Tag: poem

Loneliness

Carrie Does Poems
Carrie Does Poems
Loneliness
/

Hi! This year (2022), I’ve decided 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!

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. These podcasts and more writing tips are at Carrie’s website, carriejonesbooks.blog. There’s also a donation button there. Even a dollar inspires a happy dance in Carrie, so thank you for your support.

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.

While Carrie only posts poems weekly here, she has them (in written form) almost every other weekday over on Medium. You should check it out!

https://freemusicarchive.org/music/eric-van-der-westen/the-crown-lobster-trilogy-selection

Bored and aching, I just wanted someone to love me.

Carrie Does Poems
Carrie Does Poems
Bored and aching, I just wanted someone to love me.
/

Hi! This year (2022), I’ve decided 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! 

"Bored and aching, I just wanted someone to love me."


We were visiting Mom’s best friend,
	An aunt who wasn’t an aunt,

She taught school, the job my mother dreamed of
	Before unplanned babies and rushed marriage

Turned her life into breaths clutching
	At meaning. The ladies stayed inside with coffee

Laced with Kahlua and words steaming
	At the edges of truths while I walked to the lake,

My body lurching forward. Last child by so many years
	Made me a lonely only and I started singing

To the waves and the trees. The water-stained boards 
       Of their dock made me think of mermaids and tears. 

Bored and aching, I just wanted someone to love me.
	This is why I am a poet. 

The dog emerged from the woods to the right, 
	A Doberman. One of Mom’s men friends

Had a dog like this. I reached my arms open, hugging the air
	And the dog bounded into them. From the deck of the house,

My mother screamed, Carrie! No! 

Bored and aching, I just wanted someone to love me.
	This is why I exist. 

What are you? I whispered to the dog as her tail wagged
	And tongue lapped my face. 

When the grown-ups came running out, the dog shifted,
	Guarding me from their strange worries about credit and affairs,

Husbands who might find things out, children they left
	Behind them, coughing and clinging to life.

They implored me to come with them. My hand ran
	Along the dog’s fur and for the first time,

I felt powerful. I found a dog, I yelled, but she really found me. 
	The water clung to her fur the way I wanted to cling on

To that moment. Could she have really heard me wanting,
	Singing need and loneliness into the waves and trunks

Of crooked spruce trees, my sadness hooking lines into the granite
	That gave our state its name? Someone’s husband

Convinced them the dog meant me no harm. She didn’t. 
	Dogs never did. They still never do. 

Bored and aching, I just wanted someone to love me.
	This is why.

Hey, thanks for listening to Carrie Does Poems. These podcasts and more writing tips are at Carrie’s website, carriejonesbooks.blog. There’s also a donation button there. Even a dollar inspires a happy dance in Carrie, so thank you for your support.

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.

While Carrie only posts poems weekly here, she has them (in written form) almost every other weekday over on Medium. You should check it out!

https://freemusicarchive.org/music/eric-van-der-westen/the-crown-lobster-trilogy-selection

Mourning

Carrie Does Poems
Carrie Does Poems
Mourning
/

Hey, thanks for listening to Carrie Does Poems. These podcasts and more writing tips are at Carrie’s website, carriejonesbooks.blog. There’s also a donation button there. Even a dollar inspires a happy dance in Carrie, so thank you for your support.

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.

While Carrie only posts poems weekly here, she has them (in written form) almost every other weekday over on Medium. You should check it out!

https://freemusicarchive.org/music/eric-van-der-westen/the-crown-lobster-trilogy-selection

Every Day, a poem

Carrie Does Poems
Carrie Does Poems
Every Day, a poem
/

Every Day

The puppy galloped through the garden

While the Fed-Ex guy told me about how

His brain was fried. People keep offering

Me beer, he says. They say they’ll hide it

in my water bottle, but one accident

and I’ll lose my job. God, I need it though.

The tourists make everything harder as they walk

Down the center of the streets. Cruise ships

Anchor in the harbor. One has a giant slide

That goes all the way around the ship, even on the outside.

I feel like I’m on that every day, just going down.

Hey. Is that your puppy eating something?

I tell him, She chews at the roots of things, too.

Every day.

Hey, thanks for listening to Carrie Does Poems. These podcasts and more writing tips are at Carrie’s website, carriejonesbooks.blog. There’s also a donation button there. Even a dollar inspires a happy dance in Carrie, so thank you for your support.

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.

While Carrie only posts poems weekly here, she has them (in written form) almost every other weekday over on Medium. You should check it out!

https://freemusicarchive.org/music/eric-van-der-westen/the-crown-lobster-trilogy-selection

“Celebrity”

Carrie Does Poems
Carrie Does Poems
"Celebrity"
/

Hi! This year (2022), I’ve decided 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! 

"Celebrity"

Your life could be hated so much.

Once celebrated, you must know the joy—never.
Sitting by the sky’s vastness,

Listening to the screams

Hitting you. You must remember
To open your arms and tumble to Earth

And see if anyone embraces your bones, ascends;

Sometimes we feel like skeletons.
Ligaments, muscles, neurons barely holding it together.

We make so many into angels, waiting
For the fall.

Hey, thanks for listening to Carrie Does Poems. These podcasts and more writing tips are at Carrie’s website, carriejonesbooks.blog. There’s also a donation button there. Even a dollar inspires a happy dance in Carrie, so thank you for your support.

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.

While Carrie only posts poems weekly here, she has them (in written form) almost every other weekday over on Medium. You should check it out!

https://freemusicarchive.org/music/eric-van-der-westen/the-crown-lobster-trilogy-selection

Out of Our Cages

Carrie Does Poems
Carrie Does Poems
Out of Our Cages
/

Hi! This year (2022), I’ve decided 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! 

Out of Our Cages

Poets speak of blossoms from brown paper bags,
Walks of calmness through April days, 
And critics decry the lack of meter
In a poem that moved thousands,
Presidents and mothers included. 

We all climb hills. 
We all tumble down. 
We all seek meaning in signs
And laden flattened boughs with words.

Why can’t we find meaning in ourselves? 
Every day I watch our puppy wake joyous, 
Ready to leave her crate of wires and explore
The hard wood floors of the house again and again, 

Each cat encounter a brave adventure;
Each floor slide becomes an ode to balance. 
She flops asleep, exhausted and dreaming only to begin
Again. Puppies look forward to hills. So can we.

Hey, thanks for listening to Carrie Does Poems. These podcasts and more writing tips are at Carrie’s website, carriejonesbooks.blog. There’s also a donation button there. Even a dollar inspires a happy dance in Carrie, so thank you for your support.

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.

While Carrie only posts poems weekly here, she has them (in written form) almost every other weekday over on Medium. You should check it out!

https://freemusicarchive.org/music/eric-van-der-westen/the-crown-lobster-trilogy-selection

No One Wants to Admit

Dogs Are Smarter Than People: Writing Life, Marriage and Motivation
Dogs Are Smarter Than People: Writing Life, Marriage and Motivation
No One Wants to Admit
/

Hi! This year (2022), I’ve decided 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! 

No one wants to admit that the moment they are home alone,
They start singing show tunes or childhood hits,
Pretending the crowds are adoring as they slide in socks across a hard wood floor
That isn’t actually a stage and there is no TikTok video being made. 
Only we, random humans with our ridiculous bodies,
All gangling and bulbous, opposable thumbs a highlight
Want to be famous in secret—so many dreams sung off-key
Into the space of the kitchen, the only audience the dogs
Since the cats wisely look away.

Hey, thanks for listening to Carrie Does Poems. These podcasts and more writing tips are at Carrie’s website, carriejonesbooks.blog. There’s also a donation button there. Even a dollar inspires a happy dance in Carrie, so thank you for your support.

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.

While Carrie only posts poems weekly here, she has them (in written form) almost every other weekday over on Medium. You should check it out!

https://freemusicarchive.org/music/eric-van-der-westen/the-crown-lobster-trilogy-selection

The Retouch

Carrie Does Poems
Carrie Does Poems
The Retouch
/

Hi! This year (2022), I’ve decided 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! 

The Retouch

They take me 
And blot away all the flaws.
A sun spot becomes plain flesh.
A wrinkle vanishes. 
The eraser moves over my whole image.
Sometimes I wonder if there is any me left.

In college, a poetry teacher insisted
We could not write about baseball hats
Or dolphins and I still wonder if manatees
Are allowed, poems about commodity cheese,
Trailers, dog farts. Or is still only proper subjects? 

Why is it that we all try to erase
The deepest parts of our hidden centers, 
Hardnesses that refuse to be blurred out
In image or word.

Hey, thanks for listening to Carrie Does Poems. These podcasts and more writing tips are at Carrie’s website, carriejonesbooks.blog. There’s also a donation button there. Even a dollar inspires a happy dance in Carrie, so thank you for your support.

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.

While Carrie only posts poems weekly here, she has them (in written form) almost every other weekday over on Medium. You should check it out!

https://freemusicarchive.org/music/eric-van-der-westen/the-crown-lobster-trilogy-selection

Spring

Carrie Does Poems
Carrie Does Poems
Spring
/

Hi! This year (2022), I’ve decided 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!

This poem is (I think) part of me delving into a character of a young adult novel work in progress.

Spring

My nerves are jangled, frayed.

Panic touches the under layers

of all my skin, and I take off,

breezing past Jackie and Joe

in as fast a walk as I’m capable of

without actually running.

“I’m out of here.”

            I announce this

like I’m some kind of bad ass.

Spoiler: I am not a bad ass.

If I was a bad ass, I wouldn’t write poems under a pseudonym;

I’d be able to pass a damn driver’s test.

“How are you going to get home?” Jackie calls after me.

“I’ll walk.”

“It’s five miles,” she yells.

“Just go to work. I’m fine.”

And that’s it; that’s as much yelling back through the halls that I’m capable of. I’ve turned a corner and am pounding down the stairs, hanging onto the handrail as I go down, down, down even though the bannister is probably covered in germs from everyone else hanging onto it. I let go and unbalance hits me.

This world is pain.

This world is me

lacking balance.

This…

I am two seconds away from crying as I move past people and push through the doors. The outside air is a little cold. Spring has barely sprung. But it’s full of promise, normally, the smell of dirt losing its frozen solid nature, the buds on the trees popping through the tiniest twiggy limbs.

Branches.

They aren’t limbs.

They are branches.

“I don’t know how to exist,” I whisper as I start walking.

“I don’t know how to exist in all this life.”

There you go. That’s the thing.

            I don’t know how to exist in this life.

            I don’t know how to survive in this life.

            How do I spring?

Hey, thanks for listening to Carrie Does Poems. These podcasts and more writing tips are at Carrie’s website, carriejonesbooks.blog. There’s also a donation button there. Even a dollar inspires a happy dance in Carrie, so thank you for your support.

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.

While Carrie only posts poems weekly here, she has them (in written form) almost every other weekday over on Medium. You should check it out!

https://freemusicarchive.org/music/eric-van-der-westen/the-crown-lobster-trilogy-selection

When Your Father Isn’t Your Father

Carrie Does Poems
Carrie Does Poems
When Your Father Isn't Your Father
/

Hi! This year (2022), I’ve decided 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!

When Your Father Isn’t Your Father

This morning when I planted

An apple tree in the backyard again

Because the last had been crushed

By the weight of beaten maple branches, broken fence posts

That had separated our yard

From the neighbor’s barren grass,

Until a storm knocked everything over,

Breaking, breaking, breaking,

I thought of you planting spruces

Wherever you lived, whenever you lived.

Delighting in shaping them

Into proper silhouettes, you’d said,

“Even Santa would approve of these big boys.”

You and I are not blood it turns out because Mom

Got lonely, bored, needy, got something. You never knew.

Firefighter lungs took you away before I learned,

Particulates turning into cancer all around your thick, hobbit chest.

Invading. Invading. Invading. Taking away

What seemed so solid and true.

You told me trees talked to other trees,

Anchored each other into the ground,

Talked to humans, too. Their species

Classification didn’t matter, you said.

It didn’t matter if they weren’t alike.

Maple could love oak could love spruce could love apple

The same way I could love you even when our blood

Turned out not to be the same. We still grew together.

Hey, thanks for listening to Carrie Does Poems. These podcasts and more writing tips are at Carrie’s website, carriejonesbooks.blog. There’s also a donation button there. Even a dollar inspires a happy dance in Carrie, so thank you for your support.

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.

While Carrie only posts poems weekly here, she has them (in written form) almost every other weekday over on Medium. You should check it out!

https://freemusicarchive.org/music/eric-van-der-westen/the-crown-lobster-trilogy-selection

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