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POEMOGRAPHY | 2025

Poems by R.M. Usatinsky

pōəˈmäɡrəfē, noun: form or process of writing and representing poetry

FEBRUARY

01FEB25 | THE WINTER SKY

 

I was lying on the bed where I used

to sleep, the same bed on which my

two youngest daughters were born

(but not conceived); I was there

 

keeping my youngest company as

she was running a fever and not

feeling so well; lying on my back

looking out into the winter sky as

 

I had done for so many years, the

sky dark and clear, so many stars

visible, stars who surely no longer

remember my gazing upon them;

 

but I remember them and miss them

as dearly as I miss so much of the

life I had when the winter sky was

clear and my heart was untroubled

02FEB25 | HITTING THE SKIDS

 

I’ve seen better times, times when I

felt good, or at least felt better than

I do now; seems there are a few key

moments when aging hits hardest and

 

there’s no doubt I’m caught up in the

middle of one of those; a deep, swift

decline of both my physical and mental

health; I shuffle and drool and talk to

 

myself; my blood pressure is too high

but I’m too low, having shrunk a full

two centimeters; I’m often cold and I

sleep a lot; I have aches and pains and

 

doldrums and anxiety; I constantly worry

that a plane will crash into our house or

someone will bludgeon me to death as I sit

on the tram; so here I am hitting the skids

03FEB25 | BORDERLINE

 

I think that was song made famous

by Madonna in the 1980s; in fact,

there were a slew of songs with the

name Borderline recorded in the 80s

 

and 90s by artists such as Cheap Trick,

Joni Mitchell and the late Chris de Burgh

(though none as famous as Madonna’s);

but the borderline that’s been on my mind

 

lately is a mental health condition that affects

emotions, relationships, and self-image, the

widely common Borderline Personality Disorder,

which I myself was diagnosed as having about

 

six or seven years ago; while I do possess some

of the traits of someone who suffers from BPD,

I wonder if it has been a key factor in how many

of my own interpersonal relationships have failed

04FEB25 | EVIL EYE

 

It’s happened a few times over the

past couple of years, our paths cross

in the street, usually close to home;

and yesterday as I had to leave early

 

for work I thought there was a chance

I might see her walking home from the

tram stop on her way home from school;

our eyes met as we both rounded the corner

 

on the Haagweg; then, low and behold, her

icy cold stare penetrating deep into my soul,

leaving me numb and out of sorts; now, hours

later as I lie in bed surrounded by the cold of

 

five a.m., I feel dread and despair as my chest

feels heavy and tight wondering if the evil eye

has even further chiseled away at my heart or

merely served as a warning of what’s to come

05FEB25 | THE SAPLINGS

 

The saplings have arrived—two score

or more—to replace the forty-two trees

that were culled last year to facilitate

the renewal of our street; and what a

 

fine day to welcome these lovely young

trees, the crisp winter air parted the clouds

so the sun could shine through and sparkle

upon the wispy branches who will one day

 

grow full and bear leaves and create shady

parcels of earth; that will support birds and

insects who find their way to its branches to

feed, to mate and to take rest; and these small

 

saplings will bear witness to generations to

come, some who will notice and some who

will take their beauty and splendor for granted;

but for now, I welcome them gladly into my life

06FEB25 | THE BEACHGOER

 

I’m not what you’d exactly call a

beachgoer, but I’ve been craving

the beach lately; or maybe what I’m

actually craving is the sun; anyway,

 

I’d love to be on a beach right now

with the hot sun beating down on me,

beads of sweat forming on my brow

and the smell of surf and sand wafting

 

all around me; but this whim, this minor

fantasy would only last a couple of days,

three at best, as my beachgoing doesn’t

require any more time than that; and as

 

I lay there I softly say to myself out loud,

such a mechaya, just like my zayde used to

say as he sat in his green and white webbed

lawn chair all those year ago on Maplewood

07FEB25 | I DON’T SHAKE HANDS WITH STRANGERS

 

I’ve never been into shaking hands,

there’s something so antiquated, so

primal about extending one’s hand

in greeting; it’s not like I have to

 

demonstrate that I’m not carrying a

weapon or present a threat; and I don’t

find it cordial, but a mostly unhygienic

inconvenience; that’s not to say I never

 

shake hands, I do indeed shake my fair

share them, though they are mostly close

friends and longtime customers; I do not,

however, shake hands with those I do not

 

know, strangers who are so quick to thrust

a grubby paw towards me; and it seems I

have a particular aversion to shaking hands

with medical professionals and civil servants

08FEB25 | SOMETHING I’M NOT

 

Why would I go out of my way, go

through all that trouble and fuss to

be something I’m not, to be someone

who other people think I should be?

 

they say I’m too this or that—feeble,

lenient, a pushover—that I should

stand my ground, claim what’s mine

and not take any guff from anyone;

 

but I am who I am, always striving to

be as authentic as can be, which often

gets me into a bind, makes people think

they can take advantage of my gentile

 

manner, my compassion and goodwill;

sure, I have my passionate side and I do

get overly emotional at times and raise

my voice; which is off-putting to others

09FEB25 | EAR OF CORN

 

It was probably one of the most hurtful

moments I’ve suffered of late, though

there are so many it’s hard keeping count;

today when I woke up from my afternoon

 

nap, I noticed two of my daughters eating

ears of sweet corn slathered in butter; I

immediately walked over to the kitchen to

see if there was a warm yellow cob in the

 

oven waiting for me, but the Pyrex baking

dish was empty; thing is, everyone knows

how much I love a good ear of sweet corn

but no one thought to bring one home for me;

 

it may sound like a petty thing, it’s just an

ear of corn, but it really hurt, hurt so much

I actually shed a small pathetic tear, one no

bigger than a little yellow kernel of corn

10FEB25 | OUT OF HAND

 

You’ve let things get out of hand,

replaced the love that used to fill

our home (though there was never

really enough to begin with) with

 

things of only extrinsic value; too

many clothes that hang from every

possible place that a hanger can

hook onto; unnecessary sundries

 

that hardly serve the purposes they

purport—shampoos, creams, lotions,

serums and the like—whose fancy

labels, false promises and mephitic

 

fragrances capture the fancies of your

daughters who you allow to acquire

every useless this or that to satisfy the

childhood you dreamed of but never had

11FEB25 | THE GOOD MORNING MAN

 

It was a dreary winter’s morning, I was

walking back into the village to pick up

a loaf of freshly baked sourdough bread

and on my way home crossed paths with

 

a happy-go-lucky bald-headed feller who

looked at me and said good morning; that

in and of itself wasn’t so remarkable, not in

the Netherlands anyway (though typically

 

more observed in small towns), but this

jolly guy proceeded to give his morning

greeting to the next three people who walked

by; then, walking into the supermarket, he

 

called out a boisterous good morning to anyone

in earshot; it was nice observing how the others

reacted with smiles and returning the sentiment

and it certainly brightened my dismal morning

12FEB25 | THE VILLAGE HOUSE

 

I used to take long drives through the

North Shore suburbs, down the slinky

winding roads of Wilmette, Kenilworth,

Winnetka and Highland Park; I’d drive

 

through the villages with their old world

charm and quaint highstreets resembling

market towns one would find in the English

countryside; and the storefronts with their

 

cafés, green grocers, antique shops and stylish

boutiques would oftentimes have apartments

above them where I’d dream of living while

going to work every day as an animal control

 

officer for the village of Winnetka, a job I

actually applied for in the summer of 1981, a

few weeks after graduating from high school; I

never got the job or the apartment above a shop

13FEB25 | BELATED (For M.V.C.J.)

 

I’m guessing it’s the first time I forgot

your birthday in what, some thirty-four

years since that first one we shared when

you arrived in Chicago on the day of your

 

twenty-fourth birthday; it was an icy cold

winter’s evening when I drove a rented car to

O’Hare to pick you up (I never really thought

you’d take me seriously and actually come all

 

the way from Spain); we went straight to some

fancy restaurant for our first of what was to be

many celebratory meals over the next decade and

a half (and sorry again for complaining about your

 

cold soup); so, I forgot one, one of many I didn’t;

I hope it was a splendid day filled with love, cake

and cheery calls and messages from friends and

relatives; I’ve been forgetting a lot of things lately

14FEB25 | STUPID CUPID

 

I’ve told the story of how our romance began,

there in the river bed, enjoying a warm summer

afternoon with my children as Cupid watched

perched upon a tree branch; but it wasn’t us he

 

was watching, it was some young couple sat

there on the grass who Cupid was meant to

shoot his arrow at; but the poor sod must have

had a bit too much sangria at lunch and the

 

arrow meant for the two young lovers hit us

(right between the ears); weeks later I found

myself on a train heading north to Reus, where

things became what they became; a few months

 

later I packed up my Spanish life, bid farewell

to my children and flew off to live in Liverpool

where a new life began (before it quickly began

unravelling); stupid Cupid, what a mess you made

15FEB25 | MY BROTHER’S KEEPER

 

I guess you could call it a generational thing;

we were born nine years apart and by the time

I had graduated from high school and decided

to leave home, you were still that little kid who

 

looked up to me like a hero and must have been

crushed to see me go; and when I came home six

years later, you were the high school kid and I was

an adult (well, biologically speaking) and though

 

we tried to reconnect and stay close, we couldn’t

have been more different; and then she came into

my life, wedged between us, and five years later I

was off again to Spain and farther away then we’d

 

ever been; you came over that first year and that was

the beginning of the end; I was tired and worn down,

barely hanging on to my new life and you got caught

in the fray and things were never the same between us

16FEB25 | CONSUMPTION, WORK & ENTERTAINMENT

 

Let me be the first to admit I’ve become

somewhat of a couch potato—well, maybe

more than somewhat; I definitely spend far

too much sedentary time, working at my desk

 

and watching my one film a day (which has

replaced hours of lost time doom scrolling on

my phone); now that wouldn’t be such a problem

if I was getting out more and moving my aging

 

body, but that’s not the case; and I’m eating too

much despite the eggs I have for breakfast each day

that are supposed to keep me filled up; my stomach

protrudes like a woman about to go into labor and

 

that makes me simply miserable; but I do manage to

get out onto the balcony on those rare days when the

sun makes an appearance, and that makes me feel

better as do my naps and weekly chats with Abbott

17FEB25 | THE DUTCH SKY

 

My life is like the Dutch sky

dreary and forlorn; but I am

happy most of the time; like

when the clouds part and warm

 

rays of sun shine down thawing

the sadness; the icy frost that

covered the canal this morning

reminded me of the frozen layer

 

of glassy skin that would form on

the popsicles we made as kids from

Kool-Aid; and the pale blue of the

Dutch sky is serene, a backdrop for

 

birds and planes and the bare trees

whose branches patiently wait for

springtime buds to burst forth when

the chill subsides and life reawakens

18FEB25 | KILLER INSTINCT

 

I suppose we all have it, that killer instinct;

born from time immemorial, our natural way

of survival, kill or be killed, eat or be eaten;

and today is no different, we haven’t really

 

evolved all that much, we still possess those

primordial inclinations that lead us to shooting,

stabbing, strangling, suffocating, poisoning,

immolating, bludgeoning, and disarticulating

 

those we wish to eradicate from this life; but

I suppose the most interesting facet of our

savagery is that we also possess the power to

love, and love with such intensity that I often

 

think the brain cannot distinguish between the

two emotions, one that takes life and one that has

the unbridled power to make life; either way, we

keep on killing each other, and probably always will

19FEB25 | LEVERAGE

 

They think they have the upper hand

but they’re not really as clever as they

think they are, or think you think they

are; take the Syrian, for example, the

 

classic carpetbagger, the quintessential

opportunist trying to wield leverage in

a situation where he has a very clear

advantage and everything to gain but

 

still wants more because he feels he can

get it and feel he’s entitled to it and feels

he deserves it; but truth is, he’s just an old

hack with old-time ideas and very little real

 

knowledge of the world around him and even

less savvy in dealings of the simplest matters;

he hates his job though it’s given him his

livelihood and a shitty little house in Spain

20FEB25 | CONFLICT OF INTEREST

 

There’s a battle raging; a conflict of interest

between my teenage brain and old man’s body;

today’s diagnosis was a compressed nerve; Flip,

my boyish physiotherapist, gave me stretches to

 

do (that I won’t do) at home and said I should see

some improvements in a few weeks; that wasn’t

terribly relieving as I’ll have to find a way to get

used to the tingling and that most odd sensation

 

that feels like there is water streaming down my

left leg (and the numbness that freezes that leg

down to the knee); so my younger self is mostly at

loggerheads with my old man self and doesn’t hold

 

back when it comes to being unceremonious, laying

the blame about the extra weight, the lack of exercise,

the snacking, the sweets; and these conflicts may end

up being what does me in or help me create a new life

21FEB25 | INTIMIDATION

 

I’m fairly certain she isn’t aware of the

bitter and callous person she’s become;

and not just bitter and callous, but smug

 

and fake—a  real haughty nag; I’ve tried

to dismiss it as a hormone imbalance or

menopause or just someone who is so

discontent with their lot in life they use

 

me as a scapegoat to lay all the blame for

their misery on; and I wonder who treated

her so badly or who she observed treating

someone else with so much contempt and

 

lack of sympathy that it rubbed off on her,

or that perhaps she sees it as an acquisition

of power or control over what she has not

any right to have power over or control of

22FEB25 | HOSPICE

 

He is finally coming to the end;

a long life lived well, loved by

so many, but no one loved him

as much as you did; and I won’t

 

even dare to suggest I know what

you must have gone through all

these years because I know it’s

unimaginable; and I know how

 

much you must hate us all for not

having been there or for having been

there and not being as supportive as

you would have liked; and now he’s

 

fading away, faster than he ever has;

but you still hold on to that ray of

hope thinking that maybe he’ll live

forever; your rock and loving father

23FEB25 | TIME ALONE

 

I’m finally at a point in my life

where I’m starting to appreciate

time alone; not that being alone

was ever undesirable, it mostly

 

came down to being anxious or

worried that I would experience

a health crisis or, god forbid, die

while alone with nobody by my

 

side to cradle and comfort me as

I passed from this world to the

afterlife; but now, as the ruckus

of my daughters getting ready to

 

go down south fills the house with

manic last-minute packing, primping

and panicking, I’m both relieved and

bereaved at the prospect of being alone

24FEB25 | PLATONICALLY SPEAKING

 

I’ve been watching a lot of movies these days,

making up for more than twenty-five years of

taking kids to see kids movies or staying home

to watch kids shows on T.V.; and now you

 

could say I’m making up for lost time, spending

a few hours a day taking in these wonderful films,

made with such love and conviction, talent and

endless imagination; and yes, a lot of tears are

 

shed and a few laughs are laughed, but for the

most part I am finding myself more enlightened,

more inspired and feeling more alive than I have

in a long time; I’ve taken away quite a lot from

 

these stories, but mostly I’ve seen how love can

take on so many different forms, that relationships

don’t require any sort of physical manifestation to

be whole, pure, authentic, and completely fulfilling

25FEB25 | MADE UP PEOPLE

 

I rarely forget a name and I’ve known a

lot of people in these sixty-one years; I’ve

known good people and bad, angels and

devils and all sorts of idiosyncratic esoteric

 

motherfuckers; I may forget their faces, but

never the names; but there have been a few

names—three to be exact—that have me

thinking I may have simply made them up

 

though I’m certain they are real people whose

paths I’ve crossed somewhere along the way:

Norman Porter Six, who I know had attended

college with me; Art Ribal, a portly Filipino with

 

a contagious laugh I worked with in a call center

during high school; and Vera Langdon, who came to

me in a dream in 2012 and who I swear dad told me

was a 1930s Hollywood starlet who took her own life

26FEB25 | PURGINGS

 

I discovered sometime towards the

end of my late grandmother’s life

that she may have purged her food

after meals; it made sense at the time

 

as I recalled hearing retching sounds

coming from the bathroom when she

was in there, but didn’t pay too much

attention to it; she was never a heavy

 

woman and I can’t imagine her of all

people having body image issues, so

I’m curious as to why these purgings

occurred; interestingly enough, I’ve

 

considered doing something similar as

I do have some body image issues, an

always-protruding belly that sticks out

over my otherwise normal-sized frame

27FEB25 | IF THE SHOE WAS ON THE OTHER FOOT

 

I would never have treated you with such

disdain and indifference and I would surely

never evict you from your children’s home

where their stability and security is certainly

 

more important than whatever issues their

parents are having; I would think that you

of all people—the master pretender—could

pull off a ruse to fool yourself into behaving

 

like a decent human being; you, with all your

resentment, pent up disenchantment and no

ability whatsoever to accept things as they

are should have made your peace with life

 

years ago, come to a middle ground where

everyone’s best interests are taken to heart;

if the shoe was on the other foot, I would

do things so much differently than you have

28FEB25 | DISEASE

 

I suppose we all suffer from some kind of

affliction, diseases of the body or mind or

of the general human condition; and while

everyone knows they are dying (life’s one

 

and only certainty), not everyone knows if

and what disease is lurking nearby within;

I’ve been reading a lot of news items lately

that talk of this person or that who recently

 

passed away from some cancer—usually a

stage-four lung cancer; and it’s more often

than not mentioned how the deceased never

smoked and lead a healthy lifestyle; or the

 

outrageously high number of glioblastomas

one hears about and how quickly the demise

came to be; all this disease, so many people

dying; so my question is, what’s with all that?

© 2025 R.M. Usatinsky/Aquitania Ventures

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