Final April Poems

My friend and I have successfully completed our 30 days, 30 poems challenge this month (which is more than can be said for our attempt in February) and I think we've really done an excellent job not only of writing, but of writing good poems. I like the poems that I've come up with at least and I thought I'd share the last batch of good ones (the ones I liked the most, at least) with you tonight. I was especially inspired stylistically on certain poems by Stephen Dunn and C.K. Williams. I hope you're had a terrific April!

---

Students in the Modern Era

The teacher’s time was up and we wanted a party:

pizza, streamers, desks once arranged for notes

converted into game tables, tag, pong, anything

to not have school. Because you’re leaving,

we said. We wanted him to believe us

that we loved him. Isn’t love the modern way

to explain away negligence? If you love me,

he said, pay attention to the sound of my voice.

Does it sound like hot air and firecrackers?

We said we wanted him to stay longer,

as if the year hadn’t already stretched out

our passion, our heart, his hours after dark

attaching numbers to names. He wrestled with us

in his free time, with what effect he was having.

We waited for an answer. The words, he wanted

to tell us, honestly, he had spoken enough

and where were our ears? In our morning hour,

he wanted to beg, but knew the wages of beggars,

so instead dropped nickels of knowledge for us

to stumble on and be surprised. Again, we said,

we’ll learn this time. You’ll love us, we said,

please. If you want, he replied, you can make me

stay forever. If this is love and respect, hate me

enough that your celebration comes later, older,

in memory of kindness so sharp, it moved you.

---

Success

A snowed peak, not a home,

  you must descend

before thin-air giddiness sets in,

another dawn, another mountain

  riven with cliffs

of too much mercy or justice:

one step from death or giving

  up. While it’s divine

to see the world beneath you,

your feet don’t leave the ground.

  Before you forget how

gravity is only one cause of falling,

come down, don’t slip, live

  long enough to lead
the world higher without harm.

---

Home of Departures

What I would love to relate to you

is an airport still and quiet

in a dark blizzard in Atlanta,

the warm southern capital of my traveling

sole-worn shoes. And undeviating

terminals tunneling me to a future flight,

a delayed plane, the next one home.

This is the place I remember my parents

struggling with their age - wheelchaired

and pushed or riding passenger

on an old shuttle between gates.

And this is the station meant to be

transient, unstable, a home for migrants,

pilgrims, nomads, and wanderers.

We all have our reasons for moving,

but I’m glad for the days I’m given

a reason to stand still and see

the hand of God in a snowstorm,

where there’s no need to run

to catch a flight that isn’t coming,

no need to leave anyone behind.

I want you to know how time stops

when everyone sets aside

their load. How far the aisles reach

when they are empty.

How certain memories always stay:

a wall of glass, a window,

my parents and I watching snowfall

on a white open runway,

sleeping across two chairs, all night

no planes landing or leaving.

---

The Hero

As with most people, nothing important happened

after the musical ended. We shuffled out of our seats,

Adrian and I, with no one to greet or congratulate,

and found our car alone in the dark lot across the street.

We’d parked to avoid traffic and similarly left.

I wasn’t anything like I thought I’d be by now

and Adrian knew it. He forgave me, I know,

because he told me a story he wrote once of a man

who wanted to be a hero. Wanted throughout school,

but never stood out. Wanted in the workplace,

but was only one cog in the big machine. Wanted

as a husband, as a father, as a man who saw the world

with a broken heart, but had no superhuman tools

but hands and a willing mind.

At least, this is the story Adrian tried to write,

but the words came out like a puzzle from a thrift store:

pieces missing and pictures torn. When he couldn’t write

the words, he felt like a child, which was okay, because

he was, after all, a sensitive, everyday child.

Nothing important happened on the drive home,

at least, not visible. In the dark, there are always leaps

of faith: the way I listened to a memory,

Adrian telling me it was okay not to be a hero,

as long as I acted the part, with or without spotlight

my hand holding to the wheel while we crossed night

roads like rivers, paths where the lines disappeared

for a moment. This happens often, but still I’m thankful

we don’t lose our way.

---

Why I Work Outside My Home

At 11pm, the cafés and tabled bookstores close

their doors like eyelids; it’s hard to keep awake,

after that, the part of me that wants to work.

There, they play soft music like leather chairs

and the lighting is bright enough to be awake,

brighter than home where I save on energy prices

even down to my body, which shuts off the lights

when it knows there’s safety. There, I am surrounded

by hosts of dutiful-looking strangers; they must be

working; I should be working to fit in, a puzzle piece

in a puzzling nocturnal mix. Here is the alone-place,

the dark, cozy, warm-as-a-pillow living space

and I decide what it means to fill this room, and too often,

I remain deciding until my eyelids close and nothing

has been accomplished, and everything, forgotten.

---

Atlas Landscape 

-inspired by “Atlas Landscape” by Maxfield Parrish

Even the clouds weigh

more than he imagined,

they, orange with sunset,

skintone, wrinkled with age

and the strain of holding things.

He also is ready for a sign

of summer ending, of rainfall,

he who stands invisible,

the heavens on his shoulders,

the world at his feet.

The trees are weak pillars;

It is his to decide the storm

on the right, or peace on the left.

He tenses at the prospect of letting

lightning fall from his hands,

then forebears, a man

who knows of freedom lost

to wrath and impulse

and would not pass on

his heavy sky.

The dark takes the foreground

but beyond it, undisturbed,

a placid bay, a steadfast range

and we are thankful someone holds back

the clouds, the storm, himself.

---

A Love of Repetition 

I must tell you

as one sincere reader to another:

please read and re-read.

If a book is a friend,

let her speak more than once;

let your conversation be deep

as often mine was, driven home

by a woman twice my age.

If a book is a herald

then hear her message afresh;

listen as she reveals mysteries,

like my mother’s memoirs,

of secrets once unseen.

If a book is a companion,

counsel with her in hard times

so that, each time you touch

and read, you are familiar

with the wisdom of her smooth words.

If a book is an escort,

let her lead you time and again

through the passages of time

until the way is etched

on the life-line of your palm.

If a book is to be more

than a fling in a bookstore,

keep coming back to her;

you will find her changed

and yourself, suddenly new.

Re-read these words, my friend,

there are many secrets

I must tell you

---

Fixing Water Damage

When the clothes-washer started leaking, marked by the brown floor

            it warped into an ugly frown,

we did nothing but fix it. My mother must have noticed more; my father

let it spin in his mind for months.

I didn’t care. What does a boy know of rot? How it must be rooted

            out, and the ground, lifted up.

You see, we lived in a house built on stilts, ready to walk on water,

            because an island will flood

often in its lifetime. When the road drains clogged, the water crept in

            inches thick above the wood floor.

You could find me in the rain with a rake, scraping at the drain

            in someone’s bright yellow raincoat.

Water was what happened. I thought I knew what it could do,

            but little of damage and repair.

My father came up with his own solution, a way to undo things

            on his own, without a mason

or a carpenter, or a handyman or anyone who cost a dime, only

            he called on me to help him.

I didn’t love work, but bag after bag of concrete, I hauled

            beneath our house, into that cave

where I had never been, not that I could remember. But then,

            why remember dust

and emptiness? There were thick old pillars and support beams

            low enough to bump my head.

My back began to ache. I breathed sand and sweat. I couldn’t stand

            straight, not once down there.

While I moved in and out, my father, further in, mixed the concrete

            with water and grit, and love

was a word I would use later about him in that dim space, where he

            must have been dying

to get the job done. But he was a rock: patient. A pillar, stalwart,

            showing me where to stand

and how: bowed with a bag in my hands. I complained at first,

            but he was too busy to respond

and I learned silence was the way of service, how dark the heart

            beneath a home would be

without my father, the hardening concrete and the water and the light

            he carried down with us.

---

If you made it all the way down here, reading through every poem, thank you! I love and appreciate you! Please let me know your thoughts and any of the poems!

Review: Clockwork Princess

Clockwork Princess
by Cassandra Claire

When a book is the 3rd book in a trilogy, it is bound to have high expectations, especially if the first two were excellent. This book fulfills on the promise of the first two novels and leaves you satisfied.

Also because it's the 3rd book in a trilogy, it's hard to give a good synopsis without giving spoilers, but, essentially, it revolves around Tessa Gray, a girl living in the Victorian Era who has found herself among a group known as the Shadowhunters who fight demons and strive to protect the peace of the world. Bit by bit over the course of the books she has become wrapped up in helping them defend against metal creatures called "The Infernal Devices" and, at the same time she has become wrapped up in love.

A mix of action, romance, and character study, this series has many of the things I most love. The use of Victorian times adds a very interesting element to the whole series that, in my mind, makes it much better than the more modern series also by Cassandra Claire (though I have only read the first book "City of Bones") That being said, this book is excellent enough that it makes me want to read the more modern series if only so that I can continue discovering what happens in this world that the author has created.

This book, and the series in general, also promotes reading old literature as well as each book starts with a quote from either a book or a poem. These were lovely to read and think about while reading the stories and they added a lot to them. It makes me want to read things such as "A Tale of Two Cities" and "In Memorium A.H.H".

In the end, I recommend this whole series - Clockwork Angel, Clockwork Prince, and Clockwork Princess, especially if you love a mix of action, romance, and young adult fiction.

More April Poems

So, I had fun posting lots of poems to this, my blog, a couple weeks ago, so I've decided to do it again, because this is my blog and I can do what I want. Some of these seven poems are new from this months 30 days / 30 poems challenge, while some are revisions as part of that same challenge (thought-out revisions count as a daily poem because we value revision as well as creation). So without further ado, the poems, starting with the one I wrote this afternoon:

Atlas Landscape
-inspired by the eponymous painting by Maxfield Parrish

Even the clouds weigh
more than he imagined,
they, orange with sunset,
skintone, wrinkled with age
and the strain of holding things.

This is summer’s end;
these shades of calm and anger,
are storms half-empty, half-full.
He tenses at the prospect of letting
wildness fall from his hands,

then forebears, a man
who knows of freedom lost
to wrath, impatience, hate
and would not pass this on:
his sky of troubles.

And seeing the forefront dark,
I discern the beauty behind it:
a placid bay, the steadfast range,
and I’m thankful someone holds back

the storm, the night, himself.

---

This Time Of Night

Night gives way
to dawn, a bright hope
we sleep through

until day gives way to dusk.
The sun like a hero
in the time of heroes

departs for a distant country,
unable to shine everywhere
at once. Gone are the hours

of easy, selfless work,
the clear conversations,
the vigilant eyes.

Often I am found
sleeping like a star
in the time of stars,

silent, soft, unseen
behind a haze of dreams.
Now, the eyes of the dark open:

burnt orange street-lamps
staggered footsteps of crowds,
and singing shadows.

Tonight, I am likewise
restless: a specter
in a time of specters,

roaming shifty streets
searching for a new fire.
Who will save us now?

We are eager like birds
circling the halos of broadcast towers
or deer imagining in the headlights

a sudden miraculous dawn.

---

Odyssey
- “How great is the darkness in which we grope” - William James

You awake forgetful:
what is this bed?
this tangled blanket?

Another night,
sudden
and confusing with darkness.

Where is the world
in your dream,
still yanking at your hair?

You wrestle
with definite shadows
and escape one sheet at a time.

The floor lunges at you:
hardwood, socks,
your grandmother’s carpet.

and even then you believe
it must be close to dawn,
not 2 a.m.,

your moment, irrational,
your dream, a continual lie.

---

The Bicycle

As a child, it was my way
of moving forward,
of outrunning myself,

my mind still stuck
on an argument with my mother,
a clash in the kitchen,

or my brother,
our late night conversation
turning cold with the dark.

Then, I had the freedom that comes
with no one to look after
but my own childhood.

I learned the neighborhood,
the secret trails,
the magic of losing myself

in an unfamiliar place.
Suddenly, I was a bird
struggling to find a nest.

Or I was a star
in the patchwork of night,
sewing clothes for the walkers:

gray, soft light
reflecting off their shirts,
so I could see them,

wanderers who were not
children riding on a rusted bike,
my mother’s, my brother’s

(I would forget
my arguments, my winning lines,
the desperation).

I would return home
as a child used to changing
the rhythm of wheels,

though I didn’t understand
how I had overcome my frustration,
only that I was happy again.

Later, I discovered
bicycles have always been a mystery
even to the experts.

We know the wheels spin,
but not how it stands straight and moves,

what keeps it stable.

---

A Love of Repetition

I must tell you
as one sincere reader to another:
read and re-read.

If a book is a friend,
let her speak more than once;
let your conversation be deep
as once mine was, driven home
by a woman twice my age.

I learned of her past
and there was no silence
between us for hours.

If a book is a companion,
counsel with her in dark times
so that, each time you touch her
and read, you are familiar
with the wisdom of smooth pages.

Every repetition reveals
a mystery that hadn’t been
written there before.

If a book is to be more
than a fling in a bookstore,
keep coming back to her;
you will find her changed,
and yourself, suddenly new.

I spoke with the past,
perusing my mother’s memoirs.
Why not relive them?

If a book is an escort,
let her lead you time and again
through the back passages of time
until the way is etched
on the life-lines of your palms.

Re-read these words, my friend,
there is a blessing
I must tell you.

---

Teach

To raise the dead from empty graves
and to guide the living to the eternal edge
where they might find themselves afraid,
and, paradoxically, unafraid to step out.
To tuft taut rope into an unkempt mess,
then light it on fire - strike a blaze
beneath the teepeed sticks of a bonfire
and say “Now carry this into the night;
a candle, a torch, your hands if you have
no fear of burning.” To give fear a name,
a three-piece suit, a place to stay (we know
how long the night is, how eerily alone).
To provide a savory turkey-dinner for him,
a hot bath and blankets without complaining,
because, this way, you are no strangers anymore.
To lead by example, the simplest lesson
that requires a lifetime to master, and faith
to spark the first footstep, not fear (no,
he sleeps in the backroom, stuffed and warm,
the tended fire in the fireplace, aglow and silent).
To build from what is known, not unknown.

To bridge life’s chasm, and to learn ere death.

---

Portrait of a Tragedy

He wakes up again
to the news of children
gunned down by an unknown
man.

He cleans up like normal
and breakfast is the same cold
you might hear in a voice
today as any day.

Before leaving, he fails to remember where
he dropped his keys last night,
pats himself down in a panic: his sides,
his back pockets, his heart,

but there on table, they linger
by yesterday’s paper, splattered
with gray pictures and words
that almost have no meaning.

There’s a photo of a dead man
whose face could be anyone’s.

Next door, his neighbors
begin a war and he hears
their infant wailing.

He hurries out to the car,
turns the radio on then off again
and drums his fingers against the wheel.

His drive is a dream, arriving
with a feeling, not a memory.

On the sidewalk, he notices
an elementary girl trailing behind
her mother’s occupied phone

and brushes past them
down this path into his routine.

Work will consume him,
he trusts; he prays

it’s only a bad beginning
a day that feels clouded
though no clouds cross
the everyday blue,

another morning where nothing’s changed,

except suddenly he doesn’t know himself.

Poetry: April Challenge, 6 Poems

I'm currently in the middle of a 30 days / 30 poems challenge and, although I won't post all the poems because not all are worth it, I feel I'm doing alright for the first week or so. These are all rough - close to first drafts, but that's why I would love your feedback. Yes, you. You who love my poetry and you who do not. You who think you are good at critiquing and you who say you know nothing. I learn nothing from silence, but even a few words may give me inspiration. If there are particular lines of a poem that you like, let me know.

P.S. These poems are not necessarily in the order that I have written them.

Night Gives Way To Dawn

Day gives way to dusk.
The sun like a hero
in the time of heroes
departs for a distant country,
unable to be everywhere
at once. Gone are the hours
of selfless work,
the lucid conversations,
the watchful eyes.

Often I am found
sleeping like a star
in the time of stars,
unseen and silent
behind a cloud of dreams.
The eyes of the dark open:
orange street-lamps,
staggered footsteps,
and singing shadows.

Tonight, I am likewise
restless, a specter
in a time of specters,
roaming dangerous streets
looking for a new fire.
Who will save us now?
We are eager like birds
singing at the glow of windows
or a deer imagining in the headlights
a sudden miraculous dawn.

------------------------------------

A Love of Repetition

I must tell you
from one reader to another:
read and re-read.

If a book is a friend,
let her speak more than once;
let your conversation be deep
as once mine was driving home
with a man many years older.

I learned of the past.
There was no silence
between us for hours.

If a book is a companion,
let her words pass into remembrance
so that, each time you touch her
and read, you are familiar
with the sound of your lips moving.

Every repetition reveals
mysteries beneath the surface
I hadn’t seen before.

If a book is to be more
than a fling in a bookstore
keep coming back to her;
you will find her changed,
or yourself, suddenly new.

I spoke with the past
when I read my father’s biography.
How can I not relive it?

If a book is an escort,
let her lead you time and again
through the black passages of time
until the way is written
on your palm and on your heart.

Re-read these words, my friend,
there is something
I must tell you.

----------------------------------------

Repair

A morning so quiet
the birds have left you for food
and twigs for their nests,
and you are missing people:
your mother, a love, yourself.

You can’t remember
when you last had time to breath
spring air and cedar
from the broad bench where you sit,
your car close by on the drive.

Who are you like this,
powerless to drive or break,
at home with free time?
The car sits there like a dog
begging from a store window.

A friend is coming
and in minutes you try hard
to not impede him,
to bring fresh water and ice
on command or without it.

It’s easier that way
to excuse your discomfort
at lacking the tools
to achieve independence,
to not be alone and weak.

If you knew something
of repair or maintenance,
you would stay alone
this morning of all mornings,
excused in going nowhere.

If there were no roar
of a gear-filled life revving,
you would love silence,
but it is the car being fixed,
and you, on the bench, watching.

---------------------------------------------

Odyssey

“How great is the darkness in which we grope” - William James

There is always another night,
sudden
and confused by darkness.

You awake forgetful:
what is this bed?
this tangled blanket?

Where is the world behind you
in your dream,
still yanking at your hair.

You wrestle
with shadows
and escape one sheet at a time.

The floor rises to meet you:
hardwood, socks,
your grandmother’s carpet,

and even then you believe
it must be close to dawn,
not 3 a.m.,

your moment, irrational,
your dream, a continuous lie.

-----------------------------------

Later

When you said the greatest secrets are hidden
in the most unlikely places,

I heard behind your words a cardinal’s song
wrapped in the leaves of a maple.

I discovered a quarter on the way home,
face down on the road like a man

whose foot has snagged an unseen branch,
another secret, I suppose.

I lifted the couch, the cabinet, the awkward shelves
and found dust balls fleeing my hands.

I have niches to clean; I understand that secret.
But a lost coin is nothing, isn’t it?

And the bird, I have not heard nor seen her since,
nor you, my friend, nor you.

-------------------------------------

Late Summer, White Blossoms

My brother and I were trowels
uprooting dandelions, sorrel, and clovers
in the garden, where we would listen in silence
to the radio between us.

I don’t know the words
we could have said, dirt on our hands,
smudges decorating our blue jeans and noses,
but it had the semblance of togetherness.

Our pet mouse toiled with us,
nibbling leaves, scratching at the ground,
crawling on our shoulders, down our arms.

There were days she would work without us,
unearthing seeds and nesting others,
until a black dog caught her.

We were too late to save her,
though we were near, shifting our way across
the rows of white chrysanthemums.

I don’t remember where we buried her,
but there were many words
left planted inside us like broken seeds.

The garden was a summer in blossom
and a graveyard of petals,
beds enough for marigolds, foxgloves,
and tiger lilies dead-headed daily.