Picture Caption: I was walking the other night after 6 o'clock, so it was dark, but away from all of the lights of town and with the full moon behind the thick clouds, the sky was glowing blue. The picture does not quite capture what I saw, but close if you put it on a big screen. By the way, above the oak tree sticking up there is a ghost-like face that I kind of see. Do you see it?
Anyway, Kellie and I were doing some Christmas shopping, and I ran across a book of poetry in a stack of heavily discounted books called Somebody Give This Heart a Pen by Sophia Thakur. I will not offer a poem of hers because I might violate copyrights, but you can check out her website at www.sophiathakur.co.uk. Her poetry has been called “At once intimate and universal, aching and affirming…” Okay, School Library Journal, if you say so.
I read a few of the selections aloud to Kellie during the commercials as we watched The Mayor of Kingstown one evening, and she said, “You know, you should try to write some of this popular poetry. You have always imitated others very well.”
The wheels started clicking, and, by the time I shut off the reading light and flattened out our adjustable bed that evening around 10 o’clock, I had jotted down a few lines of verse (?!). Now, for me to leave them in what seems to be the current popular form, I had to leave them in the original free verse, no rhythm and no recurring metrical structure. My readers know that I struggle with this. And--I’m sorry, but I could not help it--the fourth “not quite poem” rhymes. Sue me, I guess. Here they are…ahem…mmm…rrrmmrrr…(clearing my throat) unrevised.
Not Quite Poems, Maybe Verse, Certainly Not Prose
I.
My soul collects clutter
Like a glass top coffee table
Until I need a place to set
My feet. Then, I gather
The things I should forget
And shuffle them off to gather
Dust somewhere out of my sight.
II.
When time pecks
At my heart,
It tickles.
When it scratches
With sharp claws,
It shreds my self-esteem.
III.
Only those living on the edge
Know about answering hard questions.
Are we civilized or savages?
Is cannibalism nutritious?
Do demons thwart or angels guide?
Who is Us when we hate Them?
No man reclining in an easy chair
(Like me?)
Drinking smoky whisky
Aged in white oak barrels
Should offer moral counsel
To a man whose children starve.
IV.
I sit and cause the sun to set.
I stand to make it rise.
My lips shape phases of the moon.
The stars float in my eyes.
The clouds are moisture of my breath,
Bedecking my mountainous nose.
Blue sky is stretched across my chest.
The forests are hairs on my toes.
I am an ancient god, a myth,
A king who wears leaves for crowns.
Supplicants send no prayers my way
So, I hide on the edge of your towns,
And creep into your heads at night
To frustrate your impotent dreams,
To make you think all wrongs are right
And nothing is quite what it seems.
And nothing IS quite what it seems.
Alrighty, then, so now you know what the popular poetry of the 21st century looks like and sounds like, at least in my imitation of it. Here is a poem that I may have shared before, but this is the way the I choose to write, the way the ideas come into my head, and the way that I make them sound after I revise them carefully. It fits with the season. Happy Thanksgiving, all!
An Oak Leaf Fell
(Where There’s No Will)
In sloughing wind, the oak leaf fell,
The chill air barely braked its fall,
It ticked on every stick it hit,
Its falling meant nothing at all.
Its falling meant nothing at all
Nor would it mean more had it hung,
Dead notion on a living limb,
A lost thought on a voiceless tongue.
A lost thought on a voiceless tongue,
A breathless sigh, a tacit word,
Its purpose served, will set it free
As if its use had not occurred.
As if its use had not occurred,
Nor ever shined in gold nor green,
Nor ever glowed yellow nor red,
Nor beauty in its form was seen.
Nor beauty in its form was seen
Nor elegance in verdant style.
In sloughing wind, the oak leaf fell
And decomposes in a pile.
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