O Harpo!

You invaded this monochrome planet,

won football games in makeshift chariots,

and shoveled the books into the fireplace.

From your trench coat of possibilities

you pulled candles, sleigh bells, scissors, a dog.

Joyful madness glinted in your child eyes.

You were grotesque and beautiful to me,

a force of laughter – a freight train, a bomb.

But now you take up your tool, your weapon,

and the comic thunderstorms cease at once.

You stop the world’s spinning, you command all.

Anemone fingers reverently play

on harp strings and heartstrings, on wire and air.

Now we are mute, and you speak for the Lord.

Contents May Explode Under Pressure

I have wanted to cry all week long now.

For months, really, just wanted to sob like

a four year-old girl watching a movie

where a grizzly bear consumes a housecat.

But I’ve felt this way so long I can’t cry.

But I need to. My constipated skull

is filling with unshed tears, and my brain

floats and soaks in a putrid pool of me.

So I hold the pocket knife to my face,

a centimeter next to my right eye,

and I gently, lovingly twist my hand.

The blade breaks my skin, a drill desperately

searching for oil. And I weep scarlet tears,

but I still don’t feel purged, or healed, or new.

The First Time I Saw You in a Bikini

It was sometime during the summer of 2002,

during that weird, brief, dream-like time when 

we were twelve, and we both liked each other.

(I think I was madly in love with you, actually.)

We were at your house. The two of us

and our mothers had been out somewhere,

for ice cream, I think. Then we came back

to your house so you and I could go swimming

in the above-ground pool in your backyard.

After I changed into my blue bathing suit,

my mother took me aside and told me

that you had just recently gotten your first bikini

and were feeling shy and self-conscious,

and that I should make sure that I compliment you.

This whipped me into a frenzy and a panic.

I was in the pool before you came back outside.

I remember you coming out of your house

in a beautiful, colorful, bikini.

Your renowned hair like nightfall,

Your skin the color of almonds.

Your mother trailed behind you

with an oddly proud expression on her face,

as if she was somehow responsible for your beauty.

I was scared out of my mind,

terrified of how stunningly beautiful you were,

yet I was also very happy.

I noticed that you had breasts now.

Tiny ones, little rosebuds, but they were there.

So I was definitely looking, at least a little.

Forgive me for that.

But more than your new body, I remember your face

and your shy, embarrassed, excited, trusting smile.

And we played, 

but it was different.

I was afraid to touch you,

and have been ever since.

I’m fairly sure I complimented you,

or at least I hope I did.

But if I did, I forget what I said,

or if it was even in English.

It was late in the evening.

The sky was orange and purple,

and the air began to cool.

Saturday

That strange, sudden happiness that finds you,

and not the other way around.

Having nothing to do with miracles,

or being in love,

or being drunk,

and everything to do with the absence of these.

A huge, heaping bowl of popcorn.

A fruitless search for a cemetery.

Monochrome movies, comedy and crime.

Art from friends’ fingers and minds.

And you know, you know,

(Because your arms

and legs tell you so)

that tonight you will sleep deeply.

When the world is broken still,

but the cracks are starting to fill.

And you know that all will be made well

will be made well, will be made well,

will be well.

And,

always,

ever,

music and friends.

And

possibly,

necessarily,

God.

I feel it now.

Woodchips and Paperclips

This and "Wind Through the Pine Needles" were both adapted from something I originally wrote as prose. I know it's clunky, but keep in mind I'm new at this whole narrative poetry thing (and poetry as a whole, for that matter).

In second grade,

I met a Russian kid named

Yuri.

Short, dark hair and big, white teeth.

Green and yellow striped shirt.

Almost all of my memories of

Yuri

take place at the playground.

He was so much fun to chase and play with,

and he was so creative.

Before he moved here,

my friends and I played a game

where the ground in the park

was a giant lake of lava,

and we’d have to traverse

the playground without touching it.

Yuri

took our game and turned it on its head.

Now instead of lava,

the woodchips were shark-infested waters.

This was good because it meant you could accidentally,

briefly touch the woodchips for a second and be ok.

Perhaps your toe touched the waters,

But no shark was around.

Yuri

moved away that same year.

I was broken-hearted.

I remember our last bus ride together.

We were scared that we’d forget each other

and not be friends anymore.

Then

Yuri

had another brilliant idea.

He took a paper clip out of his backpack

and bent it until it broke in half.

He gave one half to me,

saying that it was a symbol of our friendship,

that we were like two halves of the same thing

that were about to be separated for good.

We bravely shook hands,

because that’s what grown-ups do in these situations,

and swore that we’d never forget each other.

When I got home,

I put my half of the paper clip

on the windowsill.

Before long, I lost it.

But I never forget

Yuri.

Narrative Poem by Jessica Dreiling

(I didn't write this, though I wish I did. It was written by Jessica Dreiling. All I did was break it into lines and stanzas for an assignment.)

If sunsets dawned

and the ground crunched overhead

it would make more sense.

If time crawled slowly backwards

I could happier rest in this confusion.

Instead the world moves on as it has before,

and I sit at a loss for words.

That never happens.

Ask anyone I know,

and they will tell you the truth about me.

My words pour forth ceaselessly until I ran

into country named but unknown,

a map drawn but unseen.

Love is the drink untasted

but craved from birth.

The morning glory that grows

and will not die,

no matter how many stalks I pull

from the reaching soil that is within me.

It cannot die,

nor is it sated but by a glimpse

of the object of its colors.

It blooms unbidden, unwanted,

a weed that is yet more precious

but for the very one for whom it spreads its petals.

A friend of my heart was all I wanted.

When was it that you slipped

the seedlings into my cup?

How did you call forth

the bud that first sprang up in me?

And the strangest of all, why do you stand

opposite me,

with that look on your face

like you know nothing of what I’m saying?

I offer you these blossoms

which you yourself watered.

Why then will you not take them?

Heart of my heart,

you have renamed yourself to me.

Or do you find it strange that you

could be loved by me,

an unlikely and unexpected effect

of your green thumb?

Come then,

and uproot this plant

you have so tenderly nursed to life.

Choke this weed

you have so unwisely grown,

or see me as I am.

Helpless flowerpot.

Hope

Tonight feels like

a good night

to die.

But

tomorrow may be

a good day

to live.
Ok.

Foresight is 20/200

And maybe in three years I’ll be twenty-five,

and living in an apartment somewhere.

Maybe Boston, or even Kentucky.

I’ll be poor, I bet, but I’ll probably be

a little heavier than I am now.

I’m sure I’ll have a beard still.

I wonder when I’ll start to get chubby.

I wonder when I’ll stop wearing silly T-shirts.

I wonder when my hairline will begin to recede.

I wonder when I’ll piss

my pants or lose

my teeth or need

a walker or forget

what my grandson’s girlfriend’s name is.

But in three years, maybe I’ll be in seminary.

(I really need to start looking into seminaries, don’t I?)

But maybe in 2015 I’ll be in one, studying

philosophy and theology and helping othersology,

learning about modalism and monalism and monism.

Maybe I’ll be able to cook by then.

I could come home from class and make a nice meal

from scratch and enjoy it while I cram for that exam tomorrow.

And then on Thursday, I could surprise my wife

with breakfast in bed for our eighth wedding anniversary.

And that weekend my son will be home from college,

so we’ll probably go out to that sports bar for a few beers.

But there’s no alcohol allowed

in the nursing home so if I get caught, I’m screwed.

And I’m fairly certain that in three years, I’ll still be single.

But who knows, maybe I’ll meet someone online,

or at a bar, or at church, or at a bookstore.

Maybe I’ll actually date like a normal adult instead of

a high school kid or college student.

Maybe she’ll be funnier than me – I bet she’ll be

smarter than me. And maybe brunette.

I’ll take her back to Williamsville and show her

Glen Park, Sorrentino’s, Arend Avenue,

and introduce her to Mom and Dad.

But Dad’s been dead for two years now,

and my wife’s been dead for twenty.

So I’m clearly confused about something.

I must be getting old.

Wind Through the Pine Needles

My face feels like new sandpaper

and I’m reminded that I’m no longer a child,

and haven’t been for some time now.

The fire crackles about ten yards away

and I’m reminded that all I’ve eaten today

has been some scrambled eggs and Snickers,

and I’m hungry.

I look up at the sky and down at the water

and I’m reminded of why blue is my favorite color.

I feel the wind blow through the pine needles

and I’m reminded of Franz Wright

(It is written, “adore the wind”)

and of God.

I see Jason frying his Northern pike

with the other men gathered around him

and I’m reminded of Jesus cooking for his disciples.

Grandpa sits down with a sigh

on the island named in his honor

and I’m reminded that I am young,

a boy among men who isn’t a boy or a man.

Memories begin, involuntarily:

Jordan and I running in my front yard

playing Dragonball Z,

and I’m reminded of my lost life.

My iPod is turned off inside my backpack

and I hear the water slapping the rocks,

and the gulls yelling at each other,

and the wind blowing through the pine needles,

and I’m reminded of the first music.

My throat swells as I think

about money and friends

seminary and sin

work and college

and I’m reminded of a truth –

“Peace, be still and know that I am God.”

Oh Well

I want to be a better person.

But if I really meant that,

I would be.