Day 16-ish: Still Life, with Children

Poem:

Still Life, with Children

In the middle of a lacquered pine table

sits an oak bowl,

one black knot carved into its side.

The tips of four bananas

protrude above the rim,

curl around six faded red apples

and five tiny oranges,

a gap in the center of the bowl

while fruit almost balances

around the rim.

Beside the bowl,

powdery orange fingersmears

and dusty shards of Doritos

stretch toward the edge,

a curved river of artificial colors

that slides between

leaning, three-quarters finished

Lego ship

and yesterday’s mail pile.

One orange sits on the edge,

dangles precariously,

hovers ready to demolish the ship

or settle gently among the bananas.

 

Commentary:

 

This is an ekphrastic poem, responding to Salvador Dali's Living Still Life with my own take.  The painting essentially deconstructs the concept of a still life painting by showing dishes and utensils in the air, in motion, leaning, and basically anything but still.  As a parent of two elementary-aged boys, this represents my reality, as even when things look still, activity lingers either at the surface or just beneath.

 

I think of a still life in words as noun-focused, and I ended most of the lines with nouns for that reason.  The tension lies in between, in the lines that do end differently and in the verbs in the middle of the lines, representing an attempt within the poem to reflect the activity underlying everything there.

 

In this case, the table is one just left, signs of life and movement evident everywhere. Objects lean and dangle, and even the non-moving river of Doritos aftermath shows the mess actively left behind.  I end with the orange, hovering on the edge between destruction and peaceful settling, the perpetual state of things where children are involved.

Day 15-ish: Love Letter from a Kept Man

Poem:

Love Letter from a Kept Man

I tell you I can live without you,

and one morning even tried—

but stumbled bleary-eye,

watched a world fast-forward,

 

launch free through open air

while I sludged through the Sargasso.

I fought through fog

thick as the pillow I still craved;

voices wrapped in white noise

called as from miles away;

and through the haze

your siren call beckoned.

I turned to you again,

breathed in your strength,

absorbed your heat in my hands,

tasted you on my lips,

felt your life flow through me

and woke to the day.

Commentary:

This poem plays on the concept of a love letter, in this case not to a person but to morning coffee.  I chose language to mimic the angst and yearning we often see in love poetry, and sought to build in the sensual experience of consuming that first cup.

I chose couplets in this poem to reflect the feel of a morning before coffee, a jagged experience that moves from moment to moment before caffeinated coherence arrives.  The mythic imagery is meant to accentuate a state between dreaming and waking while I lurch into the day.

Day 14-ish: Tension, Release

Poem:

Tension, Release

Knees and elbows quiver

knobby and sharp

along the starting line,

weapons poked from skinny bodies.

A pistol bangs;

bodies spring while it echoes,

lingers in the air with

distant shouts and wafting sweat.

A multicolored mass

two hundred wide

funnels to narrow aperture;

angry grunts rise over skin-smacks.

Sprint slows to trot;

feet shuffle, hop,

stomp the torn turf,

bounce side to side,

steer toward a crevice

only the scrawny could fit,

launch through the crack,

and burst free.

Commentary:

My college jazz director claimed that all music, regardless of genre, is built on tension and release, on building dissonance that drives toward and yields inevitably to consonance.  To me, this describes how music reflects life, in that the peace or euphoria of release rise from the tensions that precede it.

The metaphor I chose here came rom experience.  My favorite cross country race in high school was not the fastest I ran, and in fact it came my freshman year, when I was running with no expectation that I might contribute meaningfully to my team.  The race was designed to funnel quickly from the starting line to a narrow path, such that all but the fastest starters were quickly hemmed in.  From here came a mile-long struggle to just find an opening, one that had me and most of my fellow runners surging with angst until that opening came.

The focus here is the tension and build.  I tried to use active verbs to describe the force exerting itself within that bottled-up position, describing almost a desperate energy waiting to be let out, right up until the moment of escape.  This also keeps the poem short, a compact piece with stray long lines to reflect the almost claustrophobic experience.

Day 13-ish: The Moment

Poem:

The Moment

First the eyes widen.

Iris expands, pupil shrinks,

a face perceptibly brighter

as though reflecting the soft glow

of the proverbial incandescent bulb

that shines just above the forehead.

Mouth-corners rise,

not a Cheshire Cat leer

but infinitesimal,

barely a hint at the inner leap.

Shoulders sink as the back unfurls;

chest lifts and falls

with an easy sigh.

For one ephemeral moment

body and mind unite,

grasp a sliver of universe

and savor.

 

Commentary:

 

When I teach something, whether a point on writing, attorney-client privilege, or how to cope with the rages of adolescent angst, I look for signs of understanding.  They are small, but powerful, and that moment when comprehension reveals itself is one of the most beautiful things in my experience.  That instant is one I look to capture here.

 

The keys to writing the poem lay in word choices that revealed the subtlety of the moment, at the same time showing its fleeting nature and the significance of it.  The poem is short because the moment is, but within it I intentionally use multisyllabic words ("ephemeral," "incandescent," "proverbial," etc.) to show the stretching of the mind and to simulate a lingering on that moment.

Day 12.5: Middle School Dance

Poem:

Middle School Dance

The masses line the walls,

haphazard skyline of growth spurts

and late bloomers.

Mouths yell through braces,

modulate to just-audible

over pounding bass.

A few know the moves—

YouTube-studied shuffle-lurches,

robot brigade for every song.

Dozens just move:

arms wave, legs shift,

feet sink in cement,

while heads turn and gawk,

watch The Guy Who Doesn’t Get It

leap, spin, dip, whoop,

launch across the room

eyes wide and glazed,

skin aglow, hair shiny.

He frenzies through his world

till the Slow Song arrives;

he slips, invisible, to the side

while the pretty ones

pair for the ark, step out,

lean left to right, whisper.

 

Commentary:

 

I was struck last weekend watching kids at play.  Many ages were involved, and I couldn't help but notice which were trying to figure out how to act and which were just winging it. 

 

The place it all converges is pre-adolescence, and I used the middle school dance as a metaphor for this.  I recall great trepidation going into these events, mostly because I had no idea what I was supposed to do.  I always envied those who either seemed to know what to do or seemed not to care at all.  And as a quasi-grownup, I find at times that I still do.

 

The goal was to create a visual look and audible sense of the scene, allowing parallels to emerge through the poem.  The ark reference was a conscious choice, both in terms of the image and the connotation of selection.  And the stanzas are locked in at three lines each, but surge and draw back for both the visual effect and the implication of chaos within the rigid structure.

Day 11.5: Reflections

Poem:

Reflections

Stride over the pier,

lean over, look down.

A picture appears,

stares back up,

you outside of yourself.

Ripples tease its surface,

wave from every edge.

Like a Scooby Doo monster

pretending to be a mirror

it moves when you move,

arches a wiggle eyebrow

the moment you arch yours,

raises right with you,

left with you,

dances when you do,

grins at you

until you launch to meet

splashes in the wind.

Commentary:

Day 11 was a day reserved for family, so I don't feel bad at all about this one coming late.  The make-up will arrive this evening.

This poem plays on the idea of looking at yourself, the reflection in the water a metaphor for how we see ourselves.  I tried to build in some layers to this.  Poetry is a means of reflection, but like any other, it is incomplete.  A poet sees what he or see wants to see and portrays it as he or she chooses to portray it; looking at yourself and drawing conclusions is no more reliable--and in some ways can be less reliable--than looking at and drawing conclusions about someone else.

The Scooby Doo analogy comes in for two reasons.  One is that it feels particularly apt: sometimes the self we see is not beautiful but in fact monstrous or grotesque, but we see enough to believe that really is us.  The other, of course, is that I loved Scooby Doo as a kid.  (I feel no such nostalgic affection for Scrappy, but that is neither here nor there.)

Finally, I chose water as the medium for our self-presentation because of its connotation of impermanence.  Reflecting on a version or ourselves does not make that version any more real than another version of ourselves, and the splashing away of that image represents that ability to change what we see.

Day 10: Waking First

Poem:

Waking First

In sleep I float, hover over cloudscapes

when the alarm creeps in,

its buzzing bleat distant at first,

whispers of tomorrow from another universe

until a fist hits my back,

pushes me back into bed

just to stretch, press a button,

roll out a hundred pounds heavier.

I shed clothes as I walk,

kick tub wall, scream silently.

My eyes only open when water hits,

hot pricks on warm skin.

I don’t remember dressing

but fabric swishes while I stumble,

lurch toward coffee—

God’s morning gift.

The world emerges

a sip at a time,

listen to my brain hum,

reboot for another today.

I sit in silence while birds sleep,

breathe in the quiet dark

an hour before the sun will reach

to seduce a slumbering earth.

Commentary:

I hate waking up early--but I love early mornings.  This poem was an attempt to capture that dichotomy, both the jolt to an early reality of waking and the peace of settling in to a morning before the rest of the house and the world wake.  I selected words that were meant to emphasize the distinctions, both phonetically and semantically.