The Threadmill / Running in Place

1950s SMALL TOWN LIFE/ untitled poem

2011-09-13T22:34:00.004-05:00

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

2011-09-07T10:28:00.006-05:00

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

2011-09-06T22:24:00.001-05:00

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

2011-09-05T10:24:00.002-05:00

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

2011-09-03T10:17:00.004-05:00

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

2011-09-02T10:13:00.002-05:00

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/

2011-09-01T09:59:00.003-05:00

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

1950s SMALL TOWN LIFE/untitled poem

2011-08-31T22:56:00.002-05:00

Loving you is the most fun I have had since:
I walked barefoot in the rain;
I staged a sit-down strike on the sidewalk in front
of the English class;
I sat on my bridge in the twilight, chewing on blades
of long green grass;
I wore sunglasses in the middle of the night;
I burned in effigy a half-dozen ex-friends;
I learned to blow giant soap bubbles;
I watched the moon set;
I found that 3:00 A.M. is the best time of the day
for flamenco music and pretzels;
I wrote my name in giant letters on a hidden wall with chalk.

Come with me.
We'll go walking in the rain,
Staging sit-down strikes,
And sitting on our bridge at twilight.
We'll wear our sunglasses in the middle of the night,
As we blow giant bubbles
And burn ex-friends in effigy.
Watching the moon set,
We will listen to flamenco music and eat pretzels,
Then write our names together on some hidden wall.

Susan J. Skinner

copyright 2011/all rights reserved

1950s SMALL TOWN LIFE/untitled poem

2011-08-28T22:36:00.001-05:00

I am happy.
The usual twilight tears
May come and go,
I ignore them.
I can be happy.
Or so I prove to myself
Through smiles and
Defiant glances
]At the poor child
Who cannot hold her tears
As she mirrors my sad eyes.

Susan J. Skinner

copyright 2011/all rights reserved

1950s SMALL TOWN LIFE/Haiku

2011-08-27T22:48:00.003-05:00

Haiku

The sun smiles on me and all is right within my
own invertedness.

The white-hot fire of youth has yet to sear the hidden
wisdom of Age.

This life of mine is not my own,
But belongs to my posterity.

Let Posterity live for himself,
My sins are mine, and mine alone.

The living have so much fear of Death,
Are not the Dead afraid of life?

Communication does not come with propinquity.
Nor hope with love.

The facade of ugliness may cover an oddly beautiful
heart.

Weeds desire to be flowers; ugliness has no loyalty
to self.

Susan J. Skinner

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1950s SMALL TOWN LIFE/RETREAT

2011-08-26T22:02:00.000-05:00

RETREAT

I am hidden from the humans
But the World's aware of me.
The wind teases me and tousles my hair
The sun and the stones on which I sit
Caress me with their warmth
All things glitter and beckon to me.
The birds toss out a promising note
Of songs-to-be!
The World is good, to me.
And I, to it, am important or un-
For it makes no difference.
This is reality.

Susan J. Skinner
June 1963

copyright 2011/all rights reserved

1950s SMALL TOWN LIFE/untitled poem

2011-08-25T22:32:00.003-05:00

I sit on the brink of the Pastel World of Evening
I want to ask but I feel I have no right
They have allowed me this one pleasure-
To watch the heavens darken into night

I'd like to ask for you to be here with me
To see transition, soft and mild and cool
I would love to see this earthly scene made heaven
But to want so much would make me seem a fool

Susan J. Skinner

copyright 2011/ all rights reserved

1950s SMALL TOWN LIFE/untitled poem

2011-08-24T22:27:00.001-05:00

I suppose that
'In a hundred years,
No one will know the difference.'
At least,
That's what my mother says.
No one will know?
No one re-experience this,
This quiet, desperation.
Or tearful journey through circumstance?
I don't know.
Oh, she is right, I'm sure.
But there has to be some purpose
In tears and would-be adoration,
Else I may, can, should
Cease breathing precious air.

Susan J. Skinner

copyright 2011/ all rights reserved

1950s SMALL TOWN LIFE/Runnin' Through the House

2011-08-23T23:10:00.000-05:00

"Your mother," she said laughing, fixing me with a questioning look that seemed to demand I be able to explain my mother's behavior, "didn't even stop giving her Home Demonstration Club program."

We stood outside our church in the mid 1980s. The cool, pleasant, spring air made people want to talk a while after services. Groups of ladies in skirts and blouses or dresses, stood in small clumps on the green grass of the lawn. Fran, standing in a group of ladies to our left, bent slightly at the waist, reached toward her knee and tugged at her pantyhose.

Men in sportcoats with open collars, some with buttoned collars and striped ties, stood laughing. A few of them held cigarettes, taking surreptitious puffs every now and then, careful to blow the smoke away from the circle of churchgoers.

Children ran up and down the covered walkways of the redbrick church, some of the girls in their skirts and blouses like their mothers.  Others wore pants, but usually with a matched shirt. The boys were in their blue jeans and knit shirts. They ran down the long portico, turned east onto the concrete sidewalk, jumped off the three short steps that led toward more sidewalk, then continued running, making a sharp right back toward the church, and the ten or so groups of adults standing outside the big white double doors of the sanctuary. A string of ten-my two among them-passed by us in a blur of motion. One of the men finally yelled, "Hey, y'all slow down! You're going to hurt somebody!"

Alice was a longtime acquaintance of my mother, and made me aware of the friendship; I had never known Alice when I was small and we lived in Purdon. I had met her two years ago, when we began attending Northside Baptist. I was 25, she was probably 45 at the time of the conversation.

"Your brothers and sister, the three of them, Elton, Neila, and Stephen-I guess they were about 7, 6, and 2-had gotten into her sewing notions and each of them had three spools of thread. They had wrapped about a foot of thread from each spool onto their hands, and then they just started out running, letting the spools bounce and hit the linoleum floor behind them, unraveling them as they ran."

She looked down and shook her head as though seeing the picture anew and expressing her disbelief.

"They started out in your parents' bedroom where the sewing machine was, and then they ran through Neila's room, into the living room where we were all standing around card tables, listening to your mother explain how to use the small metal tool to make a pattern on the aluminum trays we were making, then on into the dining room, through the kitchen, onto the backporch, then back to your parents' bedroom where they started the second round.

"Your mother paid them no attention." I shifted my weight to my left foot. This might take a while.
"Acted like they weren't even there, doing anything. They weren't screaming, just running with those spools bouncing wildly behind them, wrapping the thread around everthing in their path. Finally, so much thread wrapped itself around the doorknob leading from the living room to the dining room that when they ran in there, it slammed the door shut. Everbody jumped. Opal let out a little scream, but your mother-- she didn't even flinch. I guess the kids knew the door slamming was gonna get her attention, so they stopped running and it got real quiet then."

Your mama said, "So that's the proper way to make a patterned aluminum tray. The meeting next week is at Eara's house, and we're going to be learning how to freeze fresh garden produce for use all year long."

I was searching Alice's face for any sign of judgment of my mother because I simply could not tolerate that. Changing the subject seemed out of the question as Alice got into the story. Unsure of what the summation would be, I waited, listening, thinking of my mother, how wonderful it was to grow up with her, how she knew when to call a halt and when to let things go.

How she was like a grown kid--fun but responsible. She remembered what it was like to be a kid, not like most grownups and parents who pretended they'd never done anything bad or had a bad thought. Most of them acted like kids were just some little aliens who showed up on their doorstep and operated by some foreign code they couldn't understand. Not my mother.

I knew her boundaries were wide as the Missouri and her tolerance as deep as the oil wells around Corsicana, but I didn't want anyone talking bad about her or inferring she didn't control her kids. I knew she wouldn't have let them run in anyone else's house, just her own. And she'd say, they weren't hurting anything, and they were just having fun, so why did she need to stop them?

"Let's go into the dining room now for refreshments. I made buttermilk poundcake and lemon meringue pie. Hope ya'll like it!" Alice continued with the story, mimicking my mother's voice, her dreamy gaze indicating her own thoughts had transported her back to that day.

"Well, we all went into the dining room after your mother got some scissors and cut the thread off the doorknob so we could open the door, and there under the table were your brothers and your sister, scrunched up like we couldn't see 'em." She giggled at the memory.

"Your mother got hold of them firmly, each one by the arm, and pulled them from under the table."

"'Go on now,' she said, and they did, running out the back door, one, two, three. She never made any excuses for them, just laughed and said 'the natives are restless'and started cutting cake and pie, pouring iced tea for everyone."

"Some of us wanted to say something, but we didn't say one thing as we left later, and we didn't gossip about it to each other. All of us loved your mother. And I guess we just wouldn't criticize her like we would anyone else. Truth is, most of us wished we had her calm, 'cause my kids got on my nerves. She acted like it was the most natural thing in the world, them running through the house trailing that thread."

She looked at me again, searching my face as though I shared the same memory. "I wasn't born then," I said, almost as an apology.

"Well, I've got to go. Robert's waiting for me," she said moving away toward the Oldsmobile 88 where her husband waited. "I'll never forget that-- never," she said more to herself than me as she walked away, slowly shaking her head of tightly permed silver hair.

I walked briskly toward the car, where my husband waited, glad that Alice had not been there the day that Elton had rappelled from the roof on a rough rope anchored to the television antenna, crashing into the wall of the living room, full of yet another group of women attending one of mother's ladies' meetings.

And I know she wasn't there the night my brother Stephen, a teenager by then, walked through the house with a friend and two huge owls they had caught, or the day he parachuted off the house, or set the pasture with the butane tank on it on fire. All in all, the thread event seemed tame compared to some of the events that happened at our home later.

"Did your mother ever let you...?" I started, then stopped seeing the look on my husband's face.

"No!" he said, then laughed, having previously heard about my mother's tolerance for childish activities. "I'm sure she didn't."

1950s SMALL TOWN LIFE/untitled poem

2011-08-23T22:19:00.002-05:00

In a reflection of a glass
Those approaching are
Seen quite clearly
Every detail, color,outline
clear, distinct, and perfect
I, myself, I cannot see.
Only an outline, dim and black.
No detail there, no color.
Indeed, I am not sure that that is I.

Susan J. Skinner

copyright 2011/all rights reserved

1950s SMALL TOWN LIFE/Reflection #3

2011-08-21T21:59:00.002-05:00

Reflection #3

Windows are for looking through
And breaking
And glittering in the sun.
Windows are not always glass.
Sometimes they are brown eyes,
Or words on a paper,
Chimes from a tower,
And a child's yell of happiness.

Susan J. Skinner

copyright 2011/all rights reserved

1950s SMALL TOWN LIFE/Prelude

2011-08-20T21:56:00.002-05:00

Prelude

He smiles at me,
And if he knows my name,
I cannot tell.
But no matter.
It would not be the same
If he knew me well.
I look at him with covered eyes,
For he would be blinded
If I opened theses burning stars
That I possess when he is near,
I may never speak to him again,
But I can hope,
For
He smiles at me.

Susan J. Skinner

copyright 2011/all rights reserved

1950s SMALL TOWN LIFE/untitled poem

2011-08-19T21:41:00.002-05:00

Susan finished school a year early in order to "hurry up." This poem reflects the struggle she had to make that decision, but I think it reflects the feeling most of us have about highschool. I know these poems don't need my commentary, but sometimes I just can't help myself.

The halls are empty now
Except for me.
It is seven-thirty and twilight
Gently covers the dusty beams
With warm darkness.
Except for me,
There is no one here,
I think.
The echoeing footsteps must be mine.
The bannister returns my grasp,
Offering solace.
I cry.
A school is such a lonely place at night,
So full of dreams, remembrance,
So loud the solitude!
It insistently grasps my shoulder,
Begs me to turn around.
I will not.
I cannot leave my spirit with this melancholy assembly.
I cannot.
Tell myself-All do;
No one leaves the school completely.
We leave them here, our bittersweet alter-egos.
I step out the door.
And I do not.
I remain there forever.

Susan J. Skinner

copyright 2011/all rights reserved

1950s SMALL TOWN LIFE/untitled poem

2011-08-17T16:26:00.002-05:00

Seldom saying
Things that mean
What she believes
Leave her there
She doesn't know
Just what she wants
She will tell them nothing
They should see
But will not
Things in front of them
Are more difficult to see
Than those on extended planes
So what
She lives, dies
No marks are indelible
They will forget
She will not.

Susan J. Skinner

copyright 2011/ all rights reserved

1950s SMALL TOWN LIFE/untitled poem

2011-08-14T21:10:00.003-05:00

You can not read my mind
Thank the gods that is so.
Yet oftentimes I think love would be simpler
If my mind, picturing each tableau,

Were open like a book or set
Upon a stage with words of purest verse,
Who can say, if such love
Might be best--or worse?

For you would know each thought,
Each discrepancy, and every flaw
In my unreasoning, guileless mind
And cease to hold our love in awe.

Love, a perfect love, is wrought
When two can love, yet still
Be of two minds, two souls, two tongues
And yet be of one will.

Susan J. Skinner
June 9, 1962

copyright 2011/ all rights reserved

1950s SMALL TOWN LIFE/UNTITLED POEM

2011-08-13T16:21:00.003-05:00

Myriad lyrics trip through my mind
On the light little feet of their tunes
And the voices I hear as I sit here tonight
Come from far away planets and moons

I know that life here on earth will go on
As long as there's hope still around
But my life alone may cease to exist
For reasons that seem so profound.

Susan J. Skinner

copyright 2011/all rights reserved

1950s SMALL TOWN LIFE/UNTITLED POEM

2011-08-11T16:08:00.001-05:00

"Who are you?"
Don't ask me that.
I will not know for years and years.
I am a nymph who's colored blue,
A witch without a pointed hat.
A baby who can smile through tears.

"Where are you going?"
Should I know?
I shall go in many ways.
Stitches in ten-league boots I'm sewing.
I travel where the winds blow.
Perhaps a trip through Alice's maze.

"Are you telling the truth?"
Of course not! I know I'm
A poached egg with sugar on me.

Susan J. Skinner

copyright 2011/all rights reserved

*Note: I believe the last line was based on an old joke from the 1950s, but I am unable to find the reference online.

1950s SMALL TOWN LIFE/UNTITLED POEM

2011-08-08T16:00:00.000-05:00

To be myself
I sacrifice
Something
of the pleasure
That conformity carries--
Identification.
I do not know
what I am, though
I know what I am not
And that is better,
For I cannot see myself
For myself stands in my way.
The mirror to show me myself
Is hidden, waiting
Somewhere.
In this I place my hope.

Susan J. Skinner
June 12, 1963

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1950s SMALL TOWN LIFE/UNTITLED POEM

2011-07-29T23:08:00.000-05:00

Untitled Poem

I recall a long school hall
At night
And yelling as I ran through it,
Because no Authority loomed there
To bid me halt.
Except for Night and his synonymous
twin, Darkness,
And in my awe of these two spectral spirits,
I halted and posed back to where I had begun.

Susan J. Skinner

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1950s SMALL TOWN LIFE/Untitled poem

2011-07-28T21:26:00.002-05:00

Untitled Poem

Reason departs
And Truth assumes
the face of madness
Anti-truths scurry like
   vermin, anything ugly
And even the saner of
    the masses
Are caught by it.
Because they are too weak
    to stand alone
And Truth is not a very strong support.

Susan J. Skinner
June 13, 1964

copyright 2011/all rights reserved