to seed
it takes only a puff of air
to tear them limb from limb
and send them flying.
Each little fluff
flies to a tender place
that welcomes it
and lets it grow.
And dandelions, too,
want nothing more
than the wind to lift them
and carry them home.
(Many of you know that I have not been in the best of health for over a month. I am now on a medical leave, hoping for less stress, and more healing. Thank you for your patience. I appreciate those of you who I see still coming back.)
Spring brings the deluge,
the pouring of sky’s soul.
Here I drip
many days’ deluge
finally feeling
ready to fall.
Eyes blurred,
I planted iris bulbs
crooked.
First shoots,
curved leaves leaned,
proved my pain.
Yet today’s stem
of tomorrow’s flower -
straight up.
Straight down,
a pint of past beauty,
for a bud of hope.
Only her eyes moved,
darting back and forth,
my god, oh, my god.
His eyes open,
starring into the sky;
she knew him, dead.
They took him
in hushed tones;
she alone on the hill.
Her screams bent
allowing no words,
just agony.
Her body curled
sobbing with her softly,
then gut wrenching.
He took her life.
Even her pockets
were empty.
I have reached for the tissues
more than five times
and the pile of my agony
still grows.
Tomorrow I will pick them up
and toss them in the trash,
but today the floor
is where my heart
will lay.
Somewhere around
tissue eight or nine,
anger will come out of the box
and I will cry
no more.
I have never been a fan of singers
whose voices lift
the spirits of thousands.
And, Wind,
I am no fan of yours.
You roll my child’s ball
making her run
far away from me.
You curl my shoulders,teasingly tossing my hair
to obstruct my view.
Every second I have lost
from seeing
my sweet child’s face
in playful laughter
can not be returned.
Wind,
do not sing
your beguiling song here.
The price you charge,
too high.
Darkness hid every drop
of rain that evening.
I could hear only
the tiny pings on the roof.
I felt the heaviness
of pressured air.
There was no line
between day and night,
between calm conversation
and drips of cutting cynical words.
Unwarned came the torrents,
the angry cry of clouds.
Finally, when it returned to a drizzle,
soft and steady,
the rain became my comfort
as you went out the door.
They all stood on this hill,
stomachs hungry
for more than the rinds
of day old bread.
Yet their voices are lost,
wispy like dying fires
after the dead coals
are stomped and ground.
We have not feed them,
filled their need,
while our own greed
has stolen their future.
Children can not play,
innocent in their day
when the sun only makes
cross shadows on the hill.
My large kitchen spoon
bent too easily
as I tried to dig
to China.
The top soil
was thin,
so thin,
barely covering
the rock below.
My mom
wasn’t impressed
by my efforts then.
I just kept
on digging.
Please keep
those tasty,
tempting,
tantalizing,
thesaurus teasing
bites of you
in this place where
I devour them.
According to me
it is easier
to fight
the robot codes
that to fight
my weight.
I will be
the Biggest Loser
if you bail and post
where I can’t
read your words.
Yesterday, there was one leaf,
green and growing strong.
It was the promise
of one tulip,
the mystery
of its color,
red,
yellow,
pink,
growing by the base
of my tree.
Today,
chewed off, again.
Just like last year.
I could blame
Princess,
my white squirrel
who circus walks the top
of our cedar fence.
I could blame
the rabbit,
who doesn’t deserve
a name,
chewing his door in the bottom
of our cedar fence.
Or I could blame
the fence.
Selfishly
holding back
this year’s view
of the carried,
buried treasure
of my neighbor’s
tulip bulbs.
Sr. Mary Aloysius,
fingers sliding
over pearlized beads,
keys jingling
in an unseen pocket,
bends down
to tie her black shoes tight.
Then a quieting finger
covers her thin lips.
She points to God
who apparently
was still looking
down
on us
even though we had already checked
our laces
and our manners.
I wanted to say
she was making more noise
than us,
but little girls
wearing tissues
for our missing chapel caps
already had enough
Somewhere around fifty
our brains shifted
from abstract thinking
about the events
of the day,
who is going where
and what they’re going to do,
to the minute details
of puss oozing
from our ears
and sciatic nerve damage
that radiates down our legs.
To remember the day
that meds our should be increased
while calculating
the effort needed
to climb a flight of stairs,
we need to shift
our creaking bones
to a place where we
remember the day
when we were too young
to care that we’d grow old.
Just when I think
I know it all,
the electrifying
realization
of your 2 to 1 ratio,
proves, once again,
the magnetism
between my spoon
and a quart of frozen custard
is justifiably intensified
by the viscosity
of my tears
and the volume
of her breasts.
Global warming,
earth’s demise,
heating arguments
conflicting
with knowledge
we all insist
is true.
Scientists can’t cool
the fiery tempers
of melting icebergs
and angst filled teenagers,
floating soul sisters,
colliding
and damaging
their sinking feelings
hidden
below.
He is thirteen
seen forever
by sensitive souls
who pass his hillside,
who hear his muffled
cry.
Scissors.
Duck tape
wrapped around
his mouth
his nose,
his eyes alone
cry.
Scissors.
I drive on,
no scissors
in my car,
my radio,
just a little louder.
A piece of paper,
value kept,
worth
fifty percent off
any number
of items
needed,
desperately
needed,
has now died,
died,
an untimely death
with the flipping
of the calendar.
Expired.
Hoarders lament,
tearing their treasure,
each half
now fifty percent
of nothing.
Only an old cat
can chuck up
a hairball,
stringy,
stinky,
slippery,
that floats
like an island
in a sea of slime.
Only me
left to wipe it up.
That old cat
and I
ebb and flow
with my paper towels
and his rough tongued kiss.
Wheels spun,
rolling down the road,
screeched us to a halt.
Time was my enemy of love,
held a hand up,
prevented our crossing.
No opportunity
to look both ways,
longingly down the road.
Then my heavy breasts,
filled past love’s capacity,
rested before they got home.
Damn flat.
Chequamegon Bay
quiet as the foaming
washing of rocks,
slow as applebutter
spread on toast.
Where lupines wave
their purple spires
giving seed to
crumbling
sandstone churches.
Barren blueberries
dust of pine
buckets of smelt
batter dipped
and fried.
Then brandy slush
it all till snow
covers the land
marking my trail
home.
Anticipating adrenaline’s rush
mingled with salty popcorn,
the script,
the first sacrificial victim,
heavy in the weight
of the writer’s agonizing
choice of words
falls
to its live or die
ending
with the first reader’s
ominous words:
“I don’t get it.”
PROMPT 8: Write a TOOL poem.
Perhaps, it is because
I have never actually
seen one
that my creative mind
imagines
a barbarous, torturous device
so heinous
that every lazy-assed
good-for-nothing
12-year-old
runs screaming back
to their dining room table
finishing their project,
proving the combined
measurement of angles
will equal 360 degrees,
thereby creating
a tessellating design
equivalent to the twisted
mind of Escher
and pointed barbed-wire fences,
holding back cattle
and procrastinating children.
Assuming, of course,
that my dad actually
OWNS
a cattle prod.
Some theories should not be proved.
She could blame the caffeine
or the thousand and one
details and unmade decisions
that follow her
home from work
waking her up
at 3:07 to throw off
covers and expectations
of a good night’s sleep,
but she doesn’t.
She just stumbles
to the bathroom,
closing her eyes again
to the glare of the light,
only a sliver
squeezing through
while cupping her hands
trying to sip enough
to swallow an aspirin.
She lay back down,
dreams beginning
to slide again
into distorted cubicles
and his accusation
that work
is
her life.
When the alarm finally rings,
its sharpness
reawakens that throbbing headache,
and she finds only a dribble
of relief
rolling onto the coolness
of his side of the sheet.
She could blame him
for her pain
and her thirst,
but she doesn’t,
faulting only her skillful fingers,
unable to catch water
or men.
Talking frogs
and levitating children
danced with mushrooms
in my imagination.
Fanciful sojourns
to mystical places
could hold me
spell bound
for hours at a time.
Then I grew
too busy for books,
my hands caught up
in other tasks.
Untethered,
I have flown
into the place
where exertion
and exhaustion
collide.
If a floating lady
with a sparkling wand
wants to make me
sleep for a thousand years,
then let her.
Connecting South Curry Street to North Curry Street,
the city begins its race toward progress
building a viaduct over the her garden
spanning three gridiron railroad tracks.
The coal dust settles as the trains roll by
with warning horns echoing off the concrete.
The cats begin to wander farther from home,
her concern for them not allowing her sleep.
Her fear settles on the train’s slicing wheels,
while her cats scurry from their grinding sound.
Their stomachs empty, no mice to chase,
rumble like the trains that scare them away.
She sings for her cats to come in from the rain
that nourishes the leaves of her buried potatoes
growing under the viaduct, not under the sun,
hardly producing a bagful to harvest.
The city waits for her elderly years to wither.
They want her land for a convenience store
where people can come in the dead of night
to buy their cats milk and a sack of potatoes.
Before being demolished today, the Skunk House,
with haunting empty rooms was an invitation to teens
who wrote on the walls and destroyed furniture
while stabbing a dressmaker’s dummy to death.
City officials, knowing my mother,
and thinking of possible items of value,
suggest she venture in to see what she wants,
perhaps there are books her children could read.
I beg my mother to let me go with,
not afraid of spooks or terrorizing ghosts,
or the stories kids tell of murderous men
and women who shriek in the dead of night.
I win her over with my false bravado,
so we creak open the door to let in the sun.
The boarded up house sighs dust in our eyes,
but it can’t detour us from going inside.
Dangling strings trip us from a smashed violin,
the sound of its music now dead.
Not knowing the price of the name
“Stradivarius,” we decide upon something else.
We go home with a chair between us,
brown plush material faded and torn,
nobody else to want it, or notice it gone,
or a book of poems lamenting the dead.
While our door is open, a white cat walks in
and I drop my end of the chair in fear
because behind it comes the Cat Lady,
a real living terror walking into our home.
Rushing behind my mother’s skirts, I reveal
my ignorance of haunting things
while my mother in her compassion,
hands over the kitten, unable to calm my fears.
She is small
allowing only eighty years
to peek out from her brown babushka.
She frightens us,
her language different, indiscernible
by children playing on North Curry Street,
so the taunts begin
with cruel slurs and chalk marks
that she can not understand.
She is alone,
save six cats who need her
swirling between her shuffling feet.
They gently purr,
with a language only she understands
as the rhythm of her snapping beans
waves her paring knife in our direction.
Rocking on her porch, she smiles
at the kids who curse her.
She is misunderstood,
save my mother who protects her
when she falls coming back from her garden.
My mother covers her,
with a coat and guards her from children
who laugh as potatoes roll from her bag
pinching their noses from the scent of cat
still swarming around her
till the paramedics come.
She is carried
from the viaduct to the safety of her porch
as the story spreads through the neighborhood.
We wait by her gate,
even without dimes promised by the mailman
who believe rumors of bones in the basement,
till my mother comes out to scold us.
The Cat Lady won’t shriek in the dead of night.
It’s time for us to go home.
Her eighty-three years were tired,
and I had to crawl up beside her
if I wanted to hear her voice
too soft to hear at the side of the bed.
She lay with her hands clutching
the blanket close to her chin,
smiling as she rambles of days
children like me have never seen.
A farm wife, she reminds me,
knows the length of the furrows
as well as her husband.
She can look at the sky knowingly
getting the animals safe into the barn.
Her fingers tap the blanket
counting again the sixty-three jars
of beans she canned that year.
Laughing with the memory
of the potatoes cooked too long,
then only good for thickening stew.
I heard of running chickens,
burnt pie crusts,
and her sweet children
playing in the wheat fields
till the reaper came.
She sat in my classroom for one hundred and eighty days.
Front left side, third from the center aisle.
16 days absent, if truth be told.
Not much of a story here.
Flu, broken bones, all the usual ailments of a twelve year old.
If my students weren’t so easily distracted
from the topic of the lesson on that day,
I would have noticed her empty desk.
She entered the room quiet, so quiet, you may have not seen her
as she slipped by with her arms wrapped
around her books and she apologized
when she slid into her chair.
Crouched down with my face closer, I asked, “What was that?”
But there wasn’t another sound coming out
from under her shield of auburn bangs,
her exaggerated part falling against nature.
She moved her hair aside so one dark pupil could peek through.
I could see she had been crying
and in our glance we agreed
to leave the story there.
Students were asked to write about a happy memory.
The bell rang and her paper handed in
told the story of her older brother
ripping a clump of her hair.
In the jostling of books as she left, I could see it was non-fiction.
Her scalp showed a shining new bald spot
the size of a fifty-cent piece
but the story written there
went on to tell of how she felt safe in the walls of this room,
and since I was her teacher
could I write her an excuse
to stay away from home?
She sat in my classroom for one hundred and sixty-four days.
In 1960, Pete and Joe
wondered as they sang
when people would ever learn
where all the flowers had gone.
Gardens used to keep children
running under its sprinkler spray
and kicking the can and water balloons
filled cut grass with fun.
Laughter road the streets on bikes
with cards click-clicking spokes
and sticks banged out a tune
on the leaning picket fence.
Yet drive the street anytime today
and no one is outside
for children left the garden,
unattended, gone to weeds.
A long time since 1960,
you and I still wonder
where flowers in our garden go
when children live inside.
Dew laden grass made her shoes glisten
in the early morning sun
but the berry bushes were stingy
so she had to travel on.
The forest branches were bending to and fro
with welcoming arms that beckon children
to those dark and silent spaces
hiding quietly between the trees.
But the wind was whistling a pleasant tone,
almost a song that left a happy feeling,
so she left her basket by the mossy glen
to chase a butterfly floating on the sound.
But the dark and silent spaces
hiding quietly between the trees
eat little girls for breakfast
when the berries are not ripe.
Much more than a solid path
directing me from place to place,
the sidewalk goes on and on
pieced tightly together
like the days we’ve lived.
Yet today, the sun’s heat
has evaporated the wet remembrances
of last night’s summer rain
turning my child’s chalk drawings
into unrecognizable colored streaks
upon the sidewalk.
The passers-by stop briefly
looking down on the cement
intrigued by the thought
of what might have been.
Then they walk on
stepping on all our dreams.
Driving south on highway 63,
just past Cable,
my car takes me past the bend
where trees bow their branches wide
in homage to the Namekagon,
and its tempting glistening corridor
pulls me to its waters.
In my mind’s instant wandering
I’m on a languid inner tube
floating down the river.
Dragging a stick behind me
like a paintbrush,
I draw swooping birds
that follow me as I linger
with my hair bobbing like seaweed
catching the current.
My toes are dangling
where minnows can circle them
and my fingertips filter the coolness
as I push away from rippled rocks
where anglers could tangle me,
small mouth, or northern.
I drift away from all the thoughts
that steer me in my car
because the river flows on a different path
than where I thought I’d travel.
My teacher has a sign hanging in our classroom:
No Bullies Allowed.
And she means it.
She won’t let anyone
call me names like Gap or Gumby
just because my front teeth are gone.
No Bullies Allowed.
But summer is here and my teacher is on vacation
so there is no one to stop Mom
from rubbing salt in my wound
with this taunting,
butter dripping,
golden ear of corn.
EXPRESSIVE DOMAIN:
A CLOSE LOOK AT LIFE.
As a kaleidoscope artist, I welcome you to join with me while I reflect on life through poetry.
Patricia A. Hawkenson
phawkenson@ecasd.k12.wi.us
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