Category: poem

Young Woman at the Cocktail Party

Dogs Are Smarter Than People: Writing Life, Marriage and Motivation
Dogs Are Smarter Than People: Writing Life, Marriage and Motivation
Young Woman at the Cocktail Party
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A poem for Monday!

BE BRAVE FRIDAY

I’ve been quietly writing poems first thing every morning for a couple of weeks now. I guess, it’s my idea of morning pages, which is a writer thing where you write in the morning. Or maybe like journaling, which is a self-help thing where you get your brain ready for the day.

So, I write a poem in the morning lately.

This morning’s poem is up there.

And I’ve been not-so-quietly writing a hyper-local news blog for about a year now. It gets about 70,000 views every month, which is pretty cool and also sort of amazing since I kind of thought it would get–maybe 100?

And on this Friday, I’m trying to be a bit braver about the things I do maybe too quietly and to not be afraid to go a bit bigger in ambition and voice and focus.

It’s weird to go bigger when people expect you to be small.

This, of course, made me think about expectations.

This woman I met last week did the typical, “Oh what do you do?” as if my occupation defined me. I know! I know! People ask that to make small talk, but I’d so much rather we got to know each other by asking questions like, “Do you talk to birds?” or “Have you ever hugged a tree?” or “Do you believe that dancing in the rain is a cliche, silly, ridiculous, or a must-do whenever it is raining?”

Anyway, she asked me what I did.

I said, “I write novels.”

She raised an eyebrow. “Oh, really?”

She asked the next question, which if you are a writer, you know is always, “Have you published any?”

And I got to say, “Yes.”

Shaun yelled in, “She’s an NYT and internationally bestselling author.”

And her other eyebrow went up into that shocked look. I shrugged.

Here’s the thing: It doesn’t matter if some of my books randomly made those lists. What matters is that I love stories and creating them and sharing them.

What matters isn’t that I’m now somehow more acceptable because of a bench mark of success.

What matters is that I talk to birds and have definitely hug a tree and think dancing in the rain can be whatever you want it to be.

It’s okay to be big when people expect you to be small. It’s okay to create your art and not have to have it become a “mark of external success.”

And it’s also okay to be small when people expect you to be big.

We get to be who we are. That’s it. Be who you are.

And also I hope you have a great and brave Friday!

Here’s my painting this week. It’s a couple of colors that almost don’t go together. Kind of like expectations and reality, right?

GHOSTED

It’s a poem! 

                GHOSTED

It was like one of those self-help blogs
That only talk in abstractions
About the power of self-love

Or how to end a toxic relationship.
That’s when I realized 
That the person not showing up

Was me. All that bemoaning
About not putting in the effort,
Not taking the time to make sure

Sentences weren’t orders
And feelings were considered,
To temper my tone with kindness, 

It was just me being the bully to myself
Before ghosting off to do other things
For people, with people, to people
without even saying goodbye.

Tourist Love–A poem

I wrote a poem. 

                         TOURIST LOVE

At dusk as I tiptoed along the Shore Path,
Between tourists grumbling about fog and the price of lobster,
Listening to the sound of whaler motors humming 
out existence, I fell in love with a rose bush.

Not the cultivated kind, but the stubborn ones that cling to sea walls,
Bees fluttering about, wild and limby, stabbing at passersby, 
Bright pink and white blooms, calling you in 
Without asking for anything back. Just existing. No worries.

It knows it has survived drought and hurricane winds.
It knows it will survive those things again.
It knows it might be noticed or not. 
It doesn’t matter.

In the bright morning light, the fog eventually cleared,
And I feel in love with two kids who wandered off the path
To push at a precociously balanced rock, thinking somehow
They’d knock that giant boulder into the sea

Even though a zillion others had tried before, hands flat
Against granite, legs braced, putting all their weight into it. 
This is the sweetest kind of belief, of love, that love of self,
Not worried about what others think as you push and push and push.

American Eulogy

Tough Enough

Carrie Does Poems
Carrie Does Poems
Tough Enough
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Hi! This year (2023), I’m continuing my quest to share a poem on my blog and podcast and read it aloud. It’s all a part of my quest to be brave and apparently the things that I’m scared about still include:

  1. My spoken voice
  2. My raw poems.

Thanks for being here with me and cheering me on, and I hope that you can become braver this year, too!

For Anne & Maxine

Why is it that the dead

Never listen to my pillow talk?

I am tired, but can’t sleep

Again and again and again.

You snore next to me

And occasionally twitch

As the dog snuggles in between us,

Released from her crate

Because she cries so much.

Again and again and again,

Why is that my whines

Never wake anyone up?

Not even myself.

https://livinghappy.substack.com/

The Sea Smoke Rolls

Carrie Does Poems
Carrie Does Poems
The Sea Smoke Rolls
/

Hi! This year (2023), I’m continuing my quest to share a poem on my blog and podcast and read it aloud. It’s all a part of my quest to be brave and apparently the things that I’m scared about still include:

  1. My spoken voice
  2. My raw poems.

Thanks for being here with me and cheering me on, and I hope that you can become braver this year, too!

For Anne & Maxine

Why is it that the dead

Never listen to my pillow talk?

I am tired, but can’t sleep

Again and again and again.

You snore next to me

And occasionally twitch

As the dog snuggles in between us,

Released from her crate

Because she cries so much.

Again and again and again,

Why is that my whines

Never wake anyone up?

Not even myself.

King Kong Trolls

Carrie Does Poems
Carrie Does Poems
King Kong Trolls
/

Hi! This year (2023), I’m continuing my quest to share a poem on my blog and podcast and read it aloud. It’s all a part of my quest to be brave and apparently the things that I’m scared about still include:

  1. My spoken voice
  2. My raw poems.

Thanks for being here with me and cheering me on, and I hope that you can become braver this year, too!

For Anne & Maxine

Why is it that the dead

Never listen to my pillow talk?

I am tired, but can’t sleep

Again and again and again.

You snore next to me

And occasionally twitch

As the dog snuggles in between us,

Released from her crate

Because she cries so much.

Again and again and again,

Why is that my whines

Never wake anyone up?

Not even myself.

King Kong Trolls

The self-appointed 
writer-guru 
on Substack
with four-
thousand 
devotees
to his biweekly 
missives
has decided 
there are 
no 
more 
geniuses,
really,
not any
more.

Someone
needs 
to tell him
that he 
just doesn’t 
know

where to look.

The geniuses
aren’t banging 
their chests,
King-Kong like
in their glory
despite being
ground dwellers,
telling the world,
“Look at me! Look
at me as I roar
and pontificate.”

They are the 
discarded, 
dreaming,
creating, 
thinking
outside 
the main

streams
of 
plagiarized
discourse, 
unnoticed 
beneath
the giant
feet of 
oversized
apes 
capturing
all the attention 
as our culture
dangles 
from 
their
plump, 
hairy 
digits.

Hey, thanks for listening to Carrie Does Poems.

The music you hear is made available through the creative commons and it’s a bit of a shortened track from the fantastic Eric Van der Westen and the track is called “A Feather” and off the album The Crown Lobster Trilogy.

Loneliness

Carrie Does Poems
Carrie Does Poems
Loneliness
/

Hi! This year (2023), I’m continuing my quest to share a poem on my blog and podcast and read it aloud. It’s all a part of my quest to be brave and apparently the things that I’m scared about still include:

  1. My spoken voice
  2. My raw poems.

Thanks for being here with me and cheering me on, and I hope that you can become braver this year, too!

For Anne & Maxine

Why is it that the dead

Never listen to my pillow talk?

I am tired, but can’t sleep

Again and again and again.

You snore next to me

And occasionally twitch

As the dog snuggles in between us,

Released from her crate

Because she cries so much.

Again and again and again,

Why is that my whines

Never wake anyone up?

Not even myself.

Loneliness

He is known as he enters the emergency room, jeans sagging off his waist as an orderly ambles

To meet him. He is hunching at the precipice between lobby and hall, intake and bathroom, and

Ready to be seen. It is hard to be seen these days in a little Maine town full of tourists

If you are Old. It is only easy right here, right now, in the liminal space before becoming

A patient. We watch him totter, trying to decide. Go in? Stay out? Become

Or remain. Before we arrived here ourselves for broken bones; children who gulped down

Their own therapies in too many numbers; corneas scratched by tree limbs; we had to make

Those decisions, too. Did we want to save ourselves or should we just embrace

That all we are is pain and numbness and pain? We came, but others didn’t.

We sought help. And waited and waited for it, looking at our origins in heart beats

And blood levels, skeletons pinned and set straight again, stomachs pumped,

Eyes numbed with drops we are told not to get addicted to. In his room now, just curtains

For walls, the hunched man yells, Hello. No answer to his polite entreaty. Hello. Hello.

There is no easy cure for him. Hello. He gives up, changes tactics, and bellows. I have to pee.

WordPress won’t really allow me to format this the way I’d like so I’ll show you a screenshot of how it is meant to be.

Hey, thanks for listening to Carrie Does Poems.

The music you hear is made available through the creative commons and it’s a bit of a shortened track from the fantastic Eric Van der Westen and the track is called “A Feather” and off the album The Crown Lobster Trilogy.

Mourning

Carrie Does Poems
Carrie Does Poems
Mourning
/

Hey, thanks for listening to Carrie Does Poems.

The music you hear is made available through the creative commons and it’s a bit of a shortened track from the fantastic Eric Van der Westen and the track is called “A Feather” and off the album The Crown Lobster Trilogy.

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