Tag Archives: poetry slam

February 10, 2017 · 6:45 am

#FlashFictionFriday: In February the House is Smaller

white-cat-470px-franz_marc_013

In February the house is smaller,

Shrinking to just my office, nearer the furnace.

The Room of Shame, decorated with

Files and dusty computers, books, and cat fur,

From Yum Yum the Cat, dead these seven years.

She was old, even in cat years, and

This was her domain.

 

Like Jacob Marley and Scrooge’s knocker,

Her ghost inhabits this room,

Lurking behind boxes filled with books

And lit by the glow of the computer’s screen.

Little tufts of white fur hiding in places

The vacuum can’t reach,

A dusty memory keeping me company as I

Write novels that may or may not be read.

 

Four inches of snow fell last night, wet and heavy with water

And then froze, solid.

An iceberg enshrouded my bungalow, overtook my mini-van,

And weighs heavily on the rosemary shrubs.

And I am safe and warm inside this much smaller house

With my books and my computer,

And the ghost of my feline, past.

Attributions:

In February the House is Smaller,  Copyright © 2017 Connie J Jasperson, All rights reserved

Cat on Yellow Pillow, Franz Marc 1912 [Public domain or Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons

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February 12, 2016 · 6:45 am

#FlashFictionFriday: Laundry Day Blues

Politics and fashion may come and go, but laundry is eternal. I originally wrote this poem in 1996 as a bit of joke-on-me, when I was living in Olympia and working two jobs, one of which was 2-hour commute every day. I had no washing machine. My children and I decided that the $20.00 every two weeks I had budgeted for the laundromat would be better spent on a movie matinee or making a day trip to picnic by the ocean.

Thus, laundry was done in my bathtub and hung on lines to dry. My neighbors thought I was nuts.

Nowadays I have that miracle of modern technology, the washing machine, and still, I resent being taken from my book just to sort, wash, fold, and put away clothes.

vi edgewise words inn, the laundry meme

LAUNDRY DAY BLUES

I’d love to claim I’m reading

the best book of the year.

I’d love to swear I’ve read it

but laundry day is here.

clothespin tiny

My book rests by the sofa

tempting and serene.

But I’ve a pile of laundry

to somehow sort and clean.

clothespin tiny

The cover art is lovely

with elves and all their kin.

It’s by my favorite author–

would reading be a sin?

clothespin tiny

Alas for me it would be

for socks don’t wash themselves.

When the task is finished.

I’ll run off with my elves.

Laundry Day Blues © Connie J. Jasperson 2016

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January 1, 2016 · 6:45 am

#flashficFriday: New Years Eve at The Drunken Sasquatch

Bloody Bill reigns from behind his bar

Over the rowdy throng.

And I shall nurse my cider mulled

And sometimes sing along.

 

The Leprechaun plays Hendrix, loud,

The vampire sings the blues.

The dragon racks the billiard balls,

The Reaper chalks his cue.

 

We’re having such a lively time

The floorboards sway and heave.

The Drunken Sasquatch is the place

To spend a New Year ’s Eve.

796px-Louis_Ducros_(circle)_Pifferari_in_einer_römischen_Taverne

In a Roman Tavern, Louis Ducros Piffari (via Wikimedia Commons)

“New Years Eve at The Drunken Sasquatch” © Connie J. Jasperson 2016 All Rights Reserved

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December 18, 2015 · 6:45 am

#FlashFic Friday: A Million Lights

30_Doradus,_Tarantula_Nebula

Tarantula Nebula, Hubble Image courtesy NASA and Wikimedia Commons (PD)

A Million Lights

A million lights above me

Candles in the sky

Beacons in the dark of night

Cannot tell me why.

 

This fragile rock we live on

Trivial and lone

A home so small and simple

The only one we own.

 

Many voices on the wind

Striving to be heard

No matter how you dress us up

We’re petty and absurd.

 

A million lights above me

Darkness here below

Can’t we all just get along?

We’ve nowhere else to go.

A Million Lights © Connie J. Jasperson 2015, All Rights Reserved

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November 13, 2015 · 6:45 am

#FlashficFriday: Silence and Love #FreeVerse

Paul Cornoyer Winter twilight along Central Park

Silence and Love

There was a time when we talked,

A time when words connected us the way kisses join lovers.

You mind amazed me as much as your body did

And I knew them both better than I knew my own.

You still amaze me but years have wedged silence between us.

Not the stony silence of anger or hurt—thank god, not that.

 

It is the silence of comfortableness,

The soundless speech of two old people

who sometimes read each other’s minds.

The quiet sharing of a back porch in the summer.

Side-by-side on a second-hand settee with a blue cushion,

You reach for my hand, and I am swept away.

 

Now when we speak, it is a more cerebral sharing,

Mind to mind, heart to heart,

Two old people still in love, but with little to say.

Did we say it all in the young wild days?

Did we spend our words the way we spent our kisses?

If so, then many more remain, waiting to pass between us.

 

No. We were learning each other, discovering truths

and facing our self-deceptions.

Now it is a calm sharing.

I still know your mind and your body

and love them better than my own.

I still love it when you hold my hand.

 

And when we speak it means something.

And when we kiss it means something.

And when we hold hands in the silence

Of an evening on a back porch,

Side-by-side on a second-hand settee with a blue cushion,

It means everything.

“Silence and Love” © Connie J. Jasperson 2015, All Rights Reserved

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