Adventures in Poetry: "Snow Globe"

Occasionally I will post a poem or some other piece of writing on my blog under the title "Adventures in ..."  Why?  Because I like sharing and sometimes I write things that I don't feel like publishing, for one reason or another.  And if I'm not going to publish it through traditional channels, I might as well share it.

The following poem is certainly not one of my best.  I don't know what I was thinking when I wrote it.  But it is the first poem I've written with the note feature of my Zune HD.  That's pretty cool, no?

Anywho.  Feel free to let me know what you think.

Here's the poem:

#NaPoWriMo Entry #14: "Not a Poem"

Yes, I have become an emo poet.  Whatever.  Personal bullshit compels me to write things that reflect the confusion crap going on in my head, even if said poems don't make sense.

Do with this what you will...

Here goes:

#NaPoWriMo Entry #13: "Chickadee"

I don't feel like prefacing this with a grand explanation.  I'm having a shit day.

So here's a poem I wrote for NaPo.  That is all:

#NaPoWriMo Entry #12: "Temples"

Today's NaPo poem was not actually inspired by the picture in this post.  Rather, it was inspired by some random thoughts I have about cats, which includes thinking of them as slave masters.  The poem isn't explicitly humorous, though.

In any case, here's the poem (feel free to leave a comment with your thoughts or a link to your own NaPo entry):

#NaPoWriMo Entry #10: "Feather Skies"

Hooray for poems about birds!  Nature rocks.

Today's poem was inspired by the following:

Brownie points for anyone who can figure out what kind of bird that is...

Here's the poem:

#NaPoWriMo Entry #9: "Great Fictions for a Maiden"

No need to explain the inspiration for this one.  It's self-evident.

I know what you might be saying.  "Another love poem?  When did you become such a sop?"  One might answer "when he got a girlfriend," but that wouldn't really account for it.  I'm simply a hopeless romantic at heart, and so I write these little poems, bad as some of them are, as expressions of that silly habit.

Do with that information what you will.  (Yes, I am four poems behind now.  So sue me...)

Here goes:

#NaPoWriMo Entry #8: "To Lilium"

Today's poem is all rhyme-y.  Why?  Because Adam Callaway keeps asking me to do them.  That's not the real reason, though.  I just felt like it today.

It also helps that my poem was inspired by this:

"What's that?" you say.  You'll just have to read the poem to figure it out.  It should be pretty obvious.

Here goes:

#NaPoWriMo Entry #7: "The Fish in a Cup of His Own Making"

Today's poem was inspired by The Rainbow Fish by Marcus Pfister.  When I say inspired, I don't necessarily mean "inspired by the story," though one could certainly make the argument that my cursory knowledge of this rather famous children's book did influence the writing of the poem below.  It'll be interesting to hear what people think of what I've written...

For the record:  I am behind by three poems.  No idea if I'll catch up...

Here goes:

#NaPoWriMo Entry #6: "To a Taco Bell Employee"

Time for another poem for NaPo.  A good poem?  No.  But Adam wanted me to write something with rhymes, and so I did so while watching a strange argument at Taco Bell.  It should be clear from the poem what I thought of that argument (or I hope so, at least).

Here you go:

#NaPoWriMo Entry #5: "To an Un-American"

Technically this should have gone up yesterday, but I'm now two poem behind.  Haikus, here I come!

I don't think there was a single piece of inspiration for this piece.  It is political, which means that Adam Callaway should not read it.  It also has some bad language, which means anyone who is easily offended by slurs and the like shouldn't read past this sentence.  Hopefully my intent will become clear in the reading.

Here goes:

#NaPoWriMo Entry #4: "A Quiet Gap Builds"

Today's entry is one of those personal entries -- at least, it's related in some way to personal nonsense.  Read at your own risk.  (Note:  I will probably have some political nonsense tomorrow.  Just a warning...)

Here goes:

#NaPoWriMo Entry #3: "To a Gay Child"

Today's entry was inspired by this article.  Read it before or after if you so choose.

Now for the poem:

"To a Gay Child"

He dreamed about being a doctor --
or a writer, or an actor, or maybe something else --
does it matter what he dreams
as much as it matters that he dreams at all?
For is not the dream where all of us find
a better world?
The world we want to live in.
The world we wish could be real.

So he dreams that he might meet a man --
become a father, have a house, a career,
all the things the rest of us hope for --
and he's told by those whose mouths
are too big for their feet:
No! Never! Ever! Ever!

No...who would have thought two letters
could become the discourse of a nation?
To overshadow every other way
we can conceive of the future?
That two letters could destroy that same future,
like cannons against a matchstick wall...
That dreams could become the self-serving devices
of a dying empire...

Are his dreams empty gestures from a forlorn soul?
The candle-lit whispers flickering
in the drafty tomb of someone else's life?
Stolen by the specter of a gnarled tree yet to bloom...

The new religion:  a curled path up the mountain of man,
through the spider's den of glass spires.
To steal his dreams, to replace them
with the facsimile of a self.
Is it any wonder that his wrists turn into mouths,
speaking blood letters to the constricted face of the rope?

He dreams for the relief from the last breath
in a body wracked by doubt.
He dreams because
that is all he has left...

#NaPoWriMo Entry #2: "No Small Place"

Another entry?  Yup.  I'm taking this National Poetry Writing Month thing seriously.  This week's poem was inspired by a book by Jamaica Kincaid called A Small Place.  I recommend it to everyone; it's a biting critique of tourism in the Caribbean which draws upon, in my mind, the discourses of tourism (pamphlets, brochures, etc.).

Here's the image and poem:

NaPoWriMo Entry #1: "The Tree of Knowledge"

Before I get to the poem, I thought you all should see what inspired me to write what follows.  The following images are of the same tree, though not the tree that originally inspired me, as I did not have my camera with me while I was on campus.  In any case, I hope the images inspire you too (if not, then that's your problem, meanie)!

The Tree of Knowledge (also known as Loopsy)

This is like something out of a weird Little Nemo dream.

The Tree of Knowledge

The tree of knowledge spells its name in permafrost

moss dangles from its limbs like frayed fingers framed 

by the edges of a memory of another age,

of smoke tendrils reaching to the earth to twist 

into the fog from which the sweet dew of life

chimes a tune for which only the sun will rise.

What name does the wintry skeleton give itself

as it bends -- crick, crack -- with the wind

to track its tired oaken digits in the snow?

Can anyone read its name -- of whispers and salt --

if nobody is around to see the letters?

In whose language does the tree of knowledge speak?

If not our own, then the traces of a tree thought

must be found on the pages of our books,

like subconscious -- subliminal -- metaphors

to be teased from the edges of our collections;

nobody will read the tattered adventures of pulp pap

for the one hundred years to come -- or fifty.

But tree language is a permanent marker

beneath the layers of pulp upon which

the author pens his name in far too many words.

If we could reverse engineer the page,

perhaps we could rediscover the sacrificial lamb

whose voice -- chop, crash -- we cannot hear.

Perhaps, too, the tree of knowledge could tell us

what the Woolly Mammoth calls itself 

from the depths of so many ACGT repetitions 

archived in the permafrost cover of gnarled roots.

Perhaps humanity is but a prolongated process of return:

to ourselves, to the beings we were meant to be,

to the thought bubbles we actually are, archived, too, 

in the sap stream memories of the grove.