A Lunch Alone

This one just sort of came to me what I was trying to write something else.

A Lunch Alone

I sit at the Formica counter
Battered, and somewhat worse for wear
The sticky menu
Holds evidence of meals past,
Grease from the #3 special
(3 eggs, 3 sausages, and hash browns)
And syrup from a short stack

What do I want?
I stare into my cup of coffee
Old and bitter,
Its surface sheen glistening
Like an oil slick
Under the fluorescent lights
I lean my elbows on the counter
Waiting
For someone to take my order

The voices all around me
Cannot pierce
The invisible barrier
I have erected around myself
To keep out the messy world
Of human interactions
So I am able to sit
Amongst all the people
In this crowded diner
And have
A lunch
Alone

Sunday Scribbling: Harvest

This week the writing prompt is 'harvest.' I could talk about pumpkins and corn and wheat, but why do that when I can wax morose?

In the autumn
I gather my sorrows
Until the field is empty
Exhausted
I wipe my forehead
With the back of my hand
And look at the stubble
All around me
I smell dirt and
Barrenness

My shoulders stoop
Under the weight
Of my bitter harvest.
Downcast,
I draw no comfort
From the thought that
Come spring
I will once again
Sew my field
With regret

Back Again/ Bach Again

Well, here we are again (that's me speaking to my tape worm). I have given myself 40 lashes with the proverbial wet noodle, and am back for another go.
It's August...the second half of August...speeding toward September! Yikes! It's funny how time works. It's tricky. Stretching out when you have nothing to do, and then suddenly racing by when you're busy and not looking. I came across a funny quote, "I try to take one day at a time, but occasionally several days gang up and attack me at once." -Jennifer Unlimited.

So, here is a poem that has nothing to do with time, but with the feelings of isolation or connectedness. Go figure...

Connect

Morning light angles across the room
Bright and harsh
Showing every fingerprint and dust mote,
Intensifying the blue of the bowl
And the yellow of the buttercups,
Warming the back of my hand,
As it moves across the page,
Filling up the blank space.

Birdsong comes in the window;
Sound does not travel through a vacuum,
And we are not separate, discrete, alone
Like stepping stones in a pond.
Look below the water,
Beneath the surface,
The stones may turn out to be
Ridges of one big rock formation,
High points.

And so today,
I have this sunshine
And a very old block of crumbly cheddar
And the small, smooth stone
Surrounded by water
But underneath, a part of something larger
As I fill the blank page

November poems in May O.o

Well, it's a beautiful May day; warm, sunny. Things are starting to bloom. I have been digging in the garden, planting flowers. I used sun glasses and sunscreen. So, what am I inspired to write about?
This:

November Inside and Out

Because the skies are steely-cold and bare
I hunch my shoulders, hug myself, and sigh.
November's underside can bring despair
When muted greys form land and lake and sky.
The geese forsake this damp and dreary place
They're harbingers of darker times ahead.
In honking tatters, flapping out through space
As wistfully, I watch and lose my thread
Of thought. I drag my eyes back to the page
Where half-formed words and longings hide from me,
Not yet mature, but in a dormant stage
My mind, my words reflecting all I see.
This is the season to prepare the ground
So later buried treasures may be found

(Now with this one, I'm not quite happy with the phrase 'not yet mature' because if I am comparing my thoughts to things in November that doesn't fit. In November the natural world is decaying and dying, coming to the end of it's cycle rather than immature. So...that's something to think about. I'm pretty happy with the rest of it though, I even have a line break in the middle of the part about losing the thread of my thought.)

And here's another:

Untitled

Observe-
How lovely the leaves
As they die
Brilliant reds and yellows
Nature takes a lavish curtain call
But lest we forget,
The show is not for us,
Though by grace
We are allowed to watch
Anyway

Yup, that's a pretty good example of my logical thought process
(or lack thereof).

BP Traveling Show

So, it’s been so long since I wrote anything here that I forgot my password. As I jumped through the hoops to enable a new password (I have obviously done something wrong, as it has taken 47 minutes at this point) I have gone from impatience to anger to frustration to irony. Oh well.
Now, I don’t generally do political/current event commentary poems, but with the recent British Petroleum oil spill I make an exception. I have been through a string of emotions from surprise to impatience to anger to disbelief to anger to more disbelief. But I’ll spare you the ranting, and leave this little comparison that recently popped to mind.

BP Traveling Show

Do a little dance
Some fancy foot work
Tip your hat
Twirl around
Watch closely everyone…
Nothing up my sleeve –
Now you see it,
Now you don’t
And now for the old soft shoe,
As the band plays on…
Exit, stage right.