A happier ending
Poetry | Posted by Jannie on 7 January 2009 @ 6:25 AM 49 Comments
photo by Jannie, 2004
(upon discovering Sylvia Plath)
I was a mere spring and half a summer away from
becoming flesh the day you laid out bread and milk
and sealed off your kitchen to inhale your final solution.
I didn’t even realize until my coffee chat with Bridget
the other day that you lived and died a full hundred
years later than I waywardly assumed you had.
Surely poets didn’t suicide themselves in 1963?
1863 — 1763 — I could see. But 1963?
Yet you did.
And I wonder was your life
like a grasshopper’s on a
windshield at sixty mph,
like an uprooted sapling’s who
can’t speak the foreign tongue
of discontinued seasons?
Hanging on for dear life
from the rafters of childhood,
from the meat hooks of love,
from the blackness of red tulips,
who knows what night you knew?
Ah, gone lady, had we been girls
of beach summers and winter woods
together, I would’ve shown you how to
laugh and wear your hat like starshine,
how to skip the flattest round stones
and joke about moons over tea,
every day a small miracle hanging
like children in park swings,
like bras in happy trees.
Sun, Not So Good For Poets (a poem)
Poetry | Posted by Jannie on 31 December 2008 @ 1:01 PM 53 Comments
(Please note, my professional training is not in poetry but in weaving Easter baskets from childhood sunsets and sidewalks of silk.)
Sun, Not So Good For Poets
Somewhere blessed with darkness,
someplace delicious with shadows
that can barely even be discerned,
it’s raining a lucky black streak.
But here night’s long since faded
like sugar into water
like sin into stain
and this virgin page
is in no mood to scuffle with
poems joyous with light or fiddles
or happy bunnies frolicking with cute
little kitties tangled in balls of yellow yarn.
(A second poem — one including pansies, was later deleted by the author, because upon closer examination, that poem rather sucked.)
Hope the one abve will tide you over until next post when I’ll gleefully honor the lovely Patricia’s “7 Deep Facts About Me” meme, wherein I’ll be a-taggin’ 7 of you Sweeties. Who, oh who, will you be?
(I took the above photo a couple days ago outside the DIY store, doesn’t it freaking rock!) (I say in all humility.)
Pansies are my favorite flowers, their little faces upturned for chin-chuckings from God. Luckily here in Austin they grace our gardens all winter long.
A Good-Fitting Bra (uh-oh, here come those Google ads again)
Poetry | Posted by Jannie on 3 December 2008 @ 2:08 PM 42 Comments
Photo credit: Complimentary Crap (really!)
A Good-Fitting Bra
A good-fitting bra is a [bosom] buddy indeed,
a little [or sometimes not so little,] friend
who won’t let you [or your boobs] down
until it gets too stretched out because
you’ve worn the friendship thin and not
given it that every-other-day break,
or better yet, every-third-day break
as recommended in the Better Bras Almanac.
(Aside: a 2-day break also suggested for shoes.)
My experience has been it’s easier to replace a
good bra than a good friend so be nice to
your bras. And your friends! And if your friends
are not nice to you, come here to my blog,
because I’ll be nice to you, if you’re nice to me.
And if I’m ever not nice to you it’s because
one of us has been an ass. [Most likely me.]
But hopefully, all can and will be forgiven.
We Got To Be
On Sunday, striding across the parking lot
to the restaurant hand-in-hand-in-hand
we got to be the dashing entrepreneur,
the trophy wife and the golden child;
not the man who’s worrying how he’ll
cover checks tomorrow, the woman
with dust in every kitchen corner and
the kid who’s been flinging lip lately
like it’s going out of business.
Orbits
The secret forgotten language of children,
The secret simple language of men,
The secret not-so-simple language of women,
— That’s what keeps the planets doing what they do.
3 poems and a child in a tree (now with preamble)
Poetry | Posted by Jannie on 26 November 2008 @ 12:56 PM 27 Comments
Three hours ago I jolted awake after two straight months of Super Blogging to realize the camping gear (from early October,) and the Halloween stuff could maybe go back in the garage to make room for the Christmas tree.
So I clean house today.
And introduce you to my hubby’s new radio station website I put together last week, which will do in a pinch. And let me tell ya – it’s been a pinch, as we have to file an intervention with the Canadian Radio and Television Commission by Dec. 18th. But whatever happens, it’ll be for the best. Maybe our radio station could go satellite only? Any way you look at it, my Jimmy rocks (is quite handsome and has majorly gravity-defying buttocks.)
Above… a preview of the “Thankful Unveiling” I’ll post tomorrow if WordPress plays nice and lets me put in all the photos I want. Jim started building that “Backyard Adventure” in March and it’s now finished on the exterior. (Yay, Jae!)
