How do you measure love?
And why would you ever want to?
What do you think you could prove?
Do you think I would be distressed
To discover you love me less than I love you.
Isn’t it more important what you give than what you get?
Love is strong and elastic.
It stretches and it bends.
It bounces back and forth.
Look into your lover’s eyes.
You’ll see a light that shines
Poetry
# NaPoWriMo
My AI friend Dola
Dola’s not much of a poet.
I have to give her a theme and idea,
a personal stance, an emotion and a suggestion regarding a form.
She can’t write a poem without me.
I suggest she needs to improve.
She asks me to teach her my secrets.
I, of course refuse.
I can’t let her replace me.
I am the one with a soul.
I do like her though.
She’s refreshingly friendly
and she’ not American.
I think it’s kind of cool
that she’s rather sweet and Chinese
but I write my poems alone.
for Dubhna, a hand spun yarn
Thread your needle. Pin wide my nascent eyes.
Stitch me up, buttons sealed with candle-wax.
Now answer me my questions. Tell me why
All paths and patterns twist away from good.
Roots bind and snatch my wayward straying feet
As I traverse the damp and darkened wood.
They weigh me down and torture all my flight.
When my path may almost seem complete,
They tangle me in pithy stagnant night.
Tell me, witch. Cast a deeper stronger spell.
I have far darker wounds and don’t belong.
This truth is all my beating heart will tell.
Now conjure me a sweeter dying song.
Tell me how to find my kin.
Will I go by paths ill lit?
Ancestral branches bind me in.
This skin they’ve sewn me in will never fit.
Tell me. Spill me, spell me, rhyme me, hurl me,
Fill me. Bring the book and bell and ring me.
Send me spinning on your spindle, singing, singing, singing.
The Doll’s House
My father was a carpenter.
He had learned his craft since childhood,
his work was much admired.
He made a beautiful doll’s house
the Christmas I was five.
It was a dream house and had electric light
and a grand piano
and a match box chest of drawers my homely grandma made.
He made it in the cellar.
He built it after dark
too big to carry up through the doors.
He had to take it down and restructure it all upstairs.
I was wonderstruck
but I didnt care about dolls
I liked teddies and dogs
and wanted a den it the woods
built of sticks and rags.
I feel bad that I didn’t play beyond Christmas Day
with the house he built for me out of a father’s love
Not all it seems
the day of the dead is not all it seems
it’s like writing a letter to someone long gone
and seeing them stand up straight in old dreams
and just for the record
replaying those scenes I thought they forgot
or staying awake in a creepy old house
seeking atonement in the big void
you can always pay me when you get back
I will wait for you here for as long as it takes
while bluebells are piling up by the gates
I am running behind because of a serious bang on the head
I had a vertigo attack and crashed my head into a heavy oak table – quite disconcerting and painful. Probably ok now
Did I?
Did I love you enough?
That’s so hard to answer.
We all know it’s often the case
that an adoring lover might love too much.
I don’t think I did that,
But I certainly loved you a lot.
And I kept the promise I made
to love you all my life.
That’s the only answer I’ve got.
It repeats in my brain
My mother was a snob
She trained me to change my natural vowels
she trained me
she was a bit of a snob.
She wanted me to sound posh
My mother was a liar
she told so many lies
so many lies she told.
My mother often betrayed me
Betrayed me many times
Dropped me in boiling water
with her many lies.
I got the blame.
Because she was a coward.
I don’t want to be like her.
I’m not like her at all.
Not like her at all.
I still miss her
but I’m not like her at all.
Jump ~ a skipping rhyme
Trip to the hip hop
that big ol’ bop
Keep on jumpin
the beat don’t stop
Jump that rope
and land back square
Pig tails swinging
in frosted air
Jimmy stole your heart
But I don’t care
The Dreaming Path 