Poetry

I imagined writing exciting and wonderful things on this blog, but since have realized those kinds of happenings may not come each day. So I've decided to write poetry. I will still write exciting and wonderful things as they happen. Stay tuned.

I am attempting the Poem A Day through the month of November. I will feel fortunate just to create a poem each day. These will be unfinished, un-critiqued, rough drafts that I write so ..go easy. We have to have a theme for our poetry with the thoughts of having 30 poems to put in a chapbook. That's tough and the theme that comes to mind is loss or grief (same thing, right?) and so it's probably not poetry for everyone.

I did want to report on the Women's' Club Spaghetti Dinner that we had this weekend. It was a great success and proceeds will go to the scholarships we present to students at the end of the year. I had drive-through duty and it was not pretty. Its a wonder I didn't get splashed across the parking lot, spaghetti dinner for four splayed across my body. I should have had on roller skates to make things go more smoothly (hmmmm, maybe not). I was hobbling around the parking lot with arms loaded down with spaghetti dinners and the cars were coming through like it was a race track and they were all Andretti. When I went in all the other indoor workers were sitting down eating! I was in shock. They forgot about me out there! They even told Bill that I had left when he came to eat dinner with me! Oh, well, what can you do. I do wish I could attend these meetings and keep duct tape firmly over my mouth so I don't volunteer for anything for a while. I wanted to socialize and have fun and I'm working my tush off! Oh, well, its for a good cause.
Nov 1 and 2 poems :

Overcome

Too many times I’ve thought
I can’t stand it, I can’t be here
can’t stand the pain of this loss.

I always hang on , my
grip tenuous and iron steel
by turns as I hold on
to that which is going or

gone. I value the resolve that takes
me forward when what I want is
blissful sleep. The solution

comes to me gradually, seeps
into consciousness with the dusky
evening light. My legacy, the
women who walked before me
the ones who walk with me on
this same treacherous path.

Nov 2
In this poem we were to speak on our theme as someone else would have spoken to us. I chose Iris Bolton whose words are the first stanza, my own follow.

Declaration

I don’t know why
I’ll never know why
I don’t have to know why
I don’t like it
I don’t have to like it
What I do have to do is

make a choice about
living. Why? Why not.
Weary, I travel through
each day and pray
I won’t be destroyed
won’t destroy others by
my grief. A choice to

live is the choice I
make each day and as time
goes on I advance to choices
that make my life more than
existence. Forgetting myself

at times I even reach for
joy before life dawns on me
again. In infinitesimal increments
I move through another passage
I’m Indiana Jones effeminate

dodging spears and casualties
as I make my way to a new dawn
striped of any resemblance of the
woman I was, transformed into an
enigma even to myself.