PUT ON A SWEATER, YOUR MOTHER'S COLD

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NaPoWriMo Day 18: 

"Today, I’d like to challenge you to write a poem that incorporates “the sound of home.” Think back to your childhood, and the figures of speech and particular ways of talking that the people around you used, and which you may not hear anymore...Coax your ear and your voice backwards, and write a poem that speaks the language of home, and not the language of adulthood, office, or work."

This one's both tough and not. Tough, because I'm posting (hell, I'm writing!) these online and now we're talking family, and tough because I'm distracted by packing and sorting out the bits of paper that I've managed to accumulate since we got here in early January and for some reason I'm blanking on the "ways of talking" thing. So I shall put my thinking cap on and go putter for a bit and see what happens.

Thinking cap...there's one. Hmmmm. And, uh oh. I appear to be channelling my mother for this one. And, I'm spending pretty much an entire year's allotment of exclamation marks. Six! (oops—seven)

Put On a Sweater, Your Mother's Cold

Don't come home after school;  
there was a bear in the yard!

Get off the phone, right now; 
somebody else might want to use the line. 

You can go, but be careful on the highway.
Don't swim for an hour after you've eaten. 

What happened to that piece of cake? 
You're wearing those curlers to bed?

Do you need to go to the bathroom?
Were you smoking? I can smell it on you!

You're not leaving the table till you finish that.
Think of the children starving in Africa! 

I don't care if it was President Kennedy's funeral,
you skipped school and you're grounded! 

That dress is too short! 
Is that lipstick you're wearing? 

Did you hear me?
Because I said so!

She's almost 96 and yes, she still asks if we need to go to the bathroom!

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