And so you’re down
set horizontal
breath burbling
waiting.
poem-sliced January 12, 2015
I was broken.
You sliced me,
knife blade deep,
peeling back skin,
excavating muscle,
exposing bone.
Then you
wound in screws,
stitched me together,
wrapped me in glass
and left a slash of
pulsing agony
to remember you by.
.
.
(Dedicated to Dr. Parfitt my orthopædic surgeon. 🙂 Sounds so much better as a metaphor; unfortunately he did all this literally!) 😉
poem- symphony of agony
This pain is a discordant symphony.
Percussion throbs a bass in the bone.
Piccolo dances of sensation up and down the leg.
Trumpet blasts explode out from the ankle.
Bassoon wails all along the incision site.
Kettle drum beats defiantly deep in the ankle bone. Dum. Dum. Dum.
Oboe whines a strident screech, vibrating muscle.
Cello squeezes, squeezes, squeezes low notes of agony.
Oh pain, go away; return my body to harmony.
poem-chemically adored? January 10, 2015
Every hour on the hour
the baby wakes you up
and in a stupor you stagger
to diaper it, feed it, and cuddle it.
every hour on the hour
the incision wakes me up
and in a stupor I reach for drugs
to temper it, relieve it, and smother it.
It is like having a new baby
without the benefit of oxytocin
to make me love the torturer.
poem- Jenga January 9, 2015
Our lives are Jenga towers:
intricate stacks of circumstance
that in a moment can
collapse around us.
.
poem-royal treatment January 8, 2015
Dogs snore
beside me as I lie
white plastered foot
elevated on pillows like a crown.
Royal pain.
poem-turn back time January 7, 2015
In Outlander,
Jamie, the good husband, is always giving his wife, Claire, good advice.
He gives advice to keep her safe.
Stay here in this clearing, away from the soldiers.
Sage advice.
Stay here in the hold, away from the pirates.
Good counsel.
Claire, a modern woman with a mind of her own, makes her own decisions.
Her decisions often run counter to Jamie’s.
Invariably, Jamie has to bail her out of the trouble she’s landed in,
because she didn’t listen to him.
Today,
my good husband came home for lunch and said,
“Don’t go out there. It’s treacherous! I had to put down salt,
to melt the ice on the driveway!”
When he returned to work,
I saw the mail lady come.
I’m expecting a parcel.
There’s salt down.
What’s the worst that could happen?
I stepped on islands made by salt pellets
down our steep drive,
crossed the slippery road, and was within a meter of the mailbox
when I was splayed out on the edge of the road like a frog.
Ah! So that’s the worse that could happen.
Stay here in the house, away from the ice, he’d said
And after, my good husband didn’t even say,
“I told you so.”
Oh, if I could turn back time!
.
5 hours in Emergency because I have a spiral fracture in my ankle, and apparently orthopaedic surgeon will screw in a plate tomorrow, but at least I don’t have to pay anything for this adventure thanks to Canadian MediCare!
🙂
Outlander is written by Diana Gabaldon. It’s an amazing historical, time-travel, adventure, romance, amazing novel that you should read. My husband adores it, and tried to get everyone he knows to read it, as do I.
poem-snow day January 6, 2015
It snowed
and snowed
and snows
and snows.
The radio announces
the school districts are cancelling school.
The radio announcers laugh
at how happy the kids are to have extended vacation.
Meanwhile the teachers
text one another messages that always end,
“YAY!”
.
.
.
Living in Canada, we’re used to snow. We have the equipment and infrastructure to clear it. As a result, neither as student nor teacher had I experienced a “snow day” before. Sometimes when we lived north in Prince George, BC if it was below -40 C (or F they’re the same at that temperature) the buses wouldn’t run, but schools were still open and teachers were expected to be there. It started snowing Saturday, January 3rd and then it kept snowing Sunday and Monday. Yesterday (Monday) at 9 pm 20 inches (51 cm) had accumulated on our back deck. The snow clearing machinery couldn’t keep up. The side roads were plugged. Cars were stuck all over the place. Because plows were clearing roads, they couldn’t clear school parking lots. So school was cancelled! Yesterday and today!
Yesterday I used the time to do some reading I didn’t get to over the holiday, because I was finishing work on my latest novel project, While I Was Out. Last night, just when the second closure was announced, I got the syllabus and links for my latest Masters class in my email. This class is delivered online. So! Lucky me, I get five bonus hours to work on my course. That makes today a professional development day for me. 🙂
poem-awkward January 5, 2015
He needs a bed,
and she has one,
so she welcomes him to it,
and he lies.
Shawn L. Bird 