Grandmother

He lived just two doors down
from her when he was eight,
and when she sent him home
with a hot glass bowl of something she had cooked
for him to share with his other family down the street,
she said,
“If you fall running down the street,
throw the bowl to the side.
I don’t want it to cut you.
I can always get another bowl.
I can’t get another grandson.”
And she watched as
the skinny legs stiffly and awkwardly
carried the blonde boy balancing a steaming dish
to his home.
The back of her hand wiping the sweat from her forehead,
the breeze on the front porch blowing through her house dress.

This was the philosophy taught,
the first lesson of many rules:
that no matter how
precious the work performed,
no matter how hard the sacrifice,
no matter how blistered the hands may be,
the one receiving the gift is always
valued more.

Finding Me

An explanation of this poem:
The more I meet other poets and listen to their performances, the more I am amazed by two types of poetry: form--a departure from free verse and a journey back to older styles using meter and rhyme more formally, illustrated in the first part of the poem--and performance poetry or spoken word--poetry which gains its strength in the performance, illustrated in the second part of the poem. I'm not sure I'm good at either one. After hearing some of these genius voices, I wrote about trying to find my voice:


I wish I wrote my poems with such style
That everyone that heard would be amazed
At how the syllables danced, all the while
Enchanting readers helpless, listening, dazed.
But I don’t do that.

I wish I was a master of spoken word
demanding my message be heard
or I’ll knock you ‘side the head with my diction
the prediction in my fiction
forcing you to grab on, hold tight,
spin around,
shaking you,
breaking you,
making you
love the mouse that roared
in my house that soared higher than anybody
ever thought poetry could take them.
I could throw in an “ation”
like syncopation
with the nation
of anticipation.
I wanna curse
and be political,
maybe even Democrat.
But I don’t do that.

All I can do
is stand
on white tile
and bleed
and cry as I try to clean the mess
and hope
that someone who hears me
feels somewhat warmer
knowing that the coldness of the world
is shared.

Audio of this poem

Something Different

Ok, I'm the one usually writing the poetry, but this time one of my students in my AP Lit. class and in my AP Psychology class wrote one for me, about me. The estrogen comment involves my class of all girls, one boy.


Clocks
Clocks and strange toys and lots of art
Hanging effortlessly from the walls
You shuffle in like a mouse
Hurrying to find his house
"So what's up!?" you say
Louder than I think you intend

We talk and laugh and joke around
And when I leave I feel I've found
Someone understands and knows
Just how far away my mind goes

Desks
Desks in a circle
And no one in the middle
Empty-empty
Till we fill it with thoughts
Like a large melting pot

You have shown us that
Literature is not just about tastes
But the characters and meanings
Behind all that is said

We walk away
Not loving or hating
But with a little bit of something
Bigger than ourselves

Estrogen
Estrogen everywhere
You cannot hide
Psychology is a mixture
Of biology and the immaterial mind

As Christians it's okay
To try to comprehend
All that goes on inside the head

Words, times, minds
Always changing
Never ending
Understanding

You have made high school
Bearable
Changeable
Livable

So thank you
My counselor
My teacher
My friend
You have shown that
Literature is not just words
Psychology is not just chemicals
And I am not my own but God's

Gray Water, White Sky

When you told me you
had decided to sign contract
at a school in which I do not work
and leave the one in which I do,

When you said,
“This is not the end of our relationship,”
and we both laughed
because it sounded like a failed romance
and we were two men in my office,

I didn’t think to give
my opinion ,
or say what I thought of you,
or that I understood Daedalus.

I only swallowed and remembered the
television when I was growing
up. The colorless fuzzy images of
gray water and white sky.

Life in a Second

What is this other life I live?
Do I take on divinity
and create an image
of what I wish I was,
carefully selecting the items of me I
like and forming out of digital clay
only what I find tolerable?
Starting from scratch, do I
throw away the original blueprints
and build the new stronger,
better,
faster
version of Poet 2.0?

Or do I merely
birth a crying babe
into pixilated life?
A form released from molecules and age.
A man more like me
Than I could ever be myself.