This is an excerpt from a poem in my next book, Bleed American. Would love to hear your thoughts.
frog song
There’s an eye in the mouth of a frog
Who turned human and rooted through the gardens of gods
Digging up daisies and singing a song
For him it was lucid, so he croaked on,
“Seven thousand ships will dock,
seven thousand dames get off,
with ruffles on their dresses,
each one a beauty contestant,
I take them all, arm in arm
and skip with them to city hall.
The townsmen say,
‘damn that handsome human frog’ “
After digging for several hours
The frog had gathered all the flowers
Then swallowed the eye held in his mouth
First he chewed it up
Then he choked it down
The gods came ‘round to see him frolic away
Singing his song about the traveling dames
I’m sorry kids
Dear alpha generation,
I’m speaking to those of you who read
You’re the future of this country and you live out your lives onscreen
Your teachers are horrified by your lack of ambition to learn and your egotistical behavior
I doubt it’s every one of you
But you kids were screwed
when computers replaced paper
I see you children suffering beyond what you could know. You think your attitude is funny but your classrooms lost control
Your teachers are quitting in droves
I’m genuinely concerned for how y’all will manage as adults
No one wants to deal with you
It’s an utterly sad and outspoken truth
It’s not your fault though
Not if you really look
It’s the iPad your parents handed you
instead of opening a book
The Way
What gives you direction in life?
We meet crossroads everyday
Decisions that determine outcomes
The heroes want to pick the right one
Those of us who would do what we can for a troubled fellow man
If given worser circumstances we’d delight in the function of our hands
Because anxiety cannot control our circumstances if we find reason to rejoice
gratefulness cannot exist at the precise moment I’m paranoid
Cast your worries at His feet
Silly children, you and me
My antidote is growing in infamy
The exact wishes of the enemy
Brothers and sisters I know a direction
I changed my life and credit divine intervention
Battles
Do you have a quote you live your life by or think of often?
My father used to tell me, “the biggest battles you’ll fight are in your own head”. I found this not only accurate, but comforting because I always thought my dad invincible. Yet this advice showed me, he must have battles of his own. He is just as human as I am. I went on to fight for my life in battles in my head. My father always a sounding board for my most disconcerting moral quandaries. My dad taught me good sense. The biggest battles I fought were in my head, but my biggest ally was right by my side.
If it were my world
Pink clouds brushed with orange breaststrokes
Underground there’s caverns hoarding gold
Between the two is an illustrious blue in a dome with mountains bearing fruit trees
Met with beaches of sugar and
lemon water
whispering secrets into the wind
That carries a scent of yeast rising
Toward the center of my city
Where crowds gather to break bread and listen to stories, trading pennies
The stones in the ground mapping the walking paths
are stitched together in patchwork of a quilt your grandma has
I follow the pattern to hole with a ladder
Where I confidently descend into a twinkling honey hued den
With my best friends all around me
We sing and drink and take the gold from the deep
To meld it into the library
Where hundreds of thousands of books stack through the pink clouds and up to the heavens
In our free time we read
To learn unspoken lessons
Camping with the gnomes
Have you ever been camping?
I saw garden gnomes picking lilies in the wild
They came close to my tent, collected sticks and sang American pie
Except it went like this
“Bye bye little beetles and flies
I took the river to the treehouse and fell asleep on the ride
Them good ol’ gnomes never batted an eye
Singing, deep in the forest we hide
Under the leaves we thrive”
I thought their song so happy
I came out from my tent clapping
We roasted weenies by the fire
That was my last time in the wild
With the garden gnomes whose homes are in the trees
Camped out in my dreams
Sunday Barbecue
I asked my neighbors who was playing
It was baseball
Cincinnati against somebody and I didn’t care
I mixed the clear with my guava juice
Tapping the chain link fence with my shoe
I was wearing Yeezys that were slightly too small for me
Reminding me why I don’t shop online
I cross the grass to my patio
my chihuahua mix follows me
I open a soda
and finish a joint from earlier
It’s the same me, just earthier
And I fall asleep on my bench
I breathe deep as my toes flinch
Curled to my discomfort
Waking up on an unknown day
On an unknown planet
12 steps from a gas station
Greeted by the alien strangers
A silvery green slime colored light opens from the plum sky
Revealing the face of a missing child
And my chihuahua mix has a statue in the town square
On Sunday’s they have barbecue
Just like my neighbors
Expression
When do you feel most productive?
Writing isn’t a hobby for me. It’s my outlet, as well as I how I being to understand myself and then express myself to others. I wake up in the middle of the night, usually 3am and I find words swirling vibrantly in my thoughts. I write because I must. If I were to hold myself back from it, I wouldn’t be able to refer to myself as someone I know. What spills onto paper from my head is who I am. That being said, I feel most productive when I’m responding to the calling I feel deep within, to write. I feel as if I’ve accomplished something when I finish a piece, a poem, a story. I don’t think it’s false satisfaction. It’s the parched mouth that drinks to it’s limit, the language that inspires me to continue. For whoever reads, or simply just for me. Writing is life-giving.
IF YOU FEEL IT TOO POETRY 