Monthly Archives: April 2012

At last

Posted on April 30, 2012 by Andrew Kreider

It’s been a busy National Poetry Month. To celebrate, I’ve been writing along with the daily prompts on Robert Lee Brewer’s Poetic Asides blog. Today was the final prompt – to write a “fade away” poem. I got to thinking about what it’s like to watch someone drive away – to be left behind, and to be glad to be wherever you have landed. That’s often how I feel these days – learning to live happily with myself, digging the earth, finding joy in the smallest things. At last…

At last

This graying fleck in the dust behind you
this ampersand laughing scooping up
ochre earth in the summer breeze
is the fool who learned at last
how to love his own soul.
This lingering smile
just before I
fade away
call it
joy.

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Death in the pot

Posted on April 23, 2012 by Andrew Kreider

It’s been a rough week in the neighborhood. We had a grade-school kid collapse on our lawn after experimenting with synthetic marijuana. Then a spate of gang-related graffiti, including some of the most disturbing racial threats I have seen. What really set me back in the end was the way none of this even phased me. I just carried on as if things were normal. Which I guess they are. No outrage, no compassion. Just a kind of jaded indifference. I don’t like to think this the is person I am becoming. Something has to change in this neighborhood – and maybe it’s me Maybe you can connect with this, in some way. Anyway, I wrote this bop as I reflected on the experience of these days.

He couldn’t have been more than twelve years old,
face down on our lawn, strung out on K-2.
Out of nowhere there were three police cars
blocking the street, soon joined by a fire truck
and a white ambulance. Then came the crowd,
the shouts, the knowing looks, the same old dance.

Something has to change in this neighborhood.

Overnight there was fresh graffiti sprayed
on our neighbors’ garage – a racial slur
with a threat. The City sent a young man
to take photos. He hardly said a word.
It all just felt so completely normal:
cops on our lawn, the n-word three feet tall.
It wasn’t until my son said to me,
“I’m scared to be outside,” that it hit me:

Something has to change in this neighborhood.

Suddenly I’m angry. Seething at the
drug pushers, slum lords, smug politicians,
most of all, myself – for falling asleep,
dulled by twenty years in one place, until
I don’t blink when a kid might be dying
on my doorstep. There is death in the pot.

Something has to change in this neighborhood.

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Coming through in the clutch – Live Video

Posted on April 16, 2012 by Andrew Kreider

Here’s a true (ish) story – performed live at Elkhart’s b on the River, in March 2012. My mother was present for the show, so I couldn’t resist. She’s an amazing woman!

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Independence Day

Posted on April 16, 2012 by Andrew Kreider

Got off on a mental tangent this weekend, thinking about a “Doomsday” poetry prompt from Robert Lee Brewer, and wondering how my Amish neighbors might handle an alien invasion…

After the Fourth of July holiday,
there are no famous landmarks left standing.
The Golden Gate Bridge, The Eiffel Tower,
Big Ben, The White House – none of them survive.

But here in town, no one knows much about
all that. At the Village Inn, plain-dressed men
eat heaping plates of scrapple and head cheese
and joke in low German about tourists,

while girls in coverings and tennis shoes
giggle about ketchup and the panties
they got at the U.P. Mall. No one looks
twice at the thing sitting in the corner.

When all you wear is dark pants and blue shirts
everyone else looks like an alien.
You love your enemies, and sympathize
with all who sing: “This world is not my home.”

Outside in the parking lot, the horses
make strange at the iridescent saucer
hitched awkwardly to the post between them
swishing their tails to keep the flies at bay.

When Amos Yoder’s barn is vaporized
the Amish refuse to retaliate.
Instead, volunteers come from miles around
and raise a brand new building by milking time.

This pattern is repeated for a week
until the invaders give up and leave.
At the Village Inn, they are serving pie,
and there are no planes flying overhead.

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Something worth saving (the Octain Refrain)

Posted on April 12, 2012 by Andrew Kreider

Before you start to save my soul
from hell, it’s hardly worth it yet.
There so much life I want to get

to, if you’d spare the time. My goal
is this: to take a week to break
the rules. And laugh. I want to roll

back here sky-high on being whole,
before you start to save my soul.

. . . . .

Sometime last year, I ran into the poetic work of Luke Prater. He writes a great blog under the title WordSalad. Well worth your time checking him out. The Octain Refrain is one of Luke’s creations, and I find it a fascinating form within which to write.

It has eight lines, arranged as two tercets followed by a couplet. Each line has eight syllables, normally in iambic or trochaic meter (but it’s also OK just to count syllables if you prefer). The last line is a repeat of the first line, as much as possible.

The rhyme scheme is as follows:
A-b-b
a-c/c-a [note the middle line here has a mid-line rhyme:c-c]
b-A

or, alternatively

A
b-b-A
c/c-a-b
A

A bit confusing just to read the rubric. Probably easier to read a couple of examples to see how it works in practice. The poem I started this post with is an Octain Refrain. Here’s a link to another, by poet Beth Winter. Why not try an Octain Refrain yourself? And drop me, or Luke, a note to say how you get on!