Intercity Bus

From Unpredictable Hue, 2019.

Intercity Bus

Oh my goodness look
long haul route double-decker bus
parked at curbside
luggage doors open
Load up those suitcases
we are going on a trip.

Look at that crowd
eddies of moving feet
of backpacks
of shorts and T-shirts and flipflops
in the summer morning heat.

Look at that blue-shirt driver
hurl those bags under the bus.

Look at those faces
the people already boarded
cheeks and noses
hard up against the windows
bored or tired or indifferent or
sharp and alive
to the scene they are about to leave.

Look at that city traffic
road and sidewalk
look at it squeeze by around this bus
with the everyday matter-of-fact
so what I still have to get to work
I’m not leaving town today

Watch that driver slam the bay doors shut
Watch that last old lady
that last young guy that lady and her baby
step up and
disappear into their journeys

Watch that driver squeeze the door together
start the engine that
vibrates up and down all the sidewalk

Watch that bus pull away from the curb
make its deliberate lumbering merge into
the everyday traffic
head for the highway and every inch
a loosening
a throwing off
the everyday.

Watch that bus leave.
I wish I were going too.

Large Artist Sketchbook 2018
image 27

11/8/18

This poem is from my Large Artist Sketchbook 2018. Similar to my previous Large Artist Sketchbook 2017 and Small Artist Sketchbook 2018, I created artwork in a book over a period of time, 2017-2018, and later wrote poems to go with each image. All poems were published in the collection Unpredictable Hue in early 2019 (without their illustrations).

In the sketch book, the poems are on the facing page for each picture – here I am only showing you the illustration. Each poem is numbered according to my master list and the date refers to when I wrote the poem, not when the illustration was done.

Read and enjoy, and thank you!

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Offering

From Enough for a Book, published in 2016.

Offering

A bouquet of yellow tulips
lay on the empty seat beside her
all the way down to the city
Two hours. She took them up
when we arrived
their stems wrapped in wet paper towels
and aluminum foil. Flowers from her yard,
then, not bought at the station.
Flowers from home.

6/21/16

Settlement

Here is another of those two-sentence stories with poetry added. I’m thinking of them as “Minuscule” and quick to read.

Read the first Minuscule, the explanation of why I wrote it and got started on this idea, and search under the category Minuscule for others in the series.

And now – all the Minuscule stories have been made into a print book – each story with a pen and ink illustration. Click to see Minuscule on Amazon.

Settlement

Belinda knew Rae Jean looked down on her, but Belinda was her next of kin, her only kin, so she was hoping that Rae would overlook the incident in the school cafeteria and the chair and the chocolate cake, because it happened a very long time ago, and they were just kids, and she had said over and over again how sorry she was, and she sent Rae holiday cards every year and sometimes even a box of fruit and then there were the gift cards on birthdays – anyway, she couldn’t help but hope Rae Jean had remembered her in her will, now that the very well-off lady had finally died, God rest her soul.

In time Belinda’s hopes were granted, and when the package promised by Rae’s lawyer arrived with the long-hoped for inheritance inside, Belinda barely took the time to slam the front door shut before she tore at the box, ripping away bubble wrap and scattering packing peanuts all over the front hall in her haste to arrive at her reward – a slice of chocolate cake, smashed flat.

Old grudges
such pleasurable
luxuries
with price points
to fit any budget. And
they never wear out.

(Shadorma 103)
7/10/18

Shadorma 76, 81

Eating out. Not always such a great experience.

76.
Wore a hat.
Scowled. Diner dinner.
Burned coffee
the bleach smell
I don’t know maybe they had
upset his stomach.
8/23/18

81.
Burned coffee
reheated pastries
people stand
in line and
eagerly pay for breakfast
they’d throw out at home.
9/6/18

(Published in Unpredictable Hue, 2019)

 

 

 

Convey

From Enough for a Book, published in 2016.

Convey

Nomadic
car keys go everywhere in this house
stay nowhere
for very long. Land on dresser tops.
Fall under the sofa. Hide in the bottom
of a purse
searched three times. Occasionally
they can even be found
in the
car.

6/23/16

Three Painters

From Unpredictable Hue, 2019.

Three Painters

i.
Art exhibit
and I wonder why I look at these pictures
painted by some person or other
and why the painter went to all the trouble
tp paint the pictures in the first place
and I wonder whether I’d want to
do something of the sort myself

ii.
Art exhibit
the pictures painted by me
I wonder why I’d taken the trouble
to put my pictures into paint
and would I ever want to do it again
or why

iii.
Art exhibit
I pass it by
My thoughts are my own
They are just for me.

Large Artist Sketchbook 2018
image 26

11/8/18

This poem is from my Large Artist Sketchbook 2018. Similar to my previous Large Artist Sketchbook 2017 and Small Artist Sketchbook 2018, I created artwork in a book over a period of time, 2017-2018, and later wrote poems to go with each image. All poems were published in the collection Unpredictable Hue in early 2019 (without their illustrations).

In the sketch book, the poems are on the facing page for each picture – here I am only showing you the illustration. Each poem is numbered according to my master list and the date refers to when I wrote the poem, not when the illustration was done.

Read and enjoy, and thank you!

Compressed Deliberation and Decisions Made

From Enough for a Book, published in 2016.

Compressed Deliberation and Decisions Made

Strides up
puts the brakes on
Full stop
a wave of
floral body wash arriving seconds later
Not unpleasant but
intrusive. Whispers to herself
running her finger over the shelf.
Impatient. Not finding.
Strikes off to the right
tacking around the table. Out of sight.
The books she has rejected
silent
and would not have suited her
anyway.

6/23/16