Listen to my daughter though you lack her
Simplicity in conversations tried.
Beh-duh beh-duh Beh-duh beh-duh cracker
Beh-duh beh-duh Beh-duh beh-duh outside.
That’s how she talks to me and tells her tales,
A garbled summing up of afternoon.
Cohesive conversation surely fails,
But cohesion kills simplicity too soon.
I hesitate to give my son attention
But he’s tapping on my arm while we’re at Mass
I quickly think, “what type of intervention
Do I need to do to help this moment pass”.
Surprised I hear my son so softly say
Non-sensicals that slowly whisp away.
He points up to the altar while his speech
Lands in a language slightly out of reach.
My son just chose to share an explanation,
A mimicry of how I’m passing on
The beauty that’s caught up in revelation,
In tradition handed down after we’re gone.
I wonder if he knows what he is saying
As he whispers sounds of nothing in my ear
And though it’s simply one son’s way of playing
I know tradition’s setting in right here.
I should sit down to sort through
All I’ve chosen not to,
Since I’ve finally cleared a spot in
Basement piles I’ve forgotten.
I can clearly see the product of some spider sweat,
Decorations in between the Christmas that I’ve let
Sit for months behind a box of Halloween
That should have squeezed in right between
The box of camping gear that waits to live in twenty-ten
And the clothes I’ve kept that, maybe, might just fit again.
My pegboard hangs near empty on the wall
While the tools returned from projects start to sprawl.
The treadmill, the weight bench, my old furniture
All of which will someday be used I’m sure,
In fact right now they’re put to use by shelving gear
For babies who we know won’t show this time of year.
The aforementioned clearing must have been a mirage.
So instead of cleaning this mess, I’ll go look in my garage.
My son was eating cornflakes
And I took a flake or two.
This random act of playful theft,
Led contemplation through
A chain of thoughts that circumvent
My normal cornflake thinking
My thought pattern might represent
A drunkard ‘midst his drinking.
My tongue curled inside my mouth
Scraped the caverns of my bones
Starting North and heading south
To flick for food in pearly stones.
Then pressed against the molar
In the back most leftest corner
Sweeping Closest to the solar
Where Christ remains adorner
The food bits flick on out
With Creator from a crater
To the front of my closed mouth
Was my Lord I’d saved for later.
Undoubtedly, there’s something in the air.
The scent of which was sent to twitch your nose
Old factories there have olfactory flair
So that must be the stench, you suppose.
Now let me reveal the truth of the deal,
The stink and why we live near it.
Once you know, there’s much more appeal
Since the smell is the Holy Spirit.
Of all the scents that God perused
For His person without body
This strange new smell leaves us confused
‘till wisdom make us oddly
Okay with the stink in the morning.
With understanding, we realize
His morning breath’s adorning
Our Steubenville’s sun rise.
My bathroom door is tricky when it sticks
Which is more than I would like to admit.
If you come to use our washroom and it picks
You to mess with, please get used to it.
I carry two to-go mugs full of coffee,
A laptop bag, and some random thing.
Which is good till we both get to the spot we
Need the other one to do the opening.
Sometimes if I can find myself positioned
To hold the door for you who’s passing through
I’ll hold it, but it’s not what I envisioned
When person after person’s after you.
Timing’s not a bad thing to have hope in,
But a tricky door is something we can open.
I imagine bread falling from the sky.
Oh Manna, that would be awesome.
Reaching out to raining rye
As angels simply toss ‘em
Out of the giant bread boxes up there.
What if it drizzled soda bread or Naan?
Maybe sticky buns would fill the air
As humidity, until the grain was gone.
The light of the moon’s on a crescent roll
That falls down with bagels and yet
I’ll venture out for a midnight stroll,
Dodging croutons and sliced baguette.
Every time that it’s graining outside
We’d see bread putting on a show.
But what if we solely relied
On flakes of bread falling like snow.
BONJOUR RATING: 56 (16 out of 29) (I love this completely arbitrary rating.)
Here’s my top 5 poems from July. This is of course subject to change as the wind blows, but this is what I picked this morning. I’d be curious to hear what you liked? Is there one poem that really stands out? Let me know about it. I’ll be posting a new poem later today.
5 poems of interest from July (listed in posting order)
A “How ya doin’?”
Bird Poop Window
Defining Normal: Advice to a Newly Married Couple
The Distraction of Blogs
Ninja Abs
Here’s a list of all the poems published in July.
*In Decisions
*The Opera Tonight
The Fall of the Gladiator Hand
*A “How ya doin’?
*Joys of Parenthood
Awkward Family Photos
*The Distraction of Blogs
*Bird Poop Rainbow
The Bearded Food-Fighter Talking Snack
Japanese Beetles Sucked
*Defining Normal: Advice to a Newly Married Couple
*This vehicle will truly get me far
Newsprint vs. The iphone
*Encouraging Ventriloquism
When Memories Stay In-Line
Turn-Around Time
*Reader’s Interaction
*Depressed Lawn
*Potential-Rain Delay
Count to Twelve
Digital Photo Etiquette
*Spiritual Communion
A Classic Dinner
*Vending Machine
*Ninja Abs
Mall Walk
*Elevator Ride
Toilet Paper Roll
Before My Children Get up
BONJOUR RATING: 33 (12 out of 37)
DISTRACTIONS: Reading in the dark while trying to get kids to sleep
“The world does not need words.” Is the first sentence of the first line of the first poem in this collection. I’m a sucker for a good poem about the craft of words since I love them so much. I was immediately intrigued and ignored my children for a moment, allowing myself to enjoy reading poems again.
Failure would soon follow though. No, I mean literally, a couple pages later Dana Gioana introduces us to Failure. This poem calls you and your children failures but pulls it off without being too self-deprecating by introducing the failure of failing. A successfully-written complication.
I soon found myself reading in a darkly lit room saying shush to my children every couple of minutes. That might explain why not much could measure up to failure until page 51 when I joined a former loving couple at a table for some conversation about one of them being engaged. I find a love triangle as The Corner Table is immediately joined by two more “love” poems and finish up the book finding poems of interest on about every other page.
Curriculum vitae was also nestled in these pages with a beautiful simplicity that can only be contained in a six-line poem that requires more words to complement it than it required of itself when it was originally written.
Poems of Interest
Words
Failure
Entrance
At the Water Front Café
Curriculum Vitae
Corner Table
Long Distance
My Dead Lover
Homage to Valerio Magrelli : V.
Accomplice
For Sale
Summer Storm
Additional Links of Note:
Dana Gioia http://www.danagioia.net/
Graywolf Press http://www.graywolfpress.org/
Sometimes we get caught in indecision,
We pray about something, but never really know
the level of correction that God’s vision
Has for us, our lives, and where we go.
We all know he’s a really smart guy since
He invented what inventors use
It’s not dumb to seek his guidance
In all those choices that we choose
But I seem to get stuck in the waiting
For answers he’s placed in my heart,
Overlooking my free will creating
The answers desires impart.
BonjourPoetry 