House Poems

 A few poems I wrote about a childhood home that sold recently to new owners.

The Lego

Maybe we’re all built from rainbows
Pieced together from blocks of colour
Do you remember?
Before we built helicopters
Before we built castles
Before we put swords in our hands
To slay dragons
Before we built cabins
And hid them in forests
And took ourselves camping
Right next to the bears
Before we stacked blocks into
Three legged monsters
Before we wrapped clumsy hands
Around fragile juvenile skyscrapers
Before we’d learned to take handfuls
Of blocks and deposit them onto the floor
Before we’d learned to sort them
To know them
To pick the ones we preferred
Before all that
Do you remember back then?
We’d run around screaming
Carrying handfuls of Lego everywhere
Pieces held together
By effort
By determination
By the strength of our fingers
And I have lived my life with
Clenched jaw
And closed fists
I have hid myself
Between sweaty palms
And wondered why I feel
So tired and so salty
If only I’d listened a little more to my Lego
Maybe I’d understand that
Sometimes we have to fall apart
So we can build something that is connected
Rather than something that is only in contact

The Chair

I'm convinced there is one

Mismatched chair in every living room.

No doubt it's the one you

Thoughtfully sink into as you

Read your bible and pray.

Your other children,

With matching reupholstered skin,

Sit in silence and listen.

While all I can feel is the

Weight of your words

Leaving an imprint, 

As you get up and walk away.

The Blanket

It's never the tangled ball of yarn

That keeps us warm

It's the individual threads

Separated then woven together,

Our individuality making us whole.

It's the blanket that holds us,

Because it is made from us.

But here I've been

Putting yarn in a blender.

Tying loose ends together.

Pureeing colours.

Lighting fibres on fire.

Melting material into connection.

All the while wondering,

Why on earth I am always

So cold

The Attic

Follow me to the moon

But first up the stairs

The ones that creak and groan

Beneath feet that haven't learned their rules

We could have painted

Hop scotch on their skin

To silence our steps and theirs

But we were always experts

At avoidance anyways

Next we'll go down the hallway

The colourful body length rug there

Has delicate tassels that argue

With the vacuum cleaner

About who has the right of way

Until the vacuum chokes

On a rug that's as stubbornly beautiful

As the annoying creaking staircase

The attic is through a hole

In the ceiling

In the bathroom

Off the upstairs hallway

I've never actually been up there

But still I lie awake at night

And look at my reflection

In the emptiness

Of places grown barren

By avoidance and neglect

The Entry

Here is the place, they said,
That smells sombre like a church
Yes, home is supposed to be a sanctuary,
But still it's odd to see
Friends take a strained breath
As they take off their shoes.
Driving to the ferry
We used to hold our breath
Through the tunnels,
Practicing I guess for some distant
Catastrophe we'd be drowning in.
What worst case scenario
Do you suppose my friends
Were dreaming up
As they moved single file through the house
And out the back door?
I don't know,
But they never mentioned the toy train
Racing endless obedient loops
Around the base of the Christmas tree,
Tucked in the corner of the entry.

The Paint

Gull grey coloured siding

In honour of the places we'd fly

Grey window trim tinted slightly seaweed green

In honour of the places we'd sink

I should have guessed your neutrality

From the monotonous

Look of your exterior

But I was different back then

I used to see big distinctions

In the simple outer stuff

But now I see few distinctions

Because of all the complicated inner stuff

Houses aren't better

Just because their windows

Are decorated with blinds