GI Joe Doll

All writers steal and borrow. I stole the premise and the form of this poem from the poet Marge Piercy and her great poem "Barbie Doll." The idea came to me after a discussion of her poem in my English 12 class a few years ago.

GI Joe Doll

This manchild was born as usual

and presented games that exploded

and GI Joes and miniature Yamaha quads

and wee capguns the color of blued steel.

Then in the madness of puberty, a classmate said

You have zits and act like a jerk.

He was hearty, acted spirited,

possessed lean abs and a thick chest,

abundant hormones and could kick a soccer ball.

He went to and fro spazzing.

Everyone saw zits and a jerk.

He was advised to grow up,

pressed to act like a man,

workout, test the dangers, never smile

and intimidate.

His spirited nature vaporized

like drops of dew in the late morning sun.

So he drank beer and smoked weed

and shut up.

In the casket displayed on flannel he lay

with the undertaker’s prosthetics glued on,

a putty colored chin and wrist,

dressed in a gray suit and black shoes.

Doesn’t he look peaceful? everyone asked.

Conquest at last.

To every teenage boy a victory.

Particle

Particle

I saw myself walking by

 Myself a fragged out particle back from

Where I all began.

And you were there too

A runaway from some forgotten space

Where bodies never say no.

There is dew on your lips

Kiss but you finally never meant it

Because it was better than any other nothing.

You know I live to breathe

The place on your chest

Adorned  by a delicate ibis,

Its eyes disconsolate.

Aral Sea

The following poem is based on the truth. Man is capable of destroying the environment.

Aral Sea

Sea gone

From sea to salt to dust

The dust like pilled rags

Coating our throats

And every breath a muffled mutation

And every blink a peer

Into the shores of retreat

Sea Gone

From sea to salt to dust

All for the billowy caress of cotton

All for cotton

White-gold cotton

Pilgrim

Pilgrim

I saw forty in the rear view and put on my right turn signal

Only to see forty stretch before me

And then left and forwards put me at forty again

Where reverse is just repealing a life of sentences

I got out and pilgrimed the map

The ashes under my feet my own

Like a factor of eight and five

Ashes like black squirt between the toes

Of the day that is made forty

Years of black ash make for black soles

Black soles do not gambol

Except to journey in to my car

Hide behind the glass

Call out my father’s name

Like a snied snivvler in the night

Turn the light on

Please

Let it be down

Please

Nursery School

I never try to force the narrative in my verse. I just want it to be what it is. Often a good poem comes from a tiny, simple place. This one came from my daughter's joy playing with frogs, and I combined that joy with a funny comment from a friend. This poem started as one narrative but since has become something different.

Nursery School

Candy, said the boy.

Cracked cell phones buy no candy, said the girl.

I want my eyes to be pennies that look into your heart, said the boy.

 You are my best friend

And you eat crackers from a bucket.

She said, if you were a woman and I was a man

I would make you sweep crackers or make spaghetti

Because you are not my best friend.

Her thoughts went to her mother, suitable dresses,

Tiny white lilies and lime green frogs.

You are a frog, the girl said.

Girls kiss frogs, the boy said.

I want to jingle your love with loose change, said the boy.
You are my best friend
But you only dream of small growling animals.

She said, if you were a father and I the mother

I would stuff my dress full of your nickels

And give nickels like gum drops to every stray dog.

Her thoughts went to puppies, dust mops,

Crumbs and bits of time across a kitchen.

Here is your cell phone, said the girl.

I am hungry.

I am a frog, said the boy.

Bitter Beat Sugar

Bitter Beat Sugar

Each day of snow she tells me

Her troubles still lie in waiting

Gently stirred in a tea of bitter beat sugar

Swirling in the chipped enamel cup

Her life portrait incomplete

At night the falling flakes become audible

Beneath her breath they coalesce in resignation

To the ground where I sometimes find her

Breathing fogs on vinegar mirrors

Her strength a rimed reflection of rejected moonlight

Beyond arrival is a wet cold place

Love its only source

Smolder

Smolder is new. Right now it's the working title for my new collection.

Smolder

This is the golden age,

You the antidote

And my desolate treasure.

For you I must turn my head,

Gaze across a lithic shoulder

To your intentional eyes.

This is the golden age,

My hand jitters deep

Concealed in my pocket.

I would give you nothing

To never know

That all treasure will go missing.

This is the golden age,

I drink you

And I ache.

My hand on your cheek

In this blurry embrace.

From some golden age

Like a man I settle

My dull touch;

I light your cigarette.

Vermeer

A great way to find inspiration or to help others learn how to write poetry is to write a poem based on another work of art. My training included a hefty amount of poetry writing on the classic works of art across the last 400 years.

The next poem put that training into practice. I wrote a poem based on Salvador Dali's painting "The Ghost of Vermeer of Delft Which Can Be Used As A Table." More information about Salvador Dali can be found here http://thedali.org/history/biography.html. Information about the Dutch painter Johannes Vermeer can be found here http://www.essentialvermeer.com/.

Vermeer



I was there in Delft where Vermeer returned

to make an Orange sunset.

I saw Vermeer's shadow suggest Shakespeare

less than a prone inprint of Death

settled in brick dust with Vermeer's crutch

angled and stiff risen from Death's crotch.

See how Vermeer sees me?

His left arm a ginger arrow in my direction.

I'm that black shadow of a mountain

ready to send down thunder,

ready to send his knickers back to New Kirk.

I'll give his crutch to the trees,

lay his table out for the meadows.

Keep the wine to plug my crevices,

mask my scars.

Crisis

"Forty Blog" is the title for a series of poems I started writing the year I turned forty. Below is number IV in the Forty Blog series, which I hope to have in the new collection.

This poem is an example of a more formal style in its use of rhyme and meter as well as the consistent use of four line stanzas known as quatrains.

Crisis

Now I guess I got here with no vices

Besides that new one called a crisis

And no it will not end in divorce

So long as I drive this shiny red Porsche.

My job is not very manly,

And the bank account exists but scantily,

And fees and penalties and charges

Those could fill many many barges.

But most humiliating of all is this expanding spare tire,

The one that brings forth the wife’s disgust and ire,

Her glances and pokes upon my belly

She thinks I am awful and profoundly smelly.

So when I’m in my Porsche again,

Thinking of younger days filled with friends

To golf and games and beers we dashed

Never knowing forty could bring this crash.

But I’ll keep going it’s what I do,

For fifty is coming that much is true.

I'll use these years to gain grace and wisdom,

Starting in that Porsche where I sought freedom;

And work my job and work my job and work my job,

And dress a bit less like a slob,

And make some friends and shake some hands,

All the while working on my tan!

You Call to Me

Another poem from the new collection. This poem is a little longer than my normal style. But it is what it is. If you are engaged in your own writing, just go with it. Let it happen. Work on it. And then don't bother explaining it. At some point put it out there.

You Call to Me



I.

I know where all the big trout hide.

The trout rush for my line

regardless of worm or fly.

In the vapors of the night trout are Spartans

where I pretend forgeries of gods.

Limestone boulders on the banks

of this aqueous margin.

Rise trout rise, watch me walking

boulder to boulder and pool to pool.

These waters here hint a blackening green.

Trout bodies roar like cosmic flashes,

the stories of time their spark.

This stream a home where I sit and wait,

listen for the narrative of water and wind

where they rub each other in jealousy.

You call to me

the only words.

II.

Through a lonely strand

like a delicate tendril.

There are fish here.

All I hear or all I understand,

the words from your side of the bank.

Never what they are;

they are what I want.

In dreams time steps away

from its dimensions revealing no more

than a conspiracy of watchmakers.

In dreams gravity surrenders

to become that eternal limitless web.

Each strand of the web vibrating,

each strand a delicate cosmic flash.

In these moments

You call to me.

III.

Imagine a strand,

It connects us all.

A filament of spider web

one single strand mono to you and I.

Mono delicate without soup can

to tether our ears or press to puckered lips.

These are dreams.

Dreams where I stand on limestone boulders

and you there opposite on a lighter bank.

There are fish here,

You call to me.

In This Dream, I Will Listen

I thought former Poet Laureate Billy Collins had  an amazing idea with his poetry180 project. One new, contemporary poem for each day of the school year. As a teacher I love the immediacy of a poem; we are into it and out of it, and nobody gets hurt. Yet, at the same time, I love that we can treat any poem like a Vegas style buffet; we can be there for hours tearing it apart.

Check out poetry180 at   www.loc.gov/poetry/180/

Below is something new that I plan on adding to my new collection. I haven't settled on a title for the new collection, but I'm listening.

In This Dream, I Will Listen

We say we hardly slept,

 that crazy dreams woke us both

 from reclining chairs.

I know this heaviness around us,

a fatigue of recalcitrance,

 not a failure of sleep.

In the night I know your loneliness

even when your body undulates with the touch of a wish.

Our breath is an arctic hush on fallow fields,

we are never in the same room in darkness.

Where are you now? Who else floats within your secrets,

what would you have him say?

Perhaps we will sit in the twilight

 at the finish of some clear day.

We will not talk of sleep.

And in this dream, I will listen.

A Found Poem

When it comes to giving my students opportunities to write poetry, I try to give them rules and order. Not too many but just enough with the reason being that student poetry is usually a frantic mess. An excercise that was taught to me over twenty years ago that I now teach to kids is called A Found Poem.

A Found Poem involves using someone else's words to create something of your own. In the cae of my English classes we take words from the novels that we are reading. The rules are fairly simple:

• Turn to any random page of a novel that you are reading.
• Write a poem using only the words found on that page.
• You may not use words more than the number of times a word is found on a page. So, if the word "the" only appears on the page of the novel one time you can only use it in your poem one time.
• You may not alter the words you want to use in any way. This means no changing of verb tense or making something plural when it was singular. Words must be used the way they were found.
• Avoid using proper nouns.
• Do not lift clauses, phrases, or sentences from the page of the novel. This excercise involves using words on a page as they are written. The page is your word bank.
• Your poem must be a minimum of 10 lines.
• At least five words to a line.

Try this. Try this several times. It is challenging and fun. In time it gets a little less challenging. My students are usually amazed at what they come up with, especially because most of them have learned to hate and fear verse.

Note that I didn't mention rhyme or meter. Add those in when you are ready. Or don't. It's your poem.






Example: from page 83 of To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee.

Stray Dogs

A family of stray dogs

at rest and then stalking

loose eggs where nothing is

but safe and old and curious

In the distance mad and fussing

I emerge to the door

Yonder taking my wild time

not patiently retired like a minute

Hot to play all this

in the kitchen I roared

I draw back ruinin nothing



The Geese Will Believe This Autumn

Although an older piece, it still resonates with me. This is the title poem from my 1993 book of poetry The Geese Will Believe This Autumn. When I wrote this poem my wife and I were living in a small house on Jamesville Reservoir. The wildlife was spectacular.

The Geese Will Believe This Autumn

I pull my wrists apart

enough to flick some light,

enough to answer the phone

come alive for the first time

in twenty three years.

I stand in breath. One ear

listens for a voice I could

never recognize, one ear

hears the cool September flow

of reservoir night.

It's my father on the phone;

colder months are all that lay

ahead. He a man always foraging

for warm thoughts to winter on,

never knowing the ice my mother cut

getting me out of her belly:

There's no warmth in a son

born to a December blizzard.

Still, he has a voice

that takes me by the hand,

that says white rabbits

chased him through a dream

spitting my number in his ears.

He says he's been living

in the sun, laying low

all these years, haunted by childhood

memories of crows kicking up the snow

until their feet turned to blood.

And I believe him

in the way geese will believe

this autumn.

Cape Bright, a villanelle

Of all the poetic forms, I think the villanelle is my favorite. It looks so easy when it's done right and done well. Here is a villanelle I recently wrote for my daughter to add to her sketch book of ideas, drawings, dreams, and poems.

Cape Bright

On the sandy shores of Cape Bright

She loves to put her hands deep into the sand

Dig, grab and giggle at the broiling soft shelled shape

All the other girls admire her bucket, mouths stretched tight

In a circle they stand and gather round

On the sandy shores of Cape Bright

Little boys impatient in their envious slight

Poke at her bucket to test and hound

Dig, grab and giggle at the broiling soft shelled shape

Adults so curious in their towering height

Vacations with eyes upon children they are bound

On the sandy shores of Cape Bright

Teenagers, unaware, now ignorant of this right

Hunker and hoard together like shiftless mounds

Dig, grab and giggle at the broiling soft shelled shape

And you there, dear daughter, a beachy heart of might

Smile wistfully on this moment found

On the sandy shores of Cape Bright

Dig, grab and giggle at the broiling soft shelled shape