Soliciting Your Opinion Yet Again

The portfolio I'm working on for my creative writing class has to include poetry, which I am much less comfortable with than prose. Prose I know where I stand whereas, with poetry, I am on much less certain ground. So, here are eight poems I've written in class - let me know which ones you like the best. The poems are linked below.

The Dilemma

Not old, not brand new

Gently used is how I would say it

if I were to put an ad on Craigslist or eBay

or in the long-forgotten penny saver.

Just gently used red shoes.

They might do for me

or they might pinch at the toe

the size being not quite right.

But it would be a pity to let them go.

They are only gently used, too happy a shoe

to be left on the shelf in dire days

too structured a shoe for

arthritic and swollen feet.

Double Delight

I have started to forget the names.

Some I remember,

like Rio Samba and St. Patrick’s Day

which was green, but had no smell.

Rio Samba smelled slightly spicy, like mango salsa

on a hot day.

There was a pink and white one that smelled like cotton candy.

A smell intensified by heat

when warmed by the sun reflecting off the brick

of the house.

Gemini, maybe it was called, like the twins;

a double threat of beauty and smell.

Another smelled like pepper, in a way that reminded

one of home-cooked meals

rather than the grinders found in restaurants.

But the best, the one that outshone them all,

smelt of happiness and joy.

A smell you can’t place but know instinctively as part

of the good days.

That is the smell I remember, the rose I keep in my memory

until I have a yard of my own.

That is the rose of better days, of times before tears

of summers spent together

when worries didn’t mute the sunshine.

That is the smell I’ll miss if I ever drive past the old house again.

Blood Loss

Starting over and over, repeatedly fighting vampires until I win;

rewinding the nightmare to the beginning should I lose.

Sleep is no longer a refuge

as the battles of the day resume in the subconscious.

It isn’t quite the same, there is no loss of life in day.

Only the haunting exhaustion of burdens carried far too long

without respite.

Losing myself to the demands of the hour, the day, the week.

But only in the night does my subconscious fight back,

refusing to let me become a victim of the blood-letters

refusing to lose.

I make my last stand in my subconscious and hope it bleeds through to day.

The Spectre of Social Networking

After all this time apart

Between years of school and

Careers changed with circumstance a

Decade of differences

Exacting its revenge

Flows between us

Gives no one a

Hint that we ever knew anything

Interesting about one another now

Just friends on Facebook

Knowing nothing but what is written in the occasional status update

Like how work or school goes

Maybe who we have befriended

Nothing that speaks

Of how you once

Played a James Taylor song just for me to

Quiet all my apprehension

Risen from being thousands of miles from my

Sick mother while I

Tried to write an essay reflecting my

Understanding of how Parliamentary powers have changed over the

Vast centuries between Henry VIII and Edward VIII

When you could strike my nerves like a

Xylophone and you never knew how

You filled my thoughts and dreams – all this

Zipped up in a duffel bag shoved under my bed

10:41 on a Sunday Night

I wish I could call a time out on life

and catch up on all the things I need to do

and all the sleep I've missed

                                                in the last four years

It has been four years

of weddings

deaths

births

the endings and the starting-overs that punctuate life

but my life has not had punctuation

no periods

no semi-colons

not even one little comma

                                                in the last four years

just one

long run-on sentence in which I am neither

the subject nor the verb

                                    not even the direct object

Simply the space after each word that links

one to another providing structure

and rhythm

invisibly

The Value of Feminism

They sell bikinis at the GAP

for two year-olds

and kindergarten girls shop

for miniskirts and spaghetti-strap camisoles

while ten year-olds watch High School Musical II

obsessively

and discuss the various merits

of curled hair versus straight

their older sisters in the next bedroom over

perfecting the application of mascara

planning outfits from which various pieces can be removed

after passing parental inspection

because someone decided that being sexy

was the only acceptable expression

of the feminine power that once stood

at the pinnacle of creation

There Is Always a Base Note of Urine – a Decade in Urbanity 

London smells mostly of dew and garbage

on early Sunday mornings

with a tinge of urine

if you are up and out the door before 8 am

and take a deep breath

as you walk to the tube station

when the sky is still grey

matching the sidewalk

DC is more humid and hot

the garbage collectors keep the garbage smell at bay

so it is just the smell of heat and urine

as you sweat under the sun

and endure the heat index of 115

and the metro station appears like an air-conditioned oasis

tempting you to ride it for just one block

forgetting to mention the train is like a sardine can without A/C

Even Salt Lake City

with its inhabitants’ delusions of utopia

hints in its evening breeze

of an underground metropolis of homeless

entering the parks at dusk and relieving themselves

on the meticulously manicured expanses

on which so many children so recently played

when the smell was hidden by collective will

I imagine when I get to Paris or Athens

Singapore or Sydney

perhaps even as far as Beijing

that as I’m astounded by the beauty

the grandeur

the individuality of each metropolis

I will find the familiar scent of urban life underneath

whatever exotic top note dominates the city

35 Euros Well Spent

Orange and blue

Red and grey

Yellow and purple

Carry force across the crowded gallery

Enough to block out the name

The famous name

Of Yeats

Not the Yeats, the other one

The brother who painted like the father

The brother whose brush strokes contained power and rage

Thought and vision same as

The words and rhythms

Of the Irish poet

Even Americans have heard of

These Men of Destiny

Nonchalant

Hands in pockets

Confident that the purple ocean and the yellow land

The blue-grey sky

And the red-orange rocks

Are theirs and no one else’s

They are not the ones

Slouching towards Bethlehem

They are the ones

Filled with confidence

They are the centre that holds

Something you can hang on your wall

To remind you

That they exist

Those men of destiny

That believe in themselves

And believe in you

So that you have no choice

But to believe it yourself

As you rush out the door at the start of another day