Reanimated Lavender Granola Switchblade Nun rides again.

Wednesday, February 4, 2015

Landscapers

The neighbor's lawn crew arrives, and I realize--
I am here by mistake.

I must certainly be a shadow of a more substantial me--
wearing ten pounds of clothing in the summer time,
out walking where these houses will be.

All you noisy fuckers on your riding mowers,
you are not yet here;
you are not yet born.

Other Me watches her language,
buries her babies,
scorches the muffins, drops a stitch.

For her it is not so long ago that locusts crawled these stalks of grass.
Out on the fields where this burb will rise,
the wildflowers, the pumpkin vines, the snows will pass.

A devil with a leaf blower crosses himself near the property line.
He has heard about the spirit next door--
that misplaced ghost haunting a restless future--mine.
________



25 comments:

  1. The fourth and fifth stanzas are so good, so flawless, I'm just breaking pencils. I love this, Shay.

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  2. I think I'm glad they never knew what was coming. They would have been heartbroken. This is a beautiful, thoughtful piece.

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  3. The history of past struggles so well contrasted to the noise of the burb.. That's why I prefer to move with a scythe.. maybe I can hear those voices of past, and thread gently on the graves of the past.

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  4. Beguiling and inventive--a touch of playful black humor (if you can have such a thing, I guess) mixed with more than a little undercurrent of the sinister. Beguiling and inventive stuff.

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  5. Very cool. Especially, as MZ notes, the fourth and fifth stanzas. Wowzers!

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  6. There is not as fixed a divide between past and present and future as we would suppose. Your poem certainly makes the reader reassess one's own relationship to the past.

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  7. This ends beautifully and hauntingly Shay--how easy and even comforting it is to feel like a ghost, lost on the plains of the past, but at least feeling at home.

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  8. you go so easily to places that for my mind are terra incognita

    reading your work is always a strange adventure

    and you show the grit of it

    namaste
    jzb

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  9. in case it's not glaringly obvious, that was high praise

    jzb

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  10. I like this very much. I read the title as "The Land's Capers."

    These are my favorites:

    "I must certainly be a shadow of a more substantial me"

    Stanza 4

    "For her it is not so long ago that locusts crawled"

    "the wildflowers, the pumpkin vines"

    "that misplaced ghost haunting"

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  11. you have so well shown your super sensory awareness of realities beyond this here now thing happening. Really wonderful telling of you. Hope it helped you to define yourself to yourself even more beautifully.

    I remain, Your pet Hawaiian on a cartoon island (dancing with Katy Perry's blue sharks)
    ALOHA from Honolulu
    ComfortSpiral
    <3

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  12. Awesome... gonna keep this in my pocket so I have it available as my zen time-travel place next time the neighborhood snowblowers fire up. And leaf blowers and mowers (those seem far off now, but soon enough)

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  13. Very cool juxtaposition of the times.

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  14. I am all for haunting anyone with lawn equipment--this has a beautiful mix of past/present/the real and the crazy faked--succinct and sharp. Thanks. k. (http://Manicddaily.wordpress.com)

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  15. I live in a house with history. Most of those who've slept in one particular room have experienced the presence of earlier residents who raised 6 kids here. A pleasant presence. Glad we have the positive!

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  16. no peace in suburbia. no quiet, no wildflowers, no where to bury the babies.

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  17. Love where you went, where you took me ....

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  18. Through the eyes of the ghost...this is captivating Shay!

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  19. Whoa Nelly...I like this one...spooky but very cool. The idea of the ghost from the past watching the lawnmower people was spooky enough, but the twist at the end made it double-cool-spooky:~)

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  20. Don't get me wrong I enjoy the smell of freshly mowed grass, but that racket in the morning would drive me crazy. I'm a night bird not a morning bird. Definitely wouldn't expect to see my coming either.

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  21. I love this and long some days to be in the past with less noise.

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  22. This gave me something to think about, which is awesome. The voice of this poem is pretty great, too.

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  23. only you could take "Landscapers" and riding mowers and leaf blowers and noisy fuckers and turn them into such a haunting piece, SP! love it! (aren't you glad we don't have to wear all those clothes?)

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Spirit, what do you wish to tell us?