Here’s a question – when you buy
An item of new clothes,
How long until you wear it?
Not too long, I would suppose.
Do you take the tags off quickly,
Sporting it next time you dress
Or does it go in the closet
With the wardrobe you possess?
Or perhaps it’s folded neatly,
Nestled in a chest of drawers,
Waiting with the others to be worn
Since now it’s rightly yours?
For some reason I can’t fathom,
Any new clothes that I buy
Have to wait before I wear them –
There’s no explanation why.
So they hang or lie there, marking time,
Until that special morn
When their tags are cut and they’re put on
To finally be worn.
My husband’s just the opposite.
When clothes come from the store,
He puts them on at once and then
He’s headed out the door.
Oh, I recall the home of my childhood,
and those beautiful glassed French doors,
the sliding on shiny floors made of dark wood !
My sweet bedroom had an antique chest of drawers,
oh, a mansion like front staircase spiraled up, up, up, up,
and I will never forget the nooks where games were made-up !
_________________
October 22, 2021
Poetry/Rhyme/Sweet Memories of Home
Copyright Protected, ID 10-1399-039-22
All Rights Reserved, 2021, Constance La France
Written for the Standard contest, Bite Size Poem, No. 24
sponsor, Line Gauthier, Judged 10/27/2021
Honorable Mention
CONTENTS (…may have settled during shipping and handling.)
Preface by C. Günter Marrow
Prologue by Zoltan Goliath
Cycle I. FAITH HEALERS & HEARSAY MIRACLES
Ghosts from the Well
Hard Lessons
Chest of Drawers
Cycle II. RAW PERFUME
Social Insecurity
Rogues’ Gallery
Business as Usual
Cycle III. ORDINARY FAIRY TALES
Dry Stone Wall
A House with No Servants
Let’s Put this Night to Sleep
Cycle IV. FLOTSAM & JETSAM
Sausage, Head Cheese & Scrapple
The Institution
Should the Levee Ever Break
Cycle V. SCARS OF THE LIGHT BRIGADE
Light at the End of Tunnel Hill
Light Keeper’s Testament
Light in a Quiet Room
Epilogue by Otis Trench
Premiered at Midland Motor Speedway, Odessa, TX – 6/26/1998
ACT 1
Das Lied für Alma
Still Life Instrumental
First Nights
Pain Hurts
Violet
Dancing with the Blues
The Reckoning
No One’s Going Home
ACT 2
Brickyard Informal
Beneath the Wheel
Eyes of a Miner
Here She Was
Halfway to My Knees
The Last Time We Made Love
ACT 3
I Quit
Never Be Too Far Away
Yesterday’s Coffee
Stale Green Light
letters lie crumpled
when will you read them again?
open tiny tin locket
memories hidden
way back in chest of drawers
warm? among the socks and scarves
Looking through ol’ chest of drawers
When finding all ‘Forever Yours’
Rapid thoughts of all our plans,
Pounding heart and sweaty hands.
The letters bound with frazzled string,
Once in time meant everything
Now again on distant shores
Blink the ink- forever yours
Though I’m sad, I’m also gleaming
For two words have great meaning
Eternal love- encoded message
Always made mmm impressive.
For all the dreams and all the hopes
Gripping aged stained envelopes
Though past you were still here adores
Endless us, Forever yours.
Households unhitch so readily.
We watch incredulous as they float off,
hulls creaking,
rafters cracking like wind-lashed rigging.
Where we once believed roots gripped bedrock
now shiftless boards bob in the swell.
Domesticity tumbles out.
Bed springs gape,
a chest-of-drawers turns, inside out.
The everyday innards of a dwelling, face up,
barely floating:
a sure sign of those about to drown.
Households unhitch, hulls creaking -
the sound of storm-lashed rigging
as foundations founder.
Where we once believed roots gripped bedrock,
boards bob in the swell.
Bed-springs gape. A chest-of-drawers
turns inside out, the face-up exposure
of our everyday innards.
Even as mail-boxes are torn away,
we refuse to believe that a river and some wind
could move our lives to a far field,
or that this world were really in fact,
just this shipwreck
of what we thought of as an address.
I keep my verse in a chest of drawers
each one so very different
Some words for summer, some for winter
and some then most intemperate
I keep the best one’s locked away
for those times when you’re around
To dress each phrase in sunlit fire
with silks and linens found
I fold each poem nice and neat
stacked end to end they lay
To sit and wait, my breath exhaled
until their chosen day
There’s one drawer open every night
in case my dreams conspire
The thickest warmest woolen clads
to wrap the image dire
One day I’ll will this chest of drawers
to my first born oldest son
And hope he wears each line as his
and lets the meanings run
And then to his son, he’ll pass on
when fate calls out his name
The drawers more full than when I left
—this chest without a name
(Villanova Pennsylvania: March, 2018)
Once upon a time
There was a pretty girl,
She sold knockoffs of jewelry,
To keep herself in curls.
She squirrelled away some chains,
Let no one know she had them.
It was a bit of chicanery,
But she enjoyed believing she owned them.
Strange thing happened
One by one they disappeared,
She had laid them on her chest of drawers,
And no one had been “here.”
One day she saw a twinkling,
Between chest and the wall,
She stuck her hand through the crack,
Found the chains – one and all.
Now this girl had an alley cat
She had raised him since first he was found,
He always licked at shiny things,
Now he had his own little mound.
Did I tell you she’d been charged with stealing?
She was always short on her sales,
Who’s the thief? The cat or the girl?
Who’s gonna put up the bail?
Beauty's Beast.
Well I'm looking but I don't see.
A little here a little there
I even looked under the stair.
In the wardrobes and chest of drawers.
I even scrutinised the floors
but look I did and could not find
am I stupid, am I blind.
You say you left it by my chair.
Well I'm sorry to say it's just not there.
I'm flabbergasted to say the least
but I think your wrong Beauty,
there is no Beast.
Adopted animals love their humans;
show it in many ways.
The tiniest pet,
revels in the harmony of its time,
with family.
Dinky was a special hamster;
she lived a year beyond the normal life span.
I carried her around in my pocket and she loved the ride.
Her head, peeking out, evoked curious comments
from all who glimpsed her.
She searched for me, when I was at school;
her knack for escaping the cage,
kept me searching for her in the afternoons.
I often found her, in my chest of drawers.
Of course, I found it odd,
but hamsters are four-legged, Houdini’s…
Dinky was the best.
One cold winter night, as I lay in slumber,
That tiny traveler made her way from,
one end of the house, to my bedroom.
I lay there, on that frosty eve,
dreaming that I was outside in the rain;
the chilling raindrops, dancing upon my arm.
In a moment of lucidity,
Reality hit; those raindrops were tiny paws!
I reached, grasped and in the shimmering moonlit rays,
I stared into the eyes of my new bed buddy.
A twitchy nose said it all…
”I found you!”
I moved her cage close by my bedside;
future escapes faded into history.
I am young and travelling
my life is unraveling
as a teenager I dreamed
this day would happen
not on the safe side I dwell
as the danger unfolds
forward I propel
I coming out of my shell
extreme is not the word
crazy sounds to absurd
this beats the life of a nerd
this excel the master degree of a jock
“daddy is going to buy you a mocking bird”
who am I kidding
my parents were never there
just mama the only one
who ever cared
it is all I ever have
a personality flaw
my heart in a chest of drawers
this how I extend towards an inconvenient cause
ain’t no love lost
ain’t no sunshine when its on
My hair is frizzy and very black.
I found it in my chest of drawers.
Also a bunch grows in my crack.
And if you like it, it's all yours.
For Rick Parise's "A Bad Hair Day" contest
Life is down to no-frills necessities
in a room with the chest of drawers,
double bed and television.
The walker stands in the corner
waiting to be used to get to the dining room,
the social activity three times a day.
The nurse's aide, with her lilting Haitian accent,
comes around to check during the day:
time for meds, channel change? a walk
down the hall? a glass of juice?
You know that you mustn’t drive a car.
The house is gone, and so are its furnishings,
let's face it, life is over.
Grandchildren come to visit,
sighs of relief when it's over.
Dreams of the past when life was real
occupy time until dinner and bed.
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