Hearts on Paper

October 27, 2010
She's got mine!

Serenity sat with me this morning,
reached for my clipboard of notes and blank paper.
Awkwardly holding the mechanical pencil
     in her left hand,
made stabs and swipes at the college rule:
     the scribbles are getting bolder.
Fingering the letters of my name
printed and taped to the metal clip,
I explain she is of a select few
who call me Grandpa.

Gazing at the work of her hand
she wraps her arms around the stiff board
and hugs the page to her tiny chest.

Drool

October 21, 2010
Sometimes I feel like this is what my writing looks like.

Serenity held the paper and pen
like one who had waited a lifetime
for just such instruments;
rubbing them together like two dry sticks,
anticipating a spark
to set her little world on fire.
Turning the pen over and over,
her thumb unacquainted with opposing,
the button did not click, and yet
a long string of drool issued forth
leaving its mark upon the paper.

Poets' Dilemma Delight or Just Another Tuesday Night

September 24, 2010
Inspired by the poetry of Billy Collins.

Can't we just mean what we say?
Does each line need to hide meaning?

Why can't we just sit down to dinner
our plates spilling peas and carrots into each other, or
on rare occasions, asparagus lying parallel or perpendicular;
mashed potatoes, mine overflowing, yours barely covered, with gravy;
these beside various pork chops, or as generally is in this economy,
quick frozen chicken breast, fulfilling its duty as the main course;
all without the fork and the spoon doubling entendre?

Is it possible for us to sit on the couch
and watch TV for just an hour or two, commercial breaks included,
just you and I and perhaps a comforter on top and a pillow between
in the glow of thirty-six inch diagonal, non-HD wonder
without it having to mean something before we go to bed,
read a book, snuggle, and sleep?

Is it all meant to mean something
other than what happens in that moment
on the page?

poesimania

September 22, 2010


poesimania
The first one's free.

They said it was an acquired taste;
fine wines painting impressionist portraits
upon nurtured taste buds.
Large barrel-like bottles of table whites and reds
lead to Chardonnays and Merlots
          soft, supple and complex...
          brimming with plush cherry...
          and jammy blackberries followed by
          hints of vanilla and spice;
samplings of Pinot Grigio
          opening with seductive floral
          and lemon aromas, followed by notes
          of mineral and tropical flavors;
glasses of Reisling
          made in an off-dry style
          accentuating delicate notes of...
          stone-fruit flavors...white peach and apricot...
          deliciously mingled with hints of Anjou pear
          and bursts of jasmine;
a bottle of Trivento 2008 Malbec,
          a bright carmine red
          whose plum and raspberry jam aromas
          mingle elegantly with vanilla notes
          from the 6 months aged in French oak barrels;
to a case of 2001 Nebbiolo,
          garnet-red...with ruby reflections...
          scents of roses, vanilla, roasted hazelnuts,
          licorice and spices...
          pleasant touch of tar and
          oaky notes in perfect equilibrium.
All served with aged cheeses, wafer thin crackers,
and fresh fruits upon a tray of silver or Malaysian bamboo.

What they didn't say
was that once acquired
required constant feeding
like heroin or crack
crawling up your spine
chasing monkeys without wings
things that go bump in the day
days without end
nights with no sleep
creepy, crawly flesh
less like a man than a worm
squirming through your veins
raining on your parade
a charade of death walking
in a daze of confused words
and guttural phrases spewed out
through black and broken teeth
spittal running down the jawbone
of a diseased mind
I'll find it this time
I swear I'll pay you back
just one more
please, God, let it make sense.

I buy chapbooks like dime bags
          and hide them from my wife.

Developing Voice

August 27, 2010
from notes on drafts:
[Develop your voice
your singular voice.
Huh?
But I have many voices.]

at last stanza:
When I'm dead will the things that I've said (written) still matter?


Developing Voice
"The voice you hear when you read to yourself
is the clearest voice: you speak it
speaking to you."
          Thomas Lux, "The Voice You Hear When You Read Silently"


The black & white home movies of the early sixties
silenced my infant voice;
until the reel-to-reel recorded it again one
Christmas morning singing Jingle Bells into the taste
of the aluminum microphone.
A decade later, the tape had stretched its vocal chords
and was no longer recognizable.

I once lost my voice
in high school, auditioning for a role in “The Fantastiks.”
I sang one line and then it just stopped...
as if someone had flicked a switch or a fuse had popped
and I didn't have a penny to fix it.

I found it again
proposing pacifism, debating doctrine, singing psalms;
and again on the sidewalks for the unborn, the uninformed;
and again parading prophetic in ecstatic glossolalia utterance.

There's the voice my children have heard.
There's the voice my grandchildren hear.
There's one for the dog.

My wife knows my voice
          when I'm setting up a bad pun,
          when I'm up on my soap box,
          when I'm asking a question
          or broaching a sensitive subject.
          There is one only she knows
                    when our door is closed
                    or when we're not talking.

I have a telephone voice
and a cell phone voice:
they are different.

It actually goes up
          about half an octave
                    when I'm waiting tables.
This phenomenon seems to affect most servers.

When I try to talk to you,
what if
what if I stut...stut...stutter;
          suppose my syllables slip into lisp;
                    perhaps the words no longer exist.
And what if we don't speak the same language?
¿Y si no hablamos el mismo idioma?
Where I come from, we don't have an accent.

And when my lips are peeled back from my teeth,
and my tongue has been eaten by worms,
will my voice still be heard in the heads of my kids
when they speak to kids of their own?

The Mentor and the Page

August 17, 2010
One and the same?

The old poet licked his thumb and turned
his crinkling face to face his page,
catechism burning his lips.

Teacher, when will I be a poet?

When all is beauty and grotesque in the same syllable.
When question marks become statements;
     commas, colons, and periods the movement
     of your chest, your lungs, your diaphragm.
When each breath taken becomes a metaphor
     for each breath you take
     and your lover merely a symbol for love.
When every heartbeat pumps a slant rhyme.
When what you see is what you hear;
     what you smell what you feel.
When every moment becomes a title, each experience a line, all memory a stanza.

The aged wordsmith pricked his thumb and bled,
an inkling of narrative published
on the novice' ear.

But Sir, when shall I become a poet?

When the space between the lines blurs with the ink upon the paper.
When your limbs grow into trees rooted in the heart of the earth
     and toner circulates through your veins and your blood speaks from the ground.
When the secrets of the universe are inadvertently hidden
     between the lines for everyone to see.
When rhyme needs no reason; no, nor reason to rhyme.
When time is not measured in meter or minutes,
     and timeless morphs to cliche.
When your only rush comes from the cutting of words into lines
     on the mirror surface of the page to be snorted through a gutted pen
     directly to you brain.

The wizened bard flicked his thumb and fingered
the bleached page before which
each penman bows his head.

Father, I want to be a poet. When?

When nothing is sacred.
When everything is sacred.
When black and white are just shades of grey with an e.
When gray with an a is merely the merging of black and white.
When the footnote leads the header.
When your pen instructs the paper
     and the poem becomes your teacher.
When your inquiry is no longer when
     but why.

In anguish, the young poet selected all.
And when questioned concerning his intention,
clicked “YES” and cursed all to the Trash Bin.

Stained Glass

August 3, 2010

Foiling
visuals of my mind,
moving pictures of my heart,
the virtual reality of my spirit;
solidifying divine revelation
with rust and sand and lead;
expounding liquid dreams
by fusing concrete realities,
hardened adjectives
for pools of light

unable to penetrate,
because the Windex isn't working
on the stained glass
darkened glass
glassy eyed
window of your soul.

What You Want

July 26, 2010
Reading the guidelines for a poetry contest, one thing they were NOT looking for was poetry with "I" in every line. I understand their point, but to me it was a challenge.


I do not
want I
to write about I.

I do not
wish to know I.
I do not
care about I.
If I write about I
I may come to know I.

I require inscriptions
about the motions of I;
the emotions of another I;
verses relative to the vast un-I
universe that I reside in.
I desire lines
devoid the sound of I;
I call for metaphor
of anything but I.

Write what I know.
I know I.
At least I think
     I do.

Write Me a Poem

January 11, 2010
Found this one in a worn pocket notebook of mine.


Write me a poem;
write me a poem.
Write me the words
     that I want to hear.
Put it in words
     that are nice to the ear.

Write me a poem;
please write me a poem.
I don't care what it says,
     it's the thought that counts;
how long doesn't matter
     it's not the amount

of words that you write in a poem.
Write in my poem
because it's my poem
     and nobody else;
because it's my poem
     I don't care if it sells.

So write me a poem—
just write me a poem.
It's a need that I have.
     I don't understand why,
but the poem fills a void
     with a thought, a laugh, or a cry.

So how about it—
you going to write
     me a poem?

Advice to J. Alfred Prufrock…

July 24, 2009
This was written while I was taking English Composition II. We had read T.S. Eliot's poem "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock" and the discussion centered mostly on the sexuality of the poem. I was intrigued by the second half of line 121:
"Do I dare to eat a peach?"

from God:
     Taste and see
     that the fruit is good.
     Just don't eat the fruit
     from that tree.

from the serpent:
     Has God said
     thou shalt not
     eat a peach?

from a Puritan:
     Thou shalt not eat of the peachtree,
     nor the fruit thereof;
     lest thou become as one
     of the fruiteaters
     who bare not fruit.

from a nutritionist:
     0g fat
     cholesterol, 0mg
     0mg sodium
     dietary fiber, 3g
     go ahead

from Hamlet:
     To eat or not to eat: that is the question:
     Whether 'tis favorable for the tongue to satisfy
     With the savory juices of this sweetest of fruit,
     Or to ingest the fibrous flesh and
     To suffer in the end? To eat: to squat;
     More and more; and by squat to say no end.

from Freud:
     You are titillated and fixated
     upon your mother's breasts.

from a poetry critic:
     To Prufrock,
     the peach
     is merely a metaphor
     symbolizing a sweet life
     that is unattainable,
     since you rouse to reality when
     “human voices wake us” (line 131).
     Therefore,
     whether you dare
     or no, you will not.

Remuneration

July 9, 2009


No one makes money writing poetry.
Well, someone eventually does gain:
a publisher, some critic, an estate—
someone.

But after you're dead
and can't come back
to defend or explain.

No, really. It was just
about a tree.

I was not on drugs
when I wrote that.

I was more perfectly sane
than at any other time in my life.

If you don't get it, don't worry.
I didn't write it for you.

Purpose Driven Poetry

July 1, 2009


I want to write poetry that
               praises my God;
               rejoices in right,
               illuminates wrong;
               awakens the soul,
               revives the spirit,
               stirs emotions,
               challenges the mind,
               makes sense;
               breaks fallow ground,
               waters the barren soil,
               and grows;
               feeds the hungry,
               gives drink to the thirsty,
               uplifts the arms that hang;
               makes old men remember,
               young men desire,
               women weep;
               doesn't make sense;
               causes leaders of white-washed tomes
                              want to take me out and stone me,
               pisses off professors
                              of logic, and reason, and apologetics;
               pleases my God.
I want to write
poetry.

Rhyme and Reason

June 19, 2009
What does a blind man see when he dreams? What does a deaf man hear when he reads silently to himself? Poetry can be many things.


Rhyme and Reason

Pictures for a blind man,
voices for the dumb;
recordings for the deaf man,
feeling for the numb.

Rhythm for the paralized,
partner for the solo;
Substance for a hollow heart,
passion for the soul.

Morals for the heathen,
compass for the lost;
roadmap for the dreamer,
living without cost.

Reason for an insane world,
mem'ries once forgot;
purpose for a shattered mind,
beauty that was not.

appareo epifania

(December 11, 2008)

Don't rush me:
          the symbols are all I have left.

What do you mean
          “What does it mean?”

The entire poem
          is an epiphany.

Questioning Poets

(2003)

Poets don't have all the answers—
they just know how to
     formulate the questions.

They're looking,
     asking,
     trying to answer.

And maybe,
     just maybe,
the questions answer themselves
     in the searching.

And maybe,
     just maybe,
we don't know diddly squat.

No One Listens To Poets

(February 13, 2003)

Writing madly
     about justice and injustice,
     the inner man and
     outer beauty;
feverishly chronicling
     moods and feelings and
     thoughts and ideas
that make the learned man squirm
and the uninitiated exclaim
     “Oh, isn’t that pretty.”
Giving voice to the intangible,
     form to the unseeable,
     life to the dormant heart;
laying bare his and the soul
     of countless others
     that couldn’t give a damn
          or know that they give a damn.
Rejected by publishers of prose,
     or given their share
     of thirty pieces of silver
to lay down and play dead.
Lauded at death
     as prophetic
          after it doesn’t matter;
given their place in history
     when all they really needed
     was enough to pay
     the light bill.

I Still Use Pencil and Paper

(January 20, 2003)

I still use pencil and paper
          (any paper—
                    legal pads, printer paper, napkins)
          to write.

The feel of the pencil, or pen, in my hand
          (get your mind
                    out of the gutter);
          forming each rounded O, each sharpened I;
          spelling, misspelling every word;
          drawing each sentence, paragraph, story.

Scratching, erasing, rewriting
          on college rule,
          between the lines,
          along the margins.

Sometimes cursive, occasionally block,
          often illegible;
          to be typed and spell-checked and printed
          at a later date, but

I still use pencil and paper to write.

Unfinished mss

(2002)

Orphaned children
     anticipating adoption,
stray puppies at the SPCA,
lonely hearts
     left
     forgotten.

Notes and photos,
     newspaper clippings paperclipped
     to beginnings and endings and
     in-betweenings;
filed away in folders
     to be finished when the muse strikes.

Passionate ideas penned
     in the heat of thought—
good, bad, mediocre, brilliant—
     that someday

The Sculptor

(2002)

A blank block of granite—
     impassive, impartial;
          an empty page.

Chopping out chunks of it—
     imperfect in form,
          complete in his mind.

Carefully chiseling it,
(cutting and chipping, routing and clipping)
     improving rough places,
(smoothing and rubbing, sanding and scrubbing)
          perfecting detail.

Illuminating light;
     imparting, impressive—
          time bound in form.

Attempts at Haiku

(2002)

Writing Haiku

Pencil, paper, pen—
Heart and mind and soul revealed—
Words strung on a line.



Adventure (for Catherine)

Uncharted forest;
Father, daughter hand in hand
Find new paths to test.



Sky Dance

Puffy, pillowy clouds
Leaving shadows on the ground;
Light plays in between.



Melancholia (originally untitled)

Cold breeze blows through trees.
Black bird dead on needled bed.
Clear sky—blue—asks why.