Short poem I wrote years ago that I’m not sure is finished
Sometimes when squirrels sing, the acorns go nuts.
Sometimes when the brain rings, our soul asks what.
How can we value one stick over another?
Friend over friend, sister over brother?
Archive for poem
A Poem About Stuttering
I want to take a break from the comedy for a moment. It’s silly to do a fundraiser for the National Stuttering Association and barely write about the topic.
I wrote a poem about stuttering called “Stuttering Sucks.” I thought it would be a good to share my voice instead of hide behind the written word this time. As you can tell from the reading, it’s an emotional topic for me. I don’t expect anyone to be touched by the poem, but I hope you enjoy it.
P-P-P-Poem
I spent way too much time deciding if I should capitalize all of the p’s in the title. Anyway…
I wrote a poem.
Forward
My mouth
gurgles words
like a brook choked
by mud. They float
in a pond
like pay, pay,
paper swans. They soak
the water, the scum,
bump into the lily, and drown.
Monks write haiku
on this same rice paper
and let them glide down a river
folded into boats
never read.
I wish I could fold my words
into boats, and not care
if they leaked, or if
the sterns unfold
into tails, waving
for help
before they crumple,
silently,
in the middle of a closed sea.
Fairy Tales
In earlier centuries, one of the roles of children stories was to warn kids of child predators (Little Red Riding Hood, Hansel and Gretel…) After I wrote Spider Songs (previous post), I felt like it was echoing a poem I read before, so I searched the web (Ha!).
Remember “The Spider and the Fly“? I think that’s the poem that was influencing me. I completely missed the child predator subtext in it when I was a kid. It’s a real treat to reread a childhood tale and realize it’s more rich than when you first read it.
Spider Songs
As I was leafing through the phone book, I spotted this message from the Hello Answering Service. “Thanks to you, it’s been over 75 years.”
Finally. Validation for my theory that I led two past lives, one as a newspaper boy from 1917-1931, until I was gunned down in the streets of Chicago by pressuring Capone’s righthand man to buy a copy of the Sentinel. ‘Come on, Mister.” I pleaded. “It’s the story of the year!” I yelled the headline: “CAPONE ARRESTED FOR TAX FRAUD! AND HE’S A PUSSY!”
In my second life, 1933-1974 (two-year new life waiting period), I worked as a struggling web page designer. I would gather spiders in the wood, increase their intelligence by dipping them in mercury (pharmacist’s instructions), and wait for them to spin pages of elegant poetry. The plan worked beautifully. One of their poems:
Meat with Wings
Hello, Meat with Wings.
How I would like to meet you
to whisper in your ear,
come near, come near.
Love I will bring,
songs I will sing,
as I massage your wings
and caress you, dear.
You are so much more
than Meat with Wings.
Come near, come near.
I gathered their poems for a collection, “64 poems by 8 spiders and a water insect who looks like a spider, and writes more beautifully than the spiders, at least until they ate him”.
As the 64th poem was being composed, a young bum knocked on my door and asked if I knew of a place he could stay on that rainy night. Before I could answer, he said “Thanks”, walked in with his muddy shoes and fell asleep on my couch.
We chatted when he woke to raid my fridge. He was gone the next day with my spiders and my poems. That bum, Jack Kerouac, stole my life’s work, added some drug references, and became famous. I attended all his readings and gave him the evil eye until his death in 1969. I succumbed five years later to toxic poisoning.