Secret Keepers

October 4, 2020October 1, 2020 V.J. Knutson17 Comments

(Disclaimer: I am submitting this poem for Reena’s Exploration challenge: horror. The poem arose from a nightmare, and my be triggering for some readers.)

They always take the back roads,
virginal snow-covered lanes
lined with trees: pastoral views

Unmarked routes, out of sight,
use the innocence of landscape
to blot out their dark intentions

Pristine picture perfect scenes
lull the unsuspecting; breath-
taking vistas: secret keepers

The roads still exist in my dreams
the trees like soldiers, stiff and stark
stripped of their magical allure, now

guard the memories, painted red
with loss of purity; I had not
guessed the danger of woods

child mind incapable of conceiving
what wolves roamed in nature
the blood of their victims crimson

stains forever etched in silhouette
the shrillness of their screams
now silent echoes in the night.

(Secret Keepers first appeared here September of 2016. Art my own.)

art · childhood · Family · poetry · psychology · relationships · writing

Still Digging

August 15, 2020August 3, 2020 V.J. Knutson20 Comments

Father, as immoveable
as a mountain
taught us to orchestrate
submontane routes

Circumnavigating
his rocky moods
bestowed upon us
a fear of masculinity

Resilience instilled
the necessity of mining
gold from darkness:
still digging.

(Sketch mine)

childhood · Humour · poetry · writing

Right of Passage

August 13, 2020August 11, 2020 V.J. Knutson33 Comments

Teeth they are a-dropping
grins prideful
palms itching

Hope the Tooth Fairy
is on her game
purse full of toonies.

(for Eugi’s Causerie Weekly prompt: fairy . Photo from personal collection. Note: a toonie is a $2 coin in Canada.)

abuse · art · childhood · Love · poetry · writing

Love Lessons

July 28, 2020July 20, 2020 V.J. Knutson16 Comments

Had a weird sort of lexicon
the man who professed
to be my dad –

Clamped in his chokehold
he’d demand words of devotion

Became inured to this dichotomy –
spent a lifetime searching for love –

Just the right balance of cruelty and kind.

(Tuesdays, I borrow from Twitter @Vjknutson. Sketch mine.)

childhood · culture · poetry · writing

A Convertible Summer

June 25, 2020June 24, 2020 V.J. Knutson40 Comments

Summer of ’67
British invasion
Canada claiming 100 –
Dad arrives home
in a powder puff
blue convertible.

Back seat sisters
long hair flapping
bellowing along
with 8-track tunes:
Loving Spoonful
“Do you believe in magic?”

I, barely nine
idolizing a sister
sixteen – a model
with go-go boots
and hippie style

Cottaged at Sauble
muscle cars prowling
oiled bodies lounging
and all eyes lit
on sister, and I
wondering at the draw
made castles in the sand.

Surfing the waves
avoiding the baby
whose brash cries
and quick, chubby legs
keep Mom distracted,
I am observer of the life
Neil Diamond is promising:
“Girl, you’ll be a woman soon.”

Ah, to be 9, in summertime
few the cares, and ideas
like popcorn, burst and pop,
forgotten in each watery plunge
still content to be a child.

(A Convertible Summer first appeared here in June of 2018. I submit this edited version for Eugi’s Causerie Weekly challenge: summer. Image my own.)