1950s SMALL TOWN LIFE/ untitled poem

UNTITLED POEM


Hey, you!
I know your name today.
What will it be tomorrow?
Maybe the same,
And I'll be happy.
Or completely different,
And I'll be happy.
So that, my love, is my life,
Happiness intrinsic,
That being, quizas,
The most poignant part.

O, I love you.
That I don't deny--
Not even to myself.
But loving you is a task in self-discipline
For I could love you madly, passionately, blindly
Without another thought of the things that usually invalidate my love
Without that analysis with which I prove to Susan
The utter stupidity of all that comes and goes in the name of love.
And if I love you that way
(The ending will be sad and full of pain)
Could it be any more terrible
Than this cold, analytic state of mind
I like to think is love?
I am tired of dissecting emotion.
For this week---I think I will love you
Without reason.

The love-song of Susan Skinner is forty eons long,
Mostly written in iambic nontameter.
And profound--
So profound I would not dare to read it,
'Les I were she--or you.
So she writes,
As she wrote for years before and after,
Smiling for the fools
Who think they understand it
Acknowledge defeat, you fools.
No one knows me!

There was an answer,
I suppose,
When they wrote it.
But yet, perhaps no,
I can't be sure.
Answers are meaningless without the questions,
And this, I think, is a question,
Which even an answer would render meaningless.

I, the ego infidel,
Suspended at times in a self-made hell
Or ecstatic in a purloined paradise,
The unbelievable, unbelieved.
Limbo is denied, too in-between.
A symbol of the sacred self is seen.
A slash of soul, examined by the world,
A slice of soul, served on a polished plate
By a maitre'd who knows his work so well
That seldom does he make a slight mistake,
"Les he gets bored, and to amuse himself,
Heckles the guest he's sure is parvenue,
Intimidating those who won't complain;
There is no satisfaction in the game.
To have, to hold the things we cannot touch,
Objective childish, seen most in adults.
I love you, and I want some tangent proof.
Knowing better, Still I think that love
Is something that I hold my hand out for.

A rhyme, a rhyme for Susan.
But only for today.
Tomorrow she will want the moon;
But this communique
Contains a very small request.
I'm sure you will comply.
She only wants a happy verse,
Her useless tears to dry.

ithinkthattheveryideaofcommunicationiscloudilydefined
Away with the mists that encircle our minds!
To know you, I must wait for some exchange of words,
Masquerading as communication.
If, and when, that barrier is passed,
I find true communication in a quick exchange of glances,
Or a smile, playing at the corner of your mouth.
And the silence and your nearness say so much more than can be put in words.


Susan J. Skinner

copyright 2011/all rights reserved

Romancy

Romancy


I saw them
And their freedom was the mother
Of my ideal, my desire.
I could be a wanderer,
If they would let me go.
I would hear the gay ballads,
Follow the gypsy band
Be wild, tumultuous, tempestuous.
My tangled hair would brush my bare shoulders,
And, walking barefoot into town,
I would laugh at the women who stare
And whisper to their children, pointing.


Susan J. Skinner

copyright 2011/all rights reserved

1950s SMALL TOWN LIFE/SONNET

SONNET


Ever the youngest child, the little girl
Who finds the twilight world a mural death,
Will find the hours that pass in blinding whirl
A partial answer, told in quickening breath
By the Evening who, to rush the time,
Has stolen hours from his brother, Day,
And now returns them with a mocking mime,
For, at a time so late, what good are they?
To wait till time of twilight to enjoy
The hours that always must be spent before
Is humanity's vain attemptings to employ
The "rainy-day savings"philosophy as more
Than it can hope to offer.  Just destroy
The hope for what lies beyond the present's door.


Susan J. Skinner
July 20, 1964

copyright 2011/all rights reserved

Untitled Poem

I love you!
There, I've said it.
For so long, it was there inside
And you knew,
I could feel it.
And you knew I knew.
And your what-ever color eyes
Won't let me rest.

Because I still know that paper doesn't talk, thank God,
And even seeing eyes cannot read ashes.
So I can scream on paper, I love you.
So I can write, She ran through the halls and streets
Shouting of her love.

I never decided to love you.
The idea was not mine.
Was it yours?


Susan J. Skinner

copyright 2011/all rights reserved

untitled poem

To deny what is there.
Or to pretend
...I made it  up
And you are Flora
Or whomever your memory captures
As the essence of the momentary you.
You think that this, again, is only
Fantasy, half-memoryy, half-dream
Gleaned from untold imagination,
Every word you ever read,
And every consequent thought
And the tears are prescribed,
Part of some contrived image.
But you cannot see it through other's eyes,
Though you may try and come close.
If you never know the thought beneath the smile,
The reason for the gaze,
Then you lose
And begin again
In some other identity
With fragmentary remembrances
To help you in your search.

Susan J. Skinner

copyright 2011/all rights reserved

Untitled Poem

Love?
Ha, we love no one but ourselves.
We cannot, try though we may,
Nudge our egos over to leave even a space
for someone who is not
a reflection of ourselves


Susan J. Skinner

copyright 2011/all rights reserved

1950s SMALL TOWN LIFE/ UNTITLED POEM/

I can not see yet
Right and Wrong
As Black and White
Identities.
For I have known
The sin of one
Whose very
True propensities
Were good and
Right and true
And tall
And stood as
If they could not
Fall
As mine have done
And will do yet.
I cannot help
But feel the net
Of Goodness
Has some major flaws.
Whose right to
Set up Moral Laws
For me to follow?
Or to break?
I cannot, in my concepts,
Take
That as True,
For mortals yet
Have much to do,
To weave the Net
Into a flawless cloth.


Susan J. Skinner

copyright 2011/all rights reserved