Poetry Blogs (2020, Motherhood)

small curls so soft

fall in your eyes

sleepiest gaze

wide by surprise

tiny fingers

stretch out to me

short pudgy legs

kick aimlessly

the world is yours

grin-slobber line

should your heart break 

I’ll give you mine 

© Candice Reineke 2021

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you cannot shut the whole world off as
and when you please.
i was fifteen
my mother, forty-five, fighting
an incessant war with my headphones.
fewer words,
our days were outlined more with
slammed doors and dour glares,
conversations prisoned behind the fear
of exposing the soft-
ness in the way our hearts beat
or pumped blood
or ruptured
to spill over that   much    love. our hands
...

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My wings are brown, not black and shiny.
I'm always peeping out through leaves.
I try and keep above the fear trilling below,
I know they are ingesting bitter roots.
And yet I swallow their song all the same.
The empty smoke of hope that arises,
as I am the Blackbird mother sitting,
gathering material and protecting you,
refined in pointless expectation.
I am a gust of failure that ruins,
...

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The day I met you

My soul awoke;

a sound of crying so joyous I could cry myself
The thought of opening my eyes

without the sound this little life I created would be just as scary as it was

when she had opened hers in the first

moments of life 
She lit up my night sky
She came to me with golden hair
The color people would dye to have
For her, I'd die a million times to have also
...

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Sometimes it bugs me

to have to chain up my chest

to keep it under control

And a few days each month

I’m afraid to stand up

for fear of disaster below

The price to pay for having a way

to make two little humans

and call them my own

One of whom

will make the same complaints

once she is fully grown.

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Sitting on the kitchen floor 

in the middle of the night

Pill packets to the left of me 

and a knife just to the right 

I was young, I was broken 

I felt I couldn’t win the fight

Hopeless and desperate 

I wanted a way out of this life

This wasn’t something new

there had been many other times

But usually the prescription drugs 

were enough to suppress the crime

T...

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I want a better life for my precious little boy

I want him to have a life that he can actually enjoy 

In a town like this with limited prospects 

The best that you can hope for is that life doesn't get to complex 

And that you don't have to escape with 

self destructionalised vibes 

And that you can appreciate the beauty 

in the ever changing tides

Life's not about finding ...

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Lying here comforting my daughter of 9 months beside me, it suddenly occured to me that when she was born I was going to write more, start to share my work, use my time out of work to explore my poetry writing too. You know, all the usual gubbins, before the actual reality of having a newborn who doesn't sleep, has painful reflux and an older, teenage sister or whichever equivalents consume you.

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My mom lives in my heart

Of my world she is a special part

Lots of care and unlimited love

Shes an angel from heaven above

She gives me food and drops me to school

In my life she sets all the rules

Even she scold and yells at me

In her eyes love is what i See

Sometimes i may cause you pain

But i know your darling I will remain

You will always be in my heart

Even th...

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Being a mother can be very tough
There are days when I feel all gruff
Every time I feel like that I wish I know
I simply need to relax & go with the flow
Every time my kids make utter mess 
I wish I know there are many who suffer from being childless
Every time I see my dreams being fulfilled in their future
I wish I know my job is not to control but to nurture
I wish I remember that they ...

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Breakfast, dinner, tea-

different food, same dishes;

new water, same sink.

Each day, fresh treasure

Organic, homegrown, straight from

the cat litter tray.

You will never peel

the same potato again.

Alas, more will come.

The sole purpose for

anyone’s toaster’s crumb tray

is to upset them.

Once wine filled this glass,

fairy liquid and r...

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I have a large knife in my hand
and I’m not afraid
to skin this mother
to sliver away at the
stiff upper lip of a
toughened epidermis
banish wrinkles, dents and prickly bits
and behold it
cleansed, stripped, unveiled
If you ask me again
I will plainly chop
the thing in two
while I wonder what I could be

This repast, the fourth of the day
mentally diarised between
broken blinds and...

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They call me your mini me

Strangers mistake us for sisters

Old friends sometimes call me by your name

I have always called you mommy

Except that one year back when youth and innocence clung to my small frame and I decided calling you mom sounded more grown up

 Alas,

 I always forgot when I heard the key turn in the lock and you came home from work

I would run into your ar...

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Composed At Braunau (April 20th 1889)

Earth has not anything to show more fair,

all bloodied here beneath the twisted cross,

than this, my child, my angel of Braunau.

I take him in my arms and simply stare

upon this changeling left within my care.

His birth, today, is surely heaven’s loss

and touches all my greys with rainbow gloss.

The world lies sleeping,...

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In times of trouble,

they need me.

In times of peace,

they can't stand me.

In times of trouble,

they say, "I love

you Mom."

In times of peace,

they would rather die

than admit this.

In times of trouble,

they come to me

for advice.

In times of peace

th...

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