God Owes Us a Kitten!

After hearing that our church rector will be leaving us soon, I have noticed myself feeling sullenly, like a child of divorced parents. However, such kids can often demand gifts, like a bicycle, or an X-Box, 2 weeks in summer at Space Camp, or, in this case, as I woke up feeling Monday morning;


God Owes Us a Kitten!

For the way that we’ve been smitten,
We decree God owes us - a kitten!

One who’ll grow into a cat,
Whom we will groom and prepare that

She’ll meet with priests in coffee clubs,
There to ecumenically hub-bub,

One with great claws like a lioness,
Who’ll tear injustice, hunger and distress,

One who can leap far as a tiger,
When sent on missions to Uganda or Niger,

Who on Sundays gives us homilies
As if we are her own family,

One who sends us out in the world,
To do God’s mission, be God’s herald,

One who knows there’s work to do,
Because her job is to fill your shoes

3 Poems in the Emily D- Idiom

I spent some time today day reading her poems, and working on being able to write in the idiom of Emily Dickenson. Harder than it looks. I wrote these three as experiments, I like the second one the least. Her meter and rhyme scheme (when used) is easy enough, but the content often contains dream like non-sequitors, often expressing a horror these test poems of mine don't capture.
Maybe I'll play with that tomorrow.  
Please enjoy all the same.


# – It Was a Letter

It was a letter in a book
  Wrote by one long ago,
Her loving tone, her simple poem
  Wrapped me within her thrall

I wrote some rhymes in her response,
  In diaries I kept,
And when I read her next verse, there!
  She answered me, again!

A teenage crush? A lovers rush?
  Or distant pen pals we?
A few new rhymes, then I’ll engage
  Her to turn her next page


# – I’d Not Heard From

I’d not heard from you in so long,
I came to ask what had gone wrong,
  Then you told me, nought I could do,
You asked I place the blame on you,

You had no another paramour,
Of reasons, you were not quite sure,,
  You said in love, we must endure, 
Then closed and locked me from your door

The paths behind such bitterness,
Have lead me through cold wilderness,
  They will not lead back to your door,
From wringing love, distance my cure


# – I’ve Set the Words

I’ve set the words of life,
  Each verse of it’s extremes,
Of common birth, moments of mirth
  Of trials, crimes, and ease

Yet one I cannot write,
  And may it be the worst
When death arrives by day or night,
  End of writing, its curse

Who can pretend to pen
  One’s end before it calls?
No keyboard taps, nor scratching pens
  One hears behind the pall

An Inconvenient Cat

Wrote this mostly 2 months plus ago, so the deets are of the day.
Yet the frustrations of those days lives on, so I ask you please join me in this meditative break,
Max insists!
(PS; that's not Max down there, that's a google cat. But with less white he'd look about right.)
  

An Inconvenient Cat 
 (Yes, it’s a post election 2016 rant)

On this rolling Earth we are all kept running,
  lest we become ditched in the gutters of political road kill,
We’re a nation of circus clowns, all in a race to stay
  treading backwards on the red or the blue state star ball
  lest one mis-step spills us on the Big Top,
  as crackerjacking other side sycophants applaud
  our catastrophe and fall

After gathering signatures to petition Monsanto,
  decrying their products for extirpations of
  milkweed and Monarch Butterflies
But before sending an email of invitations
  to attend a fund raising viewing of a film
  about global warming and the retreat of the glaciers,
  and how it’s not just about debating how many
  polar bears can fit on an iceberg like so many angels on a pin,
In the middle of FaceBooking with a friend about
  how I certainly wouldn’t mind using a urinal
  standing next to a pre-op trans-woman,
  and no, we don’t call them transvestites anymore,
While I’m planning later to balance my checkbook
  to see how much I can afford to donate to Jill Stein
  and her tri-state voter recount, and also to ask
All my red state friends to donate too ‘cause
  even if you don’t believe there were electoral shenanigans
  here’s your chance to prove it to us and tell us
  Goddamn progressive libs one last time
  "It’s just too bad for yooouuuu!"

Up jumped Max the cat, on my keyboard,
  where he typed out @%&rpt!,
Which looks like a cartoon strip expletive,
  (and who hasn’t felt that way lately!)
With his absinthe almond imploring eyes,
  and his toothy complaint that I haven’t loved him
  or even anything or anyone yet today, 
I am not vexed, just for a moment, I’ll set aside
  all Al Gore’s inconvenient truths,
  and the fate of all American bees,

To give a tickle and a hug,
  a cuddle and a mug,
To my pointy eared and romping moewful friend,
  who upon my keyboard rests attendant,
   my inconvenient cat!

Ice Storm

We're supposed to get an ice storm tonight.
I began writing this last week, as we were expecting another ice storm then. That one was bad, in the South and further West. Just a lotta pissin' warm rain up here.
Mebbe tonight'll be more fun!,


Ice Storm

We’ve some fearfulness,
We’ve some safe feelings,
   Buffets make old wood joints creak
As the black wind throws ice rain in a mess
  About our strong and sturdy house,

Our windows may glaze,
Our power’s blacked out,
  And without lights or views,
We’ve darkness all about

The boiler’s gone off,
Yet our warmth’s coming on,
  We’re happily dressed in clothes we’ve not got on, as,
Between fresh laundered flannel sheets,
  Your nakedness is all my heat

Miss 3:05

Some will mistake me for a dirty old man. No, I'm not that.
More likely I'll become the type to just sit alone and have a cry when no one's looking.


Miss 3:05

I saw her pass on time today,
At 3:05, down our byway,
  The blonde school girl who walks on by
Over school years, she’s grown so high!

Her High School is just up the road,
Her school back pack packed with it’s load,
  Kids who live close by can’t take the bus,
And so she walks home, as she must

She was much shorter years ago,
And stood up straight as by she’d go,
  She walks now with a head bent gait,
Her textbooks it seems have gained weight

As she walks by I’ve wished to wave,
Her hair waves back on windy days,
  I feel as if we’ve waved for years,
I doubt she even knows I’m here

What grade she’s in I do not know,
Just by I see her walking go,
  I’ve watched her grow over the years,
Soon she’ll grow up, that’s naught to fear,

Ago I was a high school kid,
Walked from my bus stop, we all did,
  Daily past homes, same time each day,
Then I grew up and moved away,
I’m sure she’ll move on too, someday 

But, why do I love her?
  It may be;
The reckonings of short legged youth,
And their looking up views of the future,
   Are now shadowed by a blinkering truth,
That upon these rolling crests of silvering age,
   One's wistful potential's now only remembered,
    It’s loss accepted without rage

Hold Fast This Holiday

The Waltham News Tribune declined to publish this poem. They've previously posted three of my poems, on their Waltham Community Forum page. Not this one.
I'm not shocked. It reads weird. Maybe by next year I can rethink it and submit something better.
However, in writing about MLK I decided African Americans maybe don't need me to pose as their spokesman. Also, we've already many grade school poems and primers on MLK.
As a white dude, I wanted to write about why MLK and this Holiday is important to me.
A lot of push back has occurred in recent years about LGTBQ people, Muslims being registered, Mexicans being deported because of a few "Bad Hombres," you know what I'm getting at.
Can MLK day be a Holiday which does not create awareness solely of one race or classes plight, but for all of us who are victims of bigotry?


Hold Fast This Holiday

Hold fast onto this Holiday,
And honor the life of MLK,
For future times will bring discord
From those who won’t, who’ll come and say;
"No,
  You cannot love that woman,
  You cannot hire that man,
  You can not, no, you go away,
  You don’t belong here in This Town,
  You and your type are banned"

Please hold onto this Holiday,
Embody the spirit of Dr. King,
That on such notorious a day,
You and I, we will stand tall and sing;
"Yes,
  Yes I can love this woman,
  Yes I can hire this man,
  Oh yes we can, oh yes, we’re here,
  For we believe you too belong – in Our Town,
  To share and possess a love for all,
  Of our Fellows, our Sisters, and Man"

Attending

Went to a funeral today. Didn't know the guy, although it was at my church, for someone who'd been a longtime parish member.  I wanted to be supportive.
Ever see the film Harold and Maude? From the '70's? Harold used to drop in on funerals.
I kinda felt like a Harold today. Don't plan on making a habit of it.

Attending

Why in attendance am I often, at
  services for unfamiliar persons?
Any congress between, living and dead,
  remains hallowed, passed on, beyond reason

He was a living member of this church,
  I these 10 years, he so much longer more,
Yet all his presence within these walls stands
  years before these pentameters short reach

I’ve seen caskets wheeled to the hearse, and
  black suited households hymning in hushed verse,
Urns, too many, of polished metals round,
  one's ashes once poured straight into the ground

Might be I come to greet the final pall,
  where no dead dance, bereft in death of all,
Death’s service is always so cold and bare,
  when I go, I hope someone will be there

Epiphany

After four weeks of FM radio Holiday music, the idea dawned on me that Holiday themed poetry might someday result in repeat royalties.
Coincidence - Epiphany starts tonight!

I agree the humor of the included cartoon detracts from the introspective solemnity of the poem, so just think of it as being here though not directly related.


Epiphany

I wrote "Twenty-MCB-Seventeen,"
  in purple chalk on the door,
In hopes three wise men might come
  with blessings just once more

On the day there were three knocks,
Two women and a man, cloth coats, 
  frosty breathed on trepidatious ice,
"We bring a messege, of love, hope from the future,
  for the new year, it was written in the Bible,"

I pitied them having climbed up
   my glazed and uninviting steps, so said,
"Ok, I’ll take the tract but we’re not inviting you in"

Later I answered Christine by saying,
"Yes, it was them,"

We read the piece but did not bother
  look op the passages it quoted,
I found myself at odds of any message
  it had needing to be noted,

Yet all I wondered was,
   has any grace been here received?
Perhaps was it my view of blessed
  by which I find I am deceived

On New Years Eve

A shorty for New Years. Likely it'll need a revise before next year, but for today I want to share it.


On New Years Eve

I laid down all the bags and suitcases
  I’d been carrying,
I forgot for a moment that my computer
  is going to explode in the morning, or that it
  will give my identity to terrorists, or that I
  waste too much of my time on Facebook and stupid games,
I wasn’t reminded that the person I didn't vote for is a bigger jerk
  than the one I did vote for,
I didn’t pay off my credit card or notice how it had grown,
I wasn’t scared of ebola or zika,
I didn’t feel my teeth were rotting
  and I’d need expensive implants,
I didn’t notice I was becoming
  a crumbling old man,
No,

I hugged you,
  I kissed you, and
You were warm, like a
  lap cat on a winter's night,
And after a good cuddle,

I got up, re-shouldered all that crap,
  and trudged on along again