We live alone, trying to find comfort in this nursing home—
because we can’t live with our families, with our own children.

We haven’t had a real family in so long,
not one we could truly call ours.

The only ones who need us now are the others like us,
sitting in the hall, staring at us like we’re mirrors.

Now we have formed a chorus to sing some stupid song,
proving that we are not socially incapacitated.
A piano gasps its tinny chords, half-deaf and wheezing,
but we sing anyway. What else is left to do?

Soon, we’ll finish singing,
and the caregiver will lead us to the cafeteria
to drink stewed fruit drink.

We’ll keep living, keep holding ourselves together,
even if we’re lonely, abandoned, forgotten.

My mother loves me.
She watches me from the other side, happy as I sing.
After the performance, she’ll buy me a cup of ice cream.

I’m still alive. I still want to be loved.

My son was killed, and I was left with no one.

I hold sheet music in my hands, but I’m not singing—
just standing here on the side, keeping my friends company,
so they don’t feel hurt.

I think Kathy is an idiot.
Don’t know what to do about that.

I said to your Dad “I want a busy house”.

A home where we may have slept in on a weekday, then we’re rushing to grab a bite of toast before we’re stuck in traffic trying to get you to school on time.

A home where the laundry doesn’t always get done straight away and when it does we have sock fights and pray that the dog doesn’t end up going back to the vets to rescue one of the pair.

A home where you’ll try to eat what you can from your plate and we won’t mind if you snack later in the day. In fact we won’t mind if you wake us up to go on a midnight feast adventure in the middle of the night.

A home where you’ll be happy and grow up and maybe one day want to call your own.

I said to your Dad “I don’t want a busy house, I want a busy home”.

This is the shoe where poetry lives
It walks with a tap and the occasional hop and skip
But on Mondays it drags a little on the way to the train station

This is the shoe where poetry lives
Ready to throw a kick but inevitably risking a stubbed toe
Harbouring the memory of a break and the months of limp

This is the shoe where poetry lives
Experimenting with an odd sock, denoting a qwerky outlook
And if you were to examine it's sole you'd find an uneven wear

This is the shoe where poetry lives
Grass stained from ventures along less travelled paths
And carrying scuffs from many climbed boundary walls

This is the shoe where poetry lives
And it sits by the back door ready for the next adventure
Silently jealous of the shoe that was claimed by the dog last night

A house always gets

all kinds of defects, well, we --


just live around them.

I've seen the care you give to animals
From the smallest rodents
To the biggest dogs
You gave them love and homes

I should have seen the signs
I was only a person to you
When you broke my home
When you took my love

You loved animals
More than your own person
Yet you left me
Like a wounded animal