My Rose

My roses are making their last bloom.
They fight season's end but they show no care
for it, they come on still.
Fewer flowers than first,
but the bush is much bigger and greener as if cursed
in June to look puny.
I took one two days before the first hard frost.
It sat on my table really not looking lost.
And as it opened slowly to its own fullness
winter descended with a great "OH!"
It answered in kind.

© Julianne Carlile

2010

Jumping Back Into the Nursing Uniform Pool

Image via Wikipedia

For years I walked into stores,
touching when I dared
the many colors, the pretty printed
luxury of them.
Could I have them back?
How to do it?

I could not enter too far;
I worried about being watched--
by whom, I don't know.
I just wanted to walk in their presence,
to pretend for just a while that I had
a real right to covet them...

I would be dragged away looking back,
hating I was leaving...but I
just want to stay here...
I knew I would dream of
for many long nights:
tops.

Volunteering got me
headed back to my dream--
catalog in hand,
I wander the online store;
treasures are everywhere.
I pick this and this and this.
My shopping is complete,

confirmed by 78 emails?

© Julianne Carlile

2010

Southern Illinois

How many times my father took us to his home,
the land of his ancestors and of his birth,
so we could get in touch with our past and his:
to love a life gone.
And we saw land more dry and dusty than sand,
filled with not much culture, but farms,
and people as dry and dusty as the land,
as if they rose from it.
Now I go down to the place that he came from,
alone to all the places that he loved,
and find that things have not really changed so much,
except that he's not there.
The family reunion's filled with all his kin.
Young ones keep coming and old ones keep going.
The cemetery keeps growing with those he loved--
the ground cries for him.

© Julianne Carlile

Snot

Image via Wikipedia

I lie awake in my bed
in  between short dozes,
fighting with snot:

dripping from my nose to my ear,

no decongestant, no Nyquil will
absorb this never ending flow--
drowning in snot.

Fourteen blows and it's still there,
surrounded by tissues everywhere--
suffocating in snot.

My ears are ringing; I'm all alone,
no one can see me, no one will come--
my only friend: snot.

© Julianne Carlile

1993

Alas for Human Dignity

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Alas for human dignity:
it may be strong,
and try with all its might,
but if it's ever broken,
it loses all its light.

© Julianne Carlile

1970

Dignity

Image by rcameraw via Flickr

I was happy until today
my father died in a coma the way
he did...but no longer.
He went without fanfare of any kind,
just like a clock winding down
or a leaf drying up and blowing away.
It seems so insulting,
so lacking in dignity,
after suffering such mortal pain,
to go like water, emptying,
running, down a drain.

© Julianne Carlile

2010

Not From Below

Image via Wikipedia

Memory is a strange thing: It fills the mind
with things that couldn't be,
and yet it seems so real that only heaven
wishes for me.

It's a very hard thing to think or believe;
it's like a TV show,
remembering visits from an angel friend
(not from below).

© Julianne Carlile

2010

We'd Coldly Haunt

Eclipse of the Sun by Saturn (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

I do not want the world to end;
that's all I want.
If there are problems, would you mend?
It's scary to look at earth's end.
The universe would have to flaunt
a decent place for us to go,
and many people do not want
to find themselves in Saturn's flow--
we'd coldly haunt.

© Julianne Carlile

2010

I Live On a Well-Traveled Road

Image via Wikipedia

I live where I'm displayed along
a road where many go.
The traffic's loud as a rock song--
my windows see the show.

I hate to go in front of it,
the building where I live.
The ambiance out there is lit
with massive hurt to give.

All feeling drains out of my heart
when I am safe inside,
and I feel exposed and apart
like the sand at low tide.

© Julianne Carlile

2010

A Poem About How Much I Like Emily Dickinson's

Image via Wikipedia

I wanted to write a poem as light as
her one from yesterday (IX).
It's good for the heart not to have to look
at troubles every day.

I want to have the same effect as she:
to not affect the spirit,
But leave it at the end of the day
as if you'd never read it.

It's pleasing the way she uses nature
to describe human feelings;
she creates a pretty picture that
I would love to go in.

Her poem is so sweet I hope it was read.
I'm writing against the clock.
On me it had the effect she'd want:
there are riches inside to unlock.

© Julianne Carlile

2010

Just Food Waiting

I will not swim in the ocean.
I don't know how they do.
And the surfers who love it to death,
I think they are crazy too.

I've seen tapes on TV--too bad:
(great whites are there)
and people swimming nearby happily stupid--
no cares!

How to they do it these brave, brave people,
to ignore the fact that they are
just food waiting to be eaten by:
(forget it, I'm in my car).

© Julianne Carlile


2010

There Was An Old Lady Named Sadie

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There was an old lady named Sadie,
who rode on a mule down to Hades,
and when she got there,
she said with a glare,
"Now where is my god damned Mercedes?"

© Julianne Carlile

2010

You Did Not Remember

Image via Wikipedia

You did not remember that once
you stared so my head almost exploded
from the intensity, from the meaning--
your look a gun cocked and fully loaded.

I remembered, but since I was the only one,
it's not a memory I fondly kept:
I threw it out in the back forty where
the coyote and deer and foxes wept.

© Julianne Carlile

2010

The Pig Fetus

I don't think I've ever seen anything so sad
as a pig fetus,
floating in formaldehyde,
eyes tightly shut to the possibilities:
the desertion by the parents--
never pretty;
the children's names;
the sibilant siblings;
the sometime friends;
the always lovers;
the pressures of pig politics;
the pursuit of pleasure
and the avoidance of pain--
it was as if God had decided
even this was too good for him.

© Julianne Carlile

1994

The One

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He was all I ever wanted,
through years of looking sad;
I looked and looked to find the one
who'd fit the dreams I had.

I thought that I had found him,
though it's not his to know,
that after seeing all he had
there was more warmth in snow.

© Julianne Carlile

2010