Long Propped up Poems
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Just thinking of places and times
I had laid my heavy head
So far removed from silk sheets
And a warm comfortable bed
Just thinking, on dreams i had
In raging storms kaleidoscope like
Behind fluttering shut eyes with tears
Spearing through, grounding a paper kite
Just thinking,of an expressions seen
From above or below distant and far
The colour of eyes, lost in that moment
Brewing the droop propped up on a bar
Just thinking, just thought remembered
Forgotten just slipped away from my head
Curtains now closing, lessening light
That time and thought we constantly dread.
I walk in the shadow
I shore up my doubt, behind a loosely bound hope
Which in turn is propped up without foundation
Cynical of a life, at the mercy of luck
Collateral damage feeds my reservation
I shore up tomorrow with what I see today
Without conspiracy or investigation
I place trust in all that’s completely unfettered
For fear, I’m left to this present resignation
I shore up my life with whatever came before
Not hindsight or academic education
The oblivion traversed until I was born
Strings along primal echoes of information
I shore up my conscious with bliss and ignorance
Interspersed with indifference on occasion
It’s not I don’t care about suffering and death
Rather, I’m desensitised by their pervasion
I shore up my denial with an open mind
Which is nothing except raw interpretation
This planet spins correctly, even though tilted
Not by wishful thinking, but strange gravitation
I shore up my boredom, trying to fall asleep
When really tired, will attempt hibernation
Anything to forget this human condition
After remembering, I’m long past salvation
I shore up my heaven, by creating a hell
Balance looks more appealing, in an equation
Gaze upon purgatory, and share what I see
Not because I’m kind, it’s more my destination
I shore up my poem by claiming it’s my own
But in truth, it’s an open collaboration
I conspire with the musings of all that’s unclear
They dwell inside me, in flawless aberration
- - - - - - -
Horrid little raindrops
Hopping upon the ground
Hosing down my windows
Hoarding inside the clouds
Hanging around my head
Holding my spirit down
Haul your ass off elsewhere
confined to a room
propped up on pillows
lies an emaciated figure
beard and long hair
like Jesus he does not believe in
tender in suffering
no doubt barely sustained
by a saline drip
and morphium tablets
he politely accepts
small portions of food
he possibly wants
or not as the end of life
as he knows it has neared
a father husband brilliant mind
now reduced to drifting in
and out of consciousness
being a doctor must make
hanging on more difficult
when science and feelings mix
with enduring and pain
his daughter reads him
small verses by Edward Lear
which he himself shared with her
when she was a child
all of a sudden laughter
barely audible but powerful
fills the room and his eyes
fill with both sadness and joy
no one has the right
nor the power to define
quality of life
but memories and words
are medicine when
storm clouds of emotion
entice reason and orthodox therapy
to take a bow and quiet retreat
I WILL CROON THE VOWELS
kneeling in church, arm around my angel girl.
my son’s propped up on pew, chewing gum.
the oldest tries to pray, the grownup way.
LIKE THE ANGELS DO
we belt out tunes for thirty minutes,
mama’s eyes closed, one eye strobe light blinking
quiet “sh sh” like the soft spoken wind.
WITHOUT THEIR HALO SWOONS,
those baby bonnets on sideways,
bent, just halfway toward sin,
but precious are those little hands,
look like steeples,
voice chaste as the trio say “amen.”
JUST PLAIN HALLELUJAHS,
“Jesus loves me this I know”
why do children sound heavenly?
especially with eyes closed and
silent snores, tears dripping from mama’s eyes.
WITHOUT THE SURROUND SOUND
swish swish goes the bridal gown -
losing daughters gaining daughter in-laws.
those once bubblegum popping boys,
dapperly dressed up, have made their choice.
EFFECTS, CERTAINLY NOT IN TUNE
and celestial hallelujahs, spur on the stars and moon.
silver spoons saved for christenings,
beneath angel’s wings,
veiling the scarcely innocent.
babies bathed in baptism, as grandma grins,
and prays, shushing the wind.
Kim Rodrigues © 2017
My God is the God of broken ladders,
many rungs are missing
and I don’t have the skill to mend them.
My usual recourse for the unfixed
is to pen a poem about the
imperfect beauty of the
unfinished and damaged.
Breakfast is just for seating two,
there's another broken stool
propped up against a wall -
a silent testament
to 'found poetry' that needs
only a missing meaning.
I am not useless,
my wife says I am not useless,
but she never suggests furniture
that comes as a flat pack anymore,
and she often asks more adept visitors
to bring their own tools.
My God is a God of broken rungs,
I shall keep striving to fix them,
keep my toolbelt greased,
as I hammer images and metaphor
together
with yet more split nails.
I arrived a stranger
to a set of little wooden cabins by the sea.
Pretty they were, with weathered straw roofs
and fences curved like hulls,
the sea whispering at my feet.
The skipper who brought me here was a jolly man,
eternally smiling his toothless grin,
his eyes gentle in the lantern light
as he coaxed the boat through the tight waterways
like a surgeon with a scalpel.
Dawn.
Perhaps the night had blinded me
for with the first blush of the sun,
I saw for the first time (properly),
the world in which they habited.
Tattered wooden walkways, supported by little more
than some planks, nets and rubber tyres
propped up a grid of ramshackle tents
and oddly skewed cabins.
Nearby, motorboats, row upon row, bobbed upon the tide,
their engines rusted and sluggish,
unworthy of the sailors that piloted them.
I saw a woman, maybe 40,
wash her face sparingly with water
and subconsciously touched my still damp hair,
ashamed of the luxury of my long shower.
The cabin offered a variety of "fun" activities,
like fishing and ground traps
but watching the other holidayers pouring over the nets
I couldn't help but feel melancholy;
these things that we treated as games
were the fishermen's entire livelihoods.
When I departed, a young girl,
school bag fastened tightly to her chest,
clambered aboard our boat.
I thought of my waiting flight
and wondered if she could
rise above the waves.
A man with no more than a hole in his pocket
The clothes on his back and a picture in a locket
Propped up some cardboard in a dim alleyway
When a stranger came up with something to say
He wore a suit and tie with a leather briefcase
And a thoughtful, yet mischievous look on his face
“I’m tired son, money has led my feet astray.
How’d you like to switch and be rich for a day?”
There must be a catch but with nothing to lose
They traded everything, right down to the shoes
He spent the day walking and looking around
He kept his head up instead of down at the ground
He smiled at strangers who in turn, did the same
Not turning away at his sight, in pity or shame
He asked for directions even though he wasn’t lost
Just to see who would answer without an accost
Walking tall all day counted the people he did meet
And not one, today, avoided him by crossing the street
He went back to the alley where the rich man said he’d stay
He said, “So chap, what did you do while rich for a day?”
He peered in his wallet and thought hard for a time
“You had this all day and you didn’t spend a dime?”
As they swapped back their clothes, the poor man explained
“You have all this money but are exhausted and drained.
I didn’t spend a thing but cleaned up in these stitches,
I experienced a different kind of wealth and riches
No one saw me and assumed I deserved shame and neglect
I walked around today and was rich with respect
I didn’t try to get ahead using money or power
Just happy not to have to beg, head hung in a cower.”
He gripped his locket and thought of important things
And knew he held close what really pulled the heartstrings
The rich man nodded and shook the poor man’s hand
Perhaps he’d been living with his head in the sand
The next day he went back but the poor man was gone
All that remained was the cardboard he’d slept on
And a locket from a pocket that escaped from a hole
A picture inside of a woman that warmed his cold soul
He decided to use his wealth for more than his greed
And never turned a blind eye to someone in need
He began to see people in a much different way
And perhaps it was himself, who became rich that day
Watching the festering global sores of mankind
This propaganda called news, has on rewind
Images are shown for their shock value
Then compromise the effect with their marginal views
Atrocities are shown, religious zealots leak out
But the story's one sided, free thinkers have doubts
Political pundits push, independence for all
Third world economies propped up from the fall
Global warming is real, eager scientists report
Our president's vacationing at a private resort
The impoverished are starving, the land of milk and honey
Abundance receding, the food banks want money
Hatred and bigotry, open wounds from the past
With military surplus, revolutionaries are gassed
This relentless bombardment is numbing our senses
While access to our country is being prohibited by fences
Our children aren't safe, their education is lacking
International larceny from subsidized hacking
Opinions are based on the images we see
Ephemeral sadness declines instantly
This biased information, which we receive
Is one sided and filtered, leaving us deceived
an original poem by the "poemdog" Daniel Turner
For long I have been an aimless vagabond
I strayed far, the world being enormously wide.
Traveling to lands foreign, I searched my fortune.
At the end, fed up with all that was alien,
And wishing to withdraw from the world’s bewildering stress,
Decided to set out in search of my roots and my people.
Parents dead, my faint connections with my folks were gone.
My ancestral home was occupied by my brother,
With whom I had hardly any correspondence.
But when I was choked by thoughts of my dear home
And the yearning to visit struck me as an irresistible urge,
Without second thoughts, I boarded a plane,
And headed to my native village with dreams many.
From far I saw my house perched high on a hill,
Dappled in grey, squinting across the field.
Nearing it, my heart began to beat in pounding thuds,
In the excitement of a reunion long overdue.
Alas! There was none to receive me, only some creepy spiders,
Busily spinning gossamer webs over closed windows
Its vacancy haunting me, I tried to ring the doorbell.
But the rusted contraption sat silent on the cracked wall.
What had happened to the family living here?
Have they migrated to some far-off place?
A hundred questions propped up in my mind.
Wished to ask someone, but seeing nobody around,
I stood silent in the weed grown courtyard for some more time.
I thought of the heydays of my life, with a deep yearning,
To run round the house once more as a child
And be under its shelter, to lie down and dream the dreams of old.
Everything looked so forlorn. Feeling suddenly orphaned,
My eyes got welled up with tears as never before.
Hesitant to chew the unpalatable truth that this house will no more board me,
Casting one last glance with a heart laden with memories,
I turned my back from that spectral home,
Which stood silent as a symbol of UNWRITTEN ABSENCE!
(Base USO club, Zweibrucken, Germany, 1963)
Of a lazy afternoon, I sit
propped up,
Bones aching, sorely tired from
lack of work,
And dutifully read the comic
strips
With bored eyes while my mind
dozes.
I sit enveloped in my peculiar
Grayish pallor, which clings
And will not disappear,
And martyr myself to the gods
of convention.
I smoke acrid-tasting cigarettes and
Loudly chew a cud of gum, popping it
Absent-mindedly, and I turn the
crinkly sounding
Pages, one after one, slowly
and intently,
So as not to disarrange the sheaf.
The dryish smell of printed
comic strips
Irritates my nose, but I don't
sneeze --
Merely wriggle it a bit for some
relief.
My brightly polished shoes are propped
Upon the table and I lean back and tilt
the chair, and my hair
Is closely cropped and combed with care,
no strand
Out of place, pomaded and arranged.
My clothes are neat and clean
and stylish
And I brush away a nonexistent
crumb and
I slowly chew and loudly pop my gum,
Moisten index finger, moisten thumb,
And turn the colored printed page
of comics,
Snicker at the antics pictured
While I glance about.
And wonder.