Archive for the 'poems' Category
Centerpiece
Centerpiece
By Marie Gordon
Hanging on your walls
And over your sinks
I am silent décor
I am your centerpiece
Resting on sofas
Adorning loveseats
I am brilliantly soft
I am coldly yours
Hung from little hooks
I dangle captive
To captivate your guests
To be your still life
Under your footrest
Gripping wax columns
I am your hearth piece
Your stillborn décor
the paper jet plane
This poem is about how trauma shatters a little girl’s reality and her once-rosy perception of earthly justice.
The paper jet plane
By Marie Gordon
I can see myself now
When I called this body home
When Daddy set the tee ball
When paper airplanes soared high
There is a little girl
Pulling back a pony tail
Ready to bat and conquer
Coloring her paper wings
She’s invincible
Smudging off bright face paint swirls
Swinging home runs at the plate
Launching her jet plane up high
This is a simple time
Before swollen, tired gray eyes
Sworn in on the witness stand
Scribbled teary paper goodbyes
This is a better time
When a squelched reality
Struggled to mutter a word
And time smoothly glided by
Now I watch the plane dive
And watch as the wrinkles scrunch
And make my trembling approach
Toward an uncertain runway
I cannot pretend now
To be a tomboy princess
This time I can’t grip the bat
Or fly off with paper wings
I must face brutal fact
That earthly justice has failed
That smirking devils do roam
To haunt and to tempt my hate
I am no longer me
I have scrubbed this body raw
I am swinging at the wind
My paper jet plane has crashed
I do not rise again
With eager, rose-tinted eyes
No longer fearless at bat
Trembling hands fold loopy planes
I am not a Phoenix
Because I’m not the same bird
I’m now the victim species
An unheard truthful witness
A view of Christmas from behind a wet nose
A view of Christmas from behind
a wet nose
By Marie Gordon
I’m just a puppy
Whose furry dreams twinkle
With Christmas wishes
Of colored lights and tasty bones
Slobbery kisses
An eager wagging tail
Make Christmas morning
Chaos, a family tradition
I’ve got a green bow
Tied to my pink collar
That says I’m a gift
With a right to be by the tree
Wagging pine needles
Plunge deep in the white rug
And my filthy fur
Rubs against Mom’s fancy sofa
Nothing makes Christmas
Like pup dander and pine
And loving sneezes
That rub my head and scratch my ears
There’s no present here
Who can lick ‘I love you’
Or scour the tree
For low-hanging gingerbread men
I’m just a puppy
Sniffing candy cane treats
Curled under the tree
Engorged with sugary decor
The magic eraser
This one is more or less self-explanatory. It deals with the issue of trauma and whether it’s better to remember or forget.
The magic eraser
By Marie Gordon
Hand me an eraser
A magic eraser
For the phrase
“What doesn’t kill you…”
I’ll smudge out the second line
Because what doesn’t kill you
Never leaves you
With sweet nostalgia
Hand me an eraser
A magic eraser
And I’ll tell you the story
As I smudge it out
Turn my memory
Into black rubber dust
That falls off the granite
And lodges in the grout
Hand me the eraser
The magic eraser
And don’t call me a victim
Or a survivor
Just hand it over
I’ll bow to my weakness
For a hard rubbing out
Of this tarry sludge in my mind
Oh sweet amnesia
You are kind
As humans never were
Not to cherish murdered hearts
Not to love the sweet terror
The beauty of remembrance
And the cold screaming sweat
Us men so idolize
Maybe it’s the estrogen
That makes me want to give up
All the prideful glory
Accompanying horror
For the magic eraser
That wipes out shaky hands
And darting eyes
And revives the tiny dreams
Of a bubbly optimist
she was dead before the poison apple…
This post goes back to some of the themes in my earlier poems (”my feeling of figmentation” and “on being a commodity”). It’s really about the eerie fairy tales that become women’s lives and how we immortalize these tales as something beautiful and alive when they are in fact tales which encourage women to be comatose brides and Snow White stand-ins. Anyways, that is my rant… here is my poem:
The patchwork princess
By Marie Gordon
The floppy patchwork doll
With round black eyes peers out
Under her red-brimmed cap
In a felted dress of scraps
Plastic pupils once shined
Although they never lived
Her plaid ensemble matched
She was loved and propped and left
She’s a still little corpse
She died a child at most
That never bled a drop
Never had a single cell
A plushy parasite
That loved, traveled, became
A figment of a girl
A relic of innocence
Oh to polish her eyes
To re-sew her gaffed side
To uncrinkle her dress
To see her in toddling hands
As though she never died
But stitched her own small cells
From giggles and dances
And thin-woven youthful games
If the cobbler could sew
Tiny cells that divide
That resurrect girlhood
With wooden needles and thread
Then she could be so real
As to dance and be fooled
And to learn and to live
In a cruel but soulful world
But she is propped and left
With the fairy tale books
Which narrate eerie tales
Of sleepy benevolence
A beady set of eyes
Dusty scratches and tears
Wrinkled by tiny joys
Which never belonged to her
She cannot speak to tell
A story that is shared
By a girl and her doll
A tale of sleeping beauty
Which is woven but never wakes
Weasel
Finally, I’m off my sea creature kick…
Weasel
By Marie Gordon
You were my weasel
And I chased you
Like a monkey
Through the bushes
Weasel eyes popped up
From behind oaks
And mulberries
For me to chase
Such round weasel eyes
Big brown and sweet
Pop up and sing
Glimmering chirps
Oh my sweet weasel
Where do you go
You slink under
Rustling bushes
You sweep my garden
Clean of carrots
Robbed of parsley
My loot is gone
Sweet weasel, you’re mine
You chirping mouse
I sink my nails
Deep in your fur
Your little eyes peer
Oh how you squirm
Begging mercy
But not this time
Weasels do flutter
They sing and chirp
Furry instances
Fleeting moments
Captured, my weasel
Imprisoned rat
Ready for truth
Taxidermy
Prelude
This is a rather cold poem, but it’s truthful in the way that it deals with trust and ignorance. Anyway, I hope you enjoy.
By Marie Gordon
You could tweet like a wizard
Silky divulgences
Braiding in my humble brain
Your smooth jaded wisdom
You could sing like a sea snake
Pungent temptations
Slithered through my childish ears
The blood red beat of drums
You could howl like a vulture
Vicious revelations
Swooped over my cowered limbs
The tender meat of kings
You could hum like a Viking
Subtle brutalities
Nipping my swollen heels
The quiet rush of lust
You could sing to me cool tones
Rushing enticements
Only to shred the noose
Over my sweet blue lips
The Mussel
I like this poem because it has a lot of layers. It deals with femininity and violence mostly; of course, that is, as much as mussels and otters can….
The Mussel
By Marie Gordon
There’s nothing left here
No soft little button
No little pink body
I’m left just a clam
Once bubbly mussel
In a barnacle playground
Breathing little shell puffs
Popping the surface
Until furry claws
Saw my bubbles arise
And pried my shell open
Rip, rip, stealing me
The shiny pink bulb
Savored no more than fish
With peppered barnacle
Nails split me open
Black on pink on black
Ripped tendons don’t survive
The tears of claws that pry
My body from me
Oh to a be a fish
Or a slimy sea snake
To be more than still black
Pried open to taste
A vacant black shell
Left tasteless on the rocks
A black little hollowed
Swimming skeleton
Minnow Dance
I’m not sure why I keep writing about sea creatures. I suppose I must relate to them in some bizarre way… Either way, I hope you enjoy my poem about the minnow 
Minnow dance
By R. Marie Gordon
I am just a minnow
Sometimes my fins wobble
When the whitecaps catch me
Salty glittering stripes
Flicker under the froth
Darting to catch a breath
Dodging pelican swoops
I do this dance for me
I swoosh and swerve and swim
My gills puffing bubbles
Into the glossy seas
Swallowing me in blue
A silver swimming speck
Miniature fins pumping
Against enormous swells
A flying dart winking
At the sea gulls glaring
Dipping under buoys
Evading feathered bombs
Swerving minnow fins blink
A glittery shadow
A sweeping box step swish
Which pauses as the tide recedes
To remember her only line:
I do this dance for me
Washing Up
So it’s been quite a while since I’ve posted…but here is a poem which somewhat connects to an earlier one I wrote, but has quite a different tone. Anyway, hope you enjoy
Washing up
By R. Marie Gordon
Amoeba floating
Gargling salty waves
Watching sweet O2
Slip from slimy cell’s
Invisible eyes
Feeling proximity
In a gasping glob
Imagining breath
Inside her green brain
Absent spotty eyes
Gaze at fluid lungs
Swallowing seaweed
Strands of thick sand which
Weave through hollow tubes
Opening eyelids
Dotted lenses seep
Wishywashy blues
Tiny eyes which feel
But do not believe
In their own blindness
Spots which atrophy
Into their blue gaze
Until no green is left
Until the threads twist
And she is the sea’s
Simple floating speck
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