Category Archives: Poetry

When I feel like writing in verse.

Curfew

Posted on June 26, 2011 | Leave a comment

The dashboard clock quietly shifts
one minute less of this evening
you struggle, trying to hold
on to this moment in time
you will never have again.

Another minute less
stretch your arms around it
try to waste it, but make it last
to come home
late as possible
he is your enemy
and working together with change will destroy
what you have

kiss your current life goodbye
and hold tight the memories of now
you know it will be different
someday you will see how much.

Ten thirty.
He is used up.
Time
to go home.

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Self Portrait, As a Piggy Bank

Posted on June 24, 2011 | Leave a comment

The piggy bank (a misnomer) sits
it’s ceramic surface
reflecting light
its shape, an awkward beauty.
A mysterious hand
(call it fate)
deposits a coin,
seemingly worthless, into the slit
that opens its interior to the out-
side world.
The piggy bank (that’s actually shaped
like a bathtub
or a bible) takes in the coin
and like a planted seed of an idea
it grows
as each moment another coin is added.
Thus experiences are recalled,
culminated
in a grand inspiration
purchased by the mind of the piggy bank
and transformed from thought
and potential
into something beautiful.

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Quentin Tarantino Directs the Murwood Elementary Annual Christmas Pageant

Posted on June 22, 2011 | Leave a comment

Mr. Tarantino stares at the motley lineup of children
takes a deep breath
says to them
“Who can tell me the motivation behind Johnny’s character?”
A pig-tailed girl in the back
pipes up sweetly “He wants to save Christmas!”
The teacher rounds on her, interrogating
“but why?”
The gang of students stares back blankly
they never stopped to ask “why?”
As they discussed why I supposedly liked Christmas
I crept to the back,
beginning to fade.
No longer was I Johnny, but a creation
of Tarantino, our harshest pageant director
yet
who would help us put on the most action-packed
show the school and our parents
had ever seen.
Provided we remembered our lines.

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The Bathroom Scale Speaks

Posted on June 18, 2011 | 2 comments

My good morning greeting is your body.
We are not equals.
You step on me,
but I hold the power in this relationship.

I pause,
pondering, calculating, measuring
you pray as my plastic parts groan under your weight.

My only means of communication:
three red square digits.

I’m sorry
but I don’t make these up.
Just the messenger,
not your enemy, though you see me as such.
Squished between your feet and the floor
I feel it too.

You are done staring down, wishing me to change.
Good.
I can’t
and you hate me for it.

Finally,
you step off
the numbers disappear, but
I’ll be waiting until tomorrow morning.

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Elegy for Love

Posted on June 16, 2011 | 16 comments

Cross legged on my bed
old letters in my hand
tears in my eyes
I recall the sweet love we shared.
Sweet like a chocolate dessert
we tenderly nibbled at first
then later shoveled with more wild
and wild abandon
tossing aside spoons with our inhibitions
and scooping it up with our hands
until there was nothing left
but a few crumbs and frosting on the pan.
Trying to scoop up what might be left,
I run my finger across the love.
I read the letter as if it were the first time,
but it’s stale
and the memory of
the sweetness makes
its absence that much worse.

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Ten Ways of Looking at the Boardwalk

Posted on June 14, 2011 | 4 comments

I.
Out of all cities
in all the world
this boardwalk on this beach town’s coast
captivates me most.

II.
At the boardwalk
my friends and I blew about
the different sites
like dandelions in the wind.

III.
Couples fight on the boardwalk, while
first dates blossom
in an ever cyclical romantic comedy.

IV.
To play a boardwalk game
costs a quarter
but to win costs thirty of them.

V.
I sit on the
pier and contemplate the boardwalk
the seagulls’ cry
the crash of the waves
and the roar of the man-made
wooden coaster
racing down its track.

VI.
True meaning of the boardwalk
and its origins
remain hidden.

VII.
The boardwalk splits
the beach in two.

VIII.
Like life’s pathway
the boardwalk has lights and distractions.

IX.
The boardwalk is but a rectangle
that leads to games and fun.

X.
A labyrinth of trials
and screaming
and soft serve ice cream
is the boardwalk.

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How to Do Your Homework Last Minute

Posted on June 13, 2011 | 5 comments

Last night you were too tired
or too lazy
or too behind on watching Glee
but today you have five minutes to spare
the class before the class before it’s due.

Don’t worry
about typing
or expounding
or writing neatly
You don’t have time for that

Slide the paper
under your binder
so this teacher doesn’t feel the sting
of lesser
importance.

No time to nurse her broken ego
You have homework to do.

Hurry and finish before
the bell rings!
You do
and it does
The walk to that class is the ultimate
triumph.

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A Poem is Like a Song in my Head

Posted on June 12, 2011 | 5 comments

A poem is like a song in my head
I cannot write
down anything else
I do not choose
what the subject is
I feel and sit
the poem writes itself

You are like a song in my head
nothing else will work
You could not exist
were it not for the music
of thoughts
and feelings

He is like a song in my head
a series of words
that are too busy making me smile
to go away.
Until I release them
into the world
via my pen as it gently
kisses the paper.

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Desire

Posted on June 10, 2011 | 4 comments

Desire is a small child with boundless energy. While her cousins are constantly dissatisfied and need constant stimulation, she can amuse herself for hours just daydreaming about her future. She pays fleeting visits to most everyone, but makes her home in the heart of a very select few. She sits and giggles and rubs two sticks together, lighting a fire. She skips barefooted around it and spins stories with no limits from the silken thread of thoughts that never find a voice. Her ecstasy comes with the victory of her home when they hold the hand, kiss the lips, or reach the goal she has dangled in front of them, laughing and skipping backward, pounding within their heart as the voice of their soul.

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Posted in Poetry, Prose, Writing

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A Clerihew and a Double Acrostic

Posted on June 5, 2011 | 1 comment

Oh dear Capitan Kirk
you’re really not a jerk
but my preference must go to
your shipmate Zachary Quinto.

(A clerihew is a “humorous pseudo-biographical quatrain, rhymed as two couplets, with lines of uneven length more or less in the rhythm of prose.”)

Everywhere people rebeL
Giving chase to the thing that I
Yearn to share, but wouldn’t sacrifice a limB
Probably. who knows, people do funny things usuallY
To try and gain control no matter the dramA

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