Best Housekeeper Poems
By day she goes about
the weary business of her dreary life:
a housekeeper, bookkeeper, shopper, chef,
chauffer for two active teens, and
hostess of her husband’s dinner parties
is she.
In the middle of her day
she naps,
for in the night. . .
when her work-obsessed spouse
soundly slumbers
and the kids at last are fast asleep,
she goes into the darkness
of the woods
behind her house.
The mask of this woman
falls without a sound
to the leaf strewn ground.
She raises her face to the moon.
In its light, the stripes
of a tigress are revealed!
Her legs feel strong and limber.
That ferocious appetite
for something that she stifles
flees away
as
she
runs.
Among the pines and midst the sounds
of the woodland’s crepuscular creatures
she runs and runs and runs.
She is running after something
she cannot put a name to.
She’s a good woman.
She would never use a bar or night club
as her jungle.
Now - with her tigress face -
swift, stealthy, and strong -
but above all,
not beholden to any body
she is simply free to be.
After an hour of running,
the mask of the housewife
is restored.
Then she collapses, exhausted on her bed,
where she dreams refreshing dreams -
which are necessary -
for tomorrow
she begins again
the weary business
of her dreary life.
10/26/2014; Now used for Skat's A poem you are proud of #3 Poetry Contest
I promise to love you
Two-four-seven
Because you are so precious
I will always slap
Your cheek with a kiss
And collide with you
In ethereal embrace
I promise you a basket
Of smiles
Every time I come home
I`ll save a smile for you
And carefully place it above
Everyday stress of work
I promise to feed your skin
With sweet caress
As much as much as you know
That I`ll never stop
Feeding you with too many
Accolades and romantic expressions
Like I always do
I promise to give you myself
You can have all of me
From my hair to my feet
But please don`t treat me
Like your housekeeper
Or kick me off
Like your old pair of sandals
Nor put me inside your handbag
I promise you all the good
A husband can do to his wife
The A to Z of marital bliss
And I hope that you
Would always keep me
Close to your heart
Not where you will keep
This poem.
Dad's bark is worse than his verse.
When he hits it doesn't really hurt.
The dirt outside the house is soil.
The mouse inside the house is life.
Can't escape the printer or the car, IV
bag, heart monitor, a billion trillion stars.
Snow descends, each flake unique.
My sons' friends, each infinitely
a Greek or Trojan hero. Our morals:
hit not the girls, nor rape. Love more
than you are loved, by a little. Give
but stop before it hurts. Stand together
or fall apart. Which candidate you vote
for less important than to vote. Don't
depend or dote on leaders, housekeeper
and president are gods equally
remote. The human body is a thing of
bone, a strange upright animal, and the
telephone a mystery to other animals.
Everyone and everything is spinning
electrons and the space between.
A great crunch, inverse of big bang,
yr big sister told.
I began to preach at ten
but had no idea why so late,
soon it would be dark, I thought,
and wondered why
it was not so already.
Several apathies passed unnoticed.
I gave them no mind.
And, finally, an opportunity
in a lavish, bizarre old living room.
But the matriarch was having none of it,
she was withered and severe,
she heatedly ordered me on my way
and saw to it that I did not mind.
The tongue-lashing didn't bother me much,
I was amused, come to think of it.
Leaving, I passed the housekeeper,
buxom and charming,
a smiling auburn gem
I should have met somewhere else.
And it was twelve.
The day was still bright
and the thinning traffic was still traffic.
I melted into the radiance of midnight.
23rd July 1997
It’s better to know who your enemies are,
Better to know who your friends are,
The poet who praises our evil books,
The little girl who smiles at Red Santa,
The elephant that shakes the furious baobab,
Better to know who your friends are,
It’s better to know who your enemies are,
The pharmacist who never believes anyone,
The cinema that sells sweets to grand ma,
The supermarket that lacks politeness on Monday,
It’s better to know who your enemies are,
Better to know who your friends are,
The journalist or the housekeeper,
The curious baker or the nice hairdresser,
The monkey in his cage or the Albanian doctor,
One must often smile at one’s enemies,
You often have to lie to your old friends,
To the footballer, to the snake charmer,
To Queen Claude, the insolent young factor,
The muse who loves you, asks you everything.
In a lovely place paradisiacal,
where the softest showers bring
blooms that open up their petals
and then begin to sing
and shimmer in synchronization,
with undulating hues,
vocalizing for their Maker their
sweet melodious tunes. . . .
is where I saw you first,
fair flower- among that radiant cluster,
echoing your praise
with all the fervor you could muster.
You resided in a spot,
slightly shaded. .. .on the border,
where ornamental shrubbery
lent an immaculate order.
Not amidst the pansies
or the other annual flowers
that glimmer for their time
but need rest at pre-set hours.. .
but there with the stalwart bushes,
unobtrusive in your pose -
A simple classic beauty;
for my guide, I picked a rose.
(For my mother, who is a very spiritual, faithful and modest
woman and a very immaculate housekeeper as well! This poem imagines
that we might select our parents before we are born! by the way, my mom turned 90 this past March 23rd!)
For A Mother's Love, Tributes Of Love For Mother's Day Poetry Contest
Sponsor: BJ Legros Kelley
I am told; one day I will become a woman
I need to prepare for when that day will come
When someone will take my hand and care for me
Having a family of my own, in charge of running a home
I have other views of the woman I want to be
My preparations for my future I will take on my own
Women are not allowed to take the man’s role
But I will challenge the role of a man and will take no crumbs
I refuse to be the symbolic weak woman
Expected to fulfill three roles:
“Mother, housekeeper, and worker”
With few choices, no rights, and controlled by a man
Goals I will break with an education and a respected job
Remaining a single woman!
I will challenge anyone in the community
Who come to ridiculed, shun, and pitied me
The pen is mightier than the sword
And therefore I will gain freedom
With an education and a respected job
My preparations for my future, I will take on my own
1/8/2016
Her I am
sitting writing a
poem
While my housekeeper
is bury cleaning
my apartment
I feel a little guilty
She is working hard
while I am just
moving a pen
along a piece of
paper
Still poetry
is listed as an
occupation in the Occupational Outlook Handbook
So I guess I am working, too
In September I return to work as a
college assistant
Devoting the rest of my time to
the New York Giants, poetry and looking for love
(my acknowledgement
to the loose canon of Robert Frost)
An above average snowfall
heavily swathed sage heather
followed by substantial unusual rainfall
punctuated months before, during and
after the growing season
delivered one of the
most hearty crop yields
in living memory
within the generations of men
of this (or any neighboring)
Norwegian bachelor farmer
long time residents
feeling like the sole housekeeper
of Lake Woebegone,
who can remember
the Edenic pasture with reluctance
raw bits and pieces mending wall
experiencing crushing childhood's end
weathered by their parents,
who as kids themselves
(during the worst
fear full Depression
in thee United States of America)
when countless farmers forced
by circumstance declared bankruptcy
locked out of hearth and home
no recourse 'cept to sell rural legacy...
family property deeds
(traced back to original settlers)
contrasts sharply with
plentiful, crucial, and
over abundant annual
precipitation, whereby these vestiges
of rural quaint lifestyle
awash with expansive lush cornfields,
whose silk like tassels
synchronously undulate
(sparsely dotting pastoral landscape),
blistered, calloused, and damned,
whether weathered by blizzards,
or pounded with powerful (one...two)
top notch pugilistic punch
topographical scars permanently earmark,
where Ole man winter relentlessly socked
or Mother Nature slammed a wall of water
saturating freshly mown hay,
which pungent odor
belied teeming flora and fauna
(albeit many organisms nearly invisible)
yet keenly observable to hawk eye,
also tempting black crows
to carrion camping
while a flock of seagulls
swoop down upon unsuspecting
school of fish,
and/or scurrying varmints.
Help wanted. See the details below.
I’m lookin’ for a part-time assistant, and a life skills mentor,
A Quick Books accountant, and an exercise partner,
And a neat housekeeper that can do windows.
It helps if you’re a sink un-plugger, and a flower arranger,
And a calendar planner, and a good back scratcher,
And an organic gardener that can make things grow.
Later I might need a daycare provider, and a taxi driver,
And a paramedic, and a pre-school teacher.
You’ll be the go-to person that everyone knows.
It helps if you’re a gourmet cook, and a chic hair stylist,
And a party hostess, and a homework tutor.
Your duties will expand as the company grows.
There’s a retirement package no one else can match.
But I gotta warn you that there’s just one catch.
So if you think you could handle all of the above,
This is a twenty-year contract for a full-time love.
So if you want the position, click the link above!
Might be a thirty-year contract for a full-time love.
Maybe a forty-year contract for a full-time love.
I really need a secretary, and a home decorator,
A shiatsu masseuse, and a fashion coordinator.
There are no limits to how much you can grow.
I can offer you some health insurance, maybe college tuition,
Free company housing, and used transportation.
So what do you say, why don't we make a go?
Help wanted. Click the link above. Help wanted. Find somebody to love.
I took a leap of faith, into the unknown.
To stay would have been my undoing.
Not another moment could I endure,
of my life with you...treated like a whore,
a housekeeper, a slave, to your whims and moods.
All unpaid.
My mother's blessing came that very day,
when she said we should split, go our separate ways.
I had confessed how you had mistreated me,
all down the years. She stood by me,
emboldened me, to face down my fears.
Off you go! Good riddance too!
I'm trying not to hate you.
Twenty three years of disrespect.
Enough was enough, you were so inept
at being a husband, or even a man.
When I think of you now,
I just say, "God damn!!"
Tribute to stay at home moms
( from a writing by melvina germain) 10/28/11
To the stay at home moms (sahm) I must say
I honor you in every way.
I made my wife stop working when she got pregnant
Forty six years ago, and real love is what my daughter got to know.
She is there every step of the way and
my heart thanks her every day.
up in the morning at the crack of dawn
To change diapers , bathe the baby, change the clothes
And with the baby is where she belongs.
She is a woman with many hats, and for her
There is no turning back.
A mother, housekeeper , cook, and wife
Accepting all these struggles and strife.
You may not hear her complain
But when things go wrong, she is the first to blame.
We all may have a lot of food on our plates
And forget what they are going thru , but
Do you honestly think you could do her job too?
we may be the bread winners and struggle at work
But we did not have to go through the pains of giving birth.
Do any of you men think that you could hold
A child in your stomach for nine months
Of morning sickness, weird cravings, sleepless nights
And with your partner you would fight.
They could only sleep on their backs or on their sides
Would you like to give that a try?
They look at you in your sleep and thank GOD
For all that you do, but they need compensation too.
There is another hat that they may wear, when
They have to become the C.P.A. and balance
The check book so you don’t overdraft
And turn around and get on her ass.
So many hats and so little time, and when you ask
Them they say they are doing fine.
So to all the (sahm’s) out there with you this poem I share
You deserve not just a flower, a outside dinner
Or a movie, but the biggest THANK YOU
From our hearts, because in our lives
You are the greatest part.
Oh God, expand my narrow, cluttered, room!
And clear the clutter out, so I may see!
And still my Seas, as You did, Galilee!
Life threatens to collapse in, with a Boom!
Like Aspen, that arise after a fire,
Or ground-cover that sprouts from ash and dust
Or sweet alyssum permeates the must
About the room, through window of desire,
So, pray I, browse the pages of my mind,
And grope for answers to luck, fate and hope
And grub for words, and wish I were A. Pope...
There is a solace, that I sometimes find
That tells me, Love is easier than this
O! HOW can Love be EASY, when it spurs?
O! How an outside dog be free from burrs?
And yet, I know it's true! How soft the kiss
My Love gave me, that made me blow the motes
Away, swing wide the sash, let in the day...
Away! With all the piles that naysay!
And sheaves of papers bearing scribbled notes!
...Some say Tolkien, himself, could not sort well,
He lost some of the Ring in managing...
He buried his notes, his housekeeper did fling
Some part of Frodo's past? (I'll never tell!)
________
UPDATED/FIXED/REWRITTEN IN A FIT OF DESPERATION 2/22/2019
Submitted for: Enclosed Rhyme Poetry Contest
Sponsored by: Emile Pinet
Remembering when I was a young lady a few years ago
As gazing through my best friends guest rooms window
Spellbound her twin sister fondling herself passionately
Watching two beautiful women making love, on a video
Then suddenly my girlfriends housekeeper entered and
She was the most gorgeous creation; Angelica in white..
I had long adored her British accent, as her warm heart
Seeming surprised a bit shy until; amid beauty's desires.
I am told; one day I will become a woman
I need to prepare for when that day will come
When someone will take my hand and care for me
Having a family of my own, in charge of running a home
I have other views of the woman I want to be
My preparations for my future I will take on my own
Women are not allowed to take the man’s role
But I will challenge the role of a man and will take no crumbs
I refuse to be the symbolic weak woman
Expected to fulfill three roles:
“Mother, housekeeper, and worker”
With few choices, no rights, and controlled by a man
Goals I will break with an education and a respected job
Remaining a single woman!
I will challenge anyone in the community
Who come to ridiculed, shun, and pitied me
The pen is mightier than the sword
And therefore I will gain freedom
With an education and a respected job
My preparations for my future, I will take on my own
1/8/2016