Friday, November 17, 2017

2017 November Chapbook Challenge: Day 17 / What I Meant to Say


What I Meant to Say

you didn’t let me finish what t meant to say                  was left unsaid            

further discussion                     impossible                                since words are only words

and we could not agree            on their meanings                     your words                  

 like getting “it” off your chest              emptying the dust bin               snaps and snails

fell from your lips                    like the tar baby                       i said nothing



you spoke a foreign language   of a world i did not know       someone had fallen from the train

like humpty dumpty                 the world that was                    could not be put together again 
          
there was no end                      to your grievances                    you dug up things        

from the cemetery of life          you kept digging                       all the way to china     

words i did not recognize         your words a surprise to me     i miss you most of all

November 17, 2017


                       
                        


What I Meant to Say II

it is said                        this winter will be warmer and dry       no rain to speak of

no snow                       to delight                      perhaps it will be

better for the animals   burr                             not too cold                            

still cold enough for a shiver    hard to find      like bear                      

will words                    hibernate                      have they        

migrated south             the morning quiet         i will miss                                

the silence of the snow             pull books from the shelf         with my finger             

find the words              wake them                   ask them out to play                

try to find the words     that say             what i meant to say

November 17, 2017                            

2 comments:

Sherry Blue Sky said...

I can feel the shock in the power of words that rewrote history, in the first poem, and enjoyed the musings about winter in the second.

MNL (Cactus Haiku) said...

I like this a lot. In this, "your" words block "my" words making "me" mute as "there was no end to your grievances you dug up things

from the cemetery of life" ... and yet "i miss you most of all" and even afterwords, still trying to find the words: "pull books from the shelf ... try to find the words that say what i meant to say"
The need still to find the right words even after the person is gone. I like the structure too, for me I read in the spacing the hesitancy of the words not coming out. The poem evoked a myriad of feelings and I could see both characters very clearly.

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