“Olsen’s Pond”

Returning to the old house,

now still, vacant,

staring with unshaded eyes

upon a snowy front garden,

shrubs overgrown with the

lustiness of summer

now split to the ground

taxed with a heavy snow.

I tried to light the parlor stove,

cranky old smoker

clanking and rattling

in the best of times

now given up the ghost,

cold metal unyielding to wadded paper

and an old mouse nest.

Now the silence of the rooms

broken by hissing wind

whipping around  eaves

rattling old bones in the attic,

stirring the haunts asleep in  corners.

It took time for twigs to catch

water turn to coffee

bacon, eggs brought from the city

cooked in an old iron skillet–

tasting far better in the country air.

I looked down at hands cracked

in the brittle winter light,

moisture gone,  

hair static with electricity,

feet numb from the cold

the woodstove not giving

more heat than an ice cube.

Walking down to Olsen’s pond,

Looking through the glassine surface

remembering the boy who had fallen

through while playing hockey

slipping under thin ice,

disappearing without a sound,

only noticed when our puck flew

High in the air
and he, the guard, missing.

We skated to the edge, threw bodies flat

trying to catch him just out of reach,

crying like babies, snot running down chins,

knowing he was floating just under the ice–

silenced like the lamb he was.

Childhood ended that day.

We drifted away to the city,

our skates and sticks put up,

Olsen’s pond deserted like a haunted minefield.

Fifty years ago I still remember

stretched as far as I could

belly freezing on treacherous ice,

grasping to reach a life just out of sight,

his muffler and stick floating to the surface–

The boy, the important part,

gone for good from a chilly winter’s play.

Jane Kohut-Bartels

Copyrighted, 2017

 

Haibun: The Mermaid

This Haibun is from ‘Memories of a Rotten Childhood” not yet published

Haibun: The Mermaid

 

The ‘50’s was a time of Mickie Mantle vs. Marilyn Monroe, Better Red than Dead, or Dead than Red, confusing for children as we didn’t understand ‘why’ we were to change color.  The ‘50’s was surviving the drunken kindness of a father and the sober malice of a mother, with all of us siblings carrying water to both.

Second grade and I remember tall windows that cranked out at chest height but only the teacher was allowed to touch the crank and the smell of ages: mold, asbestos and lead paint was a constant in our tender lives.

I remember being given a small lump of grey/green clay for ‘arts and crafts’.  I remember the mermaid I molded:  rolled clay for hair and arms, perky breasts, a split tail. I used my fingernail to make scales.  I remember old Mrs. Hoephner coming down the aisle, her knarled hands balled into fists, her grimace, her white hair floating like a wrath around her head and she saw my mermaid and stomped it flat with her fist.

Five decades later, I made that same mermaid, (I hadn’t progressed far with clay,) but this time, I glazed her shiny and she visited the fire and I gave her a crown of thorns.  Again,  I saw old Mrs. Hoephner, crabby old woman long dead, coming to my desk and Thump This, you old bat, you destroyer of a child’s imagination and you will be wearing that crown of thorns.

–

 

Imagination

Such a fragile thing.

Child’s salvation

–

 

Jane Kohut-Bartels

Copyrighted, 2016-2020

“Mean Shirley Temple’s Birthday Party”

(Mean Nancy who turned out ok, I guess)

 

Mean, spoiled Nancy  was having her 10^th birthday party. Nancy was always turned out in pretty dresses, with petticoats and a clean face. She had blond curly hair, like Shirley Temple, except without the talent. She was the youngest of three, so her mother took special care with her. My mother? Not so much. I was left to my own devices, and those weren’t always the best. There was no fairy godmother hovering over me.

I was sitting on a stool, stupidly too near the drop off onto the road beneath. I was taking a back seat, trying to disappear. Nancy’s mother didn’t like me much. Her dog, Freckles, a Dalmatian, had bit me in the eye the year before. She blamed me for ‘disturbing his nap.’ Back then there were no lawsuits or doctor visits for this ‘small stuff’. You had iodine slapped on the wound and went back to play. I remember being uneasy about her party, as my mother picked the gift herself. I didn’t know what she had wrapped up in gift paper. I was hoping it wasn’t my Betsy-Wetsy doll.

Nancy floated around the tables, playing birthday diva. She decided to sit on me. A big mistake for a lot of reasons, two of which I remember: One, I was deathly afraid Nancy would tip us over the cliff, and two….she was fat. I thought I wouldn’t survive this. I couldn’t breathe.

So I bit her. In the back. Nancy leaped up screaming and a general riot broke out. I couldn’t get out why I had bit her, but by the faces of the adults I knew I was no longer welcome.

My father ordered me to the car. I went, weeping, sitting in the back of the old Studebaker station wagon. I was very worried, mostly about the anger from my mother as soon as she heard what her only daughter had done. Not that she liked any of the adults at the party, and it was generally mutual, but it clearly was another failing of a daughter she really didn’t like.

My father approached the car, his face beaming. “We won’t tell your mother about this. Let’s go get some Breyer’s ice cream.”

This wasn’t the first time my father stuck up for me. We were in a secret war against my mother until he died. He was my best friend though I didn’t appreciate it then. I do now.

 

Childhood is tough

Adults are the enemy

Kids fodder for wars

 

Jane Kohut-Bartels

Copyrighted, 2019

“Olsen’s Pond”…..

 I start out the New Year with this poem for many personal reasons.  Some have found it too ‘hard’ to read for their own reasons.  And some have read it and found their own childhood in it.  Regardless, it remains my favorite poem.

Lady Nyo

–

Returning to the old house,

now still, vacant,

staring with unshaded eyes

upon a snowy front garden,

shrubs overgrown with the

lustiness of summer

now split to the ground

taxed with a heavy snow.

 

I tried to light the parlor stove,

cranky old smoker

clanking and rattling

in the best of times

now given up the ghost,

cold metal unyielding to wadded paper

and an old mouse nest.

 

Now the silence of the rooms

broken by hissing wind

whipping around  eaves

rattling old bones in the attic,

stirring the haunts asleep in  corners.

 

It took time for twigs to catch

water turn to coffee

bacon, eggs brought from the city

cooked in an old iron skillet–

tasting far better in the country air.

 

I looked down at hands cracked

in the brittle winter light,

moisture gone,

hair static with electricity,

feet numb from the cold

the woodstove not giving

more heat than an ice cube.

 

Walking down to Olsen’s pond,

Looking through the glassine surface

remembering the boy who had fallen

through while playing hockey

slipping under thin ice,

disappearing without a sound,

only noticed when our puck flew

high in the air

and he, the guard, missing.

 

We skated to the edge, threw bodies flat

trying to catch him just out of reach,

crying like babies, snot running down chins,

knowing he was floating just under the ice–

silenced like the lamb he was.

 

Childhood ended that day.

We drifted away to the city,

our skates and sticks put up,

Olsen’s pond deserted like a haunted minefield.

 

Fifty years ago I still remember

stretched as far as I could

belly freezing on treacherous ice,

grasping to reach a life just out of sight,

his muffler and stick floating to the surface–

The boy, the important part,

gone for good from a chilly winter’s play.

 

Jane Kohut-Bartels

Copyrighted, 2017

 “Olsen’s Pond” was published in “A Seasoning of Lust”, 2016, Amazon.com

 

 

 

Haibun: Birthday Party

 

 

(“Hummers” …watercolor, with gold leaf, Jane Kohut-Bartels, 2003)

Over at dversepoets pub, it is Haibun Monday, and Bjorn is presenting the challenge of haiga.  A painting or illustration that relates to the haiku written.  Though this painting of mine might seem scant in relating to the Haibun/haiku below….It does.  At least to me.  The Haibun describes a father’s love, the wars of childhood, and the painting?  His three children: little Hummers which he used to call us. For those who don’t know birds….Hummers are fierce.  They are tiny but survive because of their tenacity.  Sort of like children when we have to.

Lady Nyo

 

Haibun: Birthday Party

Mean, spoiled Nancy Madsen was having her 10^th birthday party. Nancy was always turned out in pretty dresses, with petticoats and a clean face. She had blond curly hair, like Shirley Temple, except without the talent. She was the youngest of three, so her mother took special care with her. My mother? Not so much. I was left to my own devices, and those weren’t always the best. There was no fairy godmother hovering over me.

I was sitting on a stool, stupidly too near the drop off onto the road beneath. I was taking a back seat, trying to disappear. Nancy’s mother didn’t like me much. Her dog, Freckles, a Dalmatian, had bit me in the eye the year before. She blamed me for ‘disturbing his nap.’ Back then there were no lawsuits or doctor visits for this ‘small stuff’. You had iodine slapped on the wound and went back to play. I remember being uneasy about her party, as my mother picked the gift herself. I didn’t know what she had wrapped up in gift paper. I was hoping it wasn’t my Betsy-Wetsy doll.

Nancy floated around the tables, playing birthday diva. She decided to sit on me. A big mistake for a lot of reasons, two of which I remember: One, I was deathly afraid Nancy would tip us over the cliff, and two….she was fat. I thought I wouldn’t survive this. I couldn’t breathe.

So I bit her. In the back. Nancy leaped up screaming and a general riot broke out. I couldn’t get to why I had bit her, but by the faces of the adults I knew I was no longer welcome.

My father ordered me to the car. I went, weeping, sitting in the back of the old Studebaker station wagon. I was very worried, mostly about the anger from my mother as soon as she heard what her only daughter had done. Not that she liked any of the adults at the party, and it was generally mutual, but it clearly was another failing of a daughter she really didn’t care for.

My father approached the car, his face beaming. “We won’t tell your mother about this. Let’s go get some Breyer’s ice cream.”

This wasn’t the first time my father stuck up for me. We were in a secret war against my mother until he died. He was my best friend though I didn’t appreciate it then. I do now.

 

Childhood is tough

Adults are the enemy

Kids fodder for wars

Jane Kohut-Bartels

Copyrighted, 2017

 

 

 

 

 

Haibun….”Badges of Childhood”

 I’ll be offline after Tuesday for a few days.    See you hopefully at the very end of the week. Snuck this in for dverse Haibun prompt Monday.)

–

(Spring, Jane Kohut-Bartels, 2009, watercolor)

 

Scars are a roadmap of life. Each scar is a badge of some painful event and we wear them whether we want them  or not. Knees are fraught with  badges, at least mine are. One, a white puckered scar about the size of a small fingernail was pinned on my knee when I was four. I remember  a sidewalk, it was autumn, and apartment buildings, maybe a century old, looming over me. I remember rust colors, so it must have been autumn.  I remember the color red. That was pain. That was blood. You don’t get these badges  without the sacrifice of skin and blood. I was wearing a dress, a pinafore, because little girls didn’t wear jeans back then. They wore cotton dresses with petticoats and cotton drawers. Roller skates were the invitation for this scar and that little girls had no protection from concrete made it unavoidable. The concrete was a grating machine, oiled by the pain of little children and stretching for blocks. There was an old Jewish couple who would meet me under the draping pine trees with a Hershey bar every morning like it was my birthday! I was only four years old, but I lived for that candy. They had escaped Nazi Germany by selling off everything, yet every morning they were dressed formally, suit and tie and such lovely dresses, showing such kindness to a mere  child. I still remember that gut-drawing pain of that rusty morning. I tap the scar and know I have survived childhood. The Hershey bars helped.

 

Swirling winds of fall

Knees like white bones flashing

Modesty is gone.

 

 

Jane Kohut-Bartels

Copyrighted, 2016

 

“Bob Dylan and Me”

Bob Dylan and Me

 

Fifteen and not cool.

Parents off fighting

The war called marriage.

We kids on the battlefield

Carrying water to each side.

 

High school, all four years

Of it brutal.

Sadistic teachers who should

Have been gone, but hung on.

Mr. Martin’s rubber nose

shot off in the war

the only thing good about

geometry.

 

It was the times of Commies

Dropping bombs on our baseball fields

(we hoped…)

The time of ‘squat and hug your knees’

All good training for life to come.

 

Gloria, an outcast for her pimples

A kindred spirit

Got tickets to a ‘real New York folk singer’

Said the wall posters, blowing in the wind.

 

So we primped,

And curled our hair into flips,

Wore best Sunday dresses

Because we weren’t cool.

 

The name of the folk singer

Meant nothing to us

We were too young,

Too wet behind the ears

To know what was ‘too cool’.

 

They took one look

And some wit decided

We were a kink backdrop

And put us on stage behind

The

“New York Folk Singer”

A skinny kid,

With messy hair

Playing a guitar.

With faded blue jeans

That fell off his hips.

 

 

We were right behind him,

Our ankles crossed

Our hands in our laps

Looking at his shapeless ass.

 

Drunken boys from Princeton

Yelled rudely:

“Hey, Bobbie! Play Blowin’ in the Wind”.

“Hey, Bobbie! Get some singing lessons!”

More than a few beer cans were thrown on the stage,

While we kept on smiling and nodding

And Bobbie kept turning, mystified

At the two white clad girls

Who shouldn’t be there.

 

I didn’t know the word then,

But if I had to guess,

His mouth formed “WTF”

At the chaos out front

And the aliens behind.

 

Each time he would turn

We would smile and clap–

He would bow.

A private performance

For two virgins in white.

 

Jane Kohut-Bartels

Copyrighted, 2016

“Shirley Temple Gets Hers”…from Collected Short Stories, to be published Spring, 2017

 

For the past year, I have been working on short stories.  They have some of their own rules, regulations, laws.  In other words, you got to study these things.  I’ve been reading different authors of short story, mostly women writers for the past six months. Whatever these laws are, I’ve thrown most of them out the window.  I just write to tell a story, and what I have found out is the stories that seem possible are the stories from my own life.  Childhood is a good start.  So, with a growing collection of short stories, I hope to fashion a new book for next spring.  We will see how it goes.

Lady Nyo

 

I had few friends when I was a child. At least, I didn’t have many. We lived out in the countryside of New Jersey, in an old Dutch farmhouse. Everyone seemed to have acres of land, and that spaced out the families. I had few choices. School was not much of a choice. Most of the kids in the neighborhood were boys, friends of my two younger brothers. There was one girl, Nancy, but she was a fat, spoiled neighbor and besides, her mother and mine didn’t get along. My mother didn’t get along with any of our neighbors. She was forever complaining to us that the people around her were ‘inferior’. Or snobs. Whether they were or not wasn’t clear to us, but she was convinced. It impacted on our choice of playmates, or at least it did for me. She couldn’t really control my brothers, or she choose not to, because there was a load of boys on that road. There was only Nancy, and as I mentioned, she hated Nancy’s mother. I can’t remember a specific reason, it just was a general hatred that my mother was so good at.

There was another girl, Diane who lived next to us, but she was adopted, and in my mother’s mind, she really didn’t ‘belong’. She was younger than I, and that precluded much contact. Besides, her mother was also under fire from mine. I can’t remember any mother mine liked in those years. Or since. At 96, she’s still happily making enemies.

Another friend, who really couldn’t be considered a friend, was Lauren. She was the same age as I, but taller and stronger. She was a bully (I was wimp) and tormented me all through grammar school. I still have the scars where her sharp nails raked the back of my hands. She probably became a serious sadist later in life.

My mother really hated hers. I heard my mother call her ‘trash’ and that piqued my interest. She did wear wide patent leather belts with off shoulder gypsy blouses, and the wallpaper in her bathroom was black with huge red roses, so there might have been something of ‘truth’ in what my mother said. To me, Ruth was fascinating. Rather a free-spirit. A beatnik of sorts.

Nancy was to have a birthday party. I remember it to be her tenth. Now, Nancy was always turned out in crinkly dresses, with petticoats and a clean face. She was the youngest of three, so her mother took special care with her. My mother? Not so much. I was left to my own devices, and those weren’t always the best. There was no fairy godmother hovering over me.

My father took me to Nancy’s party. It was just down the road, three properties from us, but my father drove me. It’s a damn good thing he did, because there was enough tension (see mother above) and the fact that Nancy’s father was a creative drunk. Meaning he was an artist, but still a drunk. More reputations than my own probably would have been ruined.

Of course, Nancy was a picture of a well turned out little ten year old. All those crinkly petticoats and her blond curled hair. My mother paid some attention to me and I presented a clean face and a mostly clean dress. I believe my hair was short, in a bob then. My mother couldn’t take the whining when she tried to comb my long hair and sheared it off. But it was summer so this worked.

I can remember the tables of gifts and food. I was more interested in the food as I seemed to have a hollow leg. I could never get enough. I also remember there were more adults than children attending but that didn’t seem unusual. The countryside had cows and horses, chickens and some goats, but there were few children on River Road back then.

I was sitting on a stool, rather stupidly too near the dropoff on the road beneath. I was taking a back seat, trying to disappear. Nancy’s mother didn’t like me much either. Her dog, Freckles, a Dalmation, had bit me in the eye two years before and she blamed me for ‘disturbing his nap.’ Back then there were no lawsuits or doctor visits for this kind of stuff. You had iodine slapped on the wound and went back to play. I remember being uneasy about her party, as my mother picked the gift herself. I didn’t know what she had wrapped up in gift paper. I was hoping it wasn’t my Betsy-Wetsy doll.

Nancy floated around the tables, looking like Shirley Temple. Then she took it in her head to sit on me. A big mistake for a lot of reasons, two of which I remember: One, I was deathly afraid that Nancy would tip us over the cliff, and two….she was fat. I thought I wouldn’t survive this, I couldn’t breathe.

So I bit her. In the back. Nancy leaped up screaming her head off and a general riot broke out. I couldn’t get out why I had bit her, but by the faces of the adults I knew I was no longer welcome.

My father ordered me in a very stern voice to the car. I went, weeping, sitting in the back of the old Studebaker station wagon. I was very worried, mostly about the anger coming from my mother as soon as she heard what her only daughter had done publically. Not that she liked any of the adults at the party, but it was clearly another failing of a daughter she really didn’t care for.

My father approached the car, his face beaming.

“We won’t tell your mother about this. Let’s go get some Breyer’s ice cream.”

Wow. I had dodged a serious bullet. The first time, but not the last, my father would come to my defense against my mother. To top it off…..”let’s go get some Breyer’s ice cream” meant a road trip of at least 10 miles from home, down in Kendall Park. It was a very special place for us kids, and my father used it when he had the chance. It was his way of expressing his love without many words. And apologies for his own drunkenness.

Many decades later, Nancy moved down to Rex, Georgia. I got one letter from her, unbidden, surprised she looked me up. She was no longer fat, but she was still the bully. An answering letter and I never heard from her again. Good riddance to the Shirley Temple of my childhood.

 

 

 

 

 

“Olsen’s Pond”, and an opinion concerning the tragedy in Paris this week.

What we have seen of the tragedy in Paris this week is heartbreaking.   The insanity of these Islamic terrorists is beyond anything imaginable.  It is the same Nazi mentality that tormented the world decades ago. How do we protect our freedom of speech and also artistic creativity?  And uphill battle to do so, but there is no choice except to continue to write, create and speak out. But with a higher purpose. 

I don’t think it prudent to pull the whiskers of extremists. These cartoons seem  to be not only vulgar, but jejune. That includes all other religions.  It is just tasteless.  Freedom of speech doesn’t include yelling ‘fire’ in a theater, and watching the stampede regardless what some may think. 

Hopefully  moderate Muslims  understand  the world will not tolerate the barbarity of violence much longer.   They also suffer from the savagery of  Islamic extremists, and need to unite with the world against this savagery.  They are also in peril.

Je suis Charlie, aussi.

Jane

–

Childhood in the country has special memories, good and tragic.  Perhaps today things are different, but when I was a child tragedies happened.  Just a part of life then.  We also rode our bikes without helmets.

Lady Nyo

–

Olsen’s Pond

–

I returned to the old house,

now still, vacant,

staring with unshaded eyes

upon a snowy front garden,

shrubs overgrown with the

lustiness of summer and neglect

now split to the ground,

taxed with a heavy snow.

–

I tried to light the parlor stove,

old cranky cast iron smoker

clanking and rattling

in the best of times

now given up the ghost,

cold metal unyielding to wadded paper

and an old mouse nest.

–

The silence of the rooms only broken

by hissing wind whipping around  eaves

rattling old bones in the attic,

stirring the haunts sleeping in  corners.

–

It took  time for twigs to catch,

the water to turn coffee,

bacon and eggs brought from the city

and cooked in an old iron skillet–

tasting far better in the country air.

–

I looked down at hands cracked

in the brittle winter light,

moisture gone,

hair static with electricity,

feet numb from the chill,

the woodstove not giving

more heat than an icicle.

–

I walked down to Olsen’s pond,

looked through the glassine surface

remembered the boy who had fallen

through the ice while playing hockey–

slipped under the thin cover, disappearing

without a sound,

only noticed when our puck flew

Up in the air and he, the guard, missing.

–

We skated to the edge, threw bodies flat

trying to grab him just out of reach,

crying like babies, snot running down chins,

knowing he was floating just under the ice,

silenced as the lamb he was.

–

Childhood ended that day for most of us.

We drifted away to the city,

our skates and sticks put up,

Olsen’s pond deserted like a haunted minefield.

–

Fifty years ago I still remember that day

when stretched as far as I could

my belly freezing on treacherous ice,

grasping to reach a life just out of sight,

his muffler and stick floating to the surface–

The boy, the important part,

gone for good from a chilly winter day.

–

Jane Kohut-Bartels

Copyrighted, 2015, originally published in “White Cranes” by Lulu.com

“Coppermine Road”

severweatherproject.org

 

Coppermine Road

 

When I was a child

Sitting on a hill

In south-central Jersey,

I would watch the roiling thunderstorms

Shoot daggers of lightning

Across hills of the Sourland Mountains

Setting fires to forests,

Pastures–

Torching the barns.

 

 The hand-cranked siren would yowl

And all men over 21

Would answer the call.

To lurk under jacked-up cars,

To pitch hay,

Run the combine

Or start the evening milking

Would get you the cold shoulder

Or worse…

In the local gin mill.

 

Coppermine Road had

A ton of fires,

This gateway to the Sourlands

Stretching miles into Dutch-elmed darkness

As we watched

First the lightning

Then smoke rise into the air,

And heard the howl of the siren

In the valley below.

 

 Mined out, this coppermine,

 Emptied before the Revolution

The sturdy Dutch taking their

Share from the earth,

Leaving little of worth, just the name,

The scars of digging plastered over in time.

 

Perhaps it was a grand conspiracy

Between storm clouds and copper deeper down

A particular cosmic revenge,

Enough to torch the barns

Scare the milk out of cows

And bedevil the men.

 

Jane Kohut-Bartels

Copyrighted, 2012