Poetic license authorizes me
to break some grammar rules, to twist a word,
to stretch a metric foot’s capacity,
to host ideas my parents called absurd.
It grants me room to battle paucity
of language, and to fancy someone heard.
It let me play Scheherazade of poem,
and kept me sane a thousand days at home.
(Ottava Rima)
This is the final poem in the House Arrest series.
She said her hands feel dry when folding clothes.
He countered smoothing paper irks his skin.
For me a theory quickly then arose –
committed as they are to scrubbing well
when in or out their fingers they expose,
and then applying lotion for repair,
perhaps the sanitizing that they chose
depletes them of good moisture from within.
Immoderately clean means dermal woes.
(Magic 9)
The kids today may need a jaywalk class.
They’re inattentive, and the traffic’s dense.
It takes an age of walking to amass
pedestrian abilities. I sense
approaching drivers who will rudely pass.
I harbor busy street intelligence.
But all the years I lived to learn the score
have made me gray and easy to ignore.
(Ottava Rima)
The shingled structure wears a charcoal stain,
appearing almost black (or uber gray).
But when the sunshine lights each window pane,
the way it did at 3 p.m. today,
it wears a face of silver. That display
examples how appearance varies so.
My fondest enemy has an array –
she’s soft tonight, and other than a foe.
(Huitain)
I loved to read as soon as I learned how,
although I had no use for Dick-and-Jane
or even Spot. From then to beyond now
I turn to written narrative as main
amusement when awake and sitting still.
Selecting English as my major just
to keep on reading, I have found and will
a way to reading novels, cause I must.
My kids are ready readers too, but less.
My first-born favors film, and I observe,
regardless of her work, her love, all stress,
she finds a space for movies. She’ll reserve
a screening like I carve out time to read,
arranging hectic life to sate a need.
I used to think, whenever he would say
“I’m such a duck,” he had it wrong. Dismay
I felt – that couldn’t be – it was a bid
to make me laugh and reassure amid
our hug – “I love you. You’re my man, okay?”
In time I knew I shouldn’t have thought nay.
It turned out that he did have feet of clay.
(My ego might have listened to my id?)
I used to think…
I have another chance to learn, today.
My daughter’s history is on display.
We’re old but I’m attending to my kid –
I’m understanding what she felt and did.
I see her, and I’m finished with the way
I used to think.
(Rondeau)
I must conclude she likes to feel annoyed,
who always seeks a reason to complain.
I’ve never seen her visage overjoyed.
Her attitudes exhibit her disdain,
impatience, criticism, and a void
of interest in another: like her brain
comprises avenues of malcontent,
that power her to everyday misspent.
(Ottava Rima)
The season befalls
when gingko leaves drift to ground
in puddles of gold.
The book I’m reading now has rave reviews.
It’s classified a novel, but it’s not.
It has a dozen characters, but clues
about development have been forgot.
The grammar and the language don’t abuse
my taste, but what a waste – there’s no subplot.
The narrative is lacking any arc,
collapsing short of climax. Fade to dark.
(Ottava Rima)
I didn’t comprehend the full extent
of her disdain for school, till recently.
Although I helped her dodge a year, it meant
no more to me than all her certainty
about bad style choices – she was bent
toward gothic, punk, and small depravity.
Well-educated, thoughtful, willful, smart,
I didn’t understand the spectrum part.
(Ottava Rima)
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