Short Heaped Up Poems

Sweet potatoes, special cuts,
 Grandma's spices, nuts,
Raisins cooked in every bite.
Flaky crust baked light,
Cool whip heaped up high.
Thanksgiving –
Pie!...

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Sweet
Strawberry jam
Sticky gooey gummy
And warmed up it is the most yummy
Heaped up on toast is what I like the most
Baked up fresh in grandma’s oven
Delicious on ice cream
Strawberry jam
Sweet...

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Sky filters through scant woods
printing a cold sunlight on shadowed tree trunks.

Only December has this light,
it both scours and forages,
it scythes away all heaped-up flotsam.
A December wind,
sings its own death song.
Ice hangs unseen upon the air.

The woodland acres shimmer,
then tremble upon a long fading note,
one that ushers in
last rites and other mixed blessings....

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Best case scenario -
my fame walking into the future,
all my failed handiworks
recognized as avant garde – well before their time.
Honor and distinction heaped-up posthumously.
An unexceptional life
discovered to have been really ‘sui generis’
uncommonly so.
Applause echoing through the ages.

Most likely outcome –
a contrived eulogy,
slightly embarrassed onlookers
searching for right words.
Shrugs....

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No Bread.  Why?
     By Dane Smith-Johnsen

Big round dark eyes staring at forgetfulness.
Eating nothingness, feeling helplessness.
Scavenging the streets for morsels finding hopelessness.
Foraging to fill a swollen abdomen full of emptiness.
Holding death securely within mothers’ bleakness.
Too hungry to show love and too hungry to cry-
But not too hungry to die-
            Why?  
Mankind’s blindness and heaped up forgetfulness, sighs....

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Daylight wipes its face.
I travel through a door
unlocking an attic of mind.

If I had a best pair of pants
I would wear them
but I have only the next to best.

Small unnamed birds
are clambering
over a heaped-up sky.

I may have to climb a little also,
my best boots are old
but they have been to the tops
and the bottoms
and know the distance between.

I have plenty of rope
new rope
rope as silver and sparkly
as the morning dew.
It will do....

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It seems like forever. . .
	It seems like yesterday.
What an incredibly
	long, winding road
we've been navigating.

Every twist and turn
	brought a new surprise.
Every time we danced
	 we missed a few steps.
You moved left, 
         I stepped right.

Two sons, two daughters
	 who have, over time,
heaped up their own
	 failures and wins.

Not much to tell
         of joy or sorrow
but that we’ve built
	 and held together
that which will still
	 be here tomorrow....

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