Old Loves

Sigh if it helps
or cry a little
any love is worth something to me
I always blink away a few tears.

I can count them all
even the ones I didn't like
but those I remember too,
because they said they liked me.

Maybe I heard what I wanted to hear
because I needed love.
Either way they all deserve a few tears
in thanks for what I learned
by giving.

*******

The nakedness left it cold.
the sun was gone and the people were gone,
only rain and wind stayed to play games
in the wet sand.

Far back were the benches.
Blanket bundled bodies melted together
like sick chickens searching for heat
and courting death.

But it is only a day.
The lonely time will end
for some people
if there is occasion left to breathe.

*******

It hurts to love someone and have them
ride over your emotions like an elephant
thundering over an ant hill, unconscious
and uncaring except for themselves.

Needs are the essentials of existence
not for money or fame but for the craving
of the soul, the feeling of complete concern
the knowing that someone cares.

The desire to belong to someone else
as only people can.
The compulsion to feel the truth of love,
understanding the food of life, the psychic umbrella
of protection against insecurity, against hopelessness

in the living, the warmth of darkness
when you curl closely against a loved back or belly
content to let it be the only need
for that one precious moment.



###

One Precious Moment - A Poem, ca. 1969

It hurts to love someone and have them
ride over your emotions like an elephant
thundering over an ant hill, unconscious
and uncaring except for themselves.

Needs are the essentials of existence
not for money or fame but for the craving
of the soul, the feeling of complete concern
the knowing that someone cares.

The desire to belong to someone else
as only people can.
The compulsion to feel the truth of love,
understanding the food of life, the psychic umbrella
of protection against insecurity, against hopelessness

in the living, the warmth of darkness
when you curl closely against a loved back or belly
content to let it be the only need,
for that one precious moment.

What Do You Mean - A Poem, 1976.

What do you mean
when you say
We aren't right for each other?

Of course
we are different
Would you want it any other way?

This way is right.
You
are a man
I
am a woman

I like the difference
It adds warmth
to my days
and joy
to my nights.


Kathy Oddenino, June 1976.

The Scraps - A Poem, ca. 1960

The Scraps


by Kathy Oddenino


There are the scraps
the leavings that linger infecting me
with that sick feeling that screeches
through my every cell and vessel.
The one track warbling
of a mocking bird,
a needle bumping
in a cracked record.

I rush,
Busy, busy, busy little bee
trying hard to forget you see.
Nothing works.
Nothing makes the ache go away,
nothing replaces your love.
I'm cold,
and it is a hundred in the shade.

I cry,
while others laugh at their silly jokes.
I pull on heavy slacks and a sweater,
alone with my winter.
I eat sawdust with salad dressing,
I plan in panic,
But there can be no plan,
there can be no tomorrow.

Today exists only in the yesterdays
of us.
The walks, the talks, the moments
when we were.
Oh, to be again suspended
if only for an isolated while
in that land of love,
where I could find no scraps.

BEACH WALKING - a poem, ca. 1969

BEACH WALKING


by Kathy Oddenino


Waves pounding my head
upon the packed sand of my mind
eroding my world of progress
leaving me to blunder in confusion.

I walk malignantly among broken shells
carelessly searching the sky,
a seagull bursts forth and glides to a halt
bogged for a moment in soggy sand.

It turns and scampers down the beach
investigating morsels of food.
I watch it searching, incarcerated,
frantic with hunger.

Mist folds me in her cloak of velvet.
We are alone, a mute seagull and I,
sharing our precious strip of heaven
isolated in this world of hate.

Rain, misty rain playing
against my eyes. Twitching
the film rolls away and the rubbish
in my mind seeps past the barriers
leaving me stripped.

Alone, I see myself
in a new transparency
a virgin soul transformed in love
and I cry.

Biting tears choke me, falling
to mate and erode tiny furrows
in Mother earth to flow away
joining in holy intercourse
with Father sea.