You are what you hate
how and why you hate
where, who, and when you hate.
Hate being the prison
You are what you love
how and why you love
where, who, and when you love.
Love being the key.
You are what you imagine
how and why you imagine
where, who, and when you imagine
imagination being the horizon.
Take the key.
Open the prison.
Head for the horizon.
You are what you do.
#106
Punce a time whilst scambling
along a wendling way,
warbling nausic lingles
To parse the rhyme of day
I slivvied in a squishel
emprattling my pride
while splatlets on my nattiness
bumbled up my stride.
My peekers angled sighways
“Who bungled me?” I bay.
“Who skid this risky squishel
along my wendling way?”
T’was sillig for a second
then a brachy voice interth
“Your nausic lingles scathe me
gerroff and wendle firth.”
“Who peaches me” I gargle
“Who pratts my nausic lingles?”
but never nother slight was slewn
Twixt bramblers and bingles.
#105
“with apologies to Lewis Carroll…”
The Scathing Nausic Lingle – Part II
Within every meeting are sown seeds of parting.
Hi echoes goodbye.
Rot follows ivy as
hobbled humanity (yes, us) flees time
although accidents happen with every eccentric tick
of a clock have hope,
you’ll cry,
but eventually you’ll be happy.
Spamagram: Below lurks the bizarre spam message that I anagrammed into the poem above.
“Even though you’re any of the lucky enough choices, it comes evidently, although capture the fancy with the certain coveted by ly folks other valuable you you meet may possibly possibly well have hard times this specific problem. pre owned awnings”
#104
Find some land and some wood, build a house.
Use your heart and your brain, find a spouse.
Work when it’s light,
Sleep when it’s night,
When the weather is bad don’t go out.
Find a spade and some seeds, plant a garden.
Add a cow and some hens to the yard and
grow them some food,
they’ll do the same for you.
Get a sensible dog who will guard them.
Find the deadfalls and snags, cut wood
that will fit in your stove and burn good.
dowse a well for your water.
Raise sons and daughters.
build a cellar to hold all your food
There are other things that would be nice,
like a black and white cat to catch mice,
songs you can hum,
guitars to strum,
and books you would read more than twice.
That’s a pretty darn good life.
#101
Now take the wire in your left hand, the pliers in your right
and make a ninety degree bend not quite halfway along
rather like that bend in the road that I took
when I met your father.
Now, put down the regular pliers and pick up
the round nosed ones and twist a loop into the wire,
somewhat like the loop your arrival twisted
into our lives, perfect, symetrical,
the first full twist on a DNA strand.
Now grasp that loop with the regular pliers, hold firm,
sort of like we did when you rebelled, although you were
a decidedly reasonable child.
Now take a few wraps
around the wire, tight and close,
much like the way we’ve always been.
Now snip off the left over wire, the part left over
that needs to find another purpose, another role,
a bit like your journey into independence.
Now string your gems and pearls.
Repeat.
#99
I don’t dwell on my mistakes but they do live quite close by
and we get together often though we don’t see eye to eye.
And I tell them how they should be and they laugh at me and claim
I should go look in the mirror if I want someone to blame.
And they always come to visit at an inconvenient time
my pennance and my poison and my sentence for my crime
of trying something different and stumbling and falling
of trying to discover my vocation, my true calling.
And I’ve tried to move away but they follow me. I guess
they have a built in radar for a forwarding address.
I suppose I’ll have to learn to get along with them some day
They’re my oldest, closest friends and they just won’t go away.
#98
Budget day has come and gone, the news has turned to olds
but for one staunch Canadian it knelled a cruel death toll.
For many years he suffered from a deficiency of copper.
He alternately was the friend and bane of every shopper,
who, after lugging pounds (or kilos) of them in their pants
empty them on dressers or into piggy banks,
then find that when the register rings something fifty nine
their purse and pockets are bereft, no pennies can they find.
Devout friend to small children living close to railroad tracks,
we passed him off a million times but he always came right back.
Today we bid a fond farewell to our pseudo-copper friend.
The brave Canadian penny has met a cents-less end.
#97
Still waters may run deep
with rippling refractment.
Still waters may run deep
But often become stagnant.
No man is an island
all aloof and insular.
No man is an island
but some men are peninsular.
Faith may move a mountain,
shift it stone by stone.
Faith may move a mountain
but trust leaves it alone.
#94
Some days I think I understand what it must be like
to wake up from a coma,
groping for the past, staring into the mirror
only to see a stranger staring back.
Some days I think I understand what it must be like
to live in a foreign country,
everyone waving hands and talking gibberish
until I speak, and they stare at me, puzzled.
Some days I think I understand what it must be like
to be a sleepwalker,
restless pacer, blind seeker,
doomed to endlessly retrace a pointless journey.
Then your laughter rushes in to fill the gaps,
you smile in a language we both understand, and
the beating of your heart sings me to sleep.
#92
I
When you leave we’ll smile
and I’ll say ‘see you later’
though we know I won’t.
II
‘So long’ you call out
as if anticipating
the roads before us.
III
I bid you ‘farewell’
with no remorse or regret.
Fare thee well my friend.
#90
Linda Studley 