Category: Book o’ Verse

Bodies fly
close
overhead

glittering geese eyes

turning my body to track

invisible, lovely
dark 

                                          honk.

Up on those shoulders. Over that soft tummy, the gray-haired chest slopping in.
Sitting up there, hands clutched together in clumps of see-through white.
He walks you around the edge of the lake. It feel so light up there on those shoulders,
Falling would just mean floating, then landing, then hopping back up.
And a rare smile from grandpa at the sight of the bouncing boy.
But you can’t see that smile parked up on there on his shoulders.
You can’t see his face, in fact.
You’re looking forward, you’re breathing in his cherry tobacco hum.
You’re grandpa’s face today. He’s got a happy five-year-old’s face.
You’re giving that to him.
He’s giving you lift.

both kids at other
kids’ houses two toothbrushes
standing by the sink.

Snow lights
the heavens you
sparkle at me cold

soft indentations
that last a week or so
the footprints crushed

the heavens sparkle
at me cold
you
snow.

“75 years, same coffee.”
Don’t trust fancy coffee drinkers, they’re saying.
Or at least, do trust people who are constant
— fixed, unflinching
with scorched taste buds.
Give your money to the folks who say
Go to hell, cappuccino. Go to damn hell, double latte.
Buy this car?
Our coffee is pre-9/11. Pre-boom and bust. Pre-velcro.
We’re drinking the coffee
the greatest generation drank
when they were nine.
What’s it going to take?
What’s it going to take
to get you into
this coffee cup?

I ate a chocolate whopper today. A cookie that was so chocolatey that
in the molecular space where there’s usually air
or maybe some kind of eerie vacuum
with a faint ringing tone
there was no air or vacuum. There was
more chocolate.
At the time I thought I’d earned it.
I thought the math of my last few days
the good things I’d done, the bad things, the easy moments I’d had, the challenges
had all added up to
it being OK
for me to consume
a chocolate whopper.
At the time.
That’s what I thought.

Here’s another libretto that spilled out of my soon-to-be-seven-year-old son. He sang this one last weekend while puttering around his bedroom. To me, it sounds sort of like something written in 1200 BCE and then translated in the 1950s.
I should also mention that I told him I’d be posting this and asked him what he wanted his “Vortex” name to be. (My daughter is codename “Shonny Vortex,” my brother adopted “Jake Vortex” when he played sax on a couple of tracks a while back.) So anyways, he considered “Fire Vortex” and “Ice Vortex” before settling on “Power Vortex.”
Who am I to argue with a boy named “Power”?
Do You Love Bad Guys the Best?
by Power Vortex
Let us live and win the battle.
Let us lie under the stars.
God, why is this happening?
You say no to everything.
Please let us win the battle.
So when will you say yes?
Then we’ll win the battle.
Or do you love bad guys the best?
Is it for the good and the bad?
Is it for the bad and the good?

Kids write the darndest verse. A while back I posted a poem or two by my daughter Shonny. Here’s one from my six-year-old son. He doesn’t really talk like this, but every once in a while he’ll belt out a non-rhyming song, sort of like a libretto, and these words will come out from somewhere, and I’ll scramble to write them down. He tells me this one is about dreaming.
Dawn in the midnight.
You see the voices far.
You see the big flying voices
and the beautiful light that I guard.
It’s very like life.
You see the beautiful midnight sky
and the beautiful voices.
You have lots of fun but…
you don’t know the ways
of your life and the voices so far.

Oh beautiful sky.
Yeah, dawn in the midnight!

Now more than ever we could all really use
a yearbook photographer.

Whispering 'round the quad.
Snapping photos of us
and our respective pals
through the zoom lens of
a swank 35mm Canon (Christmas gift)
as we participate in various
activities.
Child-rearing, for example. Sock-matching.
These things that we do.

Afterhours they're hanging with the Editor.
Sipping diet soda, talking Duran Duran.
Nominating classmates for various awards.
Maybe you, even?
Best eyes?

Anne Frank was resting.
The day before she had bested the Werewolf.
The day before that, an alien robot had burst
into the attic.
But there’s no rest for Anne Frank.
Through a small window ringed with
pencil-drawn tulips, you can see
Godzilla’s head. At first, it’s the
size of a thimble or a small eraser. Then it makes
that noise, that horrible Godzilla noise.
The ground thumps with Godzilla’s
horrible slapping feet.
The head grows.
And Anne Frank knows she’s got
another monster to deal with.
“Kitty,” she asks, “if I destroy this one, will they
let me walk the streets?”
“Will they declare me a hero? Will they free
my people? Will they free the others?
If I destroy Godzilla?”