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Friday, April 3, 2009

The Problem with Problem Poems


AP – Michelle Obama, wife of U.S. President Barack Obama, left,
walks with Britain's Queen Elizabeth II at...

More about this picture at the end of this post. All I can say is I love it!!! Who knew the Queen was so warm? I've seen her my whole life and she appeared cold and distant. This is a real switch!!

This is going to be a short post, because I'm not so happy with my poem today, but didn't want to change it too much.:) After yesterday's assault to your senses as many have commented, today's is pretty bland, but I hope you enjoy it. It's all about my existence on this blog and maybe this poem expresses it best.:)

Today's prompt:
Take the phrase "The problem with (blank)" and replace the "(blank)" with a word or phrase. Make this the title of your poem and then write a poem to fit with or juxtapose against that title."

The Problem with Being Unemployed

The first day is exciting when you have no alarm
and you can sleep as much as you want
But when you get up the house
is empty, and you have to clean up
everyone’s mess because after all
you are not working. So you hit the newspapers and
Monster.com and Yahoo Hotjobs.com and
Craigslist.com and you spend hours
revising your resume and cover letter
You apply for all the jobs you find that fit you
and wait for the call or the email
that never arrives. Instead you find too good
to be true offers of money for not doing a thing
and how you can type and money will roll from
your fingers. So you read the omnibus letter
to the end and find all you need pay is over one
hundred dollars for the kit. Disgusted you go
back to the free job offers of Monster.com’s alerts.
Still you don’t hear a thing
You imagine your email floating
in computer land or sitting
in someone’s email box unopened
or worse discarded immediately.

Dust settles on the clutter you accumulated
with wages now gone. You’ll find time tomorrow as the
tomorrows pile up until getting over the knotted lump
becomes gargantuan.A malaise surrounds you as you
become everyone’s servant. It settles into your body until
all you’re doing each day is grabbing a non-fat mocha
latte after picking up your daughter from work.

Anxious for validation you turn to cooking and baking.
Why not bake if you have the time? But that requires
shopping and spending money and you love your
own food, so you eat too much of it. Then you are
left with the dishes to wash - alone.
Writing is done at night for the quiet and solitude
you need for thinking, but you spend too much
time on Facebook and find ways to procrastinate.

Writing at night keeps you up too late so you sleep
until afternoon and miss morning with its breakfast
and first of the day’s sunshine peeking through
your window. Your life is not like others in the house,
and you find though you like being alone at night to write,
you are more alone since no one is on your schedule.
If you try to change you get jet lagged with the time difference.
You want to scream, but it wouldn’t help.
You are stuck in a maddening circle and find it
shrinking until you feel all the life squeezed
out of you and you want to go running into the
street screaming Give Me a Job!!!!
copyright 2009 by Barbara Ehrentreu
*********************************************
I said I would talk about the picture of the Queen and Michelle Obama so here goes. I want to talk about this ridiculous furor over Michelle Obama touching the Queen! As far as I could see the Queen put her arm around Michelle first and then Michelle did what anyone does and put her arm around the Queen.:) I loved the Queen's body language, because it shows how much she appreciated that touch. Can you imagine being a Queen and everyone is always so proper with you and curtsying. Here comes this warm and bold woman who comes right up to you and treats you like a human being. It's the way change begins. :)

Until the next time, please leave your own poems or comment. I will also place this on my Facebook Notes just for a friend who is doing the same all of April.:)


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