Shellac

Posted on February 10, 2023 by sputterpub

The mom is doting with the neonates,
but once a baby’s aged to six months old,
the woman opens up abrupt floodgates –
impatience pouring over uncontrolled.
There isn’t space then for a child’s hurt,
unless the injury needs stitch or gauze.
Her offspring grow accustomed to her blurt,
ignoring her, avoiding giving cause.

Her first-born tried for years, at first confused,
exasperated by the age of five,
but words were worthless. Mom was not amused,
and so the child managed to survive
another dozen years at home (and whole),
by learning to shellac her gentle soul.

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New Beginning?

Posted on February 9, 2023 by sputterpub

It’s not too late to make a new beginning,
although the year commenced a month ago,
and dawn is past, and I am old, I know.
I have no goals for trophies – I’m for winning
a little better health: a way to slow
the march to dark; a gently lengthened glow.

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Ordinary Dreams

Posted on February 8, 2023 by sputterpub

They may be the effect of stuttered sleep.
Deleting cannabis could be a cause.
But I am dreaming nightly, and I keep
the memory of many scenes. I pause
in rise to consciousness, from nothing deep –
I surface from a shallow pool. No claws
or specters threaten – the vignettes are brief
and ordinary, absent fear or grief.

(Ottava Rima)

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It’s Mostly Not

Posted on February 7, 2023 by sputterpub

It’s mostly not an age-related ill.
She’s ancient but her memory’s not shot.
Her hatred’s from no side-effect or pill.
It’s mostly not.

If you remember vigor, you forgot
she tapped it from a fountain of ill-will.
She never laughed. She didn’t hug a lot.

And when we dared show feelings, she would fill
the space with her complaint or judgment’s rot.
You want to state the cause is age’s spill.
It’s mostly not.

(Roundel)

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Videophilia

Posted on February 6, 2023 by sputterpub

When he was 1, his interest in the world
so notable, his gaze reminded me
to see the trees and flowers that unfurled
before our eyes, the sights so gorgeously
available, resplendent, magically
arrayed. Too soon a screen kidnapped his mind.
He couldn’t tear his eyes away by three.
He may spend several decades nature-blind.

(Huitain)

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Appreciation (A Pushkin Sonnet)

Posted on February 5, 2023 by sputterpub

Existence seems a precious state of being –
a rare and lucky possibility,
with creatures capable of somehow seeing,
to finite age before mortality.
I wasn’t born an ant (and that’s appealing) –
I’m able to sense consciousness and feeling.
I wasn’t doomed to be a pet or food
(I’m human and can diagnose a mood).

And human-born, of people, I’ve the blessing
of never lacking sustenance or roof,
and seldom suffering unfair reproof.
I’m female and a Jew, but I’m not stressing
from racist acts or bully words. To date,
it’s like I’m charmed. And I appreciate.

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1991

Posted on February 4, 2023 by sputterpub

A 2 raised to the power 5 results
in tallied years since they had their affair.
For 10 days then, two middle-aged adults
conversed, exposed, laid every detail bare.
Outgoing both, they’d neither had a share
in any love so easy to convey.
And though since then they haven’t coupled, they’re
still treasuring those memories today.

(Huitain)

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Other People’s Problems

Posted on February 3, 2023 by sputterpub

I bought the cottage 15 years ago.
Its genesis in 1944
was guest room in the yard, where it won’t show,
behind a single-family shingled house.
A college town, the place would undergo
progression into flats to rent, then buy.
An H.O.A. of 5 at last, I know
I’m lucky to have separate walls and door.
The front house often fails. It’s not my woe.

(Magic 9)

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Brain Draft

Posted on February 2, 2023 by sputterpub

Accused of thinking she knows everything,
she’s smart enough to know that isn’t so.
With every step of knowledge furthering,
she glimpses how much farther she could go.
And when she tries suppressing signs she’s bright,
she fails to pull the bushel really tight.
The lumens leak. Her fellows see the beam,
and claim she values brains to an extreme.

Perhaps she does. She’s willing to admit
it to herself and maybe to you, too.
She can’t say that it’s inappropriate
to cherish such. The other point of view
she tried, and boredom drove her fast away.
She wants companions who can think and say.

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Tints & Tones

Posted on February 1, 2023 by sputterpub

He saw the world in color, but his course
was black & white cartoonish absolutes.
His superheroes had explosive force
and all his villains acted thorough brutes.
A man’s a man, and alpha is preferred;
a woman misbehaving is a bitch.
And so it stood until the worst occurred,
and he was stricken from he knew not which.

Then gray were the impressions he received,
and murky were the boundaries he sensed.
His weakness waxed, and though his loved ones grieved,
the women in his life, with will condensed,
stepped up to lead, to flex, exerting vim,
confounding all those certainties in him.

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