Sonnet#10 Homeward Call

Sonnet #10 Homeward Call

My Father said that faith is strength begun

by acts. The constant sift of dross refines:

a fire beneath the vial of siphoned years.

And I, a son, I’ve strolled away from home.

These days few static words come through my call,

and yet his voice returns, his song surrounds;

like subtle birds, he hears on cobbled streets

the patter, hears the rain of naked feet

and sings with heavy wings that prayerful sound

we chant each day to work, to graves; it’s all

the same. The vast with thunderous steps points home.

The anvil’s fire inside your covered ears,

refines the metal gold, and opens mines

left wrecked in cowered shafts of faith undone.

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There are many things I've accomplished in this poem that I've wanted to do for a while.

1. It's been a while since I've written in form, and of all the forms, the sonnet and the villanelle are my favorites. Writing a sonnet always feels like an achievement.

2. From what I've read in the Bible and the Book of Mormon, I've wanted to write a chiasmus within my poetry. I don't know how obvious it is, but this poem is a full chiasmus all the way.

3. I feel like I have really condensed and compact lines here. I'm trying not to waste words, especially dealing with a sonnet where wasting words would just sound terrible.

Anyway, it took me a couple edits to get this far, but I'm certain there's plenty of tweaking I could do. Let me know if there's anything in particular you liked, didn't like, or didn't get and I'll see what I can do. Thanks!

The Thomas Experience

Thomas

While you were busy sleeping, the door you left unlocked creeps open

to let in a stumbler, a midnight alcoholic smoker who could be

a rager, coals on his fat tongue and a brown bottle ready to break

against the wall.                                   

                                     You could die.

Instead you wake up, shower,

the day to day routine. Only when you step into the living room

do you find him snoozing on the rental couch, your TV and computer left

where you left them.

First you think of police, and then no.

He curls like an abused child.

He didn’t even use the cheap blankets.

His phone alarm sounds, and he sits up, asking you

what time is it? can I use the bathroom?

Nothing of where am I? or who are you?

Subdued, you oblige his set of requests,

then you walk him outside

to the parking lot where he first becomes confused,

before discovering that single side street

he recognizes.

His name is Thomas.

How many of him are there?

An ugly force of nature, docile this time,

harmless how many times?

   A homeless god with divine luck.

   a night spirit with a touch of wind.

   a trickster djinn with a weary mask,

   or a derelict demon taking a break.

            Though his presence lingers,

            build no shrine.

It could all be undone in a burning wisp of faith.

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If there's one name of a stranger I'll never forget, it's Thomas. For those of you unfamiliar with the experience, I forgot to leave the door to my apartment locked one evening. The next morning, I casually, lazily even, woke up, took a shower, got dressed and all, before wandering out into the living room to find a random guy sleeping on my couch. So what's the first thing I do? I post it on facebook. It doesn't even cross my mind to call the police, though that's what everyone recommended as soon as they saw my status. For some reason, I felt pretty calm about the whole thing. Part of that is because it was obvious he hadn't touched anything in the room. Anyway, the real story goes that I had somewhere I was going that morning with a friend of mine, so I just called up my friend for him to come over earlier. A little after he got here, the stranger's phone alarm went off, he asked me what time it was. I told him. I also told him that he'd probably ended up in the wrong home and I asked him if he lived around here (I thought he was a drunk who had mistaken this apartment for his own). He said no that he didn't live here, but he had driven here. He told us his name was Thomas and he offered us some gum and then asked if he could use the restroom (we accepted the gum). After that we all walked outside. When we got to the parking lot he looked for his car and then turned to us and said "Wait... where AM I?" And then he noticed a street across the road and recognized it and went off in that direction. That is the story of Thomas.

I always knew he'd end up in my poetry one day, an experience like that. I almost hope that he'll be a recurring character, someone who finds his way into many poems. But either way, this is the first poem about him. I hope you enjoy it!

Apple Days

Apple Days 

Thus he names the season,
my nephew, riding on the back
of the bike, a red helmet wrapped around
his tiny head, full of growing seeds.

When his father takes him
down this bowl-shaped road,
he knows the destination is a field
of fallen fruit, free to pick,

and so he presses against my back,
as if feeling for the bruises
and tells me these are apple days,
not knowing what I don’t know.

When his mother kneels with him
beside the green apples innocently
strewn like his three-year old toys
over the newborn grass,

does he know that the tree
also kneels with him, shades him
with the end of summer leaves, before
casting away the heavy fruit?

I took the branches leading home,
and learned that I was already
a tree, still budding white flowers
the pink tinge of spring now fading.

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            So this last Sunday I was riding a bike with my 3 year old nephew in a kid's seat and we were having a heart to heart talk. Really, it sort of surprised me how in depth our conversation was considering the boy's age. But anyway, on the course of the ride, he started telling me about his apple days, when he would go and pick apples with Mommy and Daddy. I couldn't help but be reminded of the famous Shakespeare quote "My salad days, when I was green in judgement." I almost considered putting that line in with the poem as an epigraph (should I?). Later, I found out that he was talking about that because he's used to his parents taking him to pick apples whenever they go on a bike ride together (I didn't know, so of course we didn't go pick apples). Later, while I was thinking about the experience, I decided I ought to write a poem about it, and so I did. Hope you've enjoyed it! Does it end too soon? If you have any comments on that or anything else about it, let me know :) 

Twenty-One Birthdays (plus two)

Okay, so today is my 23rd birthday, so leading up to it, I wrote a bunch of birthday poems. The poem ends with number 21, because that's a more poetic number to stop at. That being said, a quick read will show that I've skipped several in the middle because I JUST CAN'T REMEMBER! Mom, you can help me out with this maybe? Anyway, I may repost this once I have more parental input. Still, I hope you like at least one of the poems within, if not the poem as a whole (there is an overall theme in some sense). If you'd like to comment on which poems you liked best (or any other comments), I'd also really appreciate it. Enjoy!

Twenty-One Birthdays

I.

Once I had a memory

that I didn’t know was darkness

until I fell into the light.

I’m told I cried,

shaking every appendage

and gasping air

I had never yet breathed.

Today, nobody sees it, but change

is still a tunnel I should not resist.

II.

The unknown last year

cradled in my lush vale. Then

home slipped east downstream.

III.

The home was building

stairs to replace steep ladders

to hidden attics.

We dwelled on an edge island,

and I didn’t know by then

what to remember.

IV.

Three little piggies

and I was pink plump

watching the puppets

with my playmates

beside the prizes

by the fireplace,

there was even a fireplace

playing within me.

V.

We were ninjas, jumping down rolling green hills,

spinning through the uncut hay grass,

dizzy between the flitting sky and dirt,

but mostly with our eyes closed.

We were turtles, diving in a green pond,

dodging the algae and the dying yellow leaves,

then scattering tadpoles at the narrow beach,

that strip of sand too small for all of us.

VI.

We all had shimmering skin

having slid down water slides

all day. Summer Waves, the park

was full back then with remnants of summer:

adults bustling and children swimming

in the undulating wave pool, sinking beneath

or staying afloat with plastic yellow donuts.

I guess that was the last of the late autumns;

I find that place strewn with emptiness

and the shadows of stray kids grown older.

VII.

Or was this the year of the water park?

My family gathered beneath a white gazebo, beside

a round table and a round cake, to squeeze

icing through design nozzles and plastic

white sheets. Even a mess can be a work of art,

and this dessert sucked us in, much like a vacuum

searches for anything to replace the empty space,

even memories.

VIII.

An east coast Huntington Beach,

I was drawn to the ocean,

drawn as well as

the green eight dollar bill cake,

filled with pennies, nickels and dimes,

that my mother laid before us

to sink our teeth in.

IX.

Like bright wrapping paper,

bursting with yellow and orange circles,

I wanted to save this until I

grew up, as a reminder of

fruitful days.

If only I could rewrap this

head, and make it new,

nothing would be wasted.

X.

My sisters baked a cookie, so large

it filled the square pan,

every inch now

crust and chocolate,

hot and crisp,

ready to served.

But they let it cool, and drew with icing,

basketball hoop and netting,

well weaved by their hands

to toss a ball inside,

a point to make,

a goal to achieve.

XI.

This time we slid down the backyard hill, nothing like

the mountains of Vermont, but then again,

we weren’t trying to slide through time,

like I am, today.

The purple plastic slide, the hose, the bubbles, nothing

could make us go so fast. Even so we leapt

forward, and didn’t mind the mud at

the bottom of the moment.

XII.

New school year, new school, no new friends,

the curse of autumn birthdays.

And yet,

without trying,

I know of two friends

who would’ve been by me.

Though the flame burns quickly,

the candles on the cake grow slowly

each year.

XIII.

XIV.

XV.

XVI.

I still have the picture we took on the back porch,

filled with brown leaves, my friends, and I

heaped around the green ping-pong table,

like the piles of leaves,

before they dried out.

XVII.

This was the year it began,

the sense of years leaving me behind,

and the birthday a monotony of back and forth,

like the game of ping-pong

we played, the four of us.

two friends,

and the friend of a friend.

XVIII.

A quiet family affair,

my best friend also, and his mother.

We sat around the dining room table

where once we played underneath,

and giggled as we pasted stickers to the table legs,

we now kept our legs crossed,

and our laughter visible.

XIX.

My brother and sisters had left home

and though we celebrated early

my new year, I was also leaving

to Japan; the turnings of the sun and moon

past midnight happened somewhere

over the deep Pacific ocean.

I also was continually sinking

in and out of sleep

within a pressured darkness.

XX.

And then a smell rustled me awake in Spain,

in a ancient town of La Mancha,

four windmills stopped on the local hill.

Cinnamon and Maple syrup,

my friend made me French Toast,

took me out for pizza,

and bought me New York Cheesecake.

I’ve been around the world and found

warmth at the core.

XXI.

I didn’t care that nothing

special happened

and no one noticed.

Then, I went about doing good

and forgetting myself.

In truth, I didn’t wear a smile for show.

Then, it felt like I was growing older

at the turn of every week

and growing in family.

I've understood by now; my new years

begin with autumn.

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(P.S. This is 800+ words, enough to be a two page paper)

Deaths we do not fathom

Two poems that center around death in some way or another. I bet that makes you really excited to read them now. Anyway, I hope you enjoy them nonetheless :)

Death by the Blade

Even in dreams you can be stabbed; I’ve known it:

the cold dagger sliding into your breast from

a person at the door; the anger different than

the blade, less solid than a statue, yet larger

than the house, or the tree that shrouds it.

But the anger also is the blade, hidden inside

a dusty cloak, as suddenly revealed as it is buried

inside your tired heart. There is a shock deep

within the cycles of sleep, a wound that kills you

once, before the dream repeats.

The scenarios vary, but you cannot stay

dead for long; there is a motive to fulfill,

a belief to share, a reason for their hatred and

your many deaths. Your mind begins to learn who

to trust, where to speak, and when to flee.

Too bad we don’t remember these warnings.

The dream doesn’t leave behind photographs,

only watercolors stirring in the memory that

recall the sting, the inability to escape, and

the betrayal felt. But more often I fear the details I

can’t remember: the wielders of the blades.

A man or a woman, young or old, stranger or

friend. I watch them all now; I sense the daggers close

to their skin, a guard against threat. I recognize also

the weapon beside my own heart and resolve to

throw it away, or surely life will be lost. 

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Earthquakes

Perhaps there was an unjostling of the heart

that I didn’t notice.

Then, I was waiting to be served,

my mind in a book, the book in my hand,

the hand relaxed on the edge of an old table;

the table may or may not have moved.

The waiter asked if I had felt it,

the echoes of the Virginia earthquake,

200 miles away, past plains, rivers and mountains,

or so I imagined. He told me

of the boxes shaking in the back room,

though nothing spilled: no broken

bottles to clean up or

fires to put out;

though closer to the seismic center, there were

cracked buildings with

split pipes, water and gas spraying

into the street,

and real people.

But we didn’t mention it, couldn’t fathom it;

we forgot it,

and laughed about our lost

chance to experience

an earthquake.

Nearby, another customer was still reading,

unaware and absorbed in a letter

from a place I don’t know,

a place I can’t even imagine,

a place that doesn't exist.

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Both of these poems are, in fact, based off of personal experience. The first was really a dream where I was going around talking to people (as if I were still on my mission) and people would stab me and it hurt. And then it started over again with a slightly different set up and each time the me in the dream got smarter and more ready to combat or escape from my assailants. It was a pretty weird dream; I'm not going to lie. So anyway, the next day I kept on thinking about the dream as I was walking around and decided it would make a pretty good poem, and I think it did (I like it, at least).

The second poem was based on the earthquake that just happened in Virginia. I was actually sitting in the Apple Store, not a restaurant, (the former would be a little hard to explain in a poem) but I was reading a book and I didn't notice the earthquake; nor did the Apple Store guy who attended me. He mentioned how it was the second time he'd missed an earthquake (the first time he had been sleeping) and he joked about it a little. Only later, as I thought about it, I realized how lightly we take events like this sometimes, as if, because a disaster happened far away to a place we don't really know, it's almost like it doesn't exist and the pain isn't real. Therefore, that's the kind of idea that I was trying to work into the poem. 

Hopefully something got across from either or both of these poems. Thanks for reading!

Portrait of a Young Traveler

A long time ago I wrote a simple poem that I titled simply "Portrait #1". Over the years I've come to consider that poem one of my own personal favorites. Perhaps because of that, I like to title certain types of poems with "Portrait" in it. The following is one of those poems; I hope you enjoy it!

Portrait of a Young Traveler

The child sleeps in a foreign bed;

his suitcase yawns on the rigid floor;

his clothes are jumbled like bed-hair;

and his days are mixed in his bag

until morning is night and night, morning.

His eyes are closed like airplane windows,

too tired to watch the chase of the sun

or the dreamy forest like a blanket beneath him;

his hands pull the covers close around his head

because summer is winter and winter, summer.

You can find him within the door of that room;

he hears the opening of an old hinge;

he stirs within the thin blue sheets

and counts the seconds of your retreating steps

for today is tomorrow and tomorrow, today.

Traveler's Poetry

While I've been traveling around I've been writing poetry of course. But I've been writing it from the southern hemisphere.  What with the rest of my family also traveling a bit, I feel like I haven't gotten much feedback recently, so I've waited until things have settled down for them to post again. Here's two poems that have come as a direct result of my traveling; hope you enjoy them!

Swansea

Mine was the only car in the lot and the only room with life:
one chamber in a dying heart.
The innkeeper tore off the map and named the streets
with the lines on my hand.
Offseason, the innkeeper called it, as I looked back to the map
half-filled with vacant hotels.
A simple main road was like the tourists;
it skipped in and out of town, along an empty beach
where I would later walk to listen to the snoring waves
while the day aged.

Even the ocean swelled like a old man:
slowly the water rose from its lung
and slower still it heaved against the land.
The sand was a pale beautiful,
born of the winter breeze and left to defend itself
like the children huddled together
across the road. They pointed at the yachts
like they were stars in the dark,
and then to the cars, that shot across town
on their way up the coast.

Tomorrow I’ll follow past the open farmland,
golden fields, and green valleys.
From season to season fires burn the pines and I imagine incense.
I’ll smell it again,
on the other side of this inlet.
There the view will appear like a scenic churchyard
overlooking Wineglass Bay.
I’ll raise my camera like a toast
and point it at this ghost of a town to say,
“May someone remember you when you’re gone."

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The Other Side of Summer

On the other side of our world, it’s still summer;
I am waiting to catch that plane home
days or weeks away (it feels like years
sitting at this cold breakfast table,
where I feed on the wind for conversation).
I wish my morning breath
didn’t paint mist across the sky,
when I begin to see light on the horizon.
You say the heart of the north glows
and I imagine the smell of oranges,
as ripe, as burning, as the dawn’s own fruit;
the taste stings my eyes as it rises
from a leafless tree of clouds
over the ocean (that gaping mouth
that swallows words and warmth).
I shiver beside your chair, filled with an echo
(I conjure you out of my rotating seasons,
through the center of the earth:
a frozen flame that crackles within me),
that no one else can feel.