Christmas, 2004
by Robin Shwedo
©: Robin Shwedo, 2004
'Twas a misty, moisty morning on a misty, moisty day,
Could have been December, certainly not May.
The air was filled with speckled rain, the sky a gauzy grey
on a misty, moisty morning on a misty, moisty day.
On holidays, I usually try to walk through a nearby park on holidays while the main meal is in the oven. On Christmas 2004, I had to shorten this walk, as it was "a misty, moisty morning." From a new collection, just started, titled Painted Words.
Monday, December 26, 2022
Friday, December 16, 2022
WORKING CLASS, EBB AND FLOW
WORKING CLASS, EBB AND FLOW
by Robin Shwedo
©Robin Shwedo, 2018
I
For years,
my ex and I lived for the weekends.
Unemployed for months,
living in the house next door
to his parents,
a house they'd inherited,
he'd finally found work,
bringing in a weekly paycheck –
pittance, though it was –
when combined with
food stamps and
no rent,
it paid the bills, if just barely.
Friday,
after work,
we'd gather the kids,
pile into the car,
and go to the nearest Albertson's,
a farther drive than
the Winn Dixie,
but newer and cleaner.
After the weekly shopping,
reminiscent of going to the A&P
as a child
with my parents on Fridays,
we'd stop by the neighborhood Wendy's
for dinner,
always a treat.
Burgers, fries and sodas,
a big deal for the kids,
and no cooking or clean up,
a big deal for me.
Every week,
we'd see the same families,
kids in tow,
having Friday fast food dinners,
feeling comfortable enough
for some conversations.
“How was your week?”
“Great, and yours?”
When one family's boys spent too much time
in the rest room,
Mom'd tell the youngest,
“Go tell your brothers
to quit homesteading
if they want to eat.”
We all laughed at that.
Now, years later,
if someone takes too long,
the family code is that
they're homesteading.
We'd watch the sky
across the street
darken in the winter,
stay light in the summer
as we ate.
Then, finished,
we'd tell the other two or three families
we'd see them
the next week.
Gradually,
kids grew, jobs and hours changed,
Albertsons built a new, closer store
that took us closer
to other fast food places.
I wonder about the homesteaders.
II
His parents split,
and the rental became
his mom's home.
She lived with us for a month or so;
you relegated her,
in her own house,
to the utility room.
Finally,
I told her to come inside.
You lost a job,
found another,
lost it,
found another.
In desperation,
I found and took a job
with a future,
and, after a contentious weekend,
moved us out of your mom's house.
She mourned,
wanting us back.
But six people in a 2-bedroom place
was rough.
The rent in the new place
took a third of our income,
then went up more.
I lost my job,
in part because
you were too proud to do
“women's work,”
laundry,
dishes,
cleaning
while I worked full time
and you stayed home,
watching TV and the kids.
A job
revolving around
physical work
required more than three hours of sleep a night,
and catching up on weekends.
You then took a job,
while I stayed home.
III
Three moves later,
you leave to find work out of state,
leaving me to care for four kids.
I find work
while going to school full time.
We move,
and you come back.
You promised to change,
and found a job
you loved
(security in a topless bar).
You spent weekends at
the flea market,
and took a job there,
working with a friend,
running errands while he ran the booth,
helping him sell radios and such.
The security job failed,
and the flea market was your main job,
paid $100 a week.
Sy (“Hi-Fi Sy”) offered our oldest a job –
his first –
making almost as much
as you on weekends.
Finally, the stress of
work,
kids,
not enough money,
too much rent,
and other nonsense too its toll.
We had to move again.
IV
Every place we looked,
they'd rent to me,
even with four kids and a dog.
But you'd somehow jinx the deal.
Finally, you checked with a rental place.
“Sorry, you don't make enough,”
the man told you.
Our income was $20 a month shy
of 1/3 the rent,
which meant they wouldn't
rent to you.
The next day,
I took off from both jobs and school,
went to the rental agency
and fast-talked the same man
into handing me keys
to two houses.
“Take your pick,” he told me.
I picked one,
paid the rent and deposit,
and had us in the next day.
You lost,
found,
lost,
found
several dead-end jobs,
finally finding one you loved
only when I'd
asked you to leave.
With your own place to rent –
a cheap efficiency –
you made do.
I took a job driving cab,
took a few days off
when you died –
the job had no health insurance,
which meant you neglected your health –
then worked hard,
long,
12-hour days.
Met another driver
who knew how to treat a lady.
He'd nursed his late wife,
a waitress in several diners,
when her cancer showed up,
was cured,
then came back.
A man who'll care for
a dying wife
is a real man.
We married eight years after her death,
three years after my divorce,
and your death.
We both worked,
then had to quit
when our eyesight
started to fail.
I cared for him
as he'd cared for her
during his final years.
V
Working class life
is so much harder than
life for the rich.
The hours are long,
the pay is crap,
the rents are high,
the little bit of Obamacare
is being pulled away
by the obscenely rich,
making health care hard to come by.
It's the working poor's work
that has built up the rich,
built on our backs,
giving them their life
as they pull aways ours.
Someday –
probably soon –
the revolution will knock
the crap out of those rich who don't care.
Be forewarned.
This is a newer poem (written 6/17/18 – 6/18/18) from an upcoming book titled Working Class Poems, which is looking for a publisher.
by Robin Shwedo
©Robin Shwedo, 2018
I
For years,
my ex and I lived for the weekends.
Unemployed for months,
living in the house next door
to his parents,
a house they'd inherited,
he'd finally found work,
bringing in a weekly paycheck –
pittance, though it was –
when combined with
food stamps and
no rent,
it paid the bills, if just barely.
Friday,
after work,
we'd gather the kids,
pile into the car,
and go to the nearest Albertson's,
a farther drive than
the Winn Dixie,
but newer and cleaner.
After the weekly shopping,
reminiscent of going to the A&P
as a child
with my parents on Fridays,
we'd stop by the neighborhood Wendy's
for dinner,
always a treat.
Burgers, fries and sodas,
a big deal for the kids,
and no cooking or clean up,
a big deal for me.
Every week,
we'd see the same families,
kids in tow,
having Friday fast food dinners,
feeling comfortable enough
for some conversations.
“How was your week?”
“Great, and yours?”
When one family's boys spent too much time
in the rest room,
Mom'd tell the youngest,
“Go tell your brothers
to quit homesteading
if they want to eat.”
We all laughed at that.
Now, years later,
if someone takes too long,
the family code is that
they're homesteading.
We'd watch the sky
across the street
darken in the winter,
stay light in the summer
as we ate.
Then, finished,
we'd tell the other two or three families
we'd see them
the next week.
Gradually,
kids grew, jobs and hours changed,
Albertsons built a new, closer store
that took us closer
to other fast food places.
I wonder about the homesteaders.
II
His parents split,
and the rental became
his mom's home.
She lived with us for a month or so;
you relegated her,
in her own house,
to the utility room.
Finally,
I told her to come inside.
You lost a job,
found another,
lost it,
found another.
In desperation,
I found and took a job
with a future,
and, after a contentious weekend,
moved us out of your mom's house.
She mourned,
wanting us back.
But six people in a 2-bedroom place
was rough.
The rent in the new place
took a third of our income,
then went up more.
I lost my job,
in part because
you were too proud to do
“women's work,”
laundry,
dishes,
cleaning
while I worked full time
and you stayed home,
watching TV and the kids.
A job
revolving around
physical work
required more than three hours of sleep a night,
and catching up on weekends.
You then took a job,
while I stayed home.
III
Three moves later,
you leave to find work out of state,
leaving me to care for four kids.
I find work
while going to school full time.
We move,
and you come back.
You promised to change,
and found a job
you loved
(security in a topless bar).
You spent weekends at
the flea market,
and took a job there,
working with a friend,
running errands while he ran the booth,
helping him sell radios and such.
The security job failed,
and the flea market was your main job,
paid $100 a week.
Sy (“Hi-Fi Sy”) offered our oldest a job –
his first –
making almost as much
as you on weekends.
Finally, the stress of
work,
kids,
not enough money,
too much rent,
and other nonsense too its toll.
We had to move again.
IV
Every place we looked,
they'd rent to me,
even with four kids and a dog.
But you'd somehow jinx the deal.
Finally, you checked with a rental place.
“Sorry, you don't make enough,”
the man told you.
Our income was $20 a month shy
of 1/3 the rent,
which meant they wouldn't
rent to you.
The next day,
I took off from both jobs and school,
went to the rental agency
and fast-talked the same man
into handing me keys
to two houses.
“Take your pick,” he told me.
I picked one,
paid the rent and deposit,
and had us in the next day.
You lost,
found,
lost,
found
several dead-end jobs,
finally finding one you loved
only when I'd
asked you to leave.
With your own place to rent –
a cheap efficiency –
you made do.
I took a job driving cab,
took a few days off
when you died –
the job had no health insurance,
which meant you neglected your health –
then worked hard,
long,
12-hour days.
Met another driver
who knew how to treat a lady.
He'd nursed his late wife,
a waitress in several diners,
when her cancer showed up,
was cured,
then came back.
A man who'll care for
a dying wife
is a real man.
We married eight years after her death,
three years after my divorce,
and your death.
We both worked,
then had to quit
when our eyesight
started to fail.
I cared for him
as he'd cared for her
during his final years.
V
Working class life
is so much harder than
life for the rich.
The hours are long,
the pay is crap,
the rents are high,
the little bit of Obamacare
is being pulled away
by the obscenely rich,
making health care hard to come by.
It's the working poor's work
that has built up the rich,
built on our backs,
giving them their life
as they pull aways ours.
Someday –
probably soon –
the revolution will knock
the crap out of those rich who don't care.
Be forewarned.
This is a newer poem (written 6/17/18 – 6/18/18) from an upcoming book titled Working Class Poems, which is looking for a publisher.
Wednesday, December 14, 2022
THINKING TIME
THINKING TIME
by Robin Shwedo
©: Robin Shwedo, 2016
There are two best times for thinking:
Going for a walk,
and riding the bus.
Both activities make other distractions difficult.
Some of my best thinking,
idea-wise,
have come from both.
I have a path I love to walk.
It goes cross-country,
down dirt roads,
through woods,
past houses,
town homes,
stables full of horses,
parks and little league fields.
Once, walking down the dirt road,
past a moved-in house on acres of land,
just at the start of woods on one side,
a drainage ditch and stable on the other,
I had the feeling of my grandmother,
long gone,
as though waiting for me.
Over the years,
it has felt that others
gone, but not forgotten,
have joined her,
to where I almost feel them saying,
Here she comes, here she comes,
She's coming
as I head out.
I've thought of these family members
long gone,
but not forgotten.
Mom has recently joined this group.
During her memorial,
months after her death,
I couldn't help but think that
my sister and I are the
last two in our birth family.
As the elder,
I can remember when a little easier than she can.
And yet,
at the memorial,
I realize that our uncle,
Mom's only brother
(she had no sisters)
is the last one left from his birth family.
He has no one to remember when with,
at least in the same way Mom could.
Also on walks,
I've thought of the people who live in the town houses
I pass:
an old couple whose daughter
(I'm guessing)
fixes their dinner
around the time for my evening walk;
the couple with the baby in a stroller
and two small dogs
whose antics make the baby
laugh and clap;
the couple who leaves their Christmas tree
up through mid-January
every year.
Bus rides give way to
another kind of thinking.
You get to see people,
wonder about their lives.
One time, coming home from school
in downtown St. Pete,
Matt met me at Williams Park.
He knew I'd take one of two buses,
both disembarking riders
and departing on the same side of the park.
He waited, and when I saw him,
we got on the same bus –
the 52 –
together.
We watched the others on the bus,
from the bus,
pointed people out to each other.
At Central Plaza terminal,
we gasped, then laughed
at one man,
sitting and talking to a woman.
He was wearing gray slippers,
tie-dyed socks,
a purple bathrobe with gold sparkles,
and topped by a red beret,
set at a jaunty angle
atop his head.
The woman,
about his age – late middle aged –
was nondescript next to him.
I want to write them into a story,
I tell Matt,
as he laughs and rolls his eyes.
We all have times when our mind naturally drifts and starts wandering back in time, into the future, or kicking around the present. This poem is about that. I've run and/or walked for years, as well as riding buses; both are great for thinking.
This is part of a growing group of poems tentatively titled Poetry for My Mother.
by Robin Shwedo
©: Robin Shwedo, 2016
There are two best times for thinking:
Going for a walk,
and riding the bus.
Both activities make other distractions difficult.
Some of my best thinking,
idea-wise,
have come from both.
I have a path I love to walk.
It goes cross-country,
down dirt roads,
through woods,
past houses,
town homes,
stables full of horses,
parks and little league fields.
Once, walking down the dirt road,
past a moved-in house on acres of land,
just at the start of woods on one side,
a drainage ditch and stable on the other,
I had the feeling of my grandmother,
long gone,
as though waiting for me.
Over the years,
it has felt that others
gone, but not forgotten,
have joined her,
to where I almost feel them saying,
Here she comes, here she comes,
She's coming
as I head out.
I've thought of these family members
long gone,
but not forgotten.
Mom has recently joined this group.
During her memorial,
months after her death,
I couldn't help but think that
my sister and I are the
last two in our birth family.
As the elder,
I can remember when a little easier than she can.
And yet,
at the memorial,
I realize that our uncle,
Mom's only brother
(she had no sisters)
is the last one left from his birth family.
He has no one to remember when with,
at least in the same way Mom could.
Also on walks,
I've thought of the people who live in the town houses
I pass:
an old couple whose daughter
(I'm guessing)
fixes their dinner
around the time for my evening walk;
the couple with the baby in a stroller
and two small dogs
whose antics make the baby
laugh and clap;
the couple who leaves their Christmas tree
up through mid-January
every year.
Bus rides give way to
another kind of thinking.
You get to see people,
wonder about their lives.
One time, coming home from school
in downtown St. Pete,
Matt met me at Williams Park.
He knew I'd take one of two buses,
both disembarking riders
and departing on the same side of the park.
He waited, and when I saw him,
we got on the same bus –
the 52 –
together.
We watched the others on the bus,
from the bus,
pointed people out to each other.
At Central Plaza terminal,
we gasped, then laughed
at one man,
sitting and talking to a woman.
He was wearing gray slippers,
tie-dyed socks,
a purple bathrobe with gold sparkles,
and topped by a red beret,
set at a jaunty angle
atop his head.
The woman,
about his age – late middle aged –
was nondescript next to him.
I want to write them into a story,
I tell Matt,
as he laughs and rolls his eyes.
We all have times when our mind naturally drifts and starts wandering back in time, into the future, or kicking around the present. This poem is about that. I've run and/or walked for years, as well as riding buses; both are great for thinking.
This is part of a growing group of poems tentatively titled Poetry for My Mother.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)