Poetry Thursday: I Want

A possible prompt for Poetry Thursday this week is to post your favorite poem and/or something original inspired by your favorite poem. I don't have a favorite poem. That's not surprising though. I don't have a favorite book, or movie, or color, or flower, or ice cream flavor either. I could narrow it down, perhaps, to a group of favorites in any of those categories, but not A favorite. I posted one of that group of favorites a couple of weeks ago. Michelle posted another of my favorites that same week. And there are so many more. Like the poem by Ogden Nash where the title is longer than the poem: "Reflections on a Wicked World" Purity is obscurity. Gotta love it. I also thought of a poem that used to be a huge favorite of mine, but which has unfortunately been a bit ruined for me in the past few years. I'm talking about "Warning" by Jenny Joseph. You all know it. The one that starts out "When I am an old woman I shall wear purple..." I love the ideas expressed in that poem, but then it seems as if someone had the brilliant (heh) idea to take the first 2 or 3 lines of the poem literally, while evidently ignoring the entire rest of it, and said "Hey, I know! Let's celebrate a poem about women learning to accept themselves as they get older and not trying so hard to conform to society's expectations. We'll honor that by forming a club where we all dress alike and do lunch!" AAAaarrrrgggghhhh!!! Every time I see a passel of women running around in red hats and prim purple pantsuits my eye starts to twitch and I think evil thoughts. (If anyone reading this is a Red Hattie, sorry...you're welcome to rant about something I like in return, but that's how I feel.) Now every time I think of the poem I used to love, all I can see is those Stepford Senior Sorority Sisters. I thought about trying to write a sort of retaliation poem, but I was getting into my pissy little Ms. Ranty McRantPants mode and I started boring myself, so I didn't do it. Instead I'll just post a poem I discovered much more recently and like very much. It's called "I Want." I want to shove my clothes to one side of the closet, give you the bigger half. Quietly I'll hide most of my shoes, so you won't know I have this many. I will rearrange furniture to add more, find space on my shelves for your many books, nail up the placard that says poets do it, and redo it, and do it again. I want to share a laundry basket, get our clothes mixed up, wait for the yelling when my reds run wild into your whites turning them into a luscious pink, your favorite color of me. I will move my pillow to the other side of the bed, lay yours next to mine, your scent on the fabric always near me, even on nights you're away. I will buy a new bureau to hold your thousand and one black socks, find a place for all those work boots, the ones I refer to as big and ugly. I want more pots and pans to wash, piles of them leaning high from late night meals cooked naked and drunk, red wine pouring into a sauce of simmering tomatoes, garlic, and olive oil, kisses bitten between bites, and platefuls of our late hours, stacking up into dawn. I want to stock cupboards, closets, and pantry, fill the house with us. I want to gain weight with you because our love, our love makes me fat. ~~~Kim Konopka "Luscious Pink"