Poems for Olive

These are a 4 poems out of a set I wrote as part of a book report on Olive Kitteridge by Elizabeth Strout.


                                                     Donuts and Relationships

fat poured into grease,

my distrust into yours.

oil soaking into a brown paper bag,

a checked, red tablecloth,

over this wall growing up between us,

you’ve found another love.

these donuts you bring me,

are like tarnished tokens,

tokens of once,

long-forgotten love.

this donut,

adding more where less is needed,

hardly replaces those sweet, naïve days
of sparkling eyes

and pounding hearts.

but as it is,

this is it.

go see your mistress,

bring me a donut back.

let us wait for the inevitable,

the end of this,

when our hearts will stop beating as one,

in fact

they will cease

to beat

at all.

The Piano Player

vodka slurred notes twinkling in the air,

mixing with the blushing strings of lights

draped on the tree.

her shaky hands

gliding over glossy keys.

an empty smile,

glazed eyes.

her hands were hungry.

so she played

on that big piano,

in that big church,

her feet dangling.

now she stumbles every night into this bar.

she plays.

she takes no breaks.

this is what she does.

who she is.

black high-heeled shoes,

affairs with those already spoken for.

all those songs take up all the room

in that being of hers,

that has no more room.

hair fading.

fading lights in eyes.

this is the piano player.

Starfish

invincible warriors, I’ve heard,

legs growing back

like some sort of godly being.

but we pick them up anyway,

leave them on these ashy rocks

to be parched by the sun,

to hang in the fishnets hung by our windows.

little beacons in our living room.

little geometric beings

clinging to their rocks

as I cling to my fantasies of normalcy.

pancakes on Sunday nights.

sister,

what is that world?

the one into which you’ve disappeared?

what is it that I don’t know?

Tulips, Loneliness, Strokes

3 haikus

sowed, you were last spring

braving the cold as infants

bright, flaming glory

this heartache drowns me

my life now falls on deaf ears

you’ve left me alone

eyes stared blankly up

reaching up blindly past me

drift away, you can go

broken ballet shoes

And ANOTHER prompt. To describe an object in the room (I chose not to interpret that literally), I chose a ballet slipper hanging from the ceiling that must have been a book report project or something or other years back....

A dream hanging in a noose. A wish blowing in the breeze, because these stars that we reach for - our ladders break. And we fall. Back down to our parchment-thin lives. This scuffed ballet shoe is the varsity football season that never began. The college career that never finished. It is these broken dreams of stardom and of novelists and of sports careers and of travels around the globe. It is the dreams of true love and saving the world, the dreams of spotlights on stages. And then the lights go out.

Love at First Sight

Yet another journal entry prompt (the title) from English. Somewhat inspired by Billy Collins, I suppose.

earlier this morning,

as I rose from my warm bed

my world was blanketed

with ash colored clouds

and piles of dirty snow.

the sun hid her face

the air was cold.

and in the moment

it was love at first sight.

i fell head over heels

for those wisps of cold vapor.

i was lovestruck

by that cold, dreary world

because

this is life

each and every day

and life is beautiful.

worth loving.

Find contentment....

An imagery exercise for English. Thinking back, I think that I may have been thinking about Marco Island, Florida.....

A darkness so black your eyes feel like velvet. The wind warm and damp, lazily caressing your bare shins. The sounds of traffic so distant they become almost indistinguishable from each other and even the faintest sound waves from that seemingly other world that reach your ears become confused with other sensations entering your head. You taste salt. You smell the faintly foul smell of seaweed. The sand shifts beneath your feet and waves lap shyly at your toes. If you were to open your eyes you would see the ethereal expanse of silvery, moonlit sands and the water disappearing into the dark horizon, floating the stars, but as it is, you are content to allow your vision to stay in that velvety ink and find contentment in these simple sensations.

La Neige (The Snow)

Another short little poem for French II....

le neige a dansé
je n'ai pas pensé
le monde a pu halter pour regarder
mais il a eu le silence à donner
le vent a murmuré
pour le soliel nous n'avons pas cherché
nous n'avons pas oublié
parce que les nuages sont déj à arrives.

the snow danced
i did not think
the world could stop to watch
but it had silence to give
the wind whispered
for the sun we did not look
we did not forget
because the clouds had already come.