Felt Mansion
Walk About
I stand up from the sturdy wooden armed school chair
and follow the gurgle to aquarium whose water is too low
set between two windows, as dusk falls the birds have
flown and deer graze tender grass and clover out other.
Open slider into atrium that is still too warm; thirsty plant
prisoners behind glass call out and catch my sleeve with
thorns as I pass. Into a bedroom framed with old prints,
dusty with incense ash and long-uncleared cobwebs.
Piles of crumpled, once still hopeful clothes, waiting
to die on some thrift store rack of sad, stained castoffs.
The bathroom, cupboards stuffed with unused shampoo,
functional but so desperately needing an upgrade. Down
the long halls and long closets, boxes full of old dreams,
past procrastinations, long-unused suitcases, and sheets,
lots of sheets, blankets, tablecloths, together perfect
insulation for the north wall. Kitty box, electric washer, dryer,
hot water heater and high shelves for cat bed & paper goods.
I imagine being blind and knowing exactly where every
thing is. How my life has frozen. How stifled in clutter,
where nothing is ever thrown away; nothing else added.
Melissa Lemay is today’s host of dVerse’ Poetics. Melissa says:
I’d like you to start from wherever you are and write a poem “wandering from room to room like a man in a museum.” Notice your surroundings. Take a walk around. Be curious about what is happening. Perhaps write about ordinary things or things that you might not ordinarily notice. End your poem with an open-ended question as Garcia does, incorporating characteristics of some of the things you’ve observed earlier in your poem.
Tao Talk 
I love this tour of your home Lisa, so many lovely lines and an added bonus- it felt a lot like mine 😃
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Ange, thanks. I am just about to head out on the poetry trail. Happy I’m not alone <3
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🩷
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I don’t suspect this of you, but I have a close friend who is the neatest hoarder you will ever meet. Everything is clean and stacked and catalogued. He has color-coded stacks of paper, all the foil that he has ever received throughout his entire life. He has shown me aluminum foil from his childhood that he just couldn’t bear to give away because they are all imbued with memories. Like I said, I don’t suspect this is of you, but when we’re walking through our homes as we’ve gotten older, how much are we just surrounded by the memories and associations with people through the things we own. I really enjoyed your poem. Thank you very much.
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Aaron, I appreciate your comment. I think your friend may find comfort in those things, both for the memories and for something he has harmless control over. I consider my clutter an external memory that I can access whenever, but realistically speaking, rarely do. Thanks for your thought comment and glad you enjoyed it.
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Harmless is the right word but I do make him get rid of things like milk jugs because they take up way too much room in his apartment. Otherwise he’s fine and I’m sure all the stuff that you have in your home is like mine, just the cluttered accumulation of memories.
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I’m glad you’re there for your friend.
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I try to be he’s a great guy with buckets of problems, but then don’t we all.
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The form you chose worked well, like a cinematic continuous shot.
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Maria, thanks very much.
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Nice Job Lisa.
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Dwight, thank you. It’s been awhile since doing one of these vulnerable type poems. It was cathartic.
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You did very well!
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I felt suspended in time in your poem.
“thirsty plant
prisoners behind glass call out and catch my sleeve with
thorns as I pass.”
This was a surprise to me and striking imagery.
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Thanks for the feedback, Melissa. The grapefruit trees really do this. The thorns don’t break the skin but they do remind me to water them.
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I enjoyed this poetic insight into your home
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Glad you enjoyed it, Robbie. Thanks!
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My pleasure
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I love your poem Li. Very evocative.
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Thanks much, Sadje <3 I hope you write to this prompt.
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What one might take for intimate surroundings becomes a cloistered airlock stuffed with statics. Something in us needs to hold on to all that evidence of self even as it suffocates. Well done … time to eschew those marbles before you lose ’em!
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I appreciate your assessment of the situation, Brendan. I had to look up eschew to make sure you didn’t want me chewing marbles ;) You’re right, something’s got to give and I don’t want it to be my sanity.
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Thank you for the walk about, Lisa. The prose poem is the perfect form for this kind of wandering. I love the thought of following the gurgle to the aquarium, that your poem is later in the day, ‘as dusk falls’, and that the ‘thirsty plant prisoners behind glass call out and catch my sleeve with thorns’. I have a friend whose flat is cluttered, which she has tried to declutter on several occasions, but it always finds its way back in, and I accept that she needs all those things she has collected in her life.
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Kim, thanks so much for your insightful comment. <3
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Always a pleasure, Lisa.
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I enjoyed this poem Lisa I felt as if I was right there walking through the house with you! Xx
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:) Thank you.
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The last lime hits hard.
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Thanks, Reena.
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How incredibly, wonderfully detailed! I could envision everything … and I love how this is committed to memory … even in darkness.
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Thank you, Helen <3
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I can really recognize part of what a house were someone has lived for a long time looks like… how can we ever cope with all that stuff in the end?
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“long-uncleared cobwebs” as well as “bathroom, cupboards stuffed with unused shampoo” – are you sure you’re not talking about our house Li?
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lol, may be, Andrew. There’s no excuse for it, really, but there it is.
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Anything I would have written would have had a similar feel to it. People don’t like to admit they live real, messy, lives, but I bet lots of people can identify with this. (K)
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Kerfe, 100% in agreement.
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Love the details of the room, indeed like someone who knows her space and items intimately as one would be as a blind person. Thanks for the tour.
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Grace you got it. Thanks much.
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Thank you for your tour of your home Lisa. I feel I may have been walking through my own old Queenslander. Complete with the cobwebs (though last week I did get the brush up there and get rid of some). And my bathroom also in need of upgrading…hopefully soon and the cupboard filled with unopened bottles of shampoo. I think the creative mind needs an interesting home filled with the clutter of life to really live and thrive.
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Di, I love your perspective on it. I’d be lost without it!
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“Nothing thrown away; nothing added” That line says it all.
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<3
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This really brought memories for me, my office is like that still, but since moving some time ago we shed so much and we have less clutter, but in some ways I miss the familiarity of it.
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I’m kind of glad you miss it. To be honest, I would not adapt well to a spotless environment.
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