Poem in Your Pocket Day

April 30th, the last day of National Poetry Month, is poem in your pocket day. Our school asked everyone to walk around with a poem in their pocket and share it at will. It was a pretty big success. One of my favorite parts was an email thread that started up amongst the English department. All of the english teachers chortled about their favorite poems and how they were excited to read them to students. Frost, Yeats, Collins and others were discussed over the longest email thread the english department has shared all year long. The discussion inspired me to write a poem:

When I answered I teach English

to the cocktailed woman beside me

she responded,

Oh my- what a noble pursuit

to battle such malleable minds.

As her drink sipped to nothing

I stood with a furrowed brow

silently thinking

No no- I just like talking about

poetry.

I hope you had a good Poem in Your Pocket Day. The poem I kept in my pocket can be found here.

Chapter 2: The long walk of the Navajos

When my granddad died, I received a check for a thousand dollars.  I went to the mall and bought a new pair of sneakers and a video game. 

I still wear the sneakers when we play basketball.  I play poorly and comfortably.  On the court we talk of pretty girls and sports stars.  I strongly believe that none of us will succeed in the real world.  We slowly apply a comfortable disillusionment cushioned by a large bowl of popcorn placed on the table in front of the latest George Clooney movie.  

My beliefs in the future are not meant to be taken as concepts of sag-shouldered failure, but more as cultivated acceptance that there is little room for anyone else in the already crowded elevator heading north towards financial success.  I am scared of crowded places; lets take the steps.  I want to utilize.  I want to make crucial life decisions.  I want to make a compass out of a pinecone. I want to just scrape by, I want to listen to bluegrass songs and wish they were talking about me.  I want a lot of things.  When I was younger I wanted to lie between my parents while cartoons played at the foot of their bed.  Later, I wanted to tell my teachers to fuck off.  After that I wanted to kiss Sarah Atkins with my eyes closed.  Now, at the pivotal age of 21, I just want to go to outer space.  I want to man the laser cannon and barely make it through the asteroid field.  I want to curl up into a ball and spin around.  I want to play classical music and do back flips.  I want to be held down by a seatbelt and push very important buttons.  I want to look down at the earth and wave as if my mom could see me.  I want to extend my arms and welcome in billions of miles of unexplored twilight.

I mop the floor at a bar.  At the end of the night, as I push the vomit into a small pile before sprinkling it with sawdust and sweeping it into a garbage bag, I often wish that I was Future-Biff from Back to the Future 2.  In the background the late-night Sportscenter plays on mute and classic rock churns from the radio.  This all melts atop my sweaty brow and bleeds through the membrane of my imagination.  Oh what I would do if I had the sports almanac from the future.  I would be wealthy beyond all others.  I would be the guy who is banned from Las Vegas casinos due to my mysterious gambling divinity.  I would buy my friends a round of drinks and say, “To the good life.”  I would purchase two jet skis so we could race.  I would wear large breasted women like linebackers wear shoulder pads.  I would go on long drawn out binges only to later pay someone at some sort of medical center to rejuvenate my abused insides.  I would wear sunglasses and hair grease in the backyard of celebrities.  Oh this would be grand.  Give me the upper hand so I can exploit it out the yin-yang.

I haven’t paid my electric bill in two months.  It sits in front of me chanting nonsense involving responsibility and prudence.  I turn up the music and dance.  Seeing my tattered bed sheets as a complex origami labyrinth, I spring from my floor to my bed.  There is little time left to procrastinate, it must be utilized through lock-n-key idiocy.  No one will discover my actions…  I will shine behind walls as others position toupees and apply eye shadow.  I will laugh at my jokes when no one else does.  I will reposition the stickers on a rubix cube, then show off.  I will dance, I will stare at others dancing making them feel uncomfortable, then dance some more.  Who has time to accomplish when such bubbly intricacies bury motivation underneath bright-colored ash that tastes like distraction?

I never saw my Granddad without a tie and blazer on.  I have a vivid image of him in a pastel sports coat with matching slacks and a tie.  He would walk slowly, waiting to reach something he could balance his tall rickety body upon.  He would sit down, cross-legged, and seem pleased when I told him about recent accomplishments in my life.  His wrinkled eyes undoubtedly remembering his ancient childhood, while his arthritic hands struggled to grip his cocktail.  The carpet at his house was always very clean. 

When my Grandfather died, it brought the whole family close together.  It went beyond hugging and closing our eyes while he was lowered into the ground.  There was some odd calibration under our roof— the patriarch had passed on.  Someone asked me the other day if I was more afraid of death or dying.  I think that is an outlandish and foolhardy question.  I’m afraid of being trapped underwater, unable to breath… the slow imagining of all the things I will never accomplish, my lungs afire and my eyes bulging in reply to the dreadful taste of salt water.  I suppose that is dying.  I am more afraid of dying.

Another old poem

I am tentative to post this one, as it is not anything I am overly proud of. I just really like the first stanza. The last 5 words in that stanza bug me, but I think the first line is the best first line to a poem I have ever written:

For a long time I thought the Clash were singing “rock the cashbox.”

I find out many times that I am wrong.

It’s funny how life works that way-

Always finding little ways to fuck me in the ass.

Sometimes I realize I am wrong as

I pick the burnt pieces of popcorn from an overcooked bag discovering that

The Cosby show comes on at 6 instead of 6:30.

I wish I had someone besides myself to apologize to at these times.

Instead I sit alone in pathetic boredom. 

Unable to make decisions.

My mind stuck in a rowboat on a foggy lake with a friend named Harry.

When Harry asks which way is home,

I will answer… and again be wrong.

We will row in circles and wish we had fishing poles.

Harry will joke about the metaphor relating women to fish in the sea.

The boat will tip

My mind will again start churning,

Turning the volume up real loud as I watch hockey fights on television.

fixing little finger and word sandwiches

To serve to my guests.

My guests arrive on time, then leave crying.

the sandwiches had too much mustard and the bread had circles of mold.

They didn’t want to eat around it.

So I’ll sit alone, wondering.

Wondering if I’m alone because of bullshit like destiny and fate,

Or if I’m alone because I constantly

say the wrong things and think wrong and act wrong and

when I try to dance to rap music I do that wrong too.

My mistakes overtake me and I sit,

With the batteries dying on the remote,

and find out it is Sunday instead of Saturday.

Another installment of poems I wrote some time during college:

Anticipating the Equinox

Tonight we lose an hour.

Composed and laughing

In broken chairs atop crowded porches.

Five, six, seven of us

Collecting memories in blue jean pockets.

As the wind picks up

the temperature drops;

We sit, ageless, loveless, and drowsy.

It’s still nice outside…

It’s still the indecisive pre-winter.

The air is a brand new breath mint,

The sky is a cosmic cradle,

The stars seem different from the ones

She sees in California.

I catch frigid explanations of the hour.

Composed and laughing

In broken chairs atop crowded porches

I'm up for a sweatshirt,

And five more beers.

Tonight we lose an hour,

Work comes that much sooner.

As the conversation calms,

I consider calling it a night,

Unfortunately,

My bed is cold and empty.

The shadows grow earlier,

We no longer grill with our shirts off,

We eat in the moonlight.

Our appetites rushed by prime time programming.

Tonight we lose an hour,

Composed and laughing

In broken chairs atop crowded porches

We gain two bad jokes

About sex with animals and a priest.

Reflection: I'm trying to determine what I was attempting to do at the end and realizing that I was probably just waiting for someone to ask me that question so I could shrug my shoulders at them and talk about how poetry needs to lighten up a little. Either way, I remember Mary Karr, a teacher of mine, telling me I needed to think in stanzas and progressions and add a bit of formality to the structure of my poems if not the theme of my poems. This is about as close as I got to writing in stanzas. Re-reading it now, I quite like the breaks. 

I have a bunch more poems I want to post, so check back soon.

Poems from 2002

The other day, I uncovered some writing I did in college. It is fun to look back on the time of my life when I wrote every day. Now I tell my students they need to write every day, and I watch Brooklyn 99 on Hulu. I cringed, I laughed, and I decided I want to share a lot of it on this blog- but maybe not all at once. This place has become mostly an archive. I look back every now and then at past posts and smile. With that thought in mind, this blog is a win.

In honors of Valentine's Day, I thought my first Jon:the college years post could be a love poem. This was written some time between 2001 and 2002:

The coward on love 

I’ll write a poem

On a rose petal,

She’ll love me for that.

She’ll say,

“How divine, how romantic,

lets have picnics,

he’s mine.

And some day soon

 we’ll laugh

In an apartment atop dirty streets

Where the affluent turn round,

But he’ll live

next to me.

We’ll argue about

Car trouble, instability, and

Dumb dreams.

He’ll do art, I’ll support him.

We’ll work hard and raise children.

He’ll still be damned hot

When he’s wrinkled and bald. 

Then our graves will lie next

 to a tree which turns pretty in autumn.”

So I sit

With a pen and a rose and some thoughts.

Pour my heart into symbols

Of passion distraught.

The finale is deep,

So creative and true.

Our future’s so bright

She’ll be mine oh so soon.

But the poem doesn’t fit on the little red shape,

so fuck it.