I Am Professedly a Sucker for Barrel Staves

Woohoo! I'm excited. I've never done it before. Here we goooooo...OFF to Neverland!

P.S. Title of this topic is a line from "Nightlight," an awesome parody of "Twilight." Thank you, Harvard Lampoon!

Poem Numero Uno:

We could fly away
on happy thoughts and fairy dust
to our childhood:
So much to do and so much time we'd have for it.

It was a sleepover of many firsts:
Ericka Marshall introduced me to Harry Potter and Faygo pop;
we watched "Scooby-Doo on Zombie Island"
and stayed awake all night, deliciously terrified
as we watched the girl from across the street sleep--
she was a sleepwalker, and we thought
she would sleepwalk through the house with a knife
and kill us all.

In the spring we spent three days
in a tent in our backyard until
a thunderstorm chased us back indoors;
and in the summer we ran bare-footed over hot sand,
unashamed of our bodies, our baby fat, ourselves,
and splashed shrieking into Lake Huron.
They told us, You can be anything you want to be.

Today,
I want to be an astronaut.

But the world is sadly short on fairies
(and happiness too, I think sometimes),
and we are chained to this adulthood,
where freight trucks rumble through distant streets
and bills clamor to be paid,
their raucous noise drowning out the TV on which
we watch the world crumble.

Today,
I am me.
It's the best we can hope for here:
To know ourselves.

(a replacement poem)


We were cold then, she says,
without the singing and joy of the earth.

Everything had died so quietly,
we dreamed our world was gone -
we dreamed, an imploding universe.

On that day, we raised our voices
to the sky,
which heard us before we were silenced.

Of yesterday, we know nothing;
but tomorrow we will hear, anew,
the singing and the joy of the earth.

Spoiler

"Swimming, One Day in August" by Mary Oliver, which is my favorite poem of all time!

Chills flow down our backs:
I wait patiently for spring,
which will never come.

Spoiler

Hooray for haikus!
If I was REALLY lazy
I'd do one a day.

You body bends beneath
my fingertips like a field
of buckwheat in the summer wind.

I feel your hands along my back
and I trace
the bridge of your nose, crooked,
and the faint scar, also crooked,
purple at the side of your smile.

I like the way your spine curves
up to your shoulders and down
to the hard muscles
of your hips and back and butt;
I like the soft brown hair
on your chest and stomach
and the love handles that you hate;
but in my mind I see
a car on ice
and your body bending under the impact
of a semi-truck
then bleeding through a window
as you climb from the car.

But today,
you are here with me, almost whole,
tangled limbs and hearts together,
and the purple scar is the only reminder
of how I almost lost you.

This is my prayer of thanks:
My body also bent,
to meet yours with joy.

you smiled across
the classroom at me
as we read our books
and studied but

between-times we named
our lockers flesh and blood
and danced in front of
drugstores and watched
fireflies drift
above the black lawns at midnight

and we fell in love
or at least
I fell in love with you

You punch the clock--
and feel like really punching it
when it rejects your employee number again--
sign in instead--

welcome to hell.

The beeping of the registers rings
in your ears and the stupid bottle machines
need to be emptied again--
going off like fire alarms--
help, help, the bins are full,
everyone evacuate or you may be
crushed to death by dirty beer bottles!
Oh, God, shut up!

You empty the bins but no,
that's not what's wrong--
clean the machines, but still they blast
a noise like a thousand alarm clocks--
you turn them off--
"out of order" but the customers want to know:

WHY!?
Never satisfied, the bastards.

That's not enough, there's a rush--
like an Olympic runner, back and forth
back and forth
bag, bag, bag, bag
beep, beep, beep, beep
"Paper or plastic? Paper or plastic?" like a parrot
Plastic, plastic, paper, plastic, plastic
load carts, push them out--
SHIT IT'S RAINING!

Customers smile at you sweetly,
"Try to stay dry!"
You could--
if they'd let you stay inside.

Back inside:
bag, bag, bag, bag
beep, beep, beep, beep
"Paper or plastic? Paper or plastic?"
Plastic, plastic, paper, plastic, plastic
alarm clocks, fire alarms, fucking bottle bins
"Someone shit all over the bathroom walls!"
Ugh, not again
"Hey--!"

It's the manager.
Shit, you think.

"I just wanted to know," he says,
"you've been here for two years--
would you maybe like to switch
to another department?"

Aaaaaaaah.
Relief.

Spoiler

I feel an urge to write a poem using only cliches...craziness cliche-ed-ness, begin!

Snug as a bug in a rug
though it's raining cats and dogs;
let's face it,
you can bet your boots that
two is better than one.

We're two peas in a pod,
and it's business as usual:
Sex is the question and no is the answer.
I put the moves on,
but you just wanted to cuddle.

Still,
love conquers all.
In the twinkling of your eye
I saw the window to your soul and I know:
You're crazy in love
with me.

Spoiler

Okay. I'm good now. Feel free to yell at me.

Birds wing, the children sing,
and how the dogs do bark--
the lovers walk and gaily talk
of nonsense in the park.

The earth sings, girt all in green,
a hymn of the new year;
the bells toll, the voices roll,
strong for all to hear.

The bells ring to tell of spring,
green and bright at last,
and all may hear with good cheer--
for winter's finally past.

Spoiler

About damn time, isn't it!

Last year's leaves chase
each other across the streets of
Port Huron as I walk
up 7th Street and along
Military.

The wind blows back
my hair and ripples the surface
of the St. Clair River,
the Black River,
and tugs at the trees,

and I imagine walking
here with you and showing you
the college, the restaurants,
my frequent haunts,
and saying to you:

Welcome to my city.

The last leaves fell today.
In a month, you would have been twenty.
I rake the yard
and try to move on.

Long ago it seems when
we danced in the glittering waves
of the Atlantic Ocean
like korrigans in the moonlight
and followed the curve of the earth
to the edge of our dreams.

Adulthood is an
impossible tragedy:
One is always broke,

in tears over all:
The missed play, the looming bills,
the car that needs oil.

Somewhere in the mind,
an alien voice droning:

Resistance is futile.

Spoiler

I know, I know, I ruined it at the end with six syllables. Sorry.

An Italian grandmother in the kitchen,
white hair, bright brown eyes, hooked nose,
food-laden table:
Eggplant Parmesan, stuffed portabellos,
bruschetta, tomato sauce, pepperoni--
everything with garlic,
a kitchen reeking of garlic,
zesty, delicious garlic,
forty cloves at least--
and a dark-haired family,
fifty people,
each going on two-hundred and fifty pounds--
to whom she says,
You must eat more!
You're wasting away!

At her funeral, the priest remembers
the cookies she used to bring him:
She fed the community.
Her epithet should be:
Here lies our Cook,
to whom everyone was too skinny.

Yellow light shines through tiny shop windows
and ceramic skaters dressed in red
winter clothes cut circles on plastic ice.

Around and around they go, placid smiles
forever frozen on their vacant faces as
Christmas trees blink eternally beside them.

In a way I envy their life, so peaceful
and apparently happy, and I love to reach out to them--
but a sign on the display reads, Do Not Touch

and I know it is often so with life:
Here is happiness, here is peace, here is what you want--
Do Not Touch.