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She Thinks Things
| Open Poetry #46 |
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She Thinks Things |
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Alison 
since 2008-01-27
Posts 9318Lumpy oatmeal makes me crazy! 
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Things are not like they used to be nor are they like she once imagined. She has no great grandchildren and her grandchildren are now adults. Selfish, she modifies in her mind, selfish adults – part of some xyz generation, which is a label that means nothing to her. No one comes to call; people are too busy. The phone rings on Saturday mornings as if an alarm clock set to remind her of life. She ponders whether new phones actually ring and mutters that phones cannot be slammed into their cradle any longer. Pushing a button does not offer the same satisfaction; she considers the loss to mankind. So, she sits now among her stacks of books, newspapers scattered across the table, cat on her lap and remote in hand. And she puzzles how there can be so many channels and, still, nothing to watch. It makes no sense, but then so many things make absolutely no sense at all. People talk on cell phones, but have so little to say. Pictures are sent though the computer, but are too hard to frame. Everyone types, but few know how to write. She lays her head against the back of the recliner and nods off as she thinks. When did she grow old and why are things are not like they used to be nor are they like she once imagined. - Alison |
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| © Copyright 2010 Alison - All Rights Reserved | |||
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StarlitMind Junior Member
since 2010-03-17
Posts 12New England |
Slamming the phone down, one of the many reasons I still use old rotary dial phones! You make me scared for my generation and my future. Thank you for making me look back and think on who we have been and who we are becoming. Maybe if we work at it, we can change and realize the things we imagined would be. |
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threadbear Senior Member
since 2008-07-10
Posts 817Indy |
Allison, this is a great example of good poetry where you write from someone else's perspective. I think everyone, at some time thinks: What WAS the point of it all? Jeff |
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Klassy Lassy Member Elite
since 2005-06-28
Posts 2187Oregon |
Alison, I don't know what made you write this, but it really makes me bite my lip and blink against the sting of anger beneath my eyelids. Wow! The power you wield with your poetry is amazing...painful in the truth of being left behind when youth, beauty, and usefulness to the mainstream fades. Our youth these days miss so much in this throw-away society, too. There is a sadness and a poverty here I've watched for a long time, dreading, because we are never ready for the insanity of purpose falling away whether it is illness, age, or simply no one to share life with. Very thoughtful and gripping observations penned here, dear heart. Karen |
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crosscountry83 Member
since 2009-07-30
Posts 345 |
Wow, that poem is amazing. The emotions... just, wow. I haven't been here in a while, and I honestly didn't think your poetry could possibly get better. But it did. Amazing work. Rileigh |
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LindsayP Member Elite
since 2007-07-28
Posts 3410Australia, Victoria |
Dear Alison you have written a very sad poem here, one that pulls at the heart strings. There is a very old saying that states, As you sow then that is how you will reap. One could not help but feel sorry for that poor old lady when she seems so lonely. You wrote it so well my dear, love. Lindsay |
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Oklahoma Rose Senior Member
since 2008-02-28
Posts 1586Oklahoma USA |
Age can slip right up on you if you don't pay attention. It can get very lonely when you have no one there to share those later yers with. Alison you are a fantastice writer. I always enjoy reading your work, when I can get here. |
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Richy Member Elite
since 2003-05-03
Posts 3050 |
Every generation since the begining has one upped the one previous. Well at least they look at it that way. And the generation that was succeded always feels like this is the end of all society as we know it, because, of the new music, jazz, rock, punk, rap, the new styles, from bell bottoms to ripped jeans, and the new technology, from writing letters to one another that would then travel to the other side of the world via pony express, or slow boat that might take weeks, or months to now, instant messaging, through this newfangled invention called, the internet. But most of all, it just seems like the next gen just keeps getting looser, and less compassionate, that's the real scary part. When my great, great, great grandparents, were young, I'm sure their parents thought that it was the end of the world too, just as our children right now will feel the same thing when they have kids, and that new gen starts up with some more crazy intense, stuff that makes them concerned out of their head. To put it simply, thats just how life is, it about perspective. If we can keep our minds open just a little bit, as we age, gracefully, then we just might get through this whole thing, alive. Beautiful Allison. I was lucky to read you today! Richard  |
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suthern
since 1999-07-29
Posts 20723Louisiana |
I didn't think I was that old... and I don't have grandchildren... but in so many ways, you've written me. *S* I just need to heed the warning to sweep the place free of bitterness. *S* Fantastic write, my friend! *S* You are GOOD!!!!! |
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Robert E. Jordan Member Rara Avis
since 2008-01-25
Posts 8541Philadelphia, Pennsylvania |
Yo dear Alison, This is very well written. I'd drop the second "are" in the next to the last line. Love Bobby |
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Marchmadness Member Rara Avis
since 2007-09-16
Posts 9271So. El Monte, California |
Poems that make you think...the very best kind, Alison, even when they make you sad. Ida |
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Juju Member Elite
since 2003-12-29
Posts 3429In your dreams |
Nice -Juju |
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Zeigeist Member
since 2009-12-09
Posts 311Michigan |
Good to see you flexing your poetery muscule Allison. A very fine poem with lots of emotion dripping from the words. Z. |
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Sunshine
Administrator
Member Empyrean
since 1999-06-25
Posts 63354Listening to every heart |
Only ten years ago I wondered that my beloved mother-in-law shook her head at computers...as I now find myself shaking my fuzzy head at the newer phones and games that streak on by, here only for a moment, only to be replaced [daily] by something new and better, which I remember new and improved use to apply to detergents...and only sporadically, when the boxes didn't contain a dish or drinking glass of some kind... See how you make others reminisce, my dear? Good poem! Wish you could be at our writer's group...they'd love this! |
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passing shadows Member Empyrean
since 1999-08-26
Posts 45577displaced |
hmmm, well, I relate here I hate to say kinda sad stuff and I like it |
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OwlSA Member Rara Avis
since 2005-11-07
Posts 9347Durban, South Africa |
This is a very sensitive and beautiful Alison-poem. I e-correspond with a young Ovambo girl from Namibia. She is a very wise and mature 17 and I am 64, but we get on like a house on fire. If only all young people could enjoy their youth with such an understanding and appreciation of all that is good around and in them, as she does, there would be a lot less sad old people. Owl |
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Balladeer
Administrator
Member Empyrean
since 1999-06-05
Posts 25505Ft. Lauderdale, Fl USA |
We all bemoan how things have changed for the worse since we were young. It's the natural order of things. You penned it beautifully, miss. |
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Joyce Johnson
since 2001-03-10
Posts 9912Washington State |
I read your poem from the perspective of a great-grandmother and realize how lucky I have been. My children are considerate and I have this whole new bunch of friends on the internet and my poetry family. Life is great. |
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Mysteria
since 2001-03-07
Posts 18328British Columbia, Canada |
Alison, well done indeed. I never thought I would start to sound like my mother, but here I am doing it! I think though that growing old is certainly inevitable, but growing up is not. I chose the latter, and sure glad I did. |
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Misty Lilacs Senior Member
since 2005-11-15
Posts 1060White Birch Forest |
Alison, this is a great piece. With each passing day I wonder where the years disappeared to. But, I refuse to grow old and in my mind I am still a young woman. I love this line: "And she puzzles how there can be so many channels and, still, nothing to watch" ooxx Marti
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1slick_lady Member Ascendant
since 2000-12-22
Posts 6088standing on a shadow's lace |
alison you are such a talented poet |
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Honeybee Member Ascendant
since 1999-12-26
Posts 5372Ontario, CANADA |
Poignantly expressed! |
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Honeybunch Member Rara Avis
since 2001-12-29
Posts 7115South Africa |
Whew! Tonight I'm thinking she must be me! Fortunately, however, I don't settle in like she does because I know that tomorrow the sun will shine again! Well written, Alison - lot of truth. Helen |
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Bill Charles Member Patricius
since 2000-07-11
Posts 10619highways, & byways, for now |
Alison - why do I feel some of these words deeply inside. Time passes, too bad some don't see it... BC |
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The Lady Member Rara Avis
since 2005-12-26
Posts 7634The Southwest |
powerful stuff here Alison! you are a magnificent poet! |
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Dadygoose Member
since 2010-01-01
Posts 162A Communist country |
Well Ali? In 1965, if you wanted to call somebody log distance, you first had to dial 0 on a rotary phone. The operator didn¡¦t answer operator; she said something like opader ¡K and ¡§number please/¡¨ Then you had to tell the operator (or opader) I want to make a station to station or person to person call. A station to station meant you were calling a public phone in places like a state prison or mental hospital, and charges would start as soon as somebody picked up the house phone. A person to person call would be if you wanted to talk to someone in particular and charges would begin when that person agreed to take the call. When I was little I could hear normally and sometimes a voice on long distance sounded rather faint and then I would sometimes shout to be heard. San Antonio had only four TV channels and in Austin there was only one, channel 7. At the school for the blind we lived in what were called cottages, and our cottage was the only one that did not have a television. you had to go to another building. It didn¡¦t even have a water fountain and you had to walk down to cottage a if you wanted a drink or a coke. A glass bottle of pop was just ten cents then, no doubt Sunshine remembers, no deposit, no return. Then the telephone company (there was only one) put out a little commercial that said: Dial one, dial one, plus the area code if it¡¦s different from your one, plus the number. My allowance was 50 cents. It came on Friday and it was enough for the treats of a candy bar and a coke, But there was a lot of petty thievery among us little boys in the ¡§cottage¡¨ so often I didn¡¦t have any money even for a treat. We had talking book machines. The school was and indifferent, gloomy and forbidding place, and much of the time I was scared. We had to write letters home every too weeks and I hated it. A stamp was two cents. I would write the letter in Braille, double spaced so the teacher could print between the lines. I even got in trouble because I didn¡¦t like, indeed hated, everything in the school, where I was painfully homesick, and was penning my feelings in a way that wasn¡¦t considered appropriate to put in a letter home. When danny Bennet in fourth grade wrote that he hoped he would get run over by a car, the teacher didn¡¦t think that was very nice either. Soon there would not be a home to go to, and I became withdrawn and morose ¡K Well anyway, I¡¦m just rambling about the bad old days when life was worse. ƒº Back then we used party lines and got visits from milkmen. Party lines and milkmen no longer exist Of course, we didn¡¦t have computers, we used typewriters. Sunshine will remember the old Smith-coronas and the IBM Selectric. I use to have one until I got burglarized. Well, anyway ¡Kƒº Let the sun Shine in. Hey, nobody's human! |
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JamesMichael Member Empyrean
since 1999-11-16
Posts 33336Kapolei, Hawaii, USA |
Fine writing...James |
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