The Poetry and Essays of Kathryn McL. Collins *ASSOCIATE  MEMBER* The Writing Forum’s Writer of the Month - March 2002 The Writing Forum’s Writer of the Month - October 2003 THE WRITING FORUM’S WRITER OF THE YEAR - 2005   AUTHOR’S BIO: My grandmother's love of poetry began my lifetime appreciation for wordsmiths everywhere. Grandma introduced me to Longfellow, Whitman, Poe, Stevenson and countless others. Since then, many new poets have come and gone, so many outstanding, so many renowned, yet I default to Grandma's favorites for comfort and inspiration. It was in the mid-nineties my heart began to flow from the pen. With the encouragement of my late husband, family, friends, and fellow poets on the web, I took up residence in the land of poetry, reading and writing with great enthusiasm. Some have said my work is dark. I suppose it is a sadness that drives my words. Maybe sad, but rarely despondent, hope is the goal. To read my personal essays published here at The Writing Forum, please click here. Throughout these past years I've been invited to be part of several anthologies and, a few years ago I was invited to write my own book of poetry. "No Need for Breadcrumbs" was published in Spring, 2005 and is available at amazon.com. For purchasing info. please click here. What a precious thing to fan the soft cover pages of my own work, quite amazing and surreal. But enough about me. It's the writing after all that beckons us. Give it a test run. Maybe you'll like it and visit again. Email: kathryncollins7@aol.com   KATHRYN’S  POETRY Click on the button in front of any title in the list below to be linked to that poem’s location on the page: Relief Henry and Me What is it? A poem Whose Blood? Thank You for the Mustard Seed Pack and Lose the Greater Truth Three Tulips for Your Birthday (for Chrissy) Dungaree Doll Limericks - 4    ~ Bertha    ~ Arthur    ~ Murder at the Prom    ~ My sixty-seventh March 13 I felt it heaven in my attic room Oncology Versifier They’re in a Better Place After Bandit of Youth Kindergarten Recess Upon Diagnosis Don’t Look Away After the Movies My Honey Bruno Sits Tropical Thoughts Annual Chances Wide Open Spaces For Ted Visitors Mother Disappearing Reading The Kidnapping Cocktails at Seven The Wedding Anniversary Long-stemmed Promises Autumn Blues Giggles The Mourning After haiku (2) Souls Vice and Virtue fall haiku (2) Abiding Feelings One Kiss Middle of the Dance Reincarcation Dishes and Cloths Up and Leave My Breath Tim 9/11 Trilogy      “Brutality’s Day”      “Those Moments”      “The Dark and The Daylight” Morning Say it Isn’t So cloud haiku (3) Laced White Shoes   Relief She takes to bed, winds round his erstwhile ardent pillow cooled now by the meter of cruelty’s clock; sheets spoilt by life’s air; recalls the scent of him, the pre-washed grime of his shirt. Yearning wrings convulse; fill eyes beneath quivering lids.  Welcome, coaxing blessèd Breeze;  take her to the limbo of pain where slumber’s analgesic can soothe the emery of remembering. ©Kathryn Collins   Henry and Me I was reading aloud my own poetry, only I in the bedroom except for Longfellow who quickly fell asleep. ©Kathryn Collins   What is it? Sit stubborn on your perch of heat be still until I’m gone my vigil won’t induce one note toward your explosive song. My absence sets your trigger faint gurgling a shake until great belches power on a steamy shrill above the watery quake. I’ll not come a running because you give the nod now YOU’LL go unheeded I hear just my i-pod. ©Kathryn McLoughlin Collins May 5, 2012   A poem A wee skeleton key falls out of my pocket every day. Today appeared a cloisonné box just as the little key dropped. I tried the key and cracked the case. In a poof of smoke a poem unlocked. ©Kathryn McLoughlin Collins April 7, 2012   Whose Blood? patience, Prudence my mother would say be mindful of others at school or play mom, I’m right here my heart is so sore all I want is to even the score Judy kicked me and pushed me down and Molly laughed like a stupid clown pray for them darling they know no better I came home the next day with blood on my sweater. ©Kathryn McLoughlin Collins April 7, 2012   Thank You for the Mustard Seed My father gave me a mustard seed Entombed in a crystal sphere. It hung from a chain around my neck As a promise of rescue when I felt fear. It’s what I had wanted, was dying for This portal to hope in a charm. Oh I was young and didn’t know Trinkets don’t keep me from harm. My necklace of hope was lost in the years As the message it brought was too. I wasn’t aware that the seed still lived And from my parents grew. Sweet Jesus you said my miniscule prayer Could move mountains and save us all. That small belief turned out as a thief Of an naive child’s doleful call. My pleas never came to pass, oh lord Those avés so pitifully sought. I’d prayed as well as I possibly could, Just as I thought I’d been taught. I ask not redemption, lamb of my youth Tho’ relic and faith displaced. My anchor was sown when given to life And holds sure as any grace. Symbols are symbols and stories are old. Sometimes the lessons are lost when they’re told. As was with the given mustard seed The charm is gone – but I live through their deed. ~Matthew 17:20 ~ And Jesus said unto them, "Because of your unbelief  for verily I say unto you, if ye have faith as a grain of mustard seed, ye shall say unto this mountain. Remove hence to yonder place; and it shall remove; and nothing shall be impossible unto you." ©September 2, 2002 Kathryn McL. Collins   Pack and Lose the Greater Truth We’re moving all right, to my beloved state of Connecticut. Just where I always fancied myself. in a sweet cottage with skylights letting heaven in. Our home sits right on the side of a tree filled hill. As I pack another artifact, the greater truth comes calling ringing hands, tears wanting to smother my breath wanting to deny me my own life. Why Connecticut? Just a feeling within reach a goal attainable. We’ll be there on our hill you summoning birds the colors of which only a birder fathoms. I’ll be nearby hardly hearing chirps and the greater truth comes calling a hawk to take my innocence far away. I won’t hear the birds anymore. I only listened for you and watched fluffed feathers just to stand next to you and listen to your bird talk about habitat and this and that and young birds and mature birds whose male colors an Indian might snare for special headdress. The greater truth comes calling our home is temporary for each of us. ~ I wrote this when my husband was dying.  We moved from NJ to CT to be nearer to family.  He only lived there five months and I moved out shortly after. ©Kathryn McLoughlin Collins April 26, 2005   Three Tulips for Your Birthday (for Chrissy) My words are halted on this day; this day that brings you forward. So many rains have come your way yet countless joys still stored. Beneath the snow, beneath the ice, for you the tulips grow in sacred colors counted thrice. Love’s white for you will glow. Sweet blush, the pink will powder your face, velvet soon your pitted soul. Last, pale violet will bless you in grace until your heart is whole. ©Kathryn McLoughlin Collins March 2012   dungaree doll nothing like washed jeans. why do I want to wear them? don’t look cool in them anymore. ©Kathryn McLoughlin Collins April 3, 2012   Bertha Bertha who had a cute little nose one day at the beach took off her clothes. Her mother said “Bertha! “get dressed or I’ll hurt ya.” Bertha just five, could care less what showed. ~*~ Arthur I recall my poor uncle Arthur sitting on the stoop drinking vodka. Aunt Martha pulled a shiv; said he just couldn’t live, then she boiled his cirrhotic liver ~*~ Murder at the Prom Frankie Lyman shrilled his falsetto. Gwendolyn Gould danced in stilettos. So callously smothered, they never recovered. Poor little piggies, scrunched little toes. ~*~ My sixty-seventh March 13 Hoarse, the lion roar is fading; the lamb sneaks up again. Hot, another birthright tallied; the candles are so dense. Black, the coated wicks will smolder; they huddle upon cake. come to me, whom I’ve remembered; come to me for whom I’ve ached. ~*~   ©Kathryn McLoughlin Collins March  2012   I felt it heaven in my attic room Overtaken by a silent peace through parted curtains I saw it was the snow had come to veil the land with ribbons from the sky. © Kathryn McLoughlin Collins   Oncology waffle-soled Nikes travel by at a good pace and I think of chalky lace-ups and starched white caps, the apron-tied uniform of benevolent angels so gently shushing visitors. a memory collection of sneaking up stairs with no cardboard passes; two visitors at a time; fifteen minutes; youthful breaking of the rules settles in a smile incongruous to my purpose of sitting here, waiting outside his room. The devil is behind this door. They cannot be left alone.  A pair of nikes motions me in to keep at moor his boat at river’s edge. © Kathryn McLoughlin Collins   Versifier cut from Johnson’s gospel to uncover humanity’s peepshow into one another’s psyche hungry for composition from the anagram of thought out of which few valorous strains survive conversion to golden flickers through conduits of lead © Kathryn McLoughlin Collins   They’re in a Better Place This is not the time for well-intentioned testimony to ethereality so unfathomable as these deaths before me. Praise heaven and rejoice; disguised as consolation to me, fractured, who knows no better than grief; I have been left; let me rage; let me cry out in torment; let me. ©Kathryn McLoughlin Collins February 22, 2012   After as blanched I lay chambers emptied, pump drained sinew reduced to flaccid residue, am I soul? ©Kathryn McLoughlin Collins February 22, 2012   Bandit of Youth Stolen from an unknowing crusade to enlightenment, turned to a wheel of carefully cured cheddar advanced age seems sudden. ©Kathryn McLoughlin Collins   Kindergarten Recess A tiny elephant stampede all for the golden ring of an empty swing. ©Kathryn McLoughlin Collins   Upon Diagnosis breathed upon by this fine October’s chill unblighted chestnuts break their promise of long life ©Kathryn McLoughlin Collins   Don’t Look Away With trembling hands a woman beckons from the hall. She’s unaware I am daughter to someone else. I pretend to be comfortable in taking her hand for a minute when moments before I dreaded walking her corridor. Saying how glad I am to see her makes it so. I linger. Soft brown eyes cannot die as long as they are looking at me. I want to stay forever and keep her alive as I could not my own mother and her mother before her.  She’ll look away at some point and that will be that. Oh I want never to look away; nay, always to see a pair of eyes looking back. ©Kathryn McL. Collins   After the Movies Valentine’s Day Night 1959 Curiously with a slant of his face my chin turned up and then the embrace. A teenaged kiss in in his best friend’s car while Johnny Mathis sang, “Chances Are” So close, so close as I nuzzled his cheek he whispered “I love you” can we do this next week? ©Kathryn McLoughlin Collins February 12, 2012   My Honey (This poem was my entry for a Valentine challenge at another site) Dandelions and sweetbreads are paltry proof when all year long he acts aloof. He hunts all day this clumsy brute and barrels home his horn a toot bloody carcass around his shoulders, he bludgeoned it with a jumbo boulder. In this black cave I’m stuck all day while beasts outside devour their prey. With my cro-magnon cupid’s in trouble, no match for us, go shoot another couple. Happy St. Valentine’s Day ©Kathryn McLoughlin Collins January 25, 2012   Bruno Sits Bruno sits in a rocking chair as though she’s coming hither. He's just a battered old Christmas bear but I remember that winter. Our girls didn’t know we searched at night as Santa’s helpers filled with delight. Jeannie, loved bears. Barbies delighted Colette. We bumped into Ken driving Barbie’s corvette. Suddenly looking at us with  two beady eyes, was the biggest toy bear  we'd seen in our lives. On Christmas day, Jeannie gasped at that bear Colette loved her vet We were all there. Now Bruno sits and sit so do I. I know Jeannie’s not coming. Bruno can’t say goodbye. Bruno will wait and we'll not forget Not I. Not papa. Not pretty Colette. We’ll see her again wherever it be. Now Jeannie’s adieu. We’re lonely as three.  ©June 5, 2001   K.McL.Collins   Tropical Thoughts Gangrened toes, vitrified nose stuffed and starched in puffy clothes Howling wind biting into my cheek painful reminder of Dexter’s technique Cracking boots, frozen bones, ready to crumble like yesterday’s scones I dream of roasting on some desert plain and promise in August I’ll never complain. ©Kathryn McLoughlin Collins January 5, 2012   Annual Chances In steady footfalls, misguided at times, twenty- eleven has brought me to the place of no return, this place, the grand opening of January’s cyronic promise and dread, promise of quitting pain, dread of its continuum, change’s new chance overmasters holding the line. Pull me, twenty-twelve, under your arch, or, if it be, to rainbow’s end.  Or, if it be, to twenty-thirteen, another chance. ©Kathryn McLoughlin Collins January 5, 2012   Wide Open Spaces In my basket of steel and plastic, sole company my personal talking head and Billy Joel reminding me we didn’t start the fire, I bucket along. The highway’s empty this time of night and I am the only planet in the universe oblivious even to its own moon. Breaking seventy-five, my selfsame speed of light, a comet of colored fireworks descends from behind.  Stopped in my tire tracks, I am approached by one blue alien. “License and registration please.” Don’t think and drive. ©Kathryn McLoughlin Collins December 31, 2011   For Ted Cruel the world that pushes on as, dear friend, to sleep you’ve gone. Christmas will not wait this year despite the loss, despite the tear. You are the gift to grace the tree that stands year long eternally. ©Kathryn McLoughlin Collins December 21, 2011   Visitors The mere notion of civility seemed ridiculous, even as the chamomile was poured; the finger foods passed. Were the widow so disposed, her undercover rage could fell the sturdiest of this group, too polite for death. Finally exhaustion overtook her, each guest her unappointed liege dedicated to her pleasure retreated. She fell asleep in the afternoon sun. Courtiers gone, at midnight she awakened in merciful amnesia until after who knows how many breaths, came the great heaving of abandonment, the groveling to the gods, the howling at the moon. ©Kathryn McLoughlin Collins Revised November 17, 2011   Mother Disappearing repaginating reality in private fashion, dementia holds mother hostage in a doorless tabernacle, no ransom to be had. across the vacant divide like Gods nearly touching Adam, though powerless to deliver lucid breath to their mother, the children, bereft of her reassurance, are lost as she is. ©Kathryn McLoughlin Collins November 19, 2011   Reading pulchritude in Braille, he read her through fingertips, letter by letter curling with each stanza, chimes neath the surface rang as she absorbed him until the final verse like an accountant’s journal no birdsong, no breath. Kathryn McLoughlin Collins ©November 8, 2011   The Kidnapping Noisy men and women ride mower machines. Rip the cord. Rev the engine Bang the nail, throw debris. Point the blower, louder, faster. No one hears the angelus ring. No one hears the screaming as the piper steals her away. Kathryn McLoughlin Collins ©November 8, 2011   Cocktails at Seven Stand I grinning like a second-rate comedian, conversation wafting over and about my see-through discomfort. Dancing tongues skip subject-to-subject, inoculating lulls like EMT’s ready with the paddles. I am here next to my wishing star on the brink of coming in on a double dutch jump. Kathryn McL. Collins ©November 8, 2011   The Wedding Anniversary I remember you, young warrior in a suit, riding between railway cars reading the papers. worldly, you were. a champion mind, yet wasn't there a ruggedness about you? a thickness of the bone a magnitude of hand Rodinesque height and breadth. not the touch of a feather but always a gentleness of smile, a fearless curiosity, a general amusement at life that beckoned me so long ago. I loved you from the start before I even knew the depth of you. © Kathryn McLoughlin Collins   Long-stemmed Promises Sweet babies need sleep, sustenance and love. Sounds easy enough. Ask the sleepless the mother who feels the diaper rash more than the infant. Ask the mother whose child is the bully or the bullied or the social outcast.  Ask the mother of the child Hooked on drink and drugs, the troubled ones. Ask the mother of the adult child growing her own long-stemmed promises. © Kathryn McLoughlin Collins   Autumn Blues last leaves, brilliant goodbyes, off to dream of lush descendents who’ll not know their heritage of fire. ©Kathryn McLoughlin Collins November 5, 2011   Giggles One brittle leaf swooping brought to mind the time you feigned ballet dancer in the vestibule; inappropriate for church we knew. Trading the transubstantiation for scotch and soda, we pirouetted out the big doors and pas de deux did we to Moynihans.   Oh my God, I am heartily sorry. The delectable joy was worth the mortal sin and it is what I remember of you; the quiet goofing at somber times; of stop breathing laughter, of belly bumping, of eye rolling. Never could we wipe the smiles off our faces. ©Kathryn McL. Collins   The Mourning After crumpled like Marlboro butts overlooked by a tired broom, lay a leftover man dry as the deadwood walls oblivious to the infiltrating sun, tobacco stained fingers cupped round a calming glass of the malty hair that bites him again, no malice aforethought. ©Kathryn Collins   haiku (2) *** watery ghosts look up mirrored in the pre-ice pond as leaves unravel. *** leaf necklaces unhook transform to sickly goldfish carried down the stream ***   Souls Intimate you come while wind combs through foxes’ auburn coats. The willow sweeps my brow. Rock me evermore. Aback the wending breeze, you move beyond what mortal memories realize, the forever place where we began as hints in the firmament surrounding fledgling earth. Courting still from your castle in the air, you beckon me along the gossamer path. I hear you dear, even if shadow faint. Kathryn McL. Collins ©October 10, 2011   Vice and Virtue Creeping envy, locked in a golden box of praise, lecher of worthless wishes, wiggles on the belly of lust to measure up. Humility, veridical virtue of the modest soul whose eagerness for enlightenment dissolves servitude to self, harvests home the plum joy of unfettered admiration. Kathryn M. Collins ©October 8, 2011   fall haiku *** “Red Flag of Autumn” As youth promenades, autumn’s soothsayer predicts the end of the trail. Kathryn M. Collins ©October 8, 2011 *** “Folk Lore” enhanced versions doth float and dribble like fall leaves from family trees. Kathryn M. Collins ©October 8, 2011 ***   Abiding Feelings not amicable the page and I today I have abiding feelings and not a hint to place them. I’ll take them to lunch my left brain says (or is that right?), to the cinema for b-rated angst a kind of low spirit company. No I’ll sit here until I feel the yank of the leash at my pen so I’ll know I’m in not in charge. ©Kathryn McL. Collins   One Kiss Turned powder upon the cliffs of these calcified lips finely meshed determination sifts salt from memory’s ocean Purified water of love’s resurrection is all can slate this throat, plump pink again the entrance to my soul one kiss. ©Kathryn McLoughlin Collins   Middle of the Dance The jitterbug is up. our happy tap to the melody of bliss is silenced. No more to duck the arch of your arm. the circular swing evaporated just like that. The middle of the dance is no place to stop. ©Kathryn Collins   Reincarnation In overwhelming numbers of gold and brown transversing my path, I abandon every one with each step forward. Burnt toast of maples, dry and crisp, drift and roll as Mariah scoots them, to destiny’s crunchy bed . Oh leaves, once green with spring, now updraft riffs of balletic protest to finish battlefallen on my path. Is wind the enemy or surrogate mother to aureate goblin spies posturing for Halloween tricks?   Dishes and Cloths Plates and saucers quietly in attendance lick their faded flowers behind the cupboard doors old borders nicked in service as time ticks off the kitchen clock. Pile smoothed dish towels lie in neatly folded rows as a checkered mate doubles over the ice box handle with nothing to dry but a mother’s tears for days gone by.   Up and Leave My Breath Come inertial days too many, window- watching the world inside out, all the while slued dotted swiss beg to enter on the breeze. Heaven awaits my levitated soul; I’ll up and leave my breath, sweet opportunity come and gone. Kathryn McLoughlin Collins ©September 17, 2011   Tim Come wagging sweet pet of a boy with your smile and furry head. A sad old lady needs a sitter on her lap.  Only you and baby Grace comply. ©Kathryn McLoughlin Collins December 4, 2004   9/11 Trilogy ********* “Brutality’s Day” There’s been a terrible accident  A plane rammed into the World Trade Center What?  Another plane? The other Tower? You mean it’s intentional? Me at my desk Thirty miles due west of downtown Manhattan That’s how it was all begun September 11, 2001. Up my shield. Emotions not breaking a steely barrier of denial. And so the towers fell As did my wall And finally my heart succumbed at such mistral. My cyber buddy, gifted poet, working in Kuwait Said some were dancing in the streets. They even gave out candy. Can the fallout of carnage be displayed with sweets? Oh please, ye dancing devils Please, be you few compared to we. We, mounted on earth’s primordial pebbles Ready to smite the enemy. Let’s annihilate the treachery. This wells forth of desperation.. No!  Not begat by hate. A plea for brutality’s eradication. © September 15, 2001 Kathryn McLoughlin Collins ********* “Those Moments” Who is comforted As the skies clear and The flying people and papers disappear And the citizens are taken home Or not taken home? The flowered cars Long gone from the Train station now. A hardy hello to a still suffering Father who returns the gesture? What is life when it can be snuffed In the usualness of everyday schedule? When devils come in the morning And angels clean up to deliver Sons and daughters to their Gods, Who is comforted In the face of emptied space Where buildings stood abundant with The fright of  sons, daughters, fathers, mothers Friends, sisters, commuters, brothers? The churches will fill with silent moments. Organs and bagpipes will replay the dirges That color our souls with the blue grace of eternity. Are the angry comforted? Who is comforted? Published by BeWrite Books, UK 2005, Wigan, Lancashire, UK © September 8, 2002 Kathryn McL. Collins ********* “The Dark and The Daylight” Daylight forever corrupted, when more likely out of the blue come incendiaries and killer planes than birds and darning needles. Vampires unite, up from the edges of midnight windowsills, burning misbelievers at the will of clerical madness. Ghouls once reserved for nightmares pluck petrified custodians, secretaries, vice presidents mail boys and girls. Heart breaking phone calls in final conversation, gone dead as human confetti fell. Archangel firefighters attempting salvations perished on stairwells, hell crumbling round them. It’s quiet now at Ground Zero the black smoke of innocents gone to heaven, the city rubble transforming into remembrance. Now new alerts. ©Kathryn McL. Collins September 9, 2011   Morning I did not beg from you what would make me happy, instead, took heart at my contentment; my joy at your enthusiastic morning greeting at the opportunity of each day, sleepy size eleven footfall, shower steaming; my joy in watching you fill a soup bowl with Raisin Nut Bran, spilling the milk, reading The Times. I did not beg from you what would make me happy until now I am begging, teach me your enthusiastic morning greeting at the opportunity of each day. Memories are not enough. ©Kathryn McL. Collins (the day my husband died six years ago) September 2, 2011   Say it Isn't So ~The cameras flashed as the court proclaimed Shoeless Joe guilty of throwing the 1919 World Series and the boy said: “Say it isn’t so Joe” Say it isn’t so, traitorous paladins, so electrifying, so admired before the fall from grace. ©Kathryn McLoughlin Collins August 12, 2011   cloud haiku *** dreamers’ occupation bleeding into a backdrop routine *** cured in voluptuous levitation as dandelion dust descends upon grass-stained toes *** first rungs to heaven awaiting our footfalls refiguring God’s blooms *** ©Kathryn McL. Collins September 2, 2011   Laced White Shoes Tender toes came crying through the womb wiggling until the day her feet toddled toward tomorrows. I turned but a second and they pumped to the sky. In another second, the church filled while music guided her haltingly down the aisle in laced white shoes, the color of her first. ©Kathryn McL. Collins September 2, 2011