Carrie Does Poems: Recent Episodes
Carrie Jones Books
Sometimes when I read a poem, Right after, I have to find another and plunge Down between its lines, a better kind of baptism, Just to get clean. I run out of breath, sometimes. Sometimes, I meet myself in the spaces.
The Poet's Faceby Carrie JonesI saw the poet’s face for the first time Today. It wasn’t what I expected, More Springsteen than Jesus. His head tilted To the side like a dog when it just can’t Figure out what her humans are trying To say. His brow was heavy, eyes too sad, Bags beneath them … Continue reading "I Saw a Poet’s Face Today"
JOURNEYS Carrie Jones We both dreamt of journeys last night. He rode a Harley, but didn’t know the shifting pattern, Told the others he was with he’d find it on his phone and catch up. I drove with my long-dead dad, talking. He was taking me to his house To meet his girlfriend who is … Continue reading "Journeys, a poem"
Kindness is So Soft, a poem While I sat with my little on the green grassBy the ocean and tried to work through my broken becauseOf yet another guy accusing me of playing games,A man with the wrinkles and curved back failed to negotiateThe turn and his Subaru hit the Peterbilt, damaging both a littleAs … Continue reading "KINDNESS IS SO SOFT"
SHOUT OUT! The music we’ve clipped and shortened in this podcast is awesome and is made available through the Creative Commons License. Here’s a link to that and the artist’s website. Who is this artist and what is this song? It’s “Summer Spliff” by Broke For Free. WE HAVE EXTRA CONTENT ALL ABOUT LIVING HAPPY OVER … Continue reading "Pits, a poem"
THE EFFORT by Carrie Jones My grandmothers—all dead— Wander through my head in couplets Though I need to make a pie today, For dinner, and it just feels like so much effort, So much effort just to get me To this day, to this pie making. My nana was strong: gardener, hospital volunteer, Bridge player, … Continue reading "THE EFFORT – a poem about grandmothers and pie"
I wrote a poem. I changed the title 8,000 times and I’m not happy with the amounts of “Her” in it, but here it is.
So, in 2024, I’m trying (goal here) to write a poem every workday and share one of these drafts every week. I’m not sure how I’ll do. The reason for this is because I am afraid of the sound of my voice (past bullying and current comparisons to a Muppet), and I don’t want to … Continue reading "Try To Understand the Cat"
So, in 2024, I’m trying (goal here) to write a poem every workday and share one of these drafts every week. I’m not sure how I’ll do. The reason for this is because I am afraid of the sound of my voice (past bullying and current comparisons to a Muppet), and I don’t want to … Continue reading "LET IT BE, for Marge Piercy"
A poem You can hear the rain in the background. Apologies. It is impressively stormy here today.
I wrote a poem this morning. You can hear Sparty snoring in the background. He has been sick so I couldn’t bear to move him. Apologies for that. THE STORY'S STRUCTURE The beginning is here. You set up what might happen. You show all the character’s flaws, What they need to learn, the lie they … Continue reading "The Story’s Structure"
Hi! This year (2023), I'm continuing my quest to share a poem on my blog and podcast and read it aloud. It's all a part of my quest to be brave and apparently the things that I'm scared about still include:
- My spoken voice
- My raw poems.
Thanks for being here with me and cheering me on, and I hope that you can become braver this year, too!
https://livinghappy.substack.com/
Hi! This year (2023), I'm continuing my quest to share a poem on my blog and podcast and read it aloud. It's all a part of my quest to be brave and apparently the things that I'm scared about still include:
- My spoken voice
- My raw poems.
Thanks for being here with me and cheering me on, and I hope that you can become braver this year, too!
Hi! This year (2023), I'm continuing my quest to share a poem on my blog and podcast and read it aloud. It's all a part of my quest to be brave and apparently the things that I'm scared about still include:
- My spoken voice
- My raw poems.
Thanks for being here with me and cheering me on, and I hope that you can become braver this year, too!
Hi! This year (2023), I'm continuing my quest to share a poem on my blog and podcast and read it aloud. It's all a part of my quest to be brave and apparently the things that I'm scared about still include:
- My spoken voice
- My raw poems.
Thanks for being here with me and cheering me on, and I hope that you can become braver this year, too!
Hey, thanks for listening to Carrie Does Poems.
The music you hear is made available through the creative commons and it’s a bit of a shortened track from the fantastic Eric Van der Westen and the track is called "A Feather" and off the album The Crown Lobster Trilogy.
Hi! This year (2023), I'm continuing my quest to share a poem on my blog and podcast and read it aloud. It's all a part of my quest to be brave and apparently the things that I'm scared about still include:
- My spoken voice
- My raw poems.
Thanks for being here with me and cheering me on, and I hope that you can become braver this year, too!
Hey, thanks for listening to Carrie Does Poems.
The music you hear is made available through the creative commons and it’s a bit of a shortened track from the fantastic Eric Van der Westen and the track is called "A Feather" and off the album The Crown Lobster Trilogy.
Hi! This year (2023), I'm continuing my quest to share a poem on my blog and podcast and read it aloud. It's all a part of my quest to be brave and apparently the things that I'm scared about still include:
- My spoken voice
- My raw poems.
Thanks for being here with me and cheering me on, and I hope that you can become braver this year, too!
Hey, thanks for listening to Carrie Does Poems.
The music you hear is made available through the creative commons and it’s a bit of a shortened track from the fantastic Eric Van der Westen and the track is called "A Feather" and off the album The Crown Lobster Trilogy.
Hey, thanks for listening to Carrie Does Poems.
The music you hear is made available through the creative commons and it’s a bit of a shortened track from the fantastic Eric Van der Westen and the track is called "A Feather" and off the album The Crown Lobster Trilogy.
Hi! This year (2023), I'm continuing my quest to share a poem on my blog and podcast and read it aloud. It's all a part of my quest to be brave and apparently the things that I'm scared about still include:
- My spoken voice
- My raw poems.
Thanks for being here with me and cheering me on, and I hope that you can become braver this year, too!
Hey, thanks for listening to Carrie Does Poems.
The music you hear is made available through the creative commons and it’s a bit of a shortened track from the fantastic Eric Van der Westen and the track is called "A Feather" and off the album The Crown Lobster Trilogy.
Just so you all know, if my poem is about a relationship, it might not be about my own current relationship or even about me.
Hey, thanks for listening to Carrie Does Poems.
The music you hear is made available through the creative commons and it’s a bit of a shortened track from the fantastic Eric Van der Westen and the track is called "A Feather" and off the album The Crown Lobster Trilogy.
Hi! This year (2023), I'm continuing my quest to share a poem on my blog and podcast and read it aloud. It's all a part of my quest to be brave and apparently the things that I'm scared about still include:
- My spoken voice
- My raw poems.
Thanks for being here with me and cheering me on, and I hope that you can become braver this year, too!
Hey, thanks for listening to Carrie Does Poems.
The music you hear is made available through the creative commons and it’s a bit of a shortened track from the fantastic Eric Van der Westen and the track is called "A Feather" and off the album The Crown Lobster Trilogy.
I say all that, but sometimes I feature a Grammy Barnard Poem. Grammy Barnard died at the age of 102 and I was the youngest child by a lot of her youngest child, so in my head she was always older. I think she was in her 70s when I was born.
These poems make me feel a bit closer to her, allow me to imagine her in her 30s. And I like being able to do that. So, here's a Grammy Barnard poem.
Hey, thanks for listening to Carrie Does Poems.
The music you hear is made available through the creative commons and it’s a bit of a shortened track from the fantastic Eric Van der Westen and the track is called "A Feather" and off the album The Crown Lobster Trilogy.
Hi! This year (2023), I'm continuing my quest to share a poem on my blog and podcast and read it aloud. It's all a part of my quest to be brave and apparently the things that I'm scared about still include:
- My spoken voice
- My raw poems.
Thanks for being here with me and cheering me on, and I hope that you can become braver this year, too!
Hey, thanks for listening to Carrie Does Poems.
The music you hear is made available through the creative commons and it’s a bit of a shortened track from the fantastic Eric Van der Westen and the track is called "A Feather" and off the album The Crown Lobster Trilogy.
Hey, thanks for listening to Carrie Does Poems.
The music you hear is made available through the creative commons and it’s a bit of a shortened track from the fantastic Eric Van der Westen and the track is called "A Feather" and off the album The Crown Lobster Trilogy.
Hi! This year (2022), I've decided to share a poem on my blog and podcast and read it aloud. It's all a part of my quest to be brave and apparently the things that I'm scared about still include:
- My spoken voice
- My raw poems.
Thanks for being here with me and cheering me on, and I hope that you can become braver this year, too!
Hey, thanks for listening to Carrie Does Poems.
The music you hear is made available through the creative commons and it’s a bit of a shortened track from the fantastic Eric Van der Westen and the track is called "A Feather" and off the album The Crown Lobster Trilogy.
https://freemusicarchive.org/music/eric-van-der-westen/the-crown-lobster-trilogy-selection
Hi! This year (2022), I've decided to share a poem on my blog and podcast and read it aloud. It's all a part of my quest to be brave and apparently the things that I'm scared about still include:
- My spoken voice
- My raw poems.
Thanks for being here with me and cheering me on, and I hope that you can become braver this year, too!
Hey, thanks for listening to Carrie Does Poems.
The music you hear is made available through the creative commons and it’s a bit of a shortened track from the fantastic Eric Van der Westen and the track is called "A Feather" and off the album The Crown Lobster Trilogy.
https://freemusicarchive.org/music/eric-van-der-westen/the-crown-lobster-trilogy-selection
Here's this week's poem.
Hey, thanks for listening to Carrie Does Poems.
The music you hear is made available through the creative commons and it’s a bit of a shortened track from the fantastic Eric Van der Westen and the track is called "A Feather" and off the album The Crown Lobster Trilogy.
https://freemusicarchive.org/music/eric-van-der-westen/the-crown-lobster-trilogy-selection
It's another poem by Grammy Barnard. She was well into her seventies when I was born and lived to be over 100. She wrote a lot of poems about people being unfaithful. Poor Grammy.
Here you go!
Hey, thanks for listening to Carrie Does Poems.
The music you hear is made available through the creative commons and it’s a bit of a shortened track from the fantastic Eric Van der Westen and the track is called "A Feather" and off the album The Crown Lobster Trilogy.
https://freemusicarchive.org/music/eric-van-der-westen/the-crown-lobster-trilogy-selection
A poem
Happy Halloween!
Hey, thanks for listening to Carrie Does Poems.
The music you hear is made available through the creative commons and it’s a bit of a shortened track from the fantastic Eric Van der Westen and the track is called "A Feather" and off the album The Crown Lobster Trilogy.
https://freemusicarchive.org/music/eric-van-der-westen/the-crown-lobster-trilogy-selection
Hey, thanks for listening to Carrie Does Poems. These podcasts and more writing tips are at Carrie’s website, carriejonesbooks.blog. There’s also a donation button there. Even a dollar inspires a happy dance in Carrie, so thank you for your support.
The music you hear is made available through the creative commons and it’s a bit of a shortened track from the fantastic Eric Van der Westen and the track is called "A Feather" and off the album The Crown Lobster Trilogy.
https://freemusicarchive.org/music/eric-van-der-westen/the-crown-lobster-trilogy-selection
Hey, thanks for listening to Carrie Does Poems. These podcasts and more writing tips are at Carrie’s website, carriejonesbooks.blog. There’s also a donation button there. Even a dollar inspires a happy dance in Carrie, so thank you for your support.
The music you hear is made available through the creative commons and it’s a bit of a shortened track from the fantastic Eric Van der Westen and the track is called "A Feather" and off the album The Crown Lobster Trilogy.
https://freemusicarchive.org/music/eric-van-der-westen/the-crown-lobster-trilogy-selection
Hey, thanks for listening to Carrie Does Poems. These podcasts and more writing tips are at Carrie’s website, carriejonesbooks.blog. There’s also a donation button there. Even a dollar inspires a happy dance in Carrie, so thank you for your support.
The music you hear is made available through the creative commons and it’s a bit of a shortened track from the fantastic Eric Van der Westen and the track is called "A Feather" and off the album The Crown Lobster Trilogy.
https://freemusicarchive.org/music/eric-van-der-westen/the-crown-lobster-trilogy-selection
Hey, thanks for listening to Carrie Does Poems. These podcasts and more writing tips are at Carrie’s website, carriejonesbooks.blog. There’s also a donation button there. Even a dollar inspires a happy dance in Carrie, so thank you for your support.
The music you hear is made available through the creative commons and it’s a bit of a shortened track from the fantastic Eric Van der Westen and the track is called "A Feather" and off the album The Crown Lobster Trilogy.
https://freemusicarchive.org/music/eric-van-der-westen/the-crown-lobster-trilogy-selection
Hi! This year (2022), I've decided to share a poem on my blog and podcast and read it aloud. It's all a part of my quest to be brave and apparently the things that I'm scared about still include:
- My spoken voice
- My raw poems.
Thanks for being here with me and cheering me on, and I hope that you can become braver this year, too!
Hey, thanks for listening to Carrie Does Poems. These podcasts and more writing tips are at Carrie’s website, carriejonesbooks.blog. There’s also a donation button there. Even a dollar inspires a happy dance in Carrie, so thank you for your support.
The music you hear is made available through the creative commons and it’s a bit of a shortened track from the fantastic Eric Van der Westen and the track is called "A Feather" and off the album The Crown Lobster Trilogy.
https://freemusicarchive.org/music/eric-van-der-westen/the-crown-lobster-trilogy-selection
One of my grandmothers painted and wrote poems when she wasn't busy raising her three children.
This is one of her poems.
Grammy Barnard Poem #3
Melancholy, May 19, 1927
Cold and dark desolation’s arms
Embrace my heart and sound alarms
Of fearful, loveless days to be endured
To which my heart of late has become inured.
Where may I flee from these haunting visions
And from my constant indecisions?
Go I shall, and in my misery hide
In a lonely forgotten place where I’ll reside,
I’ll think of all the vows men make
And how quickly too they can forsake.
Hey, thanks for listening to Carrie Does Poems. These podcasts and more writing tips are at Carrie’s website, carriejonesbooks.blog. There’s also a donation button there. Even a dollar inspires a happy dance in Carrie, so thank you for your support.
The music you hear is made available through the creative commons and it’s a bit of a shortened track from the fantastic Eric Van der Westen and the track is called "A Feather" and off the album The Crown Lobster Trilogy.
https://freemusicarchive.org/music/eric-van-der-westen/the-crown-lobster-trilogy-selection
Hey, thanks for listening to Carrie Does Poems. These podcasts and more writing tips are at Carrie’s website, carriejonesbooks.blog. There’s also a donation button there. Even a dollar inspires a happy dance in Carrie, so thank you for your support.
The music you hear is made available through the creative commons and it’s a bit of a shortened track from the fantastic Eric Van der Westen and the track is called "A Feather" and off the album The Crown Lobster Trilogy.
https://freemusicarchive.org/music/eric-van-der-westen/the-crown-lobster-trilogy-selection
"FINDING THE STORIES"
What does it mean to find story when you are the one who is oppressed?
What does it mean to find story when you are the one who is barely surviving in your own life?
When your mother cries to sleep every night because she can’t find a job, pay bills, fix the furnace. When the food she feeds you comes from the government line even though she’s too proud for that, too smart for that, too strong?
What does it mean to find a story full of magic when you are dying for magic in your own life?
When your body doesn’t work the way other kids’ bodies work? When your body gets used in ways it is not supposed to be used?
When people make fun of your clothes, your sex, your gender, the way you say your s’s, the shade of your skin, the curl in your hair, your last name, your first name, the way you see letters backwards, the way you see or don’t see at all, the way you learn?
What does it mean when there are these stories out there – these magical truths – these enchanted people and places when you are just barely managing to survive?
It means there are tiny life lines.
It means there are little pieces of help.
Story is powerful. We’ve know that for forever.
Books are burned and banned because people fear them.
Books are powerful because they are information wrapped up in empathy, they are reflections of our world as it is, how it was and how it could--it should-- be.
And people fear that.
Instead of coming together to celebrate the enchanted, they attack it, call it evil, ban the ideas that do not match their own and say that they are doing what?
Protecting us, the children, the enchanted, the country, the people, the stories.
We do not need that kind of protection.
Hey, thanks for listening to Carrie Does Poems. These podcasts and more writing tips are at Carrie’s website, carriejonesbooks.blog. There’s also a donation button there. Even a dollar inspires a happy dance in Carrie, so thank you for your support.
The music you hear is made available through the creative commons and it’s a bit of a shortened track from the fantastic Eric Van der Westen and the track is called "A Feather" and off the album The Crown Lobster Trilogy.
https://freemusicarchive.org/music/eric-van-der-westen/the-crown-lobster-trilogy-selection
Hi! This year (2022), I've decided to share a poem on my blog and podcast and read it aloud. It's all a part of my quest to be brave and apparently the things that I'm scared about still include:
- My spoken voice
- My raw poems.
Thanks for being here with me and cheering me on, and I hope that you can become braver this year, too!
Hey, thanks for listening to Carrie Does Poems. These podcasts and more writing tips are at Carrie’s website, carriejonesbooks.blog. There’s also a donation button there. Even a dollar inspires a happy dance in Carrie, so thank you for your support.
The music you hear is made available through the creative commons and it’s a bit of a shortened track from the fantastic Eric Van der Westen and the track is called "A Feather" and off the album The Crown Lobster Trilogy.
https://freemusicarchive.org/music/eric-van-der-westen/the-crown-lobster-trilogy-selection
Hi! This year (2022), I've decided to share a poem on my blog and podcast and read it aloud. It's all a part of my quest to be brave and apparently the things that I'm scared about still include:
- My spoken voice
- My raw poems.
Thanks for being here with me and cheering me on, and I hope that you can become braver this year, too!
Hey, thanks for listening to Carrie Does Poems. These podcasts and more writing tips are at Carrie’s website, carriejonesbooks.blog. There’s also a donation button there. Even a dollar inspires a happy dance in Carrie, so thank you for your support.
The music you hear is made available through the creative commons and it’s a bit of a shortened track from the fantastic Eric Van der Westen and the track is called "A Feather" and off the album The Crown Lobster Trilogy.
https://freemusicarchive.org/music/eric-van-der-westen/the-crown-lobster-trilogy-selection
Hi! This year (2022), I've decided to share a poem on my blog and podcast and read it aloud. It's all a part of my quest to be brave and apparently the things that I'm scared about still include:
- My spoken voice
- My raw poems.
Thanks for being here with me and cheering me on, and I hope that you can become braver this year, too!
The workers at
the Hole in the Wall
catalogue their friends’ losses
to the group of diners
that come in and sit
at a high table.
One friend has lost
a porch. Another lost
their oyster building. Another
lost half their roof. Someone lost a car
to a big tree.
Someone and someone
else and someone else
lost their homes.
The hurricane just took their entire worlds.
Another. Another. Another.
Hey, thanks for listening to Carrie Does Poems. These podcasts and more writing tips are at Carrie’s website, carriejonesbooks.blog. There’s also a donation button there. Even a dollar inspires a happy dance in Carrie, so thank you for your support.
The music you hear is made available through the creative commons and it’s a bit of a shortened track from the fantastic Eric Van der Westen and the track is called "A Feather" and off the album The Crown Lobster Trilogy.
https://freemusicarchive.org/music/eric-van-der-westen/the-crown-lobster-trilogy-selection
Hi! This year (2022), I've decided to share a poem on my blog and podcast and read it aloud. It's all a part of my quest to be brave and apparently the things that I'm scared about still include:
- My spoken voice
- My raw poems.
Thanks for being here with me and cheering me on, and I hope that you can become braver this year, too!
Hey, thanks for listening to Carrie Does Poems. These podcasts and more writing tips are at Carrie’s website, carriejonesbooks.blog. There’s also a donation button there. Even a dollar inspires a happy dance in Carrie, so thank you for your support.
The music you hear is made available through the creative commons and it’s a bit of a shortened track from the fantastic Eric Van der Westen and the track is called "A Feather" and off the album The Crown Lobster Trilogy.
While Carrie only posts poems weekly here, she has them (in written form) almost every other weekday over on Medium. You should check it out!
https://freemusicarchive.org/music/eric-van-der-westen/the-crown-lobster-trilogy-selection
Hi! This year (2022), I've decided to share a poem on my blog and podcast and read it aloud. It's all a part of my quest to be brave and apparently the things that I'm scared about still include:
- My spoken voice
- My raw poems.
Thanks for being here with me and cheering me on, and I hope that you can become braver this year, too!
Hey, thanks for listening to Carrie Does Poems. These podcasts and more writing tips are at Carrie’s website, carriejonesbooks.blog. There’s also a donation button there. Even a dollar inspires a happy dance in Carrie, so thank you for your support.
The music you hear is made available through the creative commons and it’s a bit of a shortened track from the fantastic Eric Van der Westen and the track is called "A Feather" and off the album The Crown Lobster Trilogy.
While Carrie only posts poems weekly here, she has them (in written form) almost every other weekday over on Medium. You should check it out!
https://freemusicarchive.org/music/eric-van-der-westen/the-crown-lobster-trilogy-selection
Hi! This year (2022), I've decided to share a poem on my blog and podcast and read it aloud. It's all a part of my quest to be brave and apparently the things that I'm scared about still include:
- My spoken voice
- My raw poems.
Thanks for being here with me and cheering me on, and I hope that you can become braver this year, too!
"Hairy Arms" for Sarah
At McKelvie Middle School, my friend, complained about the dark hair on her arms, comparing her arms to mine and another friend's.
We sat outside on the field in seventh grade, lined up, ready for our early man unit and she was almost crying. She hated her hairy arms, called them names.
And when I told her
how beautiful she was (easily the prettiest girl in our grade), she sighed and said, “You’ll never have to deal with arms like these.”
And she was right.
DNA is a messy thing and so are family histories.
Mine is just as messy as everyone else’s.
My hairless arms tell secrets
about paternity my mom didn't
want anyone to know.
The poet is meant to create sense from life, resonance. Linkages.
My poems are messy things. Black lines and swoops on white spaces.
But maybe they can be beautiful like the hair on Sarah's arms.
Hey, thanks for listening to Carrie Does Poems. These podcasts and more writing tips are at Carrie’s website, carriejonesbooks.blog. There’s also a donation button there. Even a dollar inspires a happy dance in Carrie, so thank you for your support.
The music you hear is made available through the creative commons and it’s a bit of a shortened track from the fantastic Eric Van der Westen and the track is called "A Feather" and off the album The Crown Lobster Trilogy.
While Carrie only posts poems weekly here, she has them (in written form) almost every other weekday over on Medium. You should check it out!
https://freemusicarchive.org/music/eric-van-der-westen/the-crown-lobster-trilogy-selection
Hi! This year (2022), I've decided to share a poem on my blog and podcast and read it aloud. It's all a part of my quest to be brave and apparently the things that I'm scared about still include:
- My spoken voice
- My raw poems.
Thanks for being here with me and cheering me on, and I hope that you can become braver this year, too!
POLARITIES
If I were a man, would I take up all the space? I am a woman. I try to claim spaces. None are mine.
If I were a man, would I shout into the world? I am a woman. I sometimes wonder what it is to not whisper.
If I were a man, would I tell everyone where they should be? I am a woman. I sometimes wonder what it is to have a place.
Hey, thanks for listening to Carrie Does Poems. These podcasts and more writing tips are at Carrie’s website, carriejonesbooks.blog. There’s also a donation button there. Even a dollar inspires a happy dance in Carrie, so thank you for your support.
The music you hear is made available through the creative commons and it’s a bit of a shortened track from the fantastic Eric Van der Westen and the track is called "A Feather" and off the album The Crown Lobster Trilogy.
While Carrie only posts poems weekly here, she has them (in written form) almost every other weekday over on Medium. You should check it out!
https://freemusicarchive.org/music/eric-van-der-westen/the-crown-lobster-trilogy-selection
Imprinted
The tight curls on her lover’s neck? Lord studied them. Made litanies to survive.
Whitman, of course, sang of electric bodies and armies he loved, of girth.
Chen Chen focused on ice cream Connoisseurs, jigglypuffys and wigglytuffs.
Donika Kelly spoke of small animals Knowing thresholds of each other, meeting.
Meeting at those thresholds Litanies of survival Bodies electric and connoisseurs.
And me? I stare at a blank page and have no language;
I stare at a blank life and wonder.
We are still “imprinted with fear,” Aren’t we? Refugees of our own selves,
Starving for bronze plaques and sonnets With those measured line and expected beats Telling us it is safe: it is safe, come in.
Hey, thanks for listening to Carrie Does Poems. These podcasts and more writing tips are at Carrie’s website, carriejonesbooks.blog. There’s also a donation button there. Even a dollar inspires a happy dance in Carrie, so thank you for your support.
The music you hear is made available through the creative commons and it’s a bit of a shortened track from the fantastic Eric Van der Westen and the track is called "A Feather" and off the album The Crown Lobster Trilogy.
While Carrie only posts poems weekly here, she has them (in written form) almost every other weekday over on Medium. You should check it out!
https://freemusicarchive.org/music/eric-van-der-westen/the-crown-lobster-trilogy-selection
Hi! This year (2022), I've decided to share a poem on my blog and podcast and read it aloud. It's all a part of my quest to be brave and apparently the things that I'm scared about still include:
- My spoken voice
- My raw poems.
Thanks for being here with me and cheering me on, and I hope that you can become braver this year, too!
What kind of person does that?
A person person.
What kind of person does that though, really?
A person.
That’s not an answer. That’s a nothing answer.
It’s just an answer you don’t want to hear.
If you know that, why’d you say it then?
I didn’t know it until I said it. That’s how life works. We don’t know things. Look, the other day, my sister told me on the phone that she shakes after she has a colonoscopy. She’s old now and she’s had three. Every time she has one, she shakes and shakes when she gets home, almost collapses into bed. She’s fine the next morning. Her daughter’s a nurse administrator, and she told her that it was the anesthesia. But I think that’s not what’s happening.
What do you think is happening?
I think her body is remembering things she worked hard to forget.
But why do people do that?
At our dad’s funeral, a man showed up, and I heard her whispering to her husband the same thing I was whispering to my daughter, which was “Oh my God, why is he here?” We were talking with the same moan about the same man.
Who was he?
A man.
Who really was he though?
All his friends called him Uncle Hal, the kiddie’s pal.
And he was at your dad’s funeral?
They were friends.
But why do people do that?
Because the body remembers things the brain tries to forget. The moans become men become memory stuck inside of us, impacted, curled away. My sister hates having those procedures not just because they are invasive and it’s weird having people studying your rectum. She hates it the most because of the shaking afterwards. She told me that night that sometimes she worries it will never stop. I didn’t have the heart to tell her.
Tell her what?
That it never does.
Hey, thanks for listening to Carrie Does Poems. These podcasts and more writing tips are at Carrie’s website, carriejonesbooks.blog. There’s also a donation button there. Even a dollar inspires a happy dance in Carrie, so thank you for your support.
The music you hear is made available through the creative commons and it’s a bit of a shortened track from the fantastic Eric Van der Westen and the track is called "A Feather" and off the album The Crown Lobster Trilogy.
While Carrie only posts poems weekly here, she has them (in written form) almost every other weekday over on Medium. You should check it out!
https://freemusicarchive.org/music/eric-van-der-westen/the-crown-lobster-trilogy-selection
Because she’s not some drugged up doper or anything like that, but shivers have taken control of her whole entire body because it’s cold, cold, cold in Bar Harbor, Maine and it isn’t even winter yet.
Because she’s huddled behind the dumpster outside of Geddy’s. There’s a giant lobster claw at the front part of the restaurant and a massive moose on top of the ceiling because that’s what gets the tourists. Fake moose. Broiled monster lobster claws, red with death and sprinkled with white Christmas lights.
Because it gets to be too much, huddling there against the cold and the sun’s rising over the Porcupine Islands, so she gets up. She gets up and she heads out to the wharf where all the lobstermen tie up their skiffs, so they can get out to their moorings. The wharf’s not much of anything really, just a lot of pilings holding up a parking lot and then there’s some docks holding the skiffs. WE get
Because she runs out there because sometimes no matter how cold you are, running makes you warmer. It only works until you stop, though. When you stop running, the sweat against your skin turns you even colder. That’s why she usually don’t stop running.
Because she does today. She does today because today she is cold, cold, cold all the way into her capillaries. Today she is cold, cold, cold all the way into the roots of her teeth.
Because it’s not winter.
Because it will only get colder.
Hey, thanks for listening to Carrie Does Poems. These podcasts and more writing tips are at Carrie’s website, carriejonesbooks.blog. There’s also a donation button there. Even a dollar inspires a happy dance in Carrie, so thank you for your support.
The music you hear is made available through the creative commons and it’s a bit of a shortened track from the fantastic Eric Van der Westen and the track is called "A Feather" and off the album The Crown Lobster Trilogy.
While Carrie only posts poems weekly here, she has them (in written form) almost every other weekday over on Medium. You should check it out!
https://freemusicarchive.org/music/eric-van-der-westen/the-crown-lobster-trilogy-selection
Myths About Presidents
26.
He didn’t
Ride
A moose.
The photo is fake
Like a lot
Of presidential
things.
16.
He dreamt
His death,
Found himself
Waking in a coffin
And asked who
Was dead
In the White
House.
Dream mourners said,
“The president.”
He denied the dream.
Nobody listened.
The story was too good.
9.
He stood
At the podium,
Sworn in
And speechifying
For 8,445 words
In the cold
Of March.
He died
A month later
Of pneumonia
Linked to
His pontification
It was actually bad water
At the White House.
He’d been drinking shit.
1.
His teeth were made of wood.
But really they were just so old
And stained they looked that way.
27.
He did not get stuck in the tub and need
Six men to yank and yank and yank him free.
35
He didn’t call himself
A jelly donut in German.
45.
His toilet
Is not
Gold.
He is not
Christ. Or
Even the
Opposite.
46.
He is
Poor.
1.
He apparently
Could not
Tell
A lie
Unlike
All the others
Who could
Not
Tell
The truth.
Hey, thanks for listening to Carrie Does Poems. These podcasts and more writing tips are at Carrie’s website, carriejonesbooks.blog. There’s also a donation button there. Even a dollar inspires a happy dance in Carrie, so thank you for your support.
The music you hear is made available through the creative commons and it’s a bit of a shortened track from the fantastic Eric Van der Westen and the track is called "A Feather" and off the album The Crown Lobster Trilogy.
While Carrie only posts poems weekly here, she has them (in written form) almost every other weekday over on Medium. You should check it out!
https://freemusicarchive.org/music/eric-van-der-westen/the-crown-lobster-trilogy-selection
These firefighters show up at a hotel fire, maybe Started in the laundry room during the off season, hoses Frozen from winter temperatures, ice across roads; The crumbling structure is about to fall, flames shooting out windows.
In our small town, three-hundred people Are listening to the scanner because we can’t be there, But our family and friends battle, wearing air Compressors and safety equipment from 2002.
Twenty years outdated.
Other poets write about grief and hand holding, The ache of winter trees bending with wind, Charleston’s harbor, celebrations and tiny pains. I sit here, listening, ineffective, useless.
I once fought fire. Nobody believes that Though I have photographic evidence. I even Used to dispatch emergency calls, take fists to the face, Witness hate and rage that never made the scanner.
Twenty years outdated.
The firefighters work so hard to save that building, But the roof collapses, only the foundation remains. The thing is that building has burnt before. Twice.
They keep reconstructing it though, refusing to admit defeat, Vaguely rethinking the design. After a couple months Nobody even remembers what it was before.
When I was little, I used to dance, even got paid For it. Nobody believes that either. Or that I reported sports Taught gymnastics, was even a church secretary. I don’t fit Any of those notions people have of who I should be.
Twenty years outdated.
Sometimes we rebuild only after everything has collapsed, After burning walls fall outward to the snowy ground. Sometimes There are witnesses. Sometimes there is only lonely horror as our structures crumble.
Hey, thanks for listening to Carrie Does Poems. These podcasts and more writing tips are at Carrie’s website, carriejonesbooks.blog. There’s also a donation button there. Even a dollar inspires a happy dance in Carrie, so thank you for your support.
The music you hear is made available through the creative commons and it’s a bit of a shortened track from the fantastic Eric Van der Westen and the track is called "A Feather" and off the album The Crown Lobster Trilogy.
While Carrie only posts poems weekly here, she has them (in written form) almost every other weekday over on Medium. You should check it out!
https://freemusicarchive.org/music/eric-van-der-westen/the-crown-lobster-trilogy-selection
Hi! This year (2022), I've decided to share a poem on my blog and podcast and read it aloud. It's all a part of my quest to be brave and apparently the things that I'm scared about still include:
- My spoken voice
- My raw poems.
Thanks for being here with me and cheering me on, and I hope that you can become braver this year, too!
Holes and Vettes
Bar Harbor. Maine. 2022. A baseball field. Corvettes line up in rows, engines still For once and owners preening From their folding chairs, legs poking Into the same grass that supports Life Flight helicopters in emergencies And soccer cleats. This earth withstands so much.
It’s a yearly gathering that’s paused two years Thanks to global disease, but now the drivers Are all maskless and showing off Their cars to locals who wander Between the lines, marveling.
“I will never be rich enough To own one,” says a man in a black t-shirt to a guy with a firebird red model.
“I thought that too,” The guy says. “Work hard. You’ll get there.”
The first man moves to run A finger across the car’s hood. The owner flinches like it’s some kind of assault. “Try hard,” he repeats. “You’ll get there."
We all try hard To get there, Inventing monologues Of worth based on materialism, Who owns what, how shiny Our skins are, our hair, our cars, Houses. We pretend like any of this Fills up the holes we dig inside ourselves, Inside the ozone, inside the earth.
Darkening faces, Double visions. Horror. The Vettes represent adventure And freedom. Not being beholden Despite the car loans required, The interest rates. The American Debt.
“There are eight Generations of car here,” Says an organizer With a yellow sunhat Perched on her head. “This is the car of dreams.”
American Dreams. And that’s the thing. Have you ever hit your head On a poem or a wall Or something else hard And realized that your dreams Aren’t actually yours?
Have you ever felt like you’re falling Though you are standing still on a field Surrounded by excess and shiny paint Jobs and pride, merciless, assaulting, And begged for stable ground Before realizing you’re just making holes, too. Maybe the holes are in a ball field, Or in the Earth or the ozone Or maybe—just maybe—in your own damn heart.
Hey, thanks for listening to Carrie Does Poems. These podcasts and more writing tips are at Carrie’s website, carriejonesbooks.blog. There’s also a donation button there. Even a dollar inspires a happy dance in Carrie, so thank you for your support.
The music you hear is made available through the creative commons and it’s a bit of a shortened track from the fantastic Eric Van der Westen and the track is called "A Feather" and off the album The Crown Lobster Trilogy.
While Carrie only posts poems weekly here, she has them (in written form) almost every other weekday over on Medium. You should check it out!
https://freemusicarchive.org/music/eric-van-der-westen/the-crown-lobster-trilogy-selection
Hi! This year (2022), I've decided to share a poem on my blog and podcast and read it aloud. It's all a part of my quest to be brave and apparently the things that I'm scared about still include:
- My spoken voice
- My raw poems.
Thanks for being here with me and cheering me on, and I hope that you can become braver this year, too!
King Kong Trolls
The self-appointed writer-guru on Substack with four- thousand devotees to his biweekly missives has decided there are no more geniuses, really, not any more.
Someone needs to tell him that he just doesn’t know
where to look.
The geniuses aren’t banging their chests, King-Kong like in their glory despite being ground dwellers, telling the world, “Look at me! Look at me as I roar and pontificate.”
They are the discarded, dreaming, creating, thinking outside the main
streams of plagiarized discourse, unnoticed beneath the giant feet of oversized apes capturing all the attention as our culture dangles from their plump, hairy digits.
Hey, thanks for listening to Carrie Does Poems. These podcasts and more writing tips are at Carrie’s website, carriejonesbooks.blog. There’s also a donation button there. Even a dollar inspires a happy dance in Carrie, so thank you for your support.
The music you hear is made available through the creative commons and it’s a bit of a shortened track from the fantastic Eric Van der Westen and the track is called "A Feather" and off the album The Crown Lobster Trilogy.
While Carrie only posts poems weekly here, she has them (in written form) almost every other weekday over on Medium. You should check it out!
https://freemusicarchive.org/music/eric-van-der-westen/the-crown-lobster-trilogy-selection
Hi! This year (2022), I've decided to share a poem on my blog and podcast and read it aloud. It's all a part of my quest to be brave and apparently the things that I'm scared about still include:
- My spoken voice
- My raw poems.
Thanks for being here with me and cheering me on, and I hope that you can become braver this year, too!
Loneliness
He is known as he enters the emergency room, jeans sagging off his waist as an orderly ambles
To meet him. He is hunching at the precipice between lobby and hall, intake and bathroom, and
Ready to be seen. It is hard to be seen these days in a little Maine town full of tourists
If you are Old. It is only easy right here, right now, in the liminal space before becoming
A patient. We watch him totter, trying to decide. Go in? Stay out? Become
Or remain. Before we arrived here ourselves for broken bones; children who gulped down
Their own therapies in too many numbers; corneas scratched by tree limbs; we had to make
Those decisions, too. Did we want to save ourselves or should we just embrace
That all we are is pain and numbness and pain? We came, but others didn’t.
We sought help. And waited and waited for it, looking at our origins in heart beats
And blood levels, skeletons pinned and set straight again, stomachs pumped,
Eyes numbed with drops we are told not to get addicted to. In his room now, just curtains
For walls, the hunched man yells, Hello. No answer to his polite entreaty. Hello. Hello.
There is no easy cure for him. Hello. He gives up, changes tactics, and bellows. I have to pee.
Wordpress won't really allow me to format this the way I'd like so I'll show you a screenshot of how it is meant to be.
Hey, thanks for listening to Carrie Does Poems. These podcasts and more writing tips are at Carrie’s website, carriejonesbooks.blog. There’s also a donation button there. Even a dollar inspires a happy dance in Carrie, so thank you for your support.
The music you hear is made available through the creative commons and it’s a bit of a shortened track from the fantastic Eric Van der Westen and the track is called "A Feather" and off the album The Crown Lobster Trilogy.
While Carrie only posts poems weekly here, she has them (in written form) almost every other weekday over on Medium. You should check it out!
https://freemusicarchive.org/music/eric-van-der-westen/the-crown-lobster-trilogy-selection
Hi! This year (2022), I've decided to share a poem on my blog and podcast and read it aloud. It's all a part of my quest to be brave and apparently the things that I'm scared about still include:
- My spoken voice
- My raw poems.
Thanks for being here with me and cheering me on, and I hope that you can become braver this year, too!
"Bored and aching, I just wanted someone to love me."
We were visiting Mom’s best friend, An aunt who wasn’t an aunt,
She taught school, the job my mother dreamed of Before unplanned babies and rushed marriage
Turned her life into breaths clutching At meaning. The ladies stayed inside with coffee
Laced with Kahlua and words steaming At the edges of truths while I walked to the lake,
My body lurching forward. Last child by so many years Made me a lonely only and I started singing
To the waves and the trees. The water-stained boards Of their dock made me think of mermaids and tears.
Bored and aching, I just wanted someone to love me. This is why I am a poet.
The dog emerged from the woods to the right, A Doberman. One of Mom’s men friends
Had a dog like this. I reached my arms open, hugging the air And the dog bounded into them. From the deck of the house,
My mother screamed, Carrie! No!
Bored and aching, I just wanted someone to love me. This is why I exist.
What are you? I whispered to the dog as her tail wagged And tongue lapped my face.
When the grown-ups came running out, the dog shifted, Guarding me from their strange worries about credit and affairs,
Husbands who might find things out, children they left Behind them, coughing and clinging to life.
They implored me to come with them. My hand ran Along the dog’s fur and for the first time,
I felt powerful. I found a dog, I yelled, but she really found me. The water clung to her fur the way I wanted to cling on
To that moment. Could she have really heard me wanting, Singing need and loneliness into the waves and trunks
Of crooked spruce trees, my sadness hooking lines into the granite That gave our state its name? Someone’s husband
Convinced them the dog meant me no harm. She didn’t. Dogs never did. They still never do.
Bored and aching, I just wanted someone to love me. This is why.
Hey, thanks for listening to Carrie Does Poems. These podcasts and more writing tips are at Carrie’s website, carriejonesbooks.blog. There’s also a donation button there. Even a dollar inspires a happy dance in Carrie, so thank you for your support.
The music you hear is made available through the creative commons and it’s a bit of a shortened track from the fantastic Eric Van der Westen and the track is called "A Feather" and off the album The Crown Lobster Trilogy.
While Carrie only posts poems weekly here, she has them (in written form) almost every other weekday over on Medium. You should check it out!
https://freemusicarchive.org/music/eric-van-der-westen/the-crown-lobster-trilogy-selection
Hey, thanks for listening to Carrie Does Poems. These podcasts and more writing tips are at Carrie’s website, carriejonesbooks.blog. There’s also a donation button there. Even a dollar inspires a happy dance in Carrie, so thank you for your support.
The music you hear is made available through the creative commons and it’s a bit of a shortened track from the fantastic Eric Van der Westen and the track is called "A Feather" and off the album The Crown Lobster Trilogy.
While Carrie only posts poems weekly here, she has them (in written form) almost every other weekday over on Medium. You should check it out!
https://freemusicarchive.org/music/eric-van-der-westen/the-crown-lobster-trilogy-selection
Every Day
The puppy galloped through the garden
While the Fed-Ex guy told me about how
His brain was fried. People keep offering
Me beer, he says. They say they’ll hide it
in my water bottle, but one accident
and I’ll lose my job. God, I need it though.
The tourists make everything harder as they walk
Down the center of the streets. Cruise ships
Anchor in the harbor. One has a giant slide
That goes all the way around the ship, even on the outside.
I feel like I’m on that every day, just going down.
Hey. Is that your puppy eating something?
I tell him, She chews at the roots of things, too.
Every day.
Hey, thanks for listening to Carrie Does Poems. These podcasts and more writing tips are at Carrie’s website, carriejonesbooks.blog. There’s also a donation button there. Even a dollar inspires a happy dance in Carrie, so thank you for your support.
The music you hear is made available through the creative commons and it’s a bit of a shortened track from the fantastic Eric Van der Westen and the track is called "A Feather" and off the album The Crown Lobster Trilogy.
While Carrie only posts poems weekly here, she has them (in written form) almost every other weekday over on Medium. You should check it out!
https://freemusicarchive.org/music/eric-van-der-westen/the-crown-lobster-trilogy-selection
Hi! This year (2022), I've decided to share a poem on my blog and podcast and read it aloud. It's all a part of my quest to be brave and apparently the things that I'm scared about still include:
- My spoken voice
- My raw poems.
Thanks for being here with me and cheering me on, and I hope that you can become braver this year, too!
"Celebrity"
Your life could be hated so much.
Once celebrated, you must know the joy—never. Sitting by the sky’s vastness,
Listening to the screams
Hitting you. You must remember To open your arms and tumble to Earth
And see if anyone embraces your bones, ascends;
Sometimes we feel like skeletons. Ligaments, muscles, neurons barely holding it together.
We make so many into angels, waiting For the fall.
Hey, thanks for listening to Carrie Does Poems. These podcasts and more writing tips are at Carrie’s website, carriejonesbooks.blog. There’s also a donation button there. Even a dollar inspires a happy dance in Carrie, so thank you for your support.
The music you hear is made available through the creative commons and it’s a bit of a shortened track from the fantastic Eric Van der Westen and the track is called "A Feather" and off the album The Crown Lobster Trilogy.
While Carrie only posts poems weekly here, she has them (in written form) almost every other weekday over on Medium. You should check it out!
https://freemusicarchive.org/music/eric-van-der-westen/the-crown-lobster-trilogy-selection
Hi! This year (2022), I've decided to share a poem on my blog and podcast and read it aloud. It's all a part of my quest to be brave and apparently the things that I'm scared about still include:
- My spoken voice
- My raw poems.
Thanks for being here with me and cheering me on, and I hope that you can become braver this year, too!
Out of Our Cages
Poets speak of blossoms from brown paper bags, Walks of calmness through April days, And critics decry the lack of meter In a poem that moved thousands, Presidents and mothers included.
We all climb hills. We all tumble down. We all seek meaning in signs And laden flattened boughs with words.
Why can’t we find meaning in ourselves? Every day I watch our puppy wake joyous, Ready to leave her crate of wires and explore The hard wood floors of the house again and again,
Each cat encounter a brave adventure; Each floor slide becomes an ode to balance. She flops asleep, exhausted and dreaming only to begin Again. Puppies look forward to hills. So can we.
Hey, thanks for listening to Carrie Does Poems. These podcasts and more writing tips are at Carrie’s website, carriejonesbooks.blog. There’s also a donation button there. Even a dollar inspires a happy dance in Carrie, so thank you for your support.
The music you hear is made available through the creative commons and it’s a bit of a shortened track from the fantastic Eric Van der Westen and the track is called "A Feather" and off the album The Crown Lobster Trilogy.
While Carrie only posts poems weekly here, she has them (in written form) almost every other weekday over on Medium. You should check it out!
https://freemusicarchive.org/music/eric-van-der-westen/the-crown-lobster-trilogy-selection
Hi! This year (2022), I've decided to share a poem on my blog and podcast and read it aloud. It's all a part of my quest to be brave and apparently the things that I'm scared about still include:
- My spoken voice
- My raw poems.
Thanks for being here with me and cheering me on, and I hope that you can become braver this year, too!
The Retouch
They take me And blot away all the flaws. A sun spot becomes plain flesh. A wrinkle vanishes. The eraser moves over my whole image. Sometimes I wonder if there is any me left.
In college, a poetry teacher insisted We could not write about baseball hats Or dolphins and I still wonder if manatees Are allowed, poems about commodity cheese, Trailers, dog farts. Or is still only proper subjects?
Why is it that we all try to erase The deepest parts of our hidden centers, Hardnesses that refuse to be blurred out In image or word.
Hey, thanks for listening to Carrie Does Poems. These podcasts and more writing tips are at Carrie’s website, carriejonesbooks.blog. There’s also a donation button there. Even a dollar inspires a happy dance in Carrie, so thank you for your support.
The music you hear is made available through the creative commons and it’s a bit of a shortened track from the fantastic Eric Van der Westen and the track is called "A Feather" and off the album The Crown Lobster Trilogy.
While Carrie only posts poems weekly here, she has them (in written form) almost every other weekday over on Medium. You should check it out!
https://freemusicarchive.org/music/eric-van-der-westen/the-crown-lobster-trilogy-selection
Hi! This year (2022), I've decided to share a poem on my blog and podcast and read it aloud. It's all a part of my quest to be brave and apparently the things that I'm scared about still include:
- My spoken voice
- My raw poems.
Thanks for being here with me and cheering me on, and I hope that you can become braver this year, too!
This poem is (I think) part of me delving into a character of a young adult novel work in progress.
Spring
My nerves are jangled, frayed.
Panic touches the under layers
of all my skin, and I take off,
breezing past Jackie and Joe
in as fast a walk as I’m capable of
without actually running.
“I’m out of here.”
I announce this
like I’m some kind of bad ass.
Spoiler: I am not a bad ass.
If I was a bad ass, I wouldn’t write poems under a pseudonym;
I’d be able to pass a damn driver’s test.
“How are you going to get home?” Jackie calls after me.
“I’ll walk.”
“It’s five miles,” she yells.
“Just go to work. I’m fine.”
And that’s it; that’s as much yelling back through the halls that I’m capable of. I’ve turned a corner and am pounding down the stairs, hanging onto the handrail as I go down, down, down even though the bannister is probably covered in germs from everyone else hanging onto it. I let go and unbalance hits me.
This world is pain.
This world is me
lacking balance.
This…
I am two seconds away from crying as I move past people and push through the doors. The outside air is a little cold. Spring has barely sprung. But it’s full of promise, normally, the smell of dirt losing its frozen solid nature, the buds on the trees popping through the tiniest twiggy limbs.
Branches.
They aren’t limbs.
They are branches.
“I don’t know how to exist,” I whisper as I start walking.
“I don’t know how to exist in all this life.”
There you go. That’s the thing.
I don’t know how to exist in this life.
I don’t know how to survive in this life.
How do I spring?
Hey, thanks for listening to Carrie Does Poems. These podcasts and more writing tips are at Carrie’s website, carriejonesbooks.blog. There’s also a donation button there. Even a dollar inspires a happy dance in Carrie, so thank you for your support.
The music you hear is made available through the creative commons and it’s a bit of a shortened track from the fantastic Eric Van der Westen and the track is called "A Feather" and off the album The Crown Lobster Trilogy.
While Carrie only posts poems weekly here, she has them (in written form) almost every other weekday over on Medium. You should check it out!
https://freemusicarchive.org/music/eric-van-der-westen/the-crown-lobster-trilogy-selection
Hi! This year (2022), I've decided to share a poem on my blog and podcast and read it aloud. It's all a part of my quest to be brave and apparently the things that I'm scared about still include:
- My spoken voice
- My raw poems.
Thanks for being here with me and cheering me on, and I hope that you can become braver this year, too!
Hey, thanks for listening to Carrie Does Poems. These podcasts and more writing tips are at Carrie’s website, carriejonesbooks.blog. There’s also a donation button there. Even a dollar inspires a happy dance in Carrie, so thank you for your support.
The music you hear is made available through the creative commons and it’s a bit of a shortened track from the fantastic Eric Van der Westen and the track is called "A Feather" and off the album The Crown Lobster Trilogy.
While Carrie only posts poems weekly here, she has them (in written form) almost every other weekday over on Medium. You should check it out!
https://freemusicarchive.org/music/eric-van-der-westen/the-crown-lobster-trilogy-selection
Hi! This year (2022), I've decided to share a poem on my blog and podcast and read it aloud. It's all a part of my quest to be brave and apparently the things that I'm scared about still include:
- My spoken voice
- My raw poems.
Thanks for being here with me and cheering me on, and I hope that you can become braver this year, too!
Ode To Another Nightingale
“My heart aches,” he says as if that will change her mind. He quotes Keats, memorizes it the way others memorize song lyrics, drunk, but not on hemlock or an opiate. Drunk one minute and the next. Keats is not pretentious enough a poet to impress someone who sings with dryads and serves dark and stormies every night at the Whale. “Keats is bullshit,” she tells him. “All litanies of bullshit. Have you ever heard a nightingale sing?”
It’s like beatboxing, machine guns, not some trembling, deep-voiced opera serenading you. It’s more like a car alarm telling you someone has come too close, someone is trying to get closer, someone . . . The bird is named after men, of course, men who sing late into the night, men who pine with loneliness and drink with bitterness. A nightingale gurgles. A man trills. They both whistle. He doesn’t impress her with his heartache lines, his odes. “Fade far away, dissolve, and quite forget,” she tells him. And after another drink, he does.
Hey, thanks for listening to Carrie Does Poems. These podcasts and more writing tips are at Carrie’s website, carriejonesbooks.blog. There’s also a donation button there. Even a dollar inspires a happy dance in Carrie, so thank you for your support.
The music you hear is made available through the creative commons and it’s a bit of a shortened track from the fantastic Eric Van der Westen and the track is called "A Feather" and off the album The Crown Lobster Trilogy.
While Carrie only posts poems weekly here, she has them (in written form) almost every other weekday over on Medium. You should check it out!
https://freemusicarchive.org/music/eric-van-der-westen/the-crown-lobster-trilogy-selection
Hi! This year (2022), I've decided to share a poem on my blog and podcast and read it aloud. It's all a part of my quest to be brave and apparently the things that I'm scared about still include:
- My spoken voice
- My raw poems.
Thanks for being here with me and cheering me on, and I hope that you can become braver this year, too!
Gabby Dog Poem
There can be no doubt,
her fluffy, furry, slobbery self
was meant to save us just not
the way she thought,
not from little gray squirrels
allegedly terrorizing the house,
standing on porch railings
as they stashed nuts
into their cheeks;
nor from Fed-Ex drivers,
obviously nefarious,
with those cardboard boxes
that could contain something awful
like ear cleaning solution or cats;
nor from the lumbering man
who drug oil lines through the snow,
hooking up house to car
like some cartoon villain ready to detonate explosives,
but from our own forever brokenness,
the way our hearts yearned
to just be loved by someone
despite all our flaws.
Hey, thanks for listening to Carrie Does Poems. These podcasts and more writing tips are at Carrie’s website, carriejonesbooks.blog. There’s also a donation button there. Even a dollar inspires a happy dance in Carrie, so thank you for your support.
The music you hear is made available through the creative commons and it’s a bit of a shortened track from the fantastic Eric Van der Westen and the track is called "A Feather" and off the album The Crown Lobster Trilogy.
While Carrie only posts poems weekly here, she has them (in written form) almost every other weekday over on Medium. You should check it out!
https://freemusicarchive.org/music/eric-van-der-westen/the-crown-lobster-trilogy-selection
Hi! This year (2022), I've decided to share a poem on my blog and podcast and read it aloud. It's all a part of my quest to be brave and apparently the things that I'm scared about still include:
- My spoken voice
- My raw poems.
Thanks for being here with me and cheering me on, and I hope that you can become braver this year, too!
Parent Not Expected
I know nothing about the weather I was born in or how the sky whispered or stormed. I know nothing about the man who helped make me, other than his name and he smoked cigarettes, constantly, until he got skin cancer. I know his mother had thick, dark hair, immigrated here, which was so different from the story of my birth certificate and the ancestors who had been here for centuries, taking their time to take the land. I know nothing about how my mother struggled to hide the secret of me. My nose gave me away. My quirky clothes gave me away. The way I didn’t fit gave me away. I know nothing of the people who came before me on one side, grandparents, great-grandparents, random uncles and aunts, their pains. They are unknown stories. They are wind that I can’t feel. They are stars that don’t tell their secrets. I am their secret and they are mine.
Hey, thanks for listening to Carrie Does Poems. These podcasts and more writing tips are at Carrie’s website, carriejonesbooks.blog. There’s also a donation button there. Even a dollar inspires a happy dance in Carrie, so thank you for your support.
The music you hear is made available through the creative commons and it’s a bit of a shortened track from the fantastic Eric Van der Westen and the track is called "A Feather" and off the album The Crown Lobster Trilogy.
While Carrie only posts poems weekly here, she has them (in written form) almost every other weekday over on Medium. You should check it out!
https://freemusicarchive.org/music/eric-van-der-westen/the-crown-lobster-trilogy-selection
Hi! This year (2022), I've decided to share a poem on my blog and podcast and read it aloud. It's all a part of my quest to be brave and apparently the things that I'm scared about still include:
- My spoken voice
- My raw poems.
Thanks for being here with me and cheering me on, and I hope that you can become braver this year, too!
The Lettuce
Again this summer I’ve forgotten to harvest the lettuce that we planted when the ground was barely workable, warm enough to support the tenderness of seedlings, brown, pale, and white, barely opening to the world, the air, the sun.
We are still human, he tells me, even though I think that we may be losing whatever it is that makes humans human? Humanity seems a fickle word now that pundits use it to talk about the unfurling of threats, bombs, lies. The lettuce,
when you forget to harvest, shoots up like it’s trying to reach the sky, but it rots from the outside and in towards the core, slowly taking over the joy of green, crisp leaves.
We are like this. Everything greens and grows and rots when we aren’t looking. Democracies, romaine, bibb, souls, humanities. How can I forget to harvest the lettuce? Why do we plant it at all?
Hey, thanks for listening to Carrie Does Poems. These podcasts and more writing tips are at Carrie’s website, carriejonesbooks.blog. There’s also a donation button there. Even a dollar inspires a happy dance in Carrie, so thank you for your support.
The music you hear is made available through the creative commons and it’s a bit of a shortened track from the fantastic Eric Van der Westen and the track is called "A Feather" and off the album The Crown Lobster Trilogy.
While Carrie only posts poems weekly here, she has them (in written form) almost every other weekday over on Medium. You should check it out!
https://freemusicarchive.org/music/eric-van-der-westen/the-crown-lobster-trilogy-selection
Hi! This year (2022), I've decided to share a poem on my blog and podcast and read it aloud. It's all a part of my quest to be brave and apparently the things that I'm scared about still include:
- My spoken voice
- My raw poems.
Thanks for being here with me and cheering me on, and I hope that you can become braver this year, too!
Everything Makes Us Scared
The professor and his wife argue about the party though they love each other. Chairs are meant to be where exactly on the porch? Burgers pre-made or created on site?
He’s a hippie from the Marines. Everywhere is danger, possibilities of pain. He wasn’t in a lot of war, but it was enough, enough to know that things can become out of control
if you don’t take care. She just wants people to talk, mingle, to eat grilled vegetables and be happy, to have a moment away from fears and worries of this year, this country, this culture.
He says he isn’t worried. He’s older. He’s seen worse. And when the first guests come to the party, he knows no-one. They are the mommies, he says. The daycare people. Her friends. He lumbers off to the side. The charcoal doesn’t light. Of course. Everyone stares.
The grill’s gas is low. Their daughter, three, twirls in circles, studies the people, twirls again, a perfect mix of caring too much, caring too little, the joy of being alive and chocolate cupcakes with sprinkles and the worry
of so many faces in her backyard. The mom, she is decades younger; she’s cleaned the forest of wood, picking it up in the days leading to the party. So many potential weapons. A little boy takes a ball, pummels another.
A man says scathing things to his wife, cutting her down in warning. So many threats. We watch it all. My back goes up against the wall of the house, spine hitting shingles. They talk about pandemics, violence. So many threats. We murmur our agreement.
Everything. Everything makes us scared.
Hey, thanks for listening to Carrie Does Poems. These podcasts and more writing tips are at Carrie’s website, carriejonesbooks.blog. There’s also a donation button there. Even a dollar inspires a happy dance in Carrie, so thank you for your support.
The music you hear is made available through the creative commons and it’s a bit of a shortened track from the fantastic Eric Van der Westen and the track is called "A Feather" and off the album The Crown Lobster Trilogy.
While Carrie only posts poems weekly here, she has them (in written form) almost every other weekday over on Medium. You should check it out!
https://freemusicarchive.org/music/eric-van-der-westen/the-crown-lobster-trilogy-selection
Hi! This year (2022), I've decided to share a poem on my blog and podcast and read it aloud. It's all a part of my quest to be brave and apparently the things that I'm scared about still include:
- My spoken voice
- My raw poems.
Thanks for being here with me and cheering me on, and I hope that you can become braver this year, too!
So, this week I've decided to read one of my grandmother's poems instead. Full disclosure: I have a lot of grandmothers and they are all dead and this one was about 4'10 at maximum height and this grandmother was already 75 when I was born.
Luckily, she lived a long time so I got to know her. But her poems? They were hidden away and only brought out when my little hobbit dad begged her to see them. It was rare. She, like me, was pretty fearful about sharing her poems and her art.
But art and communication and thought isn't meant to be hidden away, is it? So here's to Grammy and here's to being brave.
Grammy Barnard Poem #2 March 11, 1927
A Wish
Love, she goes hand in hand with spring, To thoughts of this girl then you will cling, Go dear, and to her tell, Of the desire you have in her heart to dwell, Tell her while sweet spring is here, Tell her while she still is near, Tell her of moonlight, tell her of flowers, Tell her of love, and its wondrous powers.
Hey, thanks for listening to Carrie Does Poems. These podcasts and more writing tips are at Carrie’s website, carriejonesbooks.blog. There’s also a donation button there. Even a dollar inspires a happy dance in Carrie, so thank you for your support.
The music you hear is made available through the creative commons and it’s a bit of a shortened track from the fantastic Eric Van der Westen and the track is called "A Feather" and off the album The Crown Lobster Trilogy.
While Carrie only posts poems weekly here, she has them (in written form) almost every other weekday over on Medium. You should check it out!
https://freemusicarchive.org/music/eric-van-der-westen/the-crown-lobster-trilogy-selection
Hi! This year (2022), I've decided to share a poem on my blog and podcast and read it aloud. It's all a part of my quest to be brave and apparently the things that I'm scared about still include:
- My spoken voice
- My raw poems.
Thanks for being here with me and cheering me on, and I hope that you can become braver this year, too!
“You Aren’t Allowed To Write About Me”
If by aren’t allowed, you mean you forbid it, then who are you to forbid?
If by write, you mean think, tell stories, try to understand, to recreate you in a way that isn’t such a jackass, I’m sorry, but you can only be improved, and you’re missing out.
The you on the page is so much better than the you in life.
If by me you mean just you, I’m sorry, but stories (even characters, even real-life characters) are bigger than just one me, just one you, just one.
None of us are just one.
Why don’t you try to imagine what it’s like to not have a Lexus and enough money to have your back shaved? Why don’t you try to imagine what it’s like to listen to you asking someone if they are ‘really an American,’ or telling them they look like a pumpkin because they’re wearing an orange dress. What it’s like to hold a given-to-you bouquet and know that it will wilt because you don’t have the water to let it survive, to go in the shower and pray for warmth? Why don’t you imagine what it’s like to live bigger than who you are, trying to push into who you are meant to be? Imagine that’s more than a Lexus.
Why don’t you imagine?
I am not allowed to write about you.
I write about you constantly even when you don’t realize. You are the grit between my teeth.
Hey, thanks for listening to Carrie Does Poems. These podcasts and more writing tips are at Carrie’s website, carriejonesbooks.blog. There’s also a donation button there. Even a dollar inspires a happy dance in Carrie, so thank you for your support.
The music you hear is made available through the creative commons and it’s a bit of a shortened track from the fantastic Eric Van der Westen and the track is called "A Feather" and off the album The Crown Lobster Trilogy.
While Carrie only posts poems weekly here, she has them (in written form) almost every other weekday over on Medium. You should check it out!
https://freemusicarchive.org/music/eric-van-der-westen/the-crown-lobster-trilogy-selection
Hi! This year (2022), I've decided to share a poem on my blog and podcast and read it aloud. It's all a part of my quest to be brave and apparently the things that I'm scared about still include:
- My spoken voice
- My raw poems.
Thanks for being here with me and cheering me on, and I hope that you can become braver this year, too!
Mean People Suck
She is driving, in her car, with the sticker MEAN PEOPLE SUCK
Stuck on the bumper. She hasn’t yet peeled
The sticker off, though she promised herself
When her dad bought her the car, she would before the week was through.
Mean people suck.
But as she drives the car, at night, down the curves
Of the Mud Creek Road, she isn’t thinking of the elegant statement
Stuck to her little, gray automobile, she is thinking
Of the boy poet in her German class, the handsome one, with hair,
And how, only a half hour earlier,
He gave her the best compliment she’d ever heard:
If you lived in Nazi Germany
You would’ve been in the resistance. I am sure.
Ah. She sighs at such a compliment, better by far than a litany
Of her attributes, of the color of her eyes, the beauty of her words.
Not better than the boy poet’s hand on her thigh,
Or perhaps, his lips on her instep.
You can only ask for so much.
This is what she thinks as something darts in front of her car.
Headlights turn the fur orange.
A cat, she thinks as she swerves. A fox?
The thud is as bad as she imagines
And for five seconds she keeps driving,
Five seconds before she pulls to the side of the Mud Creek Road,
Five seconds before she tries to find the hazards.
She can’t. She can’t find them and while she looks, her body
Shakes and she tells herself:
Drive back.
Drive back.
Turn around.
She does, watching the body grow large and clear in headlight beams.
Not a fox. Not a cat. No crying little girls tomorrow
Searching for Muffin or Smokey,
No pictures of cuddly kittens posted on supermarket wall or telephone poles.
A raccoon.
Why did she think the fur was orange? Is she color blind?
Do you need glasses if you’re color blind, she wonders.
Parking parallel to the body in the middle of the Mud Creek Road, she looks.
God, he is beautiful, this raccoon, perfect mask and paws and fur.
Move him, she orders herself.
Move him.
She opens the door, but the animal stirs… a slow, graceful lift of his head.
His eyes meet hers. And she knows, knows she can’t move him,
Knows she can’t take off her jacket, wrap it around his soft, bruised body,
Can’t bring him to rest in dignity by the woods. And she knows she can’t
Get in the car and run him over and over again and again,
Forcing tires over his furry bulk until the pain is over.
In her own hips, a pain like sciatica spreads, needles sticking and
Spinning down her flanks.
She shuts the door, puts the car in reverse.
The raccoon stares.
The raccoon watches the lights retreat and despite the increasing distance, despite
The roar of other cars coming closer, the rush of blood,
Despite everything, this raccoon hears the girl yelling to herself:
Coward! Coward…
And he agrees.
Hey, thanks for listening to Carrie Does Poems. These podcasts and more writing tips are at Carrie’s website, carriejonesbooks.blog. There’s also a donation button there. Even a dollar inspires a happy dance in Carrie, so thank you for your support.
The music you hear is made available through the creative commons and it’s a bit of a shortened track from the fantastic Eric Van der Westen and the track is called "A Feather" and off the album The Crown Lobster Trilogy.
While Carrie only posts poems weekly here, she has them (in written form) almost every other weekday over on Medium. You should check it out!
https://freemusicarchive.org/music/eric-van-der-westen/the-crown-lobster-trilogy-selection
If Santa came would he
apologize, the way
people do now, and maybe
tweet about his perpetuated inequities
Yes, this child received
so much and this one so little.
A deluxe game system for one
And an orange for another. Yes, I gave one
a country and another a drunk uncle
whose spittle smells of gingerbread elves.
Or would he go quiet for months
(maybe years) until he was
emotionally ready to apologize
through his scotch-stained teeth
and say he’s gone through
extensive self-reflection;
therapy with Mrs. Claus
and the elves; and he’s ready
to be a better saint, a fairer man.
Hey, thanks for listening to Carrie Does Poems. These podcasts and more writing tips are at Carrie’s website, carriejonesbooks.blog. There’s also a donation button there. Even a dollar inspires a happy dance in Carrie, so thank you for your support. The music you hear is made available through the creative commons and it’s a bit of a shortened track from the fantastic Eric Van der Westen and the track is called A Feather and off the album The Crown Lobster Trilogy.
While Carrie only posts poems weekly here, she has them (in written form) almost every weekday over on Medium. You should check it out!
https://freemusicarchive.org/music/eric-van-der-westen/the-crown-lobster-trilogy-selection