Anti-Forfeit Activity

December 7

Anti-Forfeit Activity

I don’t want to write bad, forced, poor, weak, care-worn poems, but I won’t write any good ones if I don’t lift this pen. The embarrassment I might feel for lackluster lines is far less than the shame of empty notebooks. I don’t always like what flows when I open the gates, but I am sure glad the current is live and so am I.

Tie a knot

*

COOCOO’S NEST

I ran away to join the zoo
Hoping a life contained would calm me.
The segregation hit me first
Isolated exclusively with those of my stripe
Drove my thirst for diverse scents and opinion.

Next the monotony of the landscape bore into my brain
The well-meaning efforts of the keepers
Bears the mark of folks who go home at night.

The blandness of the food and music
Lent nothing to the experience
And antiseptic could drive anyone wild.

The final blow, the one which struck constantly and coldly
Was the steady stream of observers
Just waiting to be entertained.

Flower Power

December 6

Flower Power

The man with the chrysanthemum on his head walks up and down the aisle. Do I look like that, I wonder to myself? Have I taken personal style to the point of caricature? What is the boundary by which the embarrassment is kept at bay? Is there a point at which I can overcome who I present myself as, and represent the best of who I can be? Who I might be if only I can manage not to get carried away by impressionism? I am given this dwelling and it suits me quite well, when I treat it as a temple and not simply as a shrine.

Do without some things not everything

*

ALMOST TWINS

You and I are more alike than different
Yet we cannot get along
Though I ponder why this surprises me so.

A cloud and a watermelon are 98 % the same
And no one would mistake them in a crowd
Or expect them to be companionable
Except in the way of two things existing in the universe.

My expectation of liking you for our similarities
Is set up by my fear that I don’t like myself
But the joke is on me.

My dislike of you is not a reflection
Of anything but time and space
My friends are the people who like me
Not necessarily the ones who are like me.

The president didn’t like broccoli
Without slurring its good name
And I can dislike you
Without inferring you are a vegetable

My Most Important Meal

December 5

My Most Important Meal

Sweet potato pudding sits on the plate; I sit in my place and wield my spoon until the plate is clean. I’m fed, my day begins. If this is the best part of my day, life is still sweet and fine. Time skips its way through and I meet and greet the splendid and the few. Picking my way, the raindrops step aside; I am gratified, though I never mind the rain. When the mud has settled and my bed calls me home; I look back to the start of the day and pray to begin the next one the very same way.

Look for your eyes in a crowd

*

WATER PROOF

What could water prove anyway?
I get in the water and I get wet.
I’m sure there is a theorem
But a proof is highly doubtful.

Naiads dance with tridents in their hands
Illustrating the beauty and danger of the waves
But this certifies nothing.

Juiceless arid dirt can make no claims either
I see ducks take flight
Pushing the air with their wings
And rivulets trailing from webs.

This is the thing to scoot beneath at the surface,
Take sustenance and pleasure
but never to become so saturated that the air is lost.
Waterproof, is the way to go.

Relay

December 4

Relay

I have waited so long for the chase, the trap, the dig a ditch for safety, to be over and here we are; ringed, safe and surrounded. Now the sweet work of living the life we have striven for, striven to. I now long to be my best, do my best, for you are the best for me and I am the best for you. I tense and press against the blocks; the race I wish to run, but all I knew was to wait.

Explain how petals are different from leaves

*

YOU ARE ALLOWED TO CLOSE WINDOWS

OR KEEP THEM OPEN

Not every open window offers a warm and welcome breeze.
There are windows, which greet with arctic blast and little else.
Frosted cheeks and chapped lips I face these frigid openings
Believing it is my lot to forge ahead in this bluster.

Never did I think to shut the glass on this disagreeable weather.
I am allowed to close windows but I didn’t know it.
Every irksome thing that comes my way is not mine to face.

Many things will pass my way.
This does not make them my responsibility
On the other hand, when spring blows honeysuckle through the air
It is a fine idea to prop the window open with a stick.

The Twelfth of April

December 3

The Twelfth of April

When I met you, you were a power tagged and trapped in a box. A tiger caught by its toe and yet I could do nothing but fall under the spell of your roar. The suppressed growl you leave for me like an invitation I could never decline. I write to you a note of explanation; words testifying to my desire, which I promise to hold back out of respect for you. And a wish to survive my drive toward you and your furious stripes and claws. Your bite which I long to feel, yet know I must not ask for. When I inquire if you have read, you say with sanguine smile, “Read it to me.” When I am done and with tear stained face, all you reply is, “I have lost my taste for anyone but you.”

Keep an ear out for more than danger

*

GOOD SAMARITAN PIE

The meal prepared from my cognition,
The bread and jam of humility, salad of expectation,
Roast of determination and Good Samaritan pie
Wait on the table to be devoured.

The courses pass and come desert, my kindly intentions.
Are cut to wedges and pushed from setting to setting.
I can dollop after dollop cover the requisite desires
Of this tart in attempt to deny my addiction to fixing
Or I can serve up the plain truth.

I help and help, and wander down roads looking
For lost puppies to return to their homes.
I must admit my longing to lend support
Is sometimes half-baked and if kept to home and hearth
It might serve me better and make a sweeter dish.

Assistance is best in proportion to the meal
I must live my life and save my Good Samaritan pie till last.

At the Dodge

December 2

At The Dodge

I remember so long ago when I would come and sit and listen; soak in the poets and the Consort, sop it all into the sponge that listened and sat. I did not know exactly what they were doing and I didn’t know why I was there, but I went and had a soak. Now so many years hence I am the writer I never knew and I know just what they do because, I do it too!

Write a poem on your foot

*

GOOSE

I round this corner nearly every day.
There in the field stand a flock of problems,
Pecking the ground and flopping their wings.

Uniform and regular, the honking and squawking
Is undistinguishable from yesterday.

I ponder and squint, are these the same
Or yet another gaggle making their way
Along the migratory path?

Trouble is feral, skulking the edges of the field
But never sheltering in the yard.
I must leave my hands off
Knowing these are not mine.

The feathers fly and I gather the strays
Acutely aware of the ticklish nature of this.

Awkwardly I face the truth
No matter how much of a perplexity this is to me
Or others, it is only geese.

Poorly Chirping

December 1

Poorly Chirping

She writes poetry like fusion jazz, more fun to make than to listen to. She stands at the podium serving as a bad example. I pray as she reads, “Lord, please don’t let me get sucked into the self-importance of bad poetry for the sake of peering peers, and forgetting to write what is there for the world, the readers, the things which bring the word pictures and sets them before me. Lord, remind me that the writing is not done for me, but done for as Billy Collins quotes, for the love of strangers.”

Tops spin do you?

*

DO WE SEE

The old man walked down the road to see the end,
I followed to glimpse the fruit of his pursuit.
Does the highway come to rest
Or like the river just feed a greater sea?

And time, will the clock stop him?
Can he win the treasure hunt
As the seconds tick away on the metronome?

Will the slowing of his steps
And the advancing of his age
Create a curve which will prevent his accomplishment?

Does this tag-along I am doing
Make me a part of his project?
The road is long and its end may never come, only ours.

When we take the road the road takes us.
More and less is what we are and so too the road.
I follow the contour of the ground
Which curves around the world
Spinning in our sky so we can all see the stars.