LOVE TRAP

LOVE TRAP

Just You and Love

Your love was not enough

To stray my course

Though you begged for me to stay

I have left you lone – just you and Love

A cold and wintry day

Your love was not enough

To slow my pace

In fact, Love hastened me to go

I have left you lone- just you and Love

Lonely heart and soul

This is a sample of one of the poems I entered into a local poetry contest. I wrote this poem for a guy I was dating for about six months, and of course it didn't work out.  Mostly because he was a habitual liar and I could catch him every time.  No, I'm not exaggerating this and it isn't because I'm someone's mom. He was lying like this:  "Let me just borrow your phone for a minute, I just need to talk to my Mom about this weekend" so I hand over my phone and there he is dialing and then chatting wildly to "Mom" and I hear the recorded operator in the background saying "please hang up and dial again" - DUDE let me see my phone!  Technology tells me that this guy just dialed 123456789 and MOM is not on the line.  Lies can be complicated and lies can be simple, this guy was just a simple kind of liar.

BUT this post isn't about what's his name, it's about THE FIRST POETRY CONTEST I've ever entered!! This is my first ever poetry contest and I have to admit, my stomach is flopping and my fingers are crossed.  First place is $100 prize - imagine if I won that?  not to shabby to catch a hundred bucks with a sappy love poem or two.  I think today is my lucky day anyway - because - I started the morning by winning $25 on a scratch off! I've never been very good at winning, in fact - I'm really really good at LOSING!  Although, I try to believe I am a glass half full kind of girl.  I like to walk around thinking "someone has it worse", so in that vein - I've already WON just because I took the time out to enter the contest right?   Here's another entry:  

The Knot of Love

I love you

                Tangled chain of emotions

                                Keeps us apart

                                                Slowly unravel

                                                                Detangle the knot

                                                                                To get back to

                                                                                                I love you 

This one was written for my angry sixteen year old daughter, who is now an angry 27 year old.  I remember thinking it's just like this isn't it - when you really love someone, you sit down with a whole mess of emotions and try to figure out how to unravel it - the same way we do with jewelry chains.   Keep your fingers crossed for me!  This is going to be my lucky month!

Australia

On June 28 I picked up my cousin from Australia, it was his first visit to the United States and his plan was to stay for ten days and have an "American Experience"!  He planned his trip around America's fourth of July so he could see what this was about.  This was also the first time I was going to meet him (and we are both 46) this is my mothers sisters son.  He tells me there are other cousins there - Australia - that are around my age as well, but I wonder if I will ever be together enough to get over there to visit them all.  The trip from Australia to New York takes almost a full 24 hours with one stop in Los Angeles, California and costs about $2500!  I imagine the year I decide to do this I will have to give up a small trip to someplace in the States (this years trip is Memphis, Tennessee, last year was Vegas) along with the tattoo I always get! 

My cousins visit was the most fun I've had in years, he turned out to be a really nice guy (and helpful around the house!).  There were many days I would come in from working and find him downstairs doing laundry or out in my garden helping out while he waited for me to come back.  He was also adventurous and would take off to explore, talking to strangers along the way.  People in my neighborhood were immediately charmed by his accent and took him into their homes for dinner and drinks!  Cheers!  My friends and I joked that I'd acquired my own Crocodile Dundee, he was just as affable and not afraid of anything!  although he kindly told us that Paul Hogan had ruined the image of Australians forever, and Nicole Kidman was a "fake"! But he was always in favor of saying "shrimp on the Barbie" for us just the same!

I know...there isn't much creativity in sharing this visit...except that I am sure that his visit has altered who I will be forever.  Strange that when he left I found myself crying for two days over the absence of his presence.  Having never known my mother (she died when I was five) or any of her family, I never missed them...all of that has changed with that visit.