Aach...ye speak like a poet, but ye punch like one too...

PUNCH LIKE A POET

Saturday, January 29, 2005
  
Poem

This one's been forcefully advancing for some time now, and I need some forceful men (and women) to lay hold of it and tell me what's wrong, as I have officially lost all perspective. But here, at least, is a first draft.


KINGDOM COME

To what shall we liken the kingdom of God? Or with what parable shall we picture it?

Sweet Christ, your kingdom comes
in fits and failed starts, pitching
like the summer sea at Seal Rock, Oregon,
where we held our noses
at the stink the sea lions make
by living there and watched the water bend
and break against the rocks. Sweet Christ,
we heard it roar, and watched it climb
the cliffs thirty, fifty feet or more,
we watched its fingers find the too-wet holds
and clefts and try to clamber up.
We saw it slip and stumble back, the spray
of broken water like the light
that windshields scatter
when they come apart on impact. Sweet Christ,
that's your kingdom--broken glass,
or breaks when we come through, headfirst
martyrs on the splendid edges,
like the girl who shut down traffic
for an hour Sunday afternoon--your kingdom's
maybe like the last blue sky she saw
in looking up and through
our circled, staring faces. We emptied
from our cars and congregated round her dying
like her dying were itself a church,
a little passing kingdom. Maybe
your kingdom's the flashing van
that folded her from view, or how
the paramedics kept her still with something
whispered, or the traffic-stopping hymn
the sirens left us to remember. Sweet Christ,
your kingdom's lyrics
to a borrowed tune that runs the words
together--we hum it wordless
while we wash the dishes, we know
a verse or two at best
beyond the melody. Your kingdom comes
like snow to Corpus Christi--it doesn't come,
I mean. It turns to winter rain
above those hot South Texas beaches.
The smell of fish and diesel means
we're coming near the Gulf
through thousand-acre farms quilted either way
across the flat black coastal plain.
The winter harvest's coming in, chest high
sprawl of soy and sorghum. Sweet Christ,
you said your kingdom's like that--
like a mustard seed, the smallest seed that looks up
and finds itself a tree. But mustard's not
the smallest seed. And it doesn't grow
into a tree. It just doesn't.

(10/04-1/05)

# posted by Daniel at 6:07 PM.

Wednesday, January 26, 2005
  
Born to what?

Anybody else find it ironic that Bruce Springsteen's Born to Run is a song concerned entirely with using cars to get from point A to point B?

# posted by Daniel at 3:50 PM.

Thursday, January 20, 2005
  
The Fake Out Make Out

So this is the latest phrase to come down the pipes on my bus. Generally my kids can't surprise me--a few weeks ago everyone was singing the "Jingle Bells, Batman smells" song and couldn't believe that the bus driver knew it. The writer of Ecclesiastes (can I call him the Ecclesiastician?) had it right--there's (generally) nothing new under the sun. Even the kiddos' insatiable thirst for Pokemon and Yugio cards isn't different in substance from my baseball card trading days of yore--granted, there was no game involved in the latter, but the nature of the thing is largely the same.

(One of my third grade girls has even discovered the word "dude" since Christmas--every time she says anything to me she follows it with "Doooooood," as in "What time is it, dooood?" I think she thinks she's a surfer. For kicks, today when she got off the bus I said "See you tomorrow, dooood." She screeched back, "I'm not a dude! I'm a girl!" Whatever, dude.)

Anyway. The latest phrase, and one which I never heard growing up, is "fake out make out." Maybe I was just hanging out with the wrong people. I think the idea is to pretend to make out but not really. I'm not sure how one would pretend to make out without actually making out. I don't think I want to know. It's used as a sign of affection or attraction, as in "Anthony! Sabrina said she wants to fake out make out with you!" Imagine this hollered across a crowded, noisy school bus and you have my job. Fake out make out. Kids these days.

# posted by Daniel at 7:46 PM.

Wednesday, January 19, 2005
  
The lust of the eyes

There's a '72 Chevy pickup for sale a couple of streets over from my house. Yellow and white. New engine, transmission, and shocks. Plus "lots of extras," according to the sign. The truck of my dreams. $4000. Dammit.

You know, just one load of smuggled drugs would probably pay for this. I could trade in my little Hyundai--I'd be giving up the warranty, but also giving up a car payment. Besides, I know enough to work on a '72 Chevy. Not so with an '02 Accent.

Dammit. Maybe I'll get to drive one in heaven. Matthew and I can take it when we go trout fishing.



(this isn't the truck, but is fairly representative except for the paint job)

# posted by Daniel at 6:48 AM.

Saturday, January 08, 2005
  
The first poem of 2005

...is actually a substantial reworking of a poem from three years ago. Still not perfect, but good enough for the internet, right?


WINTER REVISION

Winter is the cold word,
the river's foggy
whisper in the early morning air:
fish smoke, cigarette breath
the river says, traffic
breathing hard
above an unbecoming
bridge.

Winter's in
the white stones in
the tangled winter grass,
battened houses leaking
light across a frozen,
dusky dawn, across
the lawn I mean, aching
for the January sunlight,
for the brittle marble moon.

Winter's all about
the prehistoric bones of beasts
children visit wearing winter
coats, breath steaming
from the building to the bus,
thinking how the bones
must come together
in the after-hours dark and dance
like no one's business.

And winter's underneath
the leaves that gather under trees
and remember falling after
not falling for so long,
the leaves that brittle
at the touch of feet,
cold rain, until spring comes,
beautiful,
breaker of old laws.

(1/7/05)


(and just for grins...)

WINTER

Winter is a cold word
that the river whispers to the air with
its foggy breath, like the breath of a fish.

In the front yards of sleeping brick houses,
nestled among the brown winter grass there are
smooth white stones, like the bones of ancient birds.

At night, when the moon is full and white and cold
I imagine them coming together, assuming their
former shapes, climbing to their feet and clattering
like castanets as they move together in a dance they
learned from the moon when she was young and warm.

In winter, things close their eyes and remember;
in winter the days grow shorter and shorter so that
when spring comes it breaks all the laws.

(12/01)

# posted by Daniel at 1:33 AM.