Poetry of the Past

Joy is made up of all colors, like a prism of feelings
sometimes it can travel at the speed of light, flooding the mind
others it will slowly wander through one's subconscious
It is the chameleon of all feeling always changing
shape

color

texture

This poem was the product of a 7th grade language arts class. I found it while going through my family's old desktop computer and decided I'd post it here. In my class (I can't remember the teacher's name) we were supposed to follow a form. It was really dumb, like, "Pick an emotion. Blank is color. It reminds me of insert memory." Or something like that. 

I remember being passionately irritated that we were supposed to follow this equation and end up with a "poem" so I decided that I'd completely disregard the form and write my own poem about an emotion. So I ended up writing about joy. I specifically said that joy was made up of all colors because you were supposed to pick only one. And I said that it was always changing shape, color, and texture, because you were supposed to describe those thing. 

Consequently, this poem was entered into a poetry competition and won 2nd place. (5 bucks ahoy!)

So SUCK IT form poetry from 7th grade!

The Muse

The Muse

Somewhere, deep within my innermost sanctum, lives the Muse.

At least—I think that she lives there.

I hired Her a long time ago, and the details of Her contract are…

Fuzzy.

She was supposed to work only part-time,

For Her rates are almost too much to bear,

No matter how impressive Her credentials.

She does Her job very well,

Though I sometimes worry I don’t keep Her busy. 

I once happened in upon Her,

Thinking to request help with something trivial—I forget.

I was captivated by the airy gown she wore so easily

Like a shaggy lawn wears dew on a misty morning.

But I was shocked by the fact that

She was on hands and knees, scrubbing the floors.

I do my best to keep an orderly inner sanctum,

But it’s true that I don’t get enough chances to escape there,

Like a cabin in the woods deteriorates after years of neglect,

With business meetings and dirty dishes displacing every weekend getaway,

I guess I let it get away from me.

But there was the Muse, scrubbing a cerebral spot on the floor

As fiercely as the Lady Macbeth had ever scrubbed her own bloody hands.

…I decided to come back later.

                                                                                                                                                                                    

I spend a lot more time in my inner sanctum lately—truth be told,

I sometimes can’t seem to pull myself away,

For after having cleaned the room, she proceeded to redecorate.

White walls transformed into forest borders, protected by thick underbrush.

Faded linoleum gave way to lush, living carpet

Ideal for napping in or simply resting tired feet,

the green down peeking out between my toes.

A perpetual snowfall of purple petals tumbles through the air,

sometimes as a blizzard and other times lazily forming piles

that bruise when you step on them and eventually vanish.

I haven’t seen the Muse lately.

I’m afraid she wasn’t under a lifetime contract.

But should the petals turn to dust and my inner sanctum collapse into a blasted waste,

I think she’ll show up, business card in hand, ready to discuss Her rates.

I Made it to Round Two!!!

I made it to Round Two of Last Poet Standing!!!

The next round will take place on Tuesday at 8 (I'm

assuming) at the Crossroads.

For this round, I have to write a poem to this prompt:

Take a character from mythology, history, or pop culture, and place him, her or it in an unusual situation.

At this point in my life, I'm really not sure what I want to write about, but I will say that the first thought that popped into my head was "Gaga in my dreams..."

Hmmmmmmmmmmm...

The Necessity of Interchange Fees

Last semester I took a professional writing class and was required to write an 8-page persuasive paper about changing a policy of my choice.

Given that I am married to a wonderful woman who works at a credit union, I decided to write about a topic that she could help me out with. :) So I elected to write about interchange fees.

Ultimately, the paper netted me an A- (which I happily accepted). We had a follow-up project where we had to trim the paper down and optimize it to be a web document.

I chose to experiment with Wordpress and created The Necessity of Interchange Fees.

The topic of interchange fees boils down to money. And it relates to you in that you're being charged more of it. While it is certainly a complex topic with many sides to it, essentially: we're getting screwed.

Learn how!

Last Poet Standing

BYU–Idaho is staging a competition called Last Poet Standing. I submitted this poem. And I made it to the first round. 


Each poet reads his or her poem and the crowd and some judges decide which poets will advance to the next round. A prompt is given and the poets have a week-ish to write a new poem, which is read and the process continues until the "last poet standing" wins an Amazon Kindle. 


I would absolutely appreciate the support of anyone who'd like to come! It will take place (at least I'll be presenting on)  Tuesday January 25, 2011 on the Crossroads stage in the Manwaring Center. In any case, I'm just happy that I made it and I'm looking forward to a fun time!

National Novel Writing Month

Or NaNoWriMo for short. You'll notice I currently have an awesome little badge with a ship up and to the right, which links back to NaNoWriMo.org, which is the website that sponsors the event.
Go there if you want more info, but November is the month to write a 50,000 word novel!
All you have to do is sign up and then by the end of November, if you've written a 50,000 word novel, you get a certificate emailed to you!

Maybe, not the coolest incentive in the history of the world, but I've never actually written something just for fun (at least in my adult life) and this is the perfect opportunity. I'm crossing my fingers and I'll do my best not to flake out, so here I go! (And I'll have you just guess what my novel will be about.) Anyone? Anyone? Zombie Apocalypse. That's right.

Dreams

I lie awake, sometimes at night
tracing patterns on the ceiling.
Drowsy mind starts taking flight,
clumsy movement—awkward, reeling.

As my sleepy head goes under,
body twitching carelessly,
mind induces worlds of wonder—
alternate reality.

Stilted dances of my mind turn
graceful, swans on feathered wing.
Hollow darkness rages; nocturne
melodies of color sing.

In this state of fertile stasis,
body locked in mime of death,
eyes are closed, life’s only trace is
even, deep and flaming breath.

Dreams I dream while deep in sleep are
echoes of my waking days:
To wake— to shuffle off this coil
of sleep, and let awareness blaze.

Into the Woods with I and Myself

I went with Myself for a walk,
into the woods far from our home.
We trekked up the road ‘til it became a dirt path and followed it to the forest.

The woods have always sang its siren song to us,
But I had always been too afraid to go with me.
Until now.

These woods are haunted you know?
With wolves and witches and goblins and ghosts…
I’ve always been told that monsters live there.

After years of waiting, fearfully denying our need to go,
we had finally resolved to brave the skeletal wall of the lifeless trees,
which seemed to have no openings in its crooked embattlements.
And we forced our way inside.

We had never been in the woods before.
As children, every time we had ever approached that dark, misty forest, thinking to do some exploring,
we’d gotten into trouble.

Decorated with scratches and scrapes,
we forced our way through the thorny underbrush.
I seemed to shiver with fear and excitement.

Myself seemed distant with anticipation of the forbidden.
The branches seized at our clothes and skin—emaciated claws defending their home.
I could feel hot blood trickling off the tip of my nose.

The fading sunshine lazily painted dizzying designs on the forest floor,
which shifted from yellow to red to black to luminescent silver.

I don’t know why we didn’t go in the morning—
The woods are creepy at night.

We walked.

And we walked.

It was difficult.
Always the branches snagged, scratched, and clawed.
We were bloody and bruised and I managed to trip on every stump that he could find,
but my footing never faltered.

I hated these woods.
I hated every stump, branch, and tree.
We were exhausted and filthy and I kept falling on my face,
But I didn’t once see Myself lose his footing.

I had expected to find ancient ruined castles or legendary treasure
within the vaulting trees.

I found nothing but bruises and scrapes.

I had expected to stumble into a fairy toadstool ring or observe a witch’s Sabbath.

I saw nothing but the hateful trees.

I got lost.
Where could he have gone?

I lost Myself.
Why would he leave me?

If I had been with me, he would have
seen visions.
Dreamed dreams.
He would have witnessed the fabric of reality wrest itself from his eyes
and quiver, as drapes before a storm-battered, open window.
He would have beheld realms of permafrost gold and molten diamond.
He would have floated as dust into the sun.
He would have roared with the tempest.
He would have felt the uttermost reaches of the universe as his fingers and toes.

David

In old Firenze, I looked upon
David.
His marble form forever frozen; perfection
embodied in the strokes of a chisel wielded in the hands of a master.

Walking within the walls of the Accademia di Belle Arti Firenze,
one cannot help but be awed by the resplendent anxiety of
flawless humanity.


Silence.
Except for the hushed yells of security guards molesting
camera-wielding tourists.
Or the prattle of field-tripping school-children.
Or the dim buzz of mind-flies, perpetually obscuring the
silence.


The statue gazes through the wall, flaunting the nakedness of his birth
which resounds from wall to wall to wall to wall—
—a deafening roar, perhaps only to me, who has ears to hear.
Michelangelo and seraphim must have wept inwardly when he conceived
David.

And there the monolith still stands, sling in unblemished hand,
contemplating the conquering of a giant and his invading army.
His famous feat not yet blotted out by the failures of his future.
His ivory skin not yet marred by his repentance in sackcloth and ash.
He is a pinnacle of potential, preaching thunderously to mankind what
we may become.

Who wordlessly reminds me that I may never be such an one as
David.

Seasons

Seasons
The frozen sunshine falls on lifeless leaves,
Their once bright faces carved with aged lines.
Brown, orange, red, and yellow paper sheaves,
That twist and dance away from wood confines.
It is as if a plague has swept the trees.
The casualties are mounting in the streets.
The wand’ring wind exhales a shallow wheeze,
The branches sway, a death knell slowly beats.
An icy vice will seize life in embrace,
And frost will paint a wasted countryside.
A stasis, void of mercy and of grace,
Whose spun-glass prison walls are vast and wide.
But death will itself, die down to a grave;
The roles up-turned, the master now a slave.

Just an Orange

Just an orange.


A lopsided ball of citrus juice suspended in a fleshy matrix of stringy pulp,

Sitting in a bowl on my counter.

In my fingers, the heavy fruit dimly stirs up recollections, like sleepy bats startled into noonday sun.

Recollections of gently calloused hands.

Thoughts of blinding lights.

Glimmering jewels of warmth and voices muffled by heartbeat in forte.



Almost tenderly, my thumbnail pierces the thick carapace—

Resilient orange flesh wedges almost painfully into the tender pink flesh residing under the translucent shell of my thumbnail.

Tiny bursts of citrus oil flash into the air, refracting in the humming yellow kitchen light.

A sickening sound of membrane tearing away from membrane crawls in to my cognizance.



My tiny kitchen brims with the scent of pulsating life and the imagined smell of Minute Maid® commercials.



Naked, resting in the palm of my hand—leathery jerkin crumpled, discarded—

I stare into the white webbing weaving around each segmented piece—

—Almost quivering... And think I see the face of God.



Half, half, and half again, until eight segments bleed upon a paper floral napkin.



Brilliant colors blaze

Taste, texture, scent; senses glow

Orange awareness.

Seasons

The bloodless leaves lie stale in the chilled air,
the once bright faces carved with aged lines.
Their sightless eyes can now but blankly stare
at the proud sun who brightly, coldly shines.

It is as though a plague has swept the trees.
The casualties are mounting in the streets.
The pulsing wind, it breathes a shallow wheeze
the branches sway, a death knell slowly beats.

An icy vice will soon crush out the life,
and frost will paint a wasted countryside.
A frozen stasis, void of love or strife.
The spun-glass prison bars are thick and wide.

But death itself will die down to a grave.
Its bonds will melt a path for life to pave.