The tip of my nose is cold
I always sleep in a t-shirt with my arms bare
Because I like to curl up beneath my blankets
And create my own warmth
I wish I was doing that right now
Instead of selling overpriced Christmas trees
In an unheated greenhouse
The sky is white and the roof is white,
Dusted with a fine layer of snow
I know the temperature will rise to 63° on Saturday
And it will rain
And the water will run into the creek
Which will turn brown with mud
Strong and swift
Until it freezes over, and sleeps again
Categories:
unheated, conflict, loneliness, nature, winter,
Form: Free verse
I remember plodding through the snow
From my grandma’s house to the bus stop,
Listening to the sounds of the tire chains
The school bus thumping along icy roads,
But school was never cancelled.
Bottoms of my trousers would be frozen
And snow would be clinging to my eyelashes,
Stamping my feet to warm my toes
While we waited in the unheated bus shed,
But school was never cancelled.
The fingers of my mittens would stick together
My toboggan barely covered my ears,
The soles of my shoes would be slippery
And treacherous, since I didn’t have galoshes,
But school was never cancelled.
Snow on the path would pile up to my knees
My breath glistened passing my runny nose,
Some pages of my books would get wrinkled
Especially if I dropped them along the way,
But school was never cancelled.
written December 25, 2021
Categories:
unheated, school, snow, weather, winter,
Form: Free verse
Laying on the floor beneath the window,
staring up at the painted plaster,
little cracks run
through the goosebumps in the paint.
I can read where the wall is hollow
where it is brick,
by running the tips of my nails across its gibberish braille.
In certain spots, the paint is almost smooth
and slightly darker,
polished by years of rough feet,
the action of the mattress
trying to remove the braille.
To the left there is a stain running down the wall.
It is easy to imagine a tomato slammed there
like a bird flying into a pane of glass,
and not breaking through, slid to the floor,
but the truth is, it was a can of soup,
the kind with a pop top,
unheated,
drunk straight from the can, that spilled and would not come clean.
Categories:
unheated, angst,
Form: I do not know?
We need orphanages.
So abandoned children can be cared for,
receive three hot meals a day, be helped
with their homework.
We need orphanages to be
Quiet places where children can think.
Away from loud angry music
And loud angry adults who abandon them
in spirit, and attitude way before they
are physically abandoned,
We need orphanages
Where adults can help children
Learn how to be children.
We need orphanages
Where children don't have to take care of their parents.
Where children don't have to fix their own supper.
Where children don't have to worry about being evicted,
where children don't squat in unheated abandoned buildings.
We need orphanages
Where children aren't threatened if they tell the truth.
We need orphanages for the abandoned children, so
they can safely grow up.
We need orphanages.
Written June 13, 2018 Abandon Contest Sponsored by: Brenda Chiri
Categories:
unheated, abuse, addiction, child abuse,
Form: Free verse
(Dedicated to all those who have died alone.)
They cannot fit, they cannot go along,
and the reasons are wide: pride, fear,
even love never tempered by time,
illness of the heart or mind, or simply
bad, bad luck: life throws them away
until they throw life away....
She was one of the gentle ones,
the unlucky ones-- a flower child
who missed her time, an era she
might have thrived in, free, alive,
unencumbered by family ties....
If she had come age in the 60's,
she might have lived into her 90's.
But lost and afraid in a cold world
not of her making, with her bird-
like heart breaking, she ate her
last hoarded apple, then lay down
to sleep and sleep and sleep until
she awakened safe in heaven's lap.
--judged NA in 'Will to survive' contest, 10/15/20--
[The poem was based on a true incident whereby a young woman suffering severe depression and paranoia was released from a psych ward without anyone informing her family; she stayed alone for weeks in an empty, unheated house in winter subsisting only on half-rotten apples she had picked up from the ground in the back yard.]
Categories:
unheated, abuse, allusion, death, destiny,
Form: Free verse
I cherish memories of those long ago mornings,
awakening in an unheated attic room to mingled aromas-
sweet hickory smoke escaping the old wood cook stove,
bacon frying, coffee perking, and biscuits baking.
Outside, a stark landscape in black and white,
whipped by howling wind, that seeking entry,
would expend itself against frosted windowpanes.
Delicate feathers of frost, created by my exhalations
that would spread like smoke throughout the room.
Inside, embraced by a feather mattress, oblivious
to the cold wind and impending morning chores,
I would for a few nefariously delicious moments
again drift away in blissful warmth-
those long ago winter mornings on the farm.
Categories:
unheated, farm, morning, weather, winter,
Form: Free verse
The Truth Speaker.
The voice that speaks in the silence of my unheated room,
frost smoke in morning light and ice crystals of judgment
that lacks passion, and logic too has the seed of insanity,
the lunatic is so clear that his view infects his psychiatrist.
the voice within is not always reliable subjected as it is
on the mood of the day. Sunman, rainman even snowman
want a word in the interior drama of talent and failure.
A dissonance of voices around the conference table and
everyone is your copy…but you can´t listen to them all,
a choice has to be made, the art is to choose the right one.
Categories:
unheated, best friend, betrayal, bullying,
Form: Blank verse
Snow falls on the brittle leaves of birch trees,
their branches miraculously overlooked by the December wind.
It makes a sound like the marching feet of scary Germans rushing through Poland.
Snow, mixed with freezing rain,
falls hard on the roof of an unheated barracks in Auschwitz,
filled with men and boys in pajamas.
It sounds not unlike the far-off thunder of the radio in the commandant’ s house,
the angry voice of the Fuhrer.
Snow, descending from the sky like shaved ice, on a brittle day,
5 maybe 8 degrees.
It covers the makeshift roadblocks in the streets of Warsaw,
making little mountains — so pure on the outside but fetid, rotten, corrupt beneath the fine powder.
This snow,
this ice falling to the ground,
sounds like Russian boots jumping over the mountains.
Rain in Gdansk,
a fine mist,
the smell of the sea.
It covers the streets, where men whisper things that will someday be heard
and old women fall on their knees to pray the Rosary.
This rain,
it smells of freedom.
Categories:
unheated, holocaust, war, men,
Form: Free verse
Standing on the frozen water, underneath the turquoise plain,
Temperature not getting hotter, chills set in and ease the pain.
Problems of your prior self, discarded at the price of health.
Peoples problems of today, vain and solemn, so cliche.
Imagine a desolate waste, bone chilling cold like that of space,
You're all alone, you have no place to call home,
You've got no phone, to call for a ride,
There's no one to call, there's no one to drive.
Buildings unheated , feeling defeated.
This is where humanity lies, struggling hard to survive,
Battling nature to stay alive, learning how to surely thrive.
Judged not by wealth, looks, or popularity,
But by hard work, devotion, and charity.
One day soon we will return,to the beginning when the skies were burned.
I pray for all that we'll realize, were all the same, what a surprise.
Categories:
unheated, life, philosophy, visionary,
Form: Rhyme
Are there efforts so bleak?
Grumbling stairways and windows that need paint
Utility bills comes first and food for the meek
That’s what they’ve become striving each day
Mortgage rates hit there high
Forcing families to leave there homes and stray
Forecloses no longer a thing of the past
Boarded up windows and signs on the laws
Greedy banks handing out amounts so vast
Now they tighten their grip on working folks
First they part with their phone or cable TV
Next they’ve lost their heat and their homes go up in smoke
Now home fires are on the raise
Unheated they put blankets over doors
Caught on fire from the use of space heaters and there surprised
It’s a domino effect didn’t anyone see
How greed and keeping up with the Jones
Made America be so in need
Categories:
unheated, life, loss, people
Form: Rhyme Royal
Birds are chirpping,
I don't know why,
Hope to find out,
Before I die...
I'm a stand-up comedian
Sitting before computer screen,
Writing funny things,
Are they ever seen?
A foot of snow outside,
Finally a day worthy
For me to hide...
I've got enough milk,
I have enough heat,
So it ain't like 3 years ago,
When it was quite a feat
To survive an unheated house,
With money long gone,
To wear all the clothes,
That I could put on,
Beneath every blanket,
The house did then own,
But still it was too cold,
I could not help but to groan...
Somehow it tempered me,
Ultimately it made me strong,
Survival instincts,
I had lacked for so long...
Phones, money, food,
Gas, electricity too,
Became things i had to learn,
How, without, I must do
Somehow I survived,
And learned a lesson well,
The world was not the oyster,
Of this sorry old tom bell.
Categories:
unheated, adventure, history, life, me,
Form: Bio
a parody on song "Winter Wonderland"- inspired by my winter alone in an
unheated house.
"Come away, I am threadbare
Snow is falling....
Where there' be hair..
A cold-as_sed dam_ night
It's really a fright
Walkin' in my winter underwear..
Butt-cheeks gleaming
Through the holes, near the seaming
A nasty cold a_s,
My skin is blue cast
Walkin' in my winter underwear..
In the meadow we can make a snowman
And pretend that he's an EMS
He'll say- "sonny is that really you?"
Or did someone paint you a_s blue?
Later on, I'll perspire
When I light...
My a_s on fire....
It burns so that way
I'm happy so say
Walkin' in my winter underwear...."
Categories:
unheated, funny, health, parody, song-winter,
Form: Burlesque
In the summer when the light extends,
The heat grows stronger, loneliness lives.
The house is dead, each fabric retains the scent
Of a decade. Untouched, unable to shed the weight.
Bed sheets lay cool across the mattress, clear, unstained. Bulbs
In the lamps stand chilled and firm. Unheated
Your skin hangs like an old coat.
You stand by the window, watch as the crystals
Shine within the glass. Lonely, separated
Look beyond them, to the grass
And street. You watch the families and children,
Their radiant faces
Shining in the red tint.
You have no company but your own.
Your escape has dwindled, the nights grow shorter,
The days extend.
Categories:
unheated, loss, sad,
Form: I do not know?