A Love Poem or a Eulogy: for my Washing Machine and my Dishwasher
My house has become a graveyard for appliances and technology
Or else I have become a sleepwalking electrical serial killer
I didn't realise they were so close, standing side by side
But when my terminally ill washing machine died at the end of summer,
my dishwasher was gone by the first cold breath of autumn
The bloodbath of his broken heart flooded three rooms
and I put the wet towels in body bags
To take to the morgue of the laundromat
As I emptied the unpleasant fluids from his internal filter
I thought of catheters, absorbancy and the indignity in aging
Does anyone ever really wish to be relieved of their burdens through a tube?
I didn't have the transplant heart to sell them for parts
I buried you both side by side in the darkness of my garage
Grieving still, but comforted that you are together now
wherever it is you go when the clothes and plates
are no longer yours to wash and rinse
I sat with your only child through the night
Explaining the best I could with my youth that
Sometimes the power lights just don't come back on
Sometimes the error is fatal
The cold wet truth seeped through my socks as I mopped
But you should choose to remember happier times
I tell her she was lucky to have such smartdrive parents
How through their tough cycle punishments
and extra spin lectures
They gave this world a beautiful baby Dryer
A child that smiles so warm
It dries the wettest tears
from the towels
with the bloodiest memories.
The Allies of Mermaids
Whether falling too hard in love or landing just short of heartbreak
Whether with time you borrowed or payed for thoroughly
Give yourself a gift
Create
You are the sculptor, the clay and the wheel
Know that as long as you're turning
You have something to work with
This is for every tune yet too young to harvest a song
Every hesitant turn of dancers spine blade
For every canvas growing shy under the painters gaze
Unlearn fear
Forsake the damage, the cheap highs and expensive lows
The soft touch and the hard blows
This is for the bar dwelling story telling
Soldier without a war
Listening to the whale song
of a hippie with a cause
For the art student cutting snowflakes
out of the last bus ticket they could afford
For the irony of failing english
while skipping class to read a book
For the determined hands of an old blues player
Who understands arthritis but forgets the chords
This is for the Creator
For each one, here on earth
This is for growing unapologetic
Through all the weeds in your piece of earth
For hand made, local trade
Work that hardly ever pays
and for you guys right here
who support it.
Passion opens its own doors
If you can imagine it, then why not share?
This is for the authors who write of mermaids and refuse to call it 'fiction'
Because we haven't stitched the entire ocean floor with internet cables just yet
And when your inspiration cowers
At the brave colours in the sky
Remember the sunset is just an artist,
Trying desperately to paint you
Whether you be ink silhouette or watercolour,
Graffiti canned or oil covered.
You are Art
For you
More than any other.
