Tag Archives: Poem about looking in the mirror.

Mirror Image

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Mirror Image

She’s a dingy sort of doppelganger, lackluster and fretful,
and when I’ve caught a glimpse of her, she seems to be forgetful.
She looks surprised to see me and although it should be magic,
when she catches sight of me, it seems she finds it tragic.

It’s a shame she never catches me when I am at my peak,
and so I seem to be an image that she’d like to tweak.
We both look in the mirror and we don’t like what we see,
the irony of that being that both of us are me!!

 

Prompt words today are doppelganger, tragic, forgetful, dingy and peak.

About the assemblage:

              “After Picasso: Self-examination” 

The watch part that serves as the womb to the woman beats with the pulse beat of the child within, whereas the mirror reflection contains no moving parts.  An antique “Tabu” powder tin  is imprisoned in an old  pocket watch case.  A tiny portrait of a woman is framed by one of the watch parts that make up the rest of this collage.

Wasted Youth

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Dressed up by my sister in her clothes, just for fun. For sure, not my usual fare!

Wasted Youth

It is too late to try to tone
my skin and muscle, fat and bone.
When I walk, they sway and jiggle,
protest at my every wriggle.
Arm and neck and waist and thigh
are not as bad as I imply.

Nonetheless, I do not dare
attempt bikinis or clothes that bare
great expanses of leg and skin.
I will not brave it, the shape I’m in.
Oh to relive days back when
I was taut and smooth and thin.

And could convince my young self that
I was neither plain nor fat.
If I had known, I now confess,
I would have concealed me less.
Shown more skin, gone a size smaller,
pulled back my shoulders, stood up taller.

That youth is wasted on the young
way back then were words unsung
and so I wasted all those years
peering into bathroom mirrors,
wanting to be better because,
as I look back, I see I was!

Prompt words today are question, bone, jiggle, imply and brave.

How Old Are You?

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How Old Are You?

What needless agonies and fears
await us in our bathroom mirrors—
well-lit with no protective shade
to hide the tracks that time has made.

Put vanity upon a shelf.
Mere mirrors cannot reveal one’s self.
Wrappings simply serve to hide
the real gift that is hidden inside.

That old woman in the glass
is the result of years of sass
and fun and creativity.
She’s not defined by what you see.

Age need not carry fear or menace.
for all our ages remain within us.
Calendars only go so far
in telling us what age we are.

All photos on this blog, unless labelled otherwise, are by me. The prompt today is age.

P3310265 - Version 2
Looking Glass Menagerie

I am trying to escape the menagerie—
all those selves I hold in front of me
as well as the ones I have let escape.
Those that run ahead—
the ones that are my future selves—
are here, hidden in the portrait that you see.
Domineering, perhaps. But seasoned with
an awareness of what might have created
all of the parts of myself I try to reign in.
This has produced a certain slowness to connect.
The natural is seasoned with a desire to honor dreams
of what I hope to be. When I look in the mirror,
I see them all: my mother and my grandmother
and my sisters. We demand, are stubborn.
Sometime we are martyrs, stifling tears.
Then suddenly, I pass them by like memories
of nightmares: all the anxiety attacks,
illnesses and heartbreak.
We are all wonderful performers,
using bad luck to fuel good.
The belles of our own ball,
we push back the grim news
of what we fear we really are.
Headstrong, we reach for what we can be.
Utterly addicted to change,
Tony or no Tony,
we are the stars of our own lives.

This is a poem I wrote a year and a half ago. (In response to The Daily Post’s writing prompt: “Mirror, Mirror, On the Wall.”)