Best Roommates Poems
Not a mythical creature,
or the patriarch of a lewd, cartoon family,
you are my roommate.
Well, one of them,
and you have been for two years now.
Superhero posters make your room your own.
Perhaps you’re concealing a secret identity
when you refuse to hang out with us;
on late night drives,
lunch or dinner,
all we do is make awkward small talk.
And you’re the only one
to keep his door locked.
Your girlfriend never comes around anymore,
you’re always at her place,
though, we don’t mind.
Sometimes it’s hard to tell where you are.
Perhaps you’re a murderer,
waiting for us to leave
so you can indulge in violent ceremony.
Whatever you’re into.
In the words of Jerry Garcia,
I implore you,
“Please don’t murder me.”
“We’re cleared for takeoff,” the pilot announced, “settle in, our flight time to Atlanta will be 9 hours.”
The Gulfstream roared down the runway and in a moment the tops of trees flashed by. We climbed quickly, and banked. Paris dwindled, the Seine became a string of blue, the world a patchwork of colors before we punched through a layer of hair-like cirrus clouds.
My roommates and friends were all a-chatter as we lined up on the runway but as we ascended, they grew quiet.
Thoughts of Peter ran through me and gripped me like a serpent. The last time I saw him he was dressed in a summer outfit I bought him - a short-sleeve, pale-pastel-plaid, seersucker shirt, kentucky-derby breaker shorts, pop color flip flops and a straw fedora. His sweet-face was all grin, he looked like a deck gillespie. Meow.
When I think about Peter, my skin tickles, my pulse accelerates, I’m confuddled. I think about the disturbance that moved through the air between us when we met. We were strangers, but a magnetic flux seemed to roll off him and break against me.
I didn’t let it show. I drew in, looked away and became quiet. What else could I do? Later, when I described it to Sunny, our meeting seemed like nothing. When I described it to Lisa, it sounded like too much.
Of course, my choices must be consistent with my ambitions, but I want Peter to come to Athens, so badly. He was a human placebo, for me, in otherwise stressful times. Now I want to be with him without school pressures - to see what that’s like - and get closer, a lot closer.
I don’t want commitment, but I’m saturated with desire. All I want is a fun July or August - with him. I seldom reveal the businesslike hardness I have buried inside. I want this and I’m ready for derp.
Peter worries - about money, about gender roles, social positions and what’s apposite. I don’t care about any of that. I want to give him a free month, like an amazing gift. He’s so male, so deceptively complicated, fragile and intoxicating.
I really need to think about this, and work it out - HA! - like I can think of anything else.
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Slang
deck = cool
gillespie = hipster
meow = I want
confuddled = confused and befuddled
derp = anything and everything
There’s a farmers market near campus.
A young couple has a pizza oven on a trailer.
They make a breakfast pizza - bacon, mozzarella
some egg and green peppers. It’s SO crispy and delicious.
ALL I had to do this morning was say “breakfast pizza!”
and six of us were ready to head out fifteen minutes later.
Let’s wax poetic, shall we?
There are some young ladies who live in a dorm
sometimes it seems like they only have studies
but once and a while on a Saturday or Sunday
if we have our druthers, we get out, in swarm
and find ourselves some pizza-like brekkie.
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Songs for this:
PIZZA by Oohyo
Le Breakfast Club de Paris by Gabrielle Chiararo
There’s a lot of heat when all eight
of us suitemates are together.
I might have mentioned it somewhere.
We’re like surround sound,
or eight car alarms going off together,
it’s jabberwocky by an established team.
It can get frantic and frightening
for the uninitiated or inhibited.
Some of us are pretty boy-crazy
and there’s a mix-in of twinkling girl-crazy too.
We’re basey, bugzee, spaceheads and freaks,
yeah, we're the whole emotional spice rack.
“She’s a good person to kill time with,”
is pretty high praise around here
because we have so little free time.
But these are good people to kill time with.
And they’re portable, we travel, we invade,
we’re crazy young women who’ve got it made.
So if you’re coming at us, trying to enter our enclave,
you better be brave or a situational upgrade.
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Songs for this:
No New Friends (feat. Sia, Diplo & Labrinth) by LSD
Lysergic Bliss by of Montreal
Freedom Is Free by Chicano Batman
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slang…
basey = a cool loser, nice but a bit odd, a weirdo with style
bugzee = slightly crazy
spaceheads = people who talk about weird things
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Webster: Jabberwocky = meaningless speech or communication.
The night was rainy, hot and humid. It was the kind of night that populates steamy, black and white, noir movies where someone is murdered. The stars seemed reduced to sloshing behind moldy gray clouds, as damp and listless as seaweed in the surf.
“Let’s go see a movie,” Sophy suggested, as she brought up the Fandango website on the 70” smart TV. This quickly drew a brouhaha of excited interest.
“Ooo!, Bullet Train,” Anna said. “Elvis!” Lisa gushed.
“Where the Crawdads sing!” Sunny gasped.
“Super pets!” Leong declared, pointing - producing groans all around - THAT was a no-go.
“Maverick!” I said. “I could do that,” Sunny agreed, “he’s crazy, but I’m a Cruise fan.” she added.
In the end we decided to do a movie marathon with “Maverick” that night and “Elvis”, “Bullet Train” and “Where the Crawdads sing,” on Sunday.
As we ordered our treats at the theater concession stand, a tall, skinny, spotted, teenage boy attempted to flirt with Lisa. He smiled at her as confidently as a lizard, but sagged, like a shirt whose coat hanger was removed, when she pointedly ignored him.
Darkness has pressed up against our lattice windows. Classes start again in the morning. I’m being reabsorbed by college life. I’m a planner. I’ve been going over my syllabuses, repacking my bookbag, charging my power banks, checking and rechecking the assignments due tomorrow. After watching me prep for hours, Peter said, “You’re not going to the MOON.”
Peter asked me last Friday, “Are you excited for Monday? (I’ll find out if I get my fellowship.)
“I’m more excited about tonight,” I said, “I like going out on the town.”
“Wow,” he said, “you’re so different - not like the other girls at all.”
“No!” I said, laughing, “We’re stuck in a rut, we only go to one or two places, ever - if we go out at all. When people come to New Haven, I need places to take them - places besides pizza. At home, in Athens, I know twenty places - this is RESEARCH.” I assured him.
Peter settled back into his doctorate-fraternity-house yesterday. Tonight (Sunday), there’s music in the suite, the crazy noises of people and the comfort of returned friends. All the roommates are back, greeted with hugs and kisses, as they dragged in their luggage.
Lisa arrived with dinner, for 10, from Dominick's, in Manhattan. Spaghetti, salads, rolls, extra sauce - in six, small, suitcase-sized insulated bags. It was a logistical marvel. It’s only 90 minutes from Manhattan to the residence - we didn’t need to rewarm anything. “I KNOW we could have just eaten in the dining hall,” she said, shrugging, “call it zany - one last hurrah.”
Everyone seemed happy to be back. There were travel stories, questions, and laughter. Oh, and Zeppole, little powdered sugar custard desserts that seemed the worst for travel. Everyone seemed to have an eye on the clock though. By 11pm the suite was quiet. Très unusual.
* A song for this piece would be “Kennedy” by feeble little horse
Lisa and I wrap and rap for Christmas.
Can you imagine the two of us doing that?
We’ve got Christmas playlists going
Christmas scented candles glowing,
and milky hot-chocolate flowing.
“Stir the marshmallows with the candy canes,”
Lisa says, like that’s something she has to explain.
We’re humming, singing and laughing,
and dancing because we’re happy.
We’re dashing to finish our wrapping,
we can’t have our suitemates catching
us executing the plans we’re hatching
to surprise them with gifts, enchanting.
The paper’s exotic, delicate and glittery
bought at Boyars Gifts, in New York City.
Why do the scissors keep getting lost?
Getting low on scotch-tape - we’ve used a lot.
We’ll be putting them, sneakily, under the tree
where they’ll add glamor and tease to our festivities.
I love the lights of the season - I love giving gifts.
For me, playing Santa is as good as it gets.
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We’re in the common room, Lisa and I. It’s Friday afternoon, about 2 - It’s partly-sunny and 45°f. outside. We’ve claimed the two squares of temporary rectangular sunlight like the Spanish conquistadors of old once claimed everything.
I’m just drowsing, I had a test this morning, I got up at 3:30am to study for it and although I’m confident I did ok, I find myself rehashing it when I close my eyes. So I’m determinedly not closing my eyes - much. Lisa has a book open and she’s working on a chemistry problem set (called a pset) assigned as homework.
Looking out and up, there’s only one, lonely, cumulonimbus cloud in the sky. It's there, as if placed - a piece of art - the rest of the sky remaining defiantly blank. At first glance, it resembled a man, hanging by his neck, blowing in the wind under a giant mushroom gallows - but he soon detached and floated away like a tattered kite.
Lisa starts asking a question, without looking up from her book. “Ok, so when hydrogen acts as a metal instead of a nonmetal..”
“Please don’t make me think,” I whisper in a tired monotone, “I’m unprepared.”
“Ugh.” Lisa, grunted. She absorbed her disappointment quietly, without taking offense.
We’re like two disparate species coexisting in the same landscape: the chemistry-tested and the soon-to-be-tested - neither diminished the other but we’re separate.
Leong and Anna come in together, breaking off to their rooms to shed bookbags and coats but soon they’re filling the room with restless energy. “Has anyone heard from Sophy?” Leong asks. Sophy failed a rapid test yesterday morning and was hewn from the population like a cancer on the student body - and swooped off to isolation housing. “Yeah, I took her some stuff this morning,” I report, “She seems ok.”
People are dropping to covid like flies. None of us are invincible, we roommates watch each other - as if any one of us could go full-on-zombie at any moment - not unlike I imagine dinner at the Trumps these days - everyone looking around, nonchalantly, wondering who’ll flip first - but here, if you cough, you’ll start a panic.
We sat beneath a night sky of graduated charcoals, blacks and interstellar blues. Fall’s begun its indispensable work, banishing the harsh sun, the creepy lanternflies and hot summer nights.
The stars seemed hesitant tonight, like they feared the sun might change its mind, reverse its course and run them back off - except one, which Peter says is Jupiter (and therefore not a star at all).
We were (Peter, Sunny, Anna and I), studying, in our fold-up lounge chairs and reading by little kindle lights clipped on our books. Leong’s there too - supposedly studying - but in reality, she was waiting for her date.
Leong and Sile have been flirting since last year and tonight’s their first, official date. Leong’s never been on a western date before or ever been alone with a boy in a car. She’s only seen romance in movies or from afar, like an astronomer viewing a distant moon through a telescope.
Her outfit, though casual, was coalesced from six wardrobes and no king or questing knight has ever been dressed more carefully or with greater ceremony. She even positioned her chair at a carefully chosen angle, to show her, initially, in her best light - “Zhù ni hao yùn!” She insisted (It’s good luck).
She’s a gorgeous, brilliant, amazing woman with a razor-thin veneer of amorous confidence. I know my nerves playup when I’m uncertain about things, but Leong’s playing it off, acting casual.. ish.
Finally, with an almost physical jolt, she saw him enter the quad. As he approached, his every aspect was scrutinized by vigilant, overprotective roommates. The air was filled with the whispered buzz of shared analysis.
Soon they were walking off together and chuckling at something we couldn’t hear. It’s funny, I’ve never felt so much like a parent.
Hurry up! Barry the boorish bulldog urged Priss the poodle.
There are others here who want to unwind their noodle.
Is that surly curly still in the bath? Is she getting her legs waxed?
German shepherd’s temper was being severely taxed.
Move over a bit so I can reach the sink!
Said a beagle who was trying to get a drink.
The bathroom was filled up with dogs of variety of pedigrees.
They were hopping around on fat legs that had chased a good breeze.
How many more roommates are we going to get?
Yelped a blue heeler with sass who was throwing a fit.
The puppies barked, and the old dogs passed big gas.
All of them ready to leap around on some grass.
I latest piece is too long the poem section - so it's in "Short Stories."
It's called "rose, bud and thorn" I could shorten it - but why? *shrug*
Here's the link:
www.poetrysoup.com/short_stories/rose_bud_and_thorn_12018
I hope you like it!
White is for rice and brides - ready to commit.
White’s for ghosts and clouds or even carnations
but it should never, ever, be used for privilege
or worse yet, as poetic inspiration.
I’ve been waiting for the urge to write
while facing an ugly screen of white.
Waiting for the vowels to fall into place,
for words to congeal and finally displace
the awful, foreboding, blank white space.
Learning is our struggle, our crown of thorns.
The more we study and prepare for fall,
the more excited I get to reenter those halls.
34 days until classes start. For fall weather,
and the bee hum of crowded life in the dorms.
My roommates and I are like a single, nameless thing
- an emolument that happens to have 6 heads.
We’ve beaten the freshman “imposter syndrome,”
and we’re ready to bring sophomore year home -
together - no muss, no fuss - I love that for us.
We come together like being tied by a rope.
Sometimes the rope gets cut lose by scissors,
And then we have to find a new rope to tie our friendship back together.
V. help me find the rope to tie us back together.
Don't let us both fall down on the ground by letting the cold wind get the best of us.
I will open up my heart to help you shine.
For that is all I ever wanted to see you do.
Not be in the coldness and not let you heart light up the sky.
I think we all love kisses, like flowers love the sun.
They can be meaningful, deep and scandalous or fun.
You might briefly, sneakily, steal a kiss,
you can blow a kiss or condone a kiss,
emblazon every girl or boy you know with a kiss,
postpone a kiss, or bemoan a kiss as hormones,
but you can’t keep a kiss or own a kiss,
because they’re never more than half your own kiss -
sadly, as we’ve all learned, you just can’t kiss alone.
Every kiss is a puzzle, an experiment requiring a team
you may not even understand a kiss, or exactly what it means.
As far as kisses go, I’ve only had a few. I blame that dam
pandemic, they certainly weren’t something I eschewed.
I wish I had specific tips for girls with quick, impulsive lips
which somehow never can resist a flirty, kissing apocalypse.
Your roommates will support you, with only a few quips
but you really can’t keep doing this, you’ve got to get a grip.
I had a seventh grader tell me, when I was in 5th grade, that things go downhill after 5th grade - that life doesn’t get better, it just gets more complicated. I’ve had years to mull that over and I have to say that in some ways his testimony was on beat.
As we start the second half of sophomore fall semester, I think I’ve reached stability and I’m accustomed to this year’s schedule and workload. I haven’t surveyed whether I’m faster or slower in this (see below), but now I know all the tricks - where to eat, which paths to take and what to carry. I have a firm rhythm that’s consistent and insistent.
“I’m finally on my schedule.” I commented to Sunny yesterday morning as we collided in our dash to get our shoes on.
She looked at me in confusion “You know we’re on week 8 out of 15, Ya?”
I was shocked, “I hadn’t thought of it that way,” I admitted as we stepped out.
It’s midnight and we’re going (Peter, Lisa, Sophie and I) to “My Butt” tonight (the dorm basement snack-bar). I took two seconds to splash my face with water and twist-back my hair. “How do I look?” I asked Peter.
“You’re attractive.. enough,” he said, “..I mean you fall within a bell curve.”
“You're almost 40,” I say, in the face of his non-complement.
“I’m 26,” Peter said, “You know it, and I have proof. You DO have some good points though,” he granted, while trying to drape his great, hairy, gorilla-like arm on me, “there’s your sparkling conversation and nice underwear.”
“I donated those to goodwill,” I lied, while giving him a half-gentle stiff-arm.
“You remind me of my parents,” Sophie says.
The tea (the best tea is scandalous). Lisa’s friend Baker dashed back to her room between classes Yesterday. She’d forgotten the big paper she had to turn-in. It was a mad dash and passing a roommate’s open door, she realized that the girl was lowkey masturbating. Lisa, delighted to be an interlocutor in the matter, due to Baker’s overplus embarrassment, is trying to suggest next steps in a post-shock protocol.
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Interlocutor: “someone who takes part in a dialogue, or situation”