You, gone. A poem.

You, gone.

by Jacqueline Langille

You will get on a plane again,

in the after.

You will wear a mask, because.

You will barely breathe for two hours.

Because.

The flight goes fast and well. All those nerves were for nought.

As usual.

On the ground, outside the airport,

the home province smells of fir trees and diesel construction machines.

Your brother's wife claims you

in her newish car, burgundy upholstery,

faint discolored spots on the back seat: likely grandbaby vomit.

The two-hour drive goes fast and well.

You ache to decline: "Stay at our house!"

Their tiny house

where everyone sits too close to everyone else at all times.

You stay. You breathe.

Your mother denies the form of you

who shows up at the care facility.

"Too old, too fat, too grey."

Too long away. Lockdowns and reasons.

Your mother warms to your voice

when you explain who you are

and why you're visiting.

"My daughter, so proud."

In the lounge, you will drink tea together,

brewed in the Maritime way:

strong, dark, Red Rose or King Cole.

Or you will go for a drive in the countryside

– it’s all countryside –

with your brother as chauffeur

and prompter when the conversation lags.

You chat about the pleasant weather this spring.

Blossoms, sunshine, birds.

Your mother recalls some words for birds:

cardinal, blue jay, chickadee.

You tell a story about feeding the birds last winter.

Your mother listens. That is new.

Your mother wants a treat.

She fails to remember the words

to get what she wants.

Your brother knows. You know.

She always wants ice cream.

After a two-hour visit,

long enough and yet not long enough,

you say goodbye at the care facility.

“Thank you for visiting me,” she says to you,

a stranger again after a tiring day.

“May I?” You hug your mother after 5 years away.

She smells the same.

Clean clothes. Moisturizer. Vanilla ice cream.

***

When you haven't written a poem for many years but you want it out in the world: blog it! ❤️

My mom and her favorite fur-person.

Guilt and shame of an evening

Guilt and shame of an evening

Bananas

N95 masks

Veggies

Bread

Milk

Why do I have to remind myself to buy vegetables? A recurring entry on my weekly grocery list.

This poem is not about the pandemic.

When I noticed the time

7.10 pm

and I realized it was too late to call my mother at the assisted living facility

I felt relief

She calls Grace Haven home now.

I feel grief

that her memories of my childhood

have faded. Selfish.

I used to rely on those stories

to fill in the gaps in my autobiography.

Living with Aphantasia and deficient episodic memory for me is like

starting every day with an almost blank slate of life experience.

I rely on others to remind me of

those moments we've shared.

I have to remind myself of the skills I've learned over 50 years but I can't relive those learning moments.

Will old age feel as bad for me

-- my mother decribes suffering due to her memory loss and aphasia -- 

since I don't have those memories to begin with?

My photo, 2022

Most boring title ever

At this point, the blog is a journal. I haven't journaled for years. Feels kinda good. When I was a kid, I would buy a diary every year, or get gifted one at Xmas, and I would commit to writing a little every day. I found some of those old diaries once, and noticed only a few days of writing in each. Plans, plans, so many plans. I prefer using Blogger. It waits for me patiently, doesn't take up space, I always know where it is, and doesn't kill any trees for paper.
Most adverbs are garbage.
Language notes: I corrected my own conversational speech yesterday morning, editing an adverb. That self-editing action got a giggle from my fellow chatter. Is there a label for the two parties involved in a conversation? English is limited in many ways. How can that be, with one million words and counting?
And it wouldn't be a blog post without a scribbled line or two of poetry ...
Too many feels
A poem
I feel sad for you
All the time
Do you want me to?
Later, I scrub the guilt off,
Like washing crusty dishes
left by lazy roommates.
One atom of shame remains;
my expectations feed the disgrace fungus, and it multiplies, until it's ripe and spores of more guilt fly.
The end.
Phew, that was a weird one.
P.S. Today is the one-year anniversary of my father's passing. Heavy heart.

Toad on the deck

After dog-walk this morning, I was startled to find a large toad on the back deck. He eyed me with distrust and disdain, but remained on the deck while I hunted for my phone to take a photo of his glorious amphibianness. He declined the photo op by hopping under the deck the moment I trained my camera on him. I realized that I could have spent some quality time with him instead of trying to get a photo. Moment lost. I'll recall that option next time.
Urban nature.

Toad
A poem
Toad, whom I met this morning on my deck,
Please don't meet the same pancake fate as your fellow amphibian did last week on our roadway.
Thank you, your human admirer.

Art as therapy

Writing poetry acts as therapy for many people, I'm certain. Processing emotions, bringing your own stories to the page, what a powerful tool for mental health that type of writing can be. Would that writing poetry appealed to more people in need of an outlet. I see poetry getting more popular lately, but I fear the rush to the extreme that consumes our culture already infects that arm of publishing with celebrity culture. I wish writing and publishing one's own poetry and stories were as normal and accessible for everyone as buying groceries or riding a city bus. We are all always about the stories: humans need stories to survive and thrive. Almost every moment of every day includes a story of some sort: the snippets we tell ourselves to build our world as we negotiate society, the details we share with friends to construct our social identity, the sweet pap of commercial storytellers that fill our spare moments with tv, movies, novels, and so many other stories that we receive and give daily in order to survive.
Meander
A poem
A wander in the city offers stories for the supping
The people share their tales
Whether I want them to or not
Quaff the joy, the fear, the delight, the angst
I take it all in and form their story in my own way, write the urban, write the people, write the life.

Sunday

Definitely one of those slow days. The doggo sat on my feet all afternoon: didn't feel like doing much anyway. I turned on the dishwasher: that seemed like an accomplishment.
Another poem
Lethargy
That ache at the base of my skull
When I want to feel ambition
Today is not that day
Lay your head down and rest
Tomorrow is soon enough.

Today

How little sleep can I get on a regular basis and still function? Will have to spend my weekend catching up, repaying my sleep debt.
|||

My brain
A poem

Sorrow darkens the edges of my brain.
Like a sponge, my grey matter absorbs whatever moist slime lurks nearby. It thirsts for more of the carcinogenic emotions,
self-destructive
self-vindictive
self-malignant.
You don't know my brain.
The me inside my brain wants
love
light
joy
peace.
My brain seeks disaster.
This is a story.
Poems are fiction.
Don't worry about me.

|||
I better turn off auto-suggest if I want to write more poems on my phone.
That was fun.
Thirty days, thirty poems?😀

A new poem, silliness

After Work


Paisley fractals of clouds wisp across the sky.
Two gulls, a thousand miles from the nearest salt water,
wheel on summer updrafts.
The heat of the day seeps from the deck boards
into my back:
too lazy to retrieve a wicker chair from the garage.
What conjunction of humidity, temperature, and wind
permits the creation of pointy fractal clouds?


I praise and bless the conjunction of flavours
in my tequila fruit punch,
spiked with sparkling juice imported from Italy,
which is surrounded by salt water.
"Fractal clouds" ...
the phrase bangs on my brain until I go inside and write it down.

In progress

Couldn't sleep, so blogging.
My teenage heart writes poems.


"Too much"


Twice that day I looked at you with scorn.
Once, secretly,
at the back of your head
across a crowded room
when I heard the squeak and crackle of your polite laugh.


The second, with forethought,
to your face
across the dinner table
when you winced about the day you'd had.


My full-frontal assault had no effect.
"Honey, do you have indigestion?" you asked.
My scorn-face melted into bemusement -- 
Feeling the muscles in my face relax,
I reclaimed my usual mask
of calm, demure contentment.


--Alice

For a Middle English word from the twelfth century, "scorn" gets a lot of play on the internet: with 1 million hits on Google Images, it's the name of metal bands, super-villains, and a wrestler; and it's mentioned in innumerable blog titles. It's a great word to use in a poem, and it's fun to say out loud ... "scorn." This pic shows what could very well be my next karaoke shirt.

My teenage heart writes poems

Sometimes I write poems; I wake up with them fully formed and running circles inside my brain. They scream sappy, sentimental teenager publishing in the high school yearbook, but I can't get them out of my head until I write them down. They might sound better if I had the nerve to read them out loud because they're sort of beatnik-y in their rhythms, and they never ever rhyme, so its the mood in the voice that I hear in my head when I'm typing them.
My blog, a great place to let it all hang out, literally and literarily.


"Give me a kiss," by Alice

Give me a kiss.

Not that open-lipped, too many teeth, talking about your workday while I lean in kind of kiss.

Give me a gift

that is all of you

part of you

almost too much of you

to take.

Gift me a kiss

that takes all of your mind, your person to form.

Kiss me with your thoughts not just your lips.