Monday, November 14, 2011

Can you say this??

Very well, then
Mr. Knox, sir.
Let's have a little talk
about tweetle beetles....

What do you know
about tweetle beetles?
well...

When tweetle beetles fight,
it's called
a tweetle beetle battle.

And when they
battle in a puddle,
it's a tweetle
beetle puddle battle.

AND when tweetle beetles
battle with paddles in a puddle,
they call it a tweetle
beetle puddle paddle battle.
AND...

When beetles battle beetles
in a puddle paddle battle
and the beetle battle puddle
is a puddle in a bottle...

...they call this
a tweetle beetle
bottle puddle
paddle battle muddle.
AND...
When beetles
fight these battles
in a bottle
with their paddles
and the bottle's
on a poodle
and the poodle's
eating noodles...

...they call this
a muddle puddle
tweetle poodle
beetle noodle
bottle paddle battle.
AND...

Now wait
a minute
Mr. Socks Fox!

When a fox is
in the bottle where
the tweetle beetls battle
with their paddles
in a puddle on a
noodle-eating poodle.
THIS is what they call...

...a tweetle beetle
noodle poodle bottles
paddled muddled duddled
fuddled wuddled
fox in socks, sir!

Friday, April 15, 2011

Spent

I spent my young years Dreaming
Dreaming of the day
When life and love and happiness
Would all come into play.

I spent my young years Wishing.
Wishing every moment passed.
So I could grow up faster,
And have my fun at last.

I spent my young years Dreaming.
Just dreaming of the day.
Then woke to find my young years
Had just been dreamed away.

I spent my middle years Hoping.
Hoping things would turn out right.
That all the mistakes that I had made
Would vanish over night.

I spent my middle years Trying.
Trying to reach those childhood dreams
Climbing ever up Life's scaffold
To reach the topmost beam.

I spent my middle years Hoping.
Hoping things would turn out right,
Then woke to find, in Life's long day
I was fast approaching night.

I spent my old years Praying.
Praying that God would forgive,
And when my day on earth was over
He'd take me home to live.

I spent my old years Searching.
Searching for the reason why,
We begin to grasp Life's meaning
Only when we come to die.

I spent my old years Praying.
Praying that God would forgive
Another soul who wasted life,
Who Dreamed, but failed to Live.

Saturday, April 9, 2011

something's not quite right. . .

Sometimes I wish to write a line
But worry that it will not rhyme.

Then a rebel deep inside my soul
Says "would you please just let it go?"

And while I try to write free verse,
I slip back to Zuessian of course.

(I'm rather proud of my three unrhyming almost rhymes.)

Friday, March 25, 2011

an unfinsihed beginning

I'll sell you a story,
A nickle a piece.
A penny a pound if your poor.

Of tragic young damsels,
accosted by beasts.
Of dashing young men sent to war.

This was the opening lines of a ballad I had begun. I liked the intro, which is suppose to be sung by a troubadour, but never finished the rest. Who knows, maybe I'll get around to it some day.

Wednesday, March 9, 2011

A long poem on stairs

I like a good stairwell.
I like to climb them.
I like to descend them.
I like to experience them.

I like a good stairwell.
One which twists and turns.
One with pleasing rails fit just so for my hand.
I like a stairwell that echos.
that takes my few hummed notes,
sucks them up and spits them back out as a full song.

I like a stairwell made of polished wood.
A stairwell that speaks of the epitome of good breeding.
I like a pure-bred stairwell.

I like a stairwell with gum and questionable stains
and cigarette butts in the corner.
A stairwell who's end is both intriguing and terrifying.
A stairwell that seems to lurk, who's shadows seem suspicious.
I like a trashy stairwell.

I like a stairwell that curves smoothly around
in an endless spiral a light house or a loft.

I like a stairwell that's boxy and awkward,
like a gangly child - a parking garage, a dorm.

I like a stairwell with many landings,
covered in pots of flowers so that each flight is separate,
with a garden in between.

I like a stairwell that goes straight up,
inspiring groans of dismay to those at the bottom,
and childish pride in those at the top.

I like the stairs that lead up to the memorial of Abraham Lincoln.
A large flight of steps, with good ole Abe sitting at the top.
His giant size makes the stairs look small,
and so he deceives you in death as he never did in life.

I like the stairs connecting two little back roads in Cincinnati,
which when you stand at the top look ordinary enough,
but when you stand at the bottom you can see
a design painted onto each of the risers so that it comes together to form a picture.

I like the stairs painted onto a building in downtown Cincinnati,
stairs painted so convincingly that more than once
a young child has run smack into the building.
A few adults have come close too.

I like the stairs that I have read about in books.

Stairs like the external stairs of Balors Needle,
who's rusted steps were nearly the death of the young squire Keladry.
Or the staircases of a certain king of the Enchanted Forrest.
Who was so fond of sweeping majestically up and down stairs
in long robes that he built a plethora of stairways,
some of which lead no where at all.
Or the stairs which took Frodo and Sam up to Mordor.
Or the stair carved inside a tree that housed a young Merlin.

I like the stairwell that connects Liberty Hill to Reading Rd
which is overgrown and hardly any sane person uses.
It always smells of diapers and is covered with broken bottles.
I take these stairs to reach the number 43 Reading Rd bus,
and always feel a thrill of fear that this might be the time
I am killed by some drunk hiding in the surrounding woods.
This is my adrenaline rush
because I don't like roller coasters.

I like the memories that live on in stairwells,

Like the stairs in a certain hall in Ponca City, Oklahoma,
in which I have never been,
but in which my parents had their wedding reception,
and on which my mother had a picture taken in her white gown,
with her train sweeping grandly behind her.

Or the stairwell that I walked down with friends
on a quite, sunny day freshman year,
and at the bottom found my first job in Cincinnati,
cleaning for a lady.

Or the stairwells in the girls dorm,
which threatened to plunge anyone running
late to class in heels to their deaths.
I wrote an ode to those stairs freshmen year,
it was an ode of loathing.
But now that I have been gone from there a few years,
I begin to miss everything, even the stairs.

And so I find myself sitting hear on this rainy night,
on a dirty stairwell thinking of all the stairwells I have known,
and some that I haven't,
and of which ones I liked.
And I find that I have liked them all.

I like a good stairwell.
I like to climb them.
I like to descend them.
I like to experience them.

Tuesday, February 8, 2011

A tradition continues

I greatly enjoy posting my anti-love poems during the month of February. And so I will.

John Donne

I LONG to talk with some old lover's ghost,
Who died before the god of love was born.
I cannot think that he, who then loved most,
Sunk so low as to love one which did scorn.
But since this god produced a destiny,
And that vice-nature, custom, lets it be,
I must love her that loves not me.

Sure, they which made him god, meant not so much,
Nor he in his young godhead practised it.
But when an even flame two hearts did touch,
His office was indulgently to fit
Actives to passives. Correspondency
Only his subject was ; it cannot be
Love, till I love her, who loves me.

But every modern god will now extend
His vast prerogative as far as Jove.
To rage, to lust, to write to, to commend,
All is the purlieu of the god of love.
O ! were we waken'd by this tyranny
To ungod this child again, it could not be
I should love her, who loves not me.

Rebel and atheist too, why murmur I,
As though I felt the worst that love could do?
Love might make me leave loving, or might try
A deeper plague, to make her love me too ;
Which, since she loves before, I'm loth to see.
Falsehood is worse than hate ; and that must be,
If she whom I love, should love me.

Saturday, August 21, 2010

I caught a hint of Christmas in the air . . .

and so I thought I'd polish up my recitation of the Night Before Christmas. And since I have no reason to recite it, I though I might annoy you with it. So here's my favorite line,

"As dry leaves that before the wild hurricane fly,
When they meet with an obstacle mount to the sky
So up to the roof-tops his coursers they flew
With a sleigh full of toys and St Nicholas too."

I have always liked the name Nicholas. . . and no Santa that wasn't just for brownie points!

Irreversable

half a league half a league half a league onward. . . a wind which whips the puddles dry. . .my friend you would not tell with such high zest. . . here where the world is silent. . .he took his vorpal sword in hand. . .nothing beside remains. . .the sun was shining on the sea. . . all the kings horses and all the kings men . . . lives of great men all remind us. . .

Once uttered, the words can't be unsaid
Once thought, a thoughts un-unthinkable
The written word can't be unread
A dream, once dreamt is unsinkable

So exposed our lives are filled
With a richness incomparable,
Which in time will always yeild
A damage unrepairable.

Followers