Refuse

Mom never thought
the house was clean enough.
Because it wasn't.

Dad collected newspapers
and paper scraps he might
need some day.

Piles of randomness
gathered in every corner of
every single room

waiting to be
sorted through or purged once
and for all.

She'd secretly thin
the stacks and toss the
abandoned items that

filled our garage
into the outside recycle bins
on trash day.

He'd rage when
he realized that things were
missing, even though

he couldn't tell
you what had disappeared or
how long ago.

Dad clung to
those scraps as if they
were long-held memories,

cherished moments stolen
right from his chubby hands,
clinging as tightly

as a child
holding their security blanket and
begging you to

let it go.



--

Poetic Bloomings Memoir Project: Part 3: Welcome Home

If I had a hammer ...

She was a fierce little girl
determined to tie her own shoes
and make her own way

"I can do it by myself,"
she'd declare, as if Mom and
Dad had nothing to offer

Stomping into the street in her
pink overalls, plastic hammer in hand,
ready to fix the world

--

Poetic Bloomings Memoir Project Part 2: Look what I did!

Who do you think you are, child?

Kids have a way of
Immersing themselves in the
Magic of everyday
Imagination, not
Knowing that this
Openness we think ordinary

Lives wild in our
Youth, so
Near that we
Never believe it can disappear.

Years later we will see that
Optimism challenged as the
Unknown morphs from
Newness to negativity. We 
Grow wiser, we think,

Master our own lives
And wonder why
Reality is far less
Tantilizing than
It was when 
No one was looking.
Evermore we seek the 
Zen of childhood.
 
--

Poetic Bloomings Memoir Project
PART 1 – Who do you think you are?

Back to Jack

Back to Jack

The way my father tells
it, Great-Grandpa Jack
was a lawyer in L.A.

back in the days when
the city was
really beginning to take shape.

He walked out of the
courthouse one day,
fed up with the system,

and across the street to
a construction site
and asked for a job.

He never looked back.


The way I remember it,
it was hot
where he lived. He was

frail and his head shook,
a subtle nodding,
as he smiled at me

and my little baby sister.
I squirmed, not
understanding why we were smiling

and sweating at this house.
Perhaps they knew
that death wasn't far off.

We drove away and never looked back.


I was 6 or so
when Dad whispered
to my mother in the

upstairs hallway that Great-Grandpa Jack
had passed. "What
does that mean?" I asked.

"He died. Funeral is Thursday,"
Dad said. I
wanted to go with him.

He couldn't understand why I
wanted to mourn
a man I barely knew.

Perhaps I just wanted to look back.



--

Poetic Bloomings Memoir Project
Part 8: Death, be not proud