When Spring Comes, and Smells

Dear stubborn heart,
I fancy I miss you.
You, like a cinder block
Bully of opinion.
Dear handsome heart
I fancy I misread
Affection in green eyes
For self-satisfaction.
Dear tender heart,
Winter is waning
And with it recollection
Of your scathing flaws.
Dear first heart,
I'll acquiesce this one
The hollow of your chest
Was not so poor a house.

Insurmountable as Pie

A diatribe written for creative writing.  Not poetry, but pretty entertaining (I hope).  And 110% true.

     I invite you, reader, to envision a square brick building on the corner of a downtown street.  Imagine the tinted windows, sporting blazing neon signs proclaiming “open” and “Joe’s”.  Open the door, step just inside, and allow your eyes to adjust to the shady lighting.  The main floor is dotted with black square tables, a checkerboard where all the white spaces have been grimed over with red linoleum.  The walls are brick inside, too, and have been improved by several layers of patron graffiti, in various colors, but predominantly in white. 

     I want you to picture the far corner of the room.  Two of the geometric tables have been brought together in civil union for the sake of a larger party, who are seated around and unevenly spaced; laughing, conversing, leaning slightly forward in anticipation of the meal to come.  And just when it seems they have been waiting on the verge of forever, when all conversations have encompassed the phrase “where’s the food?” at least once, the waitress with her hair up comes shuffling over in her black apron, and with flourish sets her oven-fresh burden in the center of the party. 

     Eyes light up, nostrils flare in response to the stimulus of cheese and tomato sauce melted together.  Pepperoni sit like toadstools upon a pale, gooey lake; mushrooms like toads are captured fat and lazy in between.  Olives and peppers are stones and seaweed, and now that the apex predators are brushing off the table space before them, the ecosystem is complete. 

     But take note, my eager ecologists.  Look deeper upon this scene.  For there, at the corner of the table, I sit, and my expression is woefully lacking in awe.  In fact I am quite unimpressed by the creation that has just been deposited at our double-wide checkerboard table.  As abhorrent sounds of palatable delight rise up from the company and meld with the street jazz wafting over the crowd, I sullenly reach for a breadstick.  You see, this scene holds no magic for me.  The captivating atmosphere of an artificial New York backstreet is deadened by the scent of oregano and tomatoes.  For I loathe pizza, in all its forms, and have for several years, and will for the duration of my foreseeable future. 

     The immediate reaction to this proclamation is always the same:  shock and sheer horror.  Jaws drop, and I smile.  Indignant gasps are uttered, and I shrug.  “That’s not even American!”  “You aren’t even human!”  “How can you not like pizza?”  My answer is well-rehearsed. 

     “Because,” I say in simplicity, disinterested, “I don’t like tomatoes or melted cheese.” 

     “But she likes grilled cheese,” my friends are quick to offer.  “And tomato soup.”  And they glare at me as though I have some explanation I have withheld from them previous. 

     But they are left wanting, for I feel no need to defend my finicky palate.  Pizza, its grease and congealed muddle of ingredients, its inevitable mess and unease of eating, never has appealed to me in all my years. 

     Well, that is false.  There was a time, before the rational portion of my brain had fully developed, when I stuffed my face with stuffed crust with no thought to the red sauce that marred my cheeks.  When I was young, one or two, mind you, I shared the same love of pizza that plagues the majority of the nation.  But at some point, between baby and toddler, the Italy-tinged mist dissipated from my eyes, and I saw pizza for what it was:  repulsive.  I can cite no scarring experience, no monumental change of heart.  My tastes simply shifted, and found the change to be most satisfying.  While growing up, I recall at most two occasions when I was pressured into tasting the foul concoction, little more than a mouthful, spaced across several years.  Both times the forced consumption did nothing but cement my resolve.  I would not eat it. 

     Eventually my kin grew accustomed to my “special circumstances”, and Friday night dinner was supplemented with McDonald’s or Wendy’s chicken and French fries for me, Little Caesar’s for everyone else.  My freakish preferences grew to become common knowledge.  My closest friends rarely threw a pizza-exclusive party; my sleek delivery of the line “I already ate” was Shakespeare-caliber for the times when they did.  Eventually, after much resistance, I concede I did warm to breadsticks, breaking my association of garlic with pizza, and thus making those uncomfortable pizza party situations easier on myself.  The infamy of pizza-hating was not mine alone; my best friend herself was not overly fond of pizza.  However, she had the excuse of a painfully delicate constitution, whereas I was merely picky.  Always I was the oddity, and my revelation never failed to elicit a reaction. 

     In truth, I see this aversion of mine as nothing but beneficial.  Pizza is notoriously unhealthy and promotes lazy, dispassionate eating.  I consume enough empty, salty, sugary calories of my own accord without those additionally supplied by pizza.  Furthermore, when pizza is the chosen fare of any gathering, the subtraction of my mouth from those clamoring for one more piece means more for the rest of the group.  In terms of basic mathematics, my presence actually results in more food.  It follows along this line of reasoning that my abhorrence of pizza is an asset. 

     There will be those who continue to try and coerce me to try it, just one more time.  I do not know what secret ingredient possesses people to make my appetite their evening quest.  Something about my resignation to the foregone reaction combines the heat of Italian pride and brashness of American patriotism and turns everyone into a crusader for this overindulged dietary staple.  But I skillfully deflect even their best efforts, refusing to taste or even touch the thing.  It is no matter of popularity, nor people-pleasing; but rather pride, and above all, pickiness.  I will not place pizza on a pedestal, and not even Little Caesar himself could convince me otherwise.  

Love Poem to the Broken Year

Love poem for creative writing.

Start to finish, it was a falling out

A great grievous slipping of tight-clasped hands

Set to the blare of a marching band

A transplant to where we are now

Hobbling towards the finish line

Of a decade spent in synchronized minutes

Something seeping poisonous in it

Something negating the value of time

Have you ever seen a small thing die?

Emaciated wood-creature, tiny paws

Quivering limbs and clicking jaws

So was the struggle of she and I

Him, he was a half-blind and desperate lunge

The impossible, hidden in after-school hours

Pretending this locker hall stereotype was ours

While I made eyes at a different one

And them, they were the lifelong type

The ears and feet and dancing nights and laughing days

Until cap-throw and close, and separate ways

Promises made, made thin and trite

And you, the prompter of this verse

The matter-of-time wave overshadowing shore

Always reaching, retreating for a little bit more

My reticence made it so much the worse

A blessing, you, though I your vice

Scraping for minutes in cold back rooms

Keeping a secret which everyone knew

Until final Friday night, when we both cried

This broken year, this chapter close

Was a search for something not easy to find

Claiming what is rightly mine

Was harsh and hard, but so it goes

I see myself now something new

Closer to that willow-wisp goal

This broken year was beautiful

For that I thank you, you, you, and you.

Poems from a Train

When I die, I hope
My heaven is a train
Where I can sit at the window
Like an elegant lady
Poised, and watch
The lives and houses scroll past.
Perhaps let me step off
Every few stops
Just to wander around a while
Just until the next train comes.
I hope that in heaven
The train is bright and fast
Warm and clean and murmuring
With its wheels over cirrus tracks
"So much to see, so much to see."


A volunteer art teacher once told me
"There are no curved lines.
Even circles are made of straight lines
If you look small enough."
I didn't agree with her then.
Now, as I gaze at the sag
Of the telephone wires
The bend and bob of marsh rushes
The hump of the mountains and
The sweep of the half-frozen river
I still cannot conceive
That she was right.


I saw an airplane soar
And strike the moon.
The aircraft wobbled, but
Staid its course.
The moon, however
Is missing a few teeth.

Leaves are parading down the street

Leaves are parading down the street

Shaking and rattling an out-of-season Mardi Gras

The wind has settled over the valley

Congealed into an oppressive chill

The sidewalk has become cold as the heart

Of a planet shelled in city foundations

So when we step outside, let me stand on your shoes

To preserve my naked toes from the creeping cold

And perhaps, while I am so incredibly close

I will clench my fingers in your shirt

And give you a warm winter kiss

Many Wild Places Across the West

Place poem written for creative writing (and for my dad).

The morning, the wet gray bright morning,

Ice on the tips of my nose and ears, while body is warm in the hollow log

Of a sleeping bag, forest green;

Limbs coiled about themselves like tree roots

Made it through the solid cold of the night like dark, soggy soil.

The ground is hard, tooth marks in my back

From the one malicious stone squashed beneath layers of body and canvas.

Too cold for waking, too cold to draw back into sleep

Best to pretend for two minutes that feel like fifteen

Until the other little ones cannot stand it longer, and

Pop from their bags like wildflowers at mention of spring.

And then there is no shady chance of sleeping.

The day has begun ahead of time, right on schedule.

When I was a little one, I woke later

My father was gone, and his footsteps muttered of dust and sticks and gravel outside the tent.

I would worm from my sleeping bag after a brief hibernation,

Slough it off like a snakeskin charged with static

Teeter past the rectangle homesteads belonging to brothers and sisters, half-waking;

My little sock feet made the canvas crinkle loud.

I sat at the foot of my mother’s bed and pulled on my shoes, hasty, meticulous,

Then coaxed the flimsy zipper up to greet the fresh day.

I remember camp chairs, log seats, and cold metal benches

Orange morning fire throwing sparky sleep from its eyes

Such warmth, such unimaginable warmth

Thank you, Dad, every time.

Every time I would sit, knees and ankles huddled together

Sucking the heat from hot chocolate and fire pit

I watched him pick chopped logs from the stack and hand them to the fire

Watched him unload from the car the breakfast things

Watched him in his coat, black or navy blue

Marveled at how he knew things, packing things and fire things and tent things and sleeping bag things

Wondered how he warmed the hot chocolate and built the fire, every time, with no one

But the freshly split morning outside the tent to greet him.

First Kitchen, Assigned

Yellow floor, fake tile

Sticky, shiny clean.

Deep brown paneling that looked like wood

Yet smooth to the touch, artificial.

Hard-edged counters,

My head knew that.

All the way around the island

A big island in a puddle of a sea

I crawled, played

Watched my mother’s back,

And steam rise from the

Big silver pot on the stove.

The white corner wall was blank on one side.

We built a paper fireplace every winter

For mine and Santa’s sake.

There’s a picture of me, asleep

Curled like a tiny creature with a tough shell

With Lovie, my soft friend;

All the hard toys at rest

Somewhere adrift in a tiny sea

Bullseyed by a big yellow island.

Weary

1/18/2014

Sometimes I am sure

I am destined to be weary

To shuffle against the carpet grain

To place two weighty palms on the mattress flat

Hoist one tired, aging form onto the slab of a waiting bed

Settle the covers against my lines

To shroud my short eternal rest

Stare at the ceiling, and the sleepy black below the ceiling

Until my eyelids tremble and collapse

Make a spectacle of themselves, until

At last my bones sink like a feather

Into a deep and wide-mouthed river

That meanders, as lazy as I am lachrymose.

Ode to an Alarm

An ode for creative writing.

You. 

You, you

Fiend; you

Harbinger of

Nothing good.

Cheery, melodic

Electronic echo

Of some poor

Early morning bird. 

First, you wake me—

I barely take note

Too deep in the dark

Frozen woods of my

Nighttime conjurings.

Like a pretty leaf

Laid flat in my path

I acknowledge

Then turn off

And turn over.

Exactly fifteen minutes roll by. 

Second, you

Disturb me—

Same tone, same key

Same hauling of

My body up

Out of the current

That carries me

Between oceans of

Night and early morn.

Irritation

Like whitecaps on

Young waves

Surges, ebbs.

Snooze again.

The very same fifteen minutes stroll past. 

Then this

Is it.

Thirdly,

I

Would like

To wring

Your

Small

Feathered

Neck.

Incessant

You

Are recalling

My jobs

And faults

Which I

Had hoped

To lay aside

For just

Five

Minutes

More.

You

Make me

Think

Of all things

Depraved

And faulty

And burdensome

And mean.

No doubt

Your mother

Pushed you early

From the nest.

Pause, squint, think.

Thank you.

Begrudging

Thank you.

If not for you

I would be late

For work.

Commiseration of Creative Minds

A villanelle written for creative writing.

Leading the gathering storm by the hand

In her white coat, the girl walked in the rain

Till she ran into the black and blue man

Stopping, her boots firmly wrinkled the land

Giving no heed to its squelching complaint

Leading the gathering storm by the hand

Both pockets bulging with her skinny hands

Ten fingers paintstained and coated with clay

Both eyes leaned up towards the black and blue man

He wore a coat with a head-to-toe span

Black as the smudges of ink on his face

Marks of a broken storm left on his hands

And his two eyes made no humble demand

Blue as the skin of a harborless bay

Hiding the hurt of the black and blue man

Inch by an inch he extended his hand

Boldly she shook it, for they were the same

Leading the gathering storm by the hand

She shared a nod with the black and blue man