I have been having terrible problems with this blog. It wouldn't load at all at various times during the week. Now it is probably slow loading. So please I hope you will have patience and that si why you are here. You have to refresh a couple of times to get it to load faster.
That said I am posting the last two poems written from prompts for Poem a Day on Poetic Asides by Robert Brewer. Both prompts were difficult to write about. The first is titled after a city and the other two are a love and anti love poem. Funny enough, the anti love poem was easier to write than the love poem.
Day 12
April 12, 2010
Title your poem with a city’s name
New York
You’re inside my skin with your
Neon signs and restaurant sprinkled streets
You spout from my mouth with a Brooklyn tinge
And you invade my mind with childhood memories
I’ve known you on foot and have driven past your wonders
Watched tourists gawk at places I’ve seen since childhood
Explored your waterfront and strolled through The Cloisters
Pretending I were a medieval princess wandering my abby
You are always rearranging your places
Building buildings so tall they get lost in the clouds
Stuck tight in endless rows
Bridges connect the boroughs soaring over the Hudson
And the East Rivers
Looking like necklaces with their twinkling lights at night
I could bring you to all the homes where I lived
The railroad apartment on St Johns Place in Brooklyn near my parents’ store
Our ground floor Lefrak disaster in Kew Gardens, Queens where the toilet overflowed on my mother’s beige carpet and black and white linoleum tiles
The apartment across the street in the Roger Williams with the concrete backyard
Where Flash ran away and we lived with our babies.
New York you walk with me no matter where I land
I close my eyes and your sights and smells assault me
You are my birth mother and nurturer of my soul
Your culture runs through my veins always pointing me back to you.
copyright 2010 by Barbara Ehrentreu
Day 13
April 13, 2010
Two for Tuesday: A Love Poem and Anti Love Poem
Anti Love
Why do I need you?
You are a headache shaped as a man.
I cannot be the person you wish me to be
And yet you continue to push me toward
An unwanted goal
You put your love away in a suitcase
A long time ago and threw away the key
Now all I see in your eyes are indifference
And impatience.
Those hazel eyes I once spent hours knitting
A sweater for in emerald green to match the color your
Eyes become when you wear green
Those eyes that now bore into me and hold
Recriminations instead of love
Eyes that accuse me of faux crimes made up by you.
I have grown tired of your cold face, the frowns, the
Loveless looks. Your wrath has eaten my love.
copyright 2010 by Barbara Ehrentreu
Invitation to Love
The invitation came wrapped in the shape of a young man
Whose lips were my candy and his body my playground
And I melted into him for the rest of my life.
copyright 2010 by Barbara Ehrentreu
April 13, 2010
Two for Tuesday: A Love Poem and Anti Love Poem
Anti Love
Why do I need you?
You are a headache shaped as a man.
I cannot be the person you wish me to be
And yet you continue to push me toward
An unwanted goal
You put your love away in a suitcase
A long time ago and threw away the key
Now all I see in your eyes are indifference
And impatience.
Those hazel eyes I once spent hours knitting
A sweater for in emerald green to match the color your
Eyes become when you wear green
Those eyes that now bore into me and hold
Recriminations instead of love
Eyes that accuse me of faux crimes made up by you.
I have grown tired of your cold face, the frowns, the
Loveless looks. Your wrath has eaten my love.
copyright 2010 by Barbara Ehrentreu
Invitation to Love
The invitation came wrapped in the shape of a young man
Whose lips were my candy and his body my playground
And I melted into him for the rest of my life.
copyright 2010 by Barbara Ehrentreu
