Penguin Poems

According to the gaily slanting letters
On this multi-colored box
Our product make you
Happy pretty too and funny style

As if determined by a cell
Of linguistic terrorists
Dangerously dangling prepositions
Bent on blowing
Fascist grammar up

Or perhaps it was a dozen
Thesaurus-toting monkeys with a typewriter
Who broke into the warehouse
And after swinging from the rafters
Left their longings on the page.

Shakespeare it is not
And yet this phrase compels me
With its newly minted spark
Of awkward mangledness
Funny style I like
But oh to be happy pretty.

We’re going to be late Dad
She clutches tightly to her sleeping bag
Her backpack, clothes and bug spray
Straining eagerly to see the
Rough track leading to the woods.

We join the line of awkward twosomes
Quivering like bow and arrow
My heartstrings taut and singing
She impatient for the letting go.

A familiar voice rings out
She looks up delighted
And as I busy myself
Putting twenty dollars
In her store account
She says quite simply:
“You can go now”
And walks away.

By tide of trivial
And quotidian use
We wear our language well
Into a manageable size
Obscuring the mysterious
The awesome and the fey
Until we do not blanch
Upon the mention of their name

This is a perhaps a good
And necessary thing.
I had a friend once tell me of a child
Who dug a sandy hole beside the sea
And played long hours in that tiny pool
Because the ocean was too much to bear.

So perhaps it is with our mortality
I so easily pronounce the end of little things
Appliances, vehicles, projects and dreams
All these have died for me a hundred times
And their passing feels quite natural.
They died, I tell myself, and it is all right.

I face into these little deaths
And name them so
To fit me for the journey
Of a day yet undisclosed
When I step lightly from this tiny pool
With faith full-grown
Into the wider sea.

Five
Leon, I will count to five
And if you’re not back here
By the time I get to zero, I will have to tell
Mr. Myers that you are not cooperating today.

Four
Leon, it’s no use hiding
Under the table.
I can see you with the bag over your head
Now get back here please.

Three
Leon, don’t you realize I’m only doing this
Because I want to help the school and teachers
And be a good citizen
And soothe my bleeding-heart liberal conscience about
The sorry state of our public education system?
Come out of that locker.

Two
And no, Leon, you can’t go to the
Bathroom right now, even if you
Need to do doo-doo. I don’t care any more
Just cross your legs.

One
Leon, it’s your final chance.
I would still love to read with you this exciting
Blue-level book about Bob and his dog.
Thank you.

Zero
Bob has a dog

What arrogant
Corn-fed Bonaparte
Dared bestow upon
This two-bit crossroad
The name we give with justice
Only to the great:
New York, Paris, New Delhi, Sao Paulo
A city?

Your upstart streets
Know nothing of
True city ways
The grit and grandeur
The grotesque lassitude
And violent optimism
That beggar and boast

No, you claim your title
Not by achievement
But by counting heads
The weathered and illegal countenance
Of those you summon to your trailer parks
And to your factory floor
Yet neither wish to clothe nor feed.

And then you gather
In the barber-shop
At the soda-jerk
On the hallowed bleachers
Of the high school gym
And watch each other
Sweat and gasp
For air.

A jackass and a joker
Tyrant and typhoon
He forsook the city lights
To live in sepia on this basement wall

Sometimes a vision grows quick and lithe
Sinuous out of bare earth
Other times is sold laboriously
Like soap from door to door

That winter he stood just briefly
At his daughter’s early grave
Then returned grim-faced
To his predestined rounds.

This trellis of anatomy
This carry-all
I portaged grudgingly
Across the evening
Is finally spent
And now thrown over and arranged
With loving care
Upon uneasy sheets

Each crooked piece is balanced
Tensely horizontal
Independent yet beholden
Of all its nearest kin

Afraid lest I disturb
This fragile truce
I lie awake and contemplate
The home I make
Among these tired bones.

Oh Lord, we thank you
For miracles
Of parking spots
And orphan dogs
Successful colonoscopies
And diarrhea cured.

For making Wanda celibate
For bringing wayward Jimmy home
From San Francisco
And for the anonymous guidance given
To the Wilsons as they raise their four impossible children.

And lest we forget
To tell you what you didn’t know
The pancake breakfast is on Saturday
And tickets are only five dollars
In the foyer
Right after this prayer
Is over.

Amen.

I’m now in day 21 of the Poem-a-day challenge on Robert Lee Brewer’s “Poetic Asides”
http://blog.writersdigest.com/poeticasides/

It’s been a blast having to write each day, and to compare notes with other poets – including my beloved mother-in-law, who roped me into this to begin with. I’ll post a few of my efforts here on the blog.