careful this time, about word count...
The star shone upon the recently born tree, as it was presented to a loving fruitcake.
Or
The birth of a star coincides with the flowering of the magestic fruitcake, tree, and the traditional giving of presents.
Or
When you wish upon a star, fruitcake fruitcake, where's birth, tree tree tree, a birthday present shines for you...
Or
Birth of fruitcake heralds the dawn of age of tree gifting as presents.
Or
Presents of ostantatious nature, such as fruitcakes and trees are given richly , to celebrate the birth of Donald Trump.
Or,
'..Or is it a birth canal?' She asked , knowing i am a fruitcake , and consequently cant tell the difference between a tapering cervix and a pine tree, wrapped up in pink paper, the kind used for presents.
Wild Strawberries
The first clue the strawberries were ripe was usually the scent of crushed berries.
When you spent as much time as we did camping and hiking in the Rocky Mountains west of Calgary, strawberry season was one of the things we always looked forward to.
Anticipation always lasted for a couple of weekends, sometimes three before the tiny red morsels of sweetness were ready to pick.
The distinctive leaves were the first sign the plants were coming back from a winter buried under snowdrifts. Usually we found the first ones in open meadows in the middle of a Douglas Fir forest in Kootenay National Park. We had a favorite campsite there, and a hike to a beaver pond usually gave us the first sightings of tiny green leaves working their way up between fresh green grass sprouts.
The next weekend, we would find the ones clustered around the bottom of massive rough barked firs in the humus of dead needles shed from drooping branches. Mom would always tell us to be careful where we put our feet. Not one of us wanted to crush one of the berries when it was such a treat to pluck them from between the tiny white flowers blooming all around. Each flower promising another delicate treat for us to pick.
Inevitably one of us would step on a plant the the tangy scent would give away the location of the first ripe red fruit. Dropping into a crouch, the hunt was on and on the first weekend, not one went into an improvised basket to take back to camp. Our hats stayed on our heads, and the berries popped into our mouths, straight from the ground hugging plants without the benefit of cleaning them like you do fruit from the store. Nothing compares to fresh from the plant wild strawberries, unless it's the raspberries you find in late August hoping a bear hasn't beat you to them first.
White Christmas
you can't force a white Christmas
in the same way I can't seem
to produce serotonin
snow that won't come
snowflakes stuck somewhere
up in the sky where my head is
writing poems on wrapping paper
when I didn't get what I wanted
I'm all out of creative juices
where's Santa Claus when
you need him
61°
Tomorrow is Thanksgiving. It is 61° outside where I am now.
As a kid, the best part of Thanksgiving was dad taking me and my brother sledding on the big hill to get out of mom's hair while she was making our holiday meal.
Weather, it turns out, is arbitrary.
61°, while there should be some science on how it should make humans feel, turns out to be experienced completely different based on age, place and attitude.
I have a husband who is always telling me how great we have it having moved to Florida where it is always warm and, most of all, there is no snow for him to shovel.
He tells me about the fine weather a lot as if to convince me that residing in 61° at Thanksgiving is a compelling reason to be happy.
"You should be happy", he says
I smile to please him but my mind is wrapped up in the smells and comfort of being swaddled in two layers of clothes under my coat snow kicking up on my bright red cheeks zipping down a hill head first thinking I really could sense the fragrance of mom's turkey somewhere in the distance.
I Am/Am I?
I am a writer.
Am I a writer?
When do I go from a writer
Who waits
To a waiter
Who writes as a hobby?
I'm not a waiter.
Why'd I say waiter?
What metaphor am I trying to achieve?
That's it --trying
Always reaching
Never grasping
Always just shy
Or this close.
No awards, no accolades
No recognition
No published work
And I'm thirty.
Not an ingenue
Not a new voice
Not a brilliant prodigy.
Thirty
And my book is still half written
And my poems are still trite
And naive
And irrelevant
Ever increasingly irrelevant
Because as I grow older
I fall ever away
From the people, to which
I long to relate
I am a writer.
Am I a writer?
Sometimes I wonder
Because I feel like a writer
When one line of brilliance
Hits my insomniac mind
And I cannot sleep
Until it's written
On any scrap of paper
To be found
But I wake up in the morning
And that sentence, so profound
Is gibberish, it makes no sense
Am I a writer?
I write a new word
But I hate it
The old word was better
But no longer fits
I feel like that word
Never right, never fitting
Always searching
I think I lost my generation
Or maybe it doesn't exist
Because we're all consumed
With chasing fleeting
Fragments of the past
That we hold nothing
That's just ours
I am no voice
To that generation
Because that generation
Is voiceless by choice
Everyone has their own drum
And they beat to their content
They don't need a guide
So why do I still
Feel this need to fill some void
That if I write for long enough
Or say enough
Perhaps I'll find some meaning
They'll find some meaning.
I hold that flickering hope
A candle flame
I make believe it's a torch.
And then I'll swear that I'm done
I'll blow out the flame.
I'll give up forever.
And then I'll wake
And I'll pick up a pen.
Disappointed
Did you see his hand on my thigh? Did your headphones mask the words he whispered in my ear? I was eleven, walking home from school. How could he mistake me for eighteen? Did you? I look just like your mother, is that why you looked away? Were you ashamed? Aroused? Curious? Annoyed? Laughing? Did I deserve it? So disappointed. In you, for looking away. And in me, for knowing I'd have done the same. Lest it happened to me.
The Night Cafe
there's a painting
by Vincent van Gogh
of a bar all in reds and yellows
a master work
before 90's hip hop could be blasted
into the eardrums of clientele
they say he painted his best work
in a psychiatric hospital
in two years
where he was self-admitted
just like in a dive bar
it's important to know
when you've had enough
and you need to decompress
inside what will be
infamous