Thursday, April 2, 2015

Napowrimo Day 1 and 2

Poem Day 1, Napowrimo,

Careful 

I never ran around with scissors,
daring a wound to my head.
I was afraid to even use them.

I never placed my tongue
on a hot meal, steaming
smoke from the fragile plate.

I never crossed the pike, even
when the little white man appeared.
A car could suddenly swipe me.

I never stopped breathing,
avoiding all manners of death,
from gun to rope to drowning.

I never failed to pray at night.
Angels came downstairs to say,
shaking their heads, I won't die.

Day 2

Copper Coin

One day the tower would fall.
Leave a pile of stones around
its clearing, remains for seekers
to dig out and steal.  Nobody
would remember how the jester
sang, like a clown mask of sound,
forcing laughter from everyone.
The nobles would be forgotten,
with their oversize hungers,
swallowing chickens in minutes,
yelling for more wine so drunken
fights could lead to joust challenges.
The king alone escaped, taking off
his royal clothes, passing through
a secret passage into the countryside.
He would keep his name, John,
but he would spend the days
shoving manure, gathering hay.
If someone met him they'd know
how happy he was.  To eat corn
and porridge.  To labor underneath
the plain white sky's copper coin,
to receive no other pay than this.

Wednesday, February 4, 2015

Middle of the Night Poems

Sometimes when I write a poem in the middle of the night, I'm deluded into thinking it's good.  A particular good line or humorous passage makes me believe that I've hit on something.  Occasionally, I even submit the poem to a journal that night, so confident I am that it's a great piece of work.

Unfortunately, what I find out in the dead light of morning is that it's just not very good.  The lines are a little too familiar.  There might be a grammatical error or two.  I'm usually aghast that this has happened, that I was fooled by a poem.  I promised myself that next time it won't happen again.  I'll be sober, even inside the darkness.  And it always happens again....

Tuesday, February 3, 2015

Monday, February 2, 2015

Welcome Back to the Blog

I've never really used this blog the way it should be used.  True, I've posted some Napowrimo poems, but just about nothing else.  Let this be the announcement that I'm going to post much more often.

Last night was the Super Bowl, and I started to think about why there were not many contemporary poems about big sporting events, or sports in general.  They do dominate our consciousness in many ways, since we spend so much time on it -- Fantasy Football, sports talk radio, etc.  Perhaps most poets aren't sports people, I'm not sure.  Perhaps its image doesn't work for writers.

I remember Jack Spicer had some references to sports, baseball in particular, in his work.  Dickey had a poem about football and his son called "The Bee," which I love.  http://www.poets.org/poetsorg/poem/bee

So, maybe I'll try to write some sports poems.  I have some already, but I think I could do more. Maybe others might want to share theirs?