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.

Pool of Serenity

October 20, 2010
You can look at this 3 ways.

I have an old water fountain
now filled with pebbles and rocks
that Serenity likes to play in.
She'll take the stones,
one or two in each hand,
and walk about turning them,
then tossing them,
then returning for more.
You can see the holes where she's been.

Dancing On the Grave

October 6, 2010
My dear sister, Annette, asked me to pen a poem to be read at her funeral. It's not that she's dying--far from it as far as I know--she just wants to be prepared. This is actually two poems in one--she's special.


Dancing On the Grave
(A Song of Rejoicing
for the Funeral of my Sister, Annette Smith
written well before she moved on)

So you think this is a victory
because my vocal chords are silenced
and laughter no longer bounces off
my tongue through the gap in my teeth
that will fall to the floor of this box.

You think this is loss
because my hands are folded flat
and not clapping to the heartbeat
no longer beating
the song beat of a different heart.

Do you believe this is the end
because my lifeless limbs
don't sway in the Wind in the dust;
and the dust will devour my flesh,
and the Wind will blow it where it will?

This is just the beginning.
My arms now move
to a whole new groove.
I am one with the Wind
and the dust don't keep me down.

This is gain.
My hands are lifted high applauding
the one beat,
the only beat,
the eternal beat.

Ha! This is a victory.
Hear my song.


Annette's Song

The Lord has brought me through.
My God has made a way.
Jesus carried me.

Your Word lead me.
Your Spirit moved me.
Your Presence guided me.

And I lived my life in You.
And You lived Your life through me.
And we lived our life as one.

Before Your throne I kneel.
Before Your power I bow.
Before Your majesty I lay myself down.

In the company of all the saints, I lift my voice to You.
In the sight of all the angels, I sing Your praise.
In Your presence, I worship.

I worship Your name.
I adore Your name.
I love Your name.

And I have a new name.
And though I have always known Your name,
it is new.

YES!
YES!
YES!

Bless You Lord.
Bless You God.
Bless You Jesus.

Jesus.
Jesus.
Jesus.

Wet: morning of September 30, 2010

September 30, 2010
Serenity is a fount of inspiration!

It rained last night and the earth is all wet;
too wet for little feet,
too wet to be absorbed by a single disposable diaper.

So you return the favor and press
drool soaked lips against the window pane,
giving the world outside a sloppy wet kiss,

your diaper drooping below sea level.

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?

The Living Word

September 23, 2010

Lord, I live
by your word.
My life is in the spoken sentences
and paragraphs from Your mouth,
not the black and red ink on
rice paper that can be burned to ashes,
added to the pile;
but by Your voice that etches
the tablets of my heart,
by Your breath that permanently
marks my mind,
the breeze that brands my soul
as Yours
I live.

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.

The Heart of God

September 20, 2010

There is not a soul alive
that has glimpsed the complete beauty
within a conch shell.
Broken by the crush of waves
and washed smooth by sand
gives a partial and wholly different vision.
The only way to truly comprehend
the smooth darkness of its bright curves:
          crawl inside.

Can a man know the tenderness
of a mother nursing?
Neither can remember
the comfort of the infant
suckling mama's breast.
It must be lived in the moment of innocence.

To my knowledge,
no one alive has survived
the internal winds and pressure of a tornado
whipping about seemingly out of control;
dust and debris flung about on the outside,
while molecules of nothingness fill the eye.
But wouldn't that be an experience.

Ghost of Serenity

September 20, 2010

You're not dead.
Just not here.

Where'd she go?
Don't wave bye.

Blown kisses
fill the air.

Echoes of morning jabber
tickle my inner ear.

Toys are scattered across the floor.
No one is playing.

I eat my Cheerios®
alone.

You're not here.
We're not alive.

Reading the Bible by Moonlight

September 15, 2010
I actually attempted to read by moonlight. It was early morning, the moon was full and bright, but not bright enough.

Reading the Bible by moonlight
words are blurred and smeared
on a not so white surface
only thing clear the white space
the margins that surround ink
jot tittle blend indistinguishable
from alpha and omega

Dawn, increasing clarity;
words are ordered in steps.
O's are opened, I's made straight;
more white space is evident
in the pores of the P's and the Q's:
each letter clearly delineated.
Even the punctuation is comprehensible.

Love Poetry

September 14, 2010

1.
She lifted the words of my poem off the paper,
dry-flower pressed them between the pages
          of her heart,
carried the meaning in her bosom
between her breasts
where a line of sweat traced her cleavage,
cleaving the sense of the words to and from our souls
like the drop of sweat rolling between my eyes
down the bridge of my nose to drop
upon the page, blurring any trace of meaning
between the careful symmetry
          of the lines.

2.
Remember how we used to leave each other messages:
the first one out of the shower
would write with their finger
on the steamed mirror
I “heart” U or
U R SEXY;
words that remained after
the condensation evaporated.

When I Was A Child

September 11, 2010
Reminiscent of a simpler time.

Gumby,
Gunsmoke,
no one was voted off
     Gilligan's Island;
Bozo, Batman (in gray tights);
Dragnet;
wrestling greats Bobo Brazil,
Flying Fred Curry,
The Sheik;
I always lost at marbles,
     little league baseball,
     Webeloes and Awanas;
yellow Huffy bicycle, banana seat,
     sissy bar, chopper handle bars,
     no helmet, no pads;
Detroit Tigers on the transistor radio,
Hank Williams on the console stereo;
drive-ins;
station wagon,
bench seats, seat belts not required;
black cherry Kool-Aid™,
fried oatmeal, bread pudding,
     both with raisins,
goulash, Sunday pot roast;
weeping willow in the front yard,
cherry on the side, wild apple across the fence,
rhubarb and clover.
When I was four I was allowed
to walk a quarter mile
down the tree-lined road by myself
to play with my friend Ruth.

Wholly You (A Confession)

August 31, 2010
This poem is deeply personal. It is a metaphor of amazing grace in my life. I dedicate this to my God and Saviour, Jesus Christ; and to my wife Lynn, whose love and forgiveness saved me.

It was completely you
responsible for reconciliation.

The fault is mine for crouching out the door,
walking away from the dwelling
we both built with our bare hands,
down the street and around the corner
for a tawdry, no wait,
          sleazy is a better word,
affair with a strange woman;
make believe quote/unquote love, no wait,
          sex with three x's is a better word,
in the dark fabric of the quilted streets of the city:
certainly castration is a certainty.

Nevertheless you nursed me back
to your milk-laden breasts
with words
of passionate urging, loving guidance, tender comfort.
I stained your back with tears of sludge.
Turning me over
you crossed my heart.
I hoped to die.
I must have been speaking in tongues
when I cried out “Merci! Merci!”
because my lips don't know how to formulate foreign language by themselves.

And now when we make love, no wait,
          the better word is love,
your nails painted blood-rust dig my flesh;
Oh, God! I feel the pain you provide—pain not like yours,
in comparison a tingling, an internal cutis anserina.
The foreign tongue you mastered.

The reason we are becoming one
is wholly you.

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.

Natural Selection, Naturally

August 13, 2010
Science doesn't answer all of the questions.

So...
          how did those bugs know
                    those other bugs don't taste too fine?
Then,
          how did they get the word out
                    to the rest of the swarm or hive
                              to change their spots or stripes
                                        to look like those other bugs?
First,
          they must have had one
                    heck of a research team
                              investigating the necessary DNA markers
                                        needed to evolve.
Perhaps,
          they thought real hard,
                    gritting their tiny little mandibles,
                              chanting “I think I can! I think I can!” until
                                        the right shades and hues popped out on their tiny little exoskeletons.
Maybe
          they just used Match.com
                    to hook up with the right
                              mates to propagate
                                        the appropriate gene pool.
However
          they did it,
                    them some smart bugs.

The Lost Art of Walking

August 13, 2010
Nobody walks anywhere anymore. It seems that the younger generation needs some form of transportation just to get around the block. But there's more to walking than putting one foot in front of the other. It's noticing things along the way. And it's a nice metaphor for life. Besides, even God enjoys a good walk (Genesis 3:8).

The Lost Art of Walking
Does not matter where you start or started;
comfortable shoes are wise, a bottle of water necessary;
any and all weather acceptable, sunny with a breeze preferable.

through the school playground littered with jungle gyms, swings, and slides
wads of paper tucked between the grass blades
chewing gum tattooed on the sidewalk
crossing over railroad tracks cutting perspective through trees
tight-rope walking narrow shoulders too close to oncoming traffic
soft shoulders sprinkled with litter like shed tears
full-blast electric hum, buzz of insects in the powerline cut
cigarette butts congregating against the curb
multicolored mulches
close-up, slow-motion landscaping
     every untrimmed branch standing out in hi-def, bold relief
question mark butterfly--what is it's taxonomic label in Latin?
deserted service station
     oily parking lot, empty abandoned cracked pavement fading lines
red clay, rocks, grass (carefully manicured this side, gone to seed that side)
anthills
back roads and small businesses you cannot see from the highway
there's a picnic table behind the firehouse
there's another one in the cemetery--go figure
sidewalks end

arriving home is like walking into your hometown
that you haven't been to since you were a kid
it's old and familiar and surreal and new

Baby Dreams

August 13, 2010
I actually started writing this when Serenity was an infant. I found it amazing that she was experiencing REM so early. Her dreams must have been amazing.

Eyelids closed in infant sleep;
     rapid eye movement
as quick as your heartbeat:
What could you
     be dreaming?

With eyes wide open you can't find,
     can't even focus;
yet visions flash in your mind:
What could you
     be dreaming?

Not old enough to even be young.
     Heart not awakened
to the good or bad; right and wrong.
What could you
     be dreaming?

Is your soul still connected
     by a heavenly cord?
Your innocence unaffected.
What could you
     be dreaming?

Serenity's First Birthday

August 6, 2010

I'll miss you when you're gone:

          pointy finger
          squint your eyes
          purse your lips
          slobber drool
          wobbley dance
          crab walking
          waddle down the hall
          peek-a-boo
          numma numma breakfast
          yay--clap, clap

I'll see you in the morning
for our walk among the trees.