E.I. Does Not Apply To Habits

Severance in the highest places
that were drilling down to the core,
compacting the softness into packed,
hard stone.
But we broke into the mine
and drugged all the workers,
dragged them away and shut off the drill,
heard it whir to an exhausted stop.
We cheered! for victory!
High-fives all around!
and sat down
bewildered,
as to what to do next.

I Am A Man

I am a man
squishing cans
that filled with beer,
now fill my belly, fill me with fear
of the future, my wife
not holding me dear but I miss out
on this feeling squishing my can because I am
a MAN!
I don't have any feelings except for spinning ceilings and I like it that way
so I don't have to pay attention to things
that I don't like
my little tyke running around
on his hands and knees in the sand playing dad with
his trucks in his hands building mountains of bland nods from me
and squish goes the can because I am a man.
Jesus could take this cup from my hand and pour
it with water but I don't like him!
He doesn't like me I'm too filled with sin and I don't understand
anyway the Bible is rot and I forgot how to love so it's over,
it's done,
I'd rather have fun with my beer and my hand and
some ladies on the screen trying hard to be seen by a
dad just like me
who would rather squish cans and
listen to bands scream about woes and leather
and things the second time Sports Net comes on
I run away home to my bed
where my wife sleeps
alone because I
thought first of myself
not even my son,
who needs me to love him -
but how do I love when just love's not enough?
Living water! they say it but sure don't portray it and I'm scared
of a life where I don't have my vices to pull me away
every hour, every day, should I need them!
Ah, too sad,
hard and sad to be a man without hope,
without life,
though a son and a wife
maybe all I ever wanted,
though didn't know what we needed and Jesus
preceded to show me the way
but I don't know that way and I don't even know
what I don't know anymore
I don't know what I'm for but I slip slowly to sleep
a taste of beer on my tongue and no love on my lips
though a woman sleeps soundly and
profoundly I dream about nothing but stupor...
a man needs a love and a man needs some help
but pride is on the shelf and he is not a man
while he's blind to the First who was last.
So get up out of bed and turn off the TV.
Shut down your laptop,
are you listening to me?
Presence is important in life and in mind
find help if you need it and try to be kind to
the children who love you and the wife
who lies next to you each night
she's given her life to be by your side.
It's fine. You're a man. You can do this.

Pure Love

Once again, I've forgotten to write a poem of the day.... twice in a row! agh!!! To anyone actually following these, I'm sorry! But here's my poem for today.

Interest forged in deeper depths
Than a ring of solid gold,
Spoke me words of wisdom
from a love I couldn't hold.
Love, pure love, unwavering, alone,
Steadfast in trials and heartache alike
When he rolled away the Stone.
Nothing like it, nothing near,
Nothing same as the One who clears the burdens
and brambles and heartache and shambles and
calls me, I'm His Own.

Tether on a Lonesome Heart

In the garden I ran aground
Compass lost among the sounds
Of singing crooks and adverts loud
I poked the holes among my sails,
I volunteered those dusty sails
battling fish who were eating whales,
Trying to make sense of ancient tales.

Never ran aground before
in a garden that actually wanted more
where plants withered, but held to hope, or
handed me any sturdy ropes,
I'd never seen roses sing
though swayed in the sea and
with valiant cries, call out to me.

So we tried to sever the rusty parts...
and tied the rope fast to my creeking mast,
to bring the wind to meet the sea
to bring your mind to meet with me,
to give my ship a second start:

a Tether on my lonesome heart.

The 30 second poem

Well, I forgot to write a poem yesterday, which was a horrible missed opportunity. I almost forgot again today, but luckily, as I was sliding into bed, something poked my memory and woke me up and Told me to write a poem.
So, I present to you the Thirty-Second-Poem: I wrote it in literally about thirty seconds in my brain while Blogger loaded on my phone. Now I'm gonna type it out as fast as possible and get on with the snoozin'!

In the garden I ran aground
Compass lost among the sounds
Of singing crooks and adverts loud
I was the tallest of my own small crowd.

I think I might spring from this in tomorrow's poem and I'll probably change that last line... Cuz right now I hate it. But I'll do that once I've had a good night's sleep.

Mayne Island

Up on the gleaming rock face
where sunlight found a home,
we sat and gazed out on the rippling sea
and pondered how it all began.
We admired the swooping hawks
and the
green moss that put neon signs to shame.
Talked about arbutus trees peeling away their bark like
parchment, and
bugs that looked like wood chips.
It was all so
majestic, all so unique,
and we were part of it,
we were part of the Kingdom.

Brand New Music

Has that jab of excitement sometimes
that makes you want to suddenly
sway back and worth in the car or
sip your iced tea in rhythm with the bassline.
When this happened in the 90s,
I put a tape in the player
and hovered around the room like I
was guarding a treasure
waiting for the first bars to blast through
my parents' black plastic stereo,
so I could bolt
like lightning
or a startled steed
towards the player and jam my fingers
into the Rec. and Play buttons
all at once
and sign with relief,
knowing I had captured the magic
onto my mix-tape.

Till The End Of April

If I write a poem every day
maybe one will find its way
into my heart and grow a tree
and being a plant
will keep sprouting leaves!
and shoots! and flowers and bees will come
and pollinate my tree and it'll grow so tall
so mighty
you won't see the top -
you won't see it at all.
It'll be so far up
it'll be stuck in my brain
like a wave
to a friend
I hadn't seen in days
or years
or a whole entire decade and waved
to them across the street cuz
I knew their face,
it was familiar to me,
my friend who's a tree,
they grew in my heart and got stuck in my brain
the painting of their face was
a poem I made
one day
out of many
from March until May
and I won't be stopping,
no how,
no way,
I water the tree
every night, every day because I want it to grow
to a beautiful height
so I can't see the top
but I'll know it by name -
I'm the writer, you see,
so I kiss my little tree and mold till it grows and runs away on me
takes flight on its own,
and blossoms with green.

In A Dungeon, A Moon Is Just A Rock

I put my heart in a box,
I locked it
inside
to out,
my head turned the locking key.
Heartbars, headmaster.
My head smiled down:
a sun without heat,
a padlock with no trick
no key, and
drooled.

AND THEN DINNER!

It was the greatest feast:
the wolf caught the child,
and I earned my place among the learned -
I tasted sooooo good on a porcelain plate
I ate it all!

and in the dungeon
my heart melted into stone
and became the walls that held it,
became the clasp,
became the lock,
became a dead, unmoving rock,
became a snake who knew everything but its own tail
and chased itself forever.

You Found Me In The Crevices

You found me in the crevices,
alost,
alone,
afraid,
and then you found me in the darknesses:
alone,
alost,
afraid.
And then you suffered with my weaknesses,
tiring from the raid and though
you suffered through my weaknesses
you loved me all the same.

And though I ate the bitter sting
my blood was tongued with metal
you spurred me in the mettled darkness:
the price had all been settled;
in our weakness
in our crevice
where arrogance hung like dirty cloths for endless days
like dusty cloths,
you hid me from my weaknesses and mended them your ways.
You set a prophet in my heart,
you gave him words to speak.
You gave him words to tell me how
the places I was weak.
You told him I am not my own
and though you've shown me many times,
cradle still you all my weakness,
knowing I am blind.
I heard a voice,
I called His name,
I blundered to His soul,
he told me a tale of a far off land,
where weakness is not my own.
My weakness is not for myself,
but for the cross to bear,
and on the night I doubted most
my Jesus met me there.

Real Hipsters of Vancouver

Who are we?
Hiding in the crevices
of society,
forgoing lenses
in lieu of frames, and
having stars tattooed on our hands.
Wiping our sweaty brows
with coffee stained palms
smearing organic balms
over ears to sooth
awkward sounding basslines
reverberating through plaid shields
and Vancouver Umbrella subs.
Our favorite band
only has two fans,
(three if you count my rescue cat, or
one, if you don't count the fourth guitarist's mom.)
We're wearing rain boots
that look like they cost us nothing
but they really cost us the entirety of
the rest of our student loans..
which is why we're now making tea out of
the "organic naturals" coming up through the cracks of
the pathway at the house
where we all rent a room
and share the bath
and scratch our beards
and write poems about far-off things
like world peace and Vancouver Hipsters.

Stat Class

90% of your digestion comes from lies,
40% of your relationships are fake, and 11% of the
information you take in every day has
0% pertinence to reality, which, realistically, makes it
100% worthless.
Within one year, either approximately 34% of stats will be re-
written, or
22% of university classes will be obsolete,
or there will be around
18 new riddles circulating the web.
By the next century, they'll disprove 89 out of 583
of the foremost religious beliefs
and show how
science
is really just an art form but
only 37% of people
understand 10% of what they've read,
and the other 69% percent know it's false.

Give and Take

The sticky juice finds it's way
out of the porous citrus colored flesh
and dribbles down my fingers
in tiny rivulets.
My nails sink in,
pull up,
ripping open the treasure chest to reveal
golden pockets underneath,
protected in soft white bedding.
Over,
and over,
I nimbly become acquainted with my tender provider.
At last the final lid comes off,
and I sink my teeth into the orange's simple gift.

Off by 45

Missed today's deadline?
Better write a haiku fast!
That's much easier.

Close Encounters of the Stationary Kind

Gingerly,
I picked up the card.
The faded pink edges
where the glitter hung on
for dear life
were bent from sitting
in my plastic box for too long.
A teddy bear
held out a gift to me,
in 2D,
while he sat in front of the words:
Happy Birthday.
A bump near the fold promised
a serenade of digital proportions
upon opening.
I fingered the tough paper's
crisp edge,
and pulled up.
Love, Grandpa and Grandma
became visible
only splits of a second
before I saw the white tab:
about to awaken the sleeping
orchestra.
I caught my breath,
tugged just that much further,
and
Out rushed the sound!
filling my living room from
within tiny folds of paper...
but instead of a
family opera,
it was an alien spaceship...

You don't realize you're growing up until you've already done it.

Among the taxes,

stickers
and construction paper,

student loan records,
pay stubs,
letters,
birthday cards from Grandma,
sits my numb bum
on the uncomfortably short carpet,
trying to make sense of
my life in black and white.
I'm sleepy,
thinking about tasks,
rubbing mascara into my eyes,
wishing for some chocolate with hazelnut chunks.
Or about seven beers.
Or both, as I push through the forest
of thinly sliced tree trunks.
One card
lying among the many documents,
says that when I was 19, I
referred to checking men out
as "admiring the merchandise."
Apparently my girlfriend thought this was funny enough
to put it into a birthday card.
Laughing, I remember.
Under the birthday card,
lies a pay stub from
Burger King, 2010.
I'm staring at it and wondering
if it would be considered socially OK,
to sniff the paper an see
if it still smells like onions and back-room gossip.
I place the pay stub
into its proper folder and glance
at the time:
11:16
I realize
that I haven't written my poem yet for today.
I am becoming too responsible.

POWERLESS

It's sinking,
warning me that the end is coming,
Urging me to push my creative juices,
type faster,
think further outside the box as close
to warp speed as possible.
White bar pushes itself under the yellow mountain
and screams at the top of its lungs,
"FINISH THE DAMN POEM!"

Foreign

Just a little certificate,
that's what it said.
Two years.
The text message smiled up at me,
promising ease,
a life undisturbed.
I stared at it,
quizzical,
wondering if this strange promise of light
was foreign. 

Cutlery

Cutlery
sitting in my kitchen drawer
all fitting together if I
arrange them just so,
who invented you?
A hand-sized piece of metal
for any job,
so simple,
so enlightened to
think of a spoon -
a small cup at the end of a mini lever.
Or an apple corer,
friend to pie bakers everywhere.
I think God
must be confused
as we figure out how to feed ourselves
and not everyone else.

The Affliction of Breasts

I see them
on my computer screen,
in magazines,
wearing strategically placed triangles like a parka,
it's far too much.
Bones that stick out,
begging for a Toblerone,
maybe some apple slices
to scrape their way down the tube and
into the holding chamber -
Jonah, being vomited out of the fish,
he didn't know what God made him for.

We laugh at them,
their cowed uteruses bulging out towards the camera,
lips parted in an attempt at a sullen flirt.
"HA! Hahahahahaha look at her,
it looks like she has a butt on her chest!"
"Swimsuit edition since when?
I would never wear that to the beach!"

Little do we know
that neither would she.

From Here to Dentures

A few years ago
I got a tattoo.
And then I got another one about a year later.
People asked me,
"What will you do
if people don't hire you-
because of that?
Because of your tat?"
"Why spend your money
in that funny way?
What would God say?"
"What will happen when you're old and saggy,
'n' it doesn't look good cuz your skin is baggy?"

I told them that by that time
my eyes will be halfway into my head,
my boobs will be lower than my knees,
my "feminine figure"
will be a far-off joke that barely fits into a moomoo,
and my teeth will be in
the doorframe
of a certain fairy's castle.

And then it occurred to me:
The Toothfairy
pays us money for our teeth
so that later
we can buy
dentures!

A Branch in a Tree

Outside my window stood a Branch,
a-swaying in the breeze,
holding tightly to it's trunk
among the other trees.
The Branch shut his eyes and clenched his fist
to stay where he had grown,
to keep roots firmly held in trunk-
in the place that he called home.
Said I loudly to the Branch, I says,
"Stay there, Branch, just as you be,
clinging to the trunk you love
and while you cling and shut your eyes,
I'll write some poetry."
Swaying, said the Branch to I, says he,
"You'd be better chopping down the tree
and save me from the wind!
My fingers slip
from wooden grip!
I long to be released!"
So I typed this out in poetic form
to show it to the Branch,
(words are the norm
for any storm
that needs an action patch)
but by that time he'd lost himself
in a pile of leaves
on a pile of trees
and I myself? wholey unpleased!
I stood inside
and looked outside
and he lay far below
my barely openned window...
impatience had got the better of him
I thought
while he was hanging
in the storm and wind...
and I myself
with all this trouble
had gone about and sweat and penned
a poem for him! in the middle of the night!
The indignance of him! The Branch!
The Branch!
To let go on a whim
before I'd finished my number,
before I'd recited my piece,
He let go of the trunk and brought down many trees
into piles of leaves
he didn't believe,
I supposed
he didn't believe in
the words I'd fought so hard to think of,
when I'd decided he needed them most!
But his loss, I supposed,
For he was then
a branch on the ground,
not listening to me,
not attached to a tree,
I could've helped if he
Would've listened to me! I! WE!
MYSELF AND I
we knew best.
Branch didn't need an axe or money or food
or anything else if I'm not in the mood,
But I read Rude Him my poem anyway
because I practice grace
every hour
every day!
So at least I got the final nose-up.
At lease I got the final say.

Bedtime Stories

We never questioned whether Robinson Crusoe
was over our heads
as we scrambled for a spot
on the warm lap -
the evening throne for children
ready to soak up scenes that tomorrow's imagination
would spring from.
We groaned about
reading from the thesaurus
(which is not a dinosaur
obsessed with words,
and not even a proper bedtime book, FYI),
and begged to get on
with our friends Edwin and Lucy
as they traveled beyond
the bureau of  facts and education.

It never really occurred to us
to press pause as
The Ghost Frog
ripped out Tantor's tusk,
or The Old Man battled
the elusive marlin
through rough, cutting ropes And The Sea.
(You obviously can't pause reality, anyway...)
And in the warmth of the cramped living room we became pirates,
became rogues in coonskin crowns where
The Call of the Wild
crept through the cracks in our fortress,
and agitated excitement surrounded like a mist foreshadowing,
sank into our ears
and rooted itself in our eager souls.

We could've done
anything.

Always to the Violin

I always tip a Violinist.
I see them
swaying at the entrance of a transit line,
eyes closed in wonder -
wandering through other worlds.

And I know they
spent hours with that shapely wood,
petting it till it purred,
soothing it to hum with the bow.

I know

their father spent
hundreds
on lessons,
and mom sacrificed
her last 30 minutes
to wait patiently outside the little room
where a million cats lay agonizing to the point of
death
and teacher
scratched his head
wondering
how to better explain:
"loosen your wrist.
No.
Like this."

I know

the Violinist plays his treasure
in long chords of gold and
choppy drops of southern wind
in fretless notes and loosened wrist,
each giving their lover their highest favor as
gently, he strokes her neck and
softly she sings in his ear his favorite song
he practiced long to hear.

And so for
father
teacher
mother
lover,
the hours soaring past the bridge
that are joyfully recovered,
and for the high-note E string
where all their effort pours in,

I'll always tip
the Violin.

Remember that time....

I cut my friend off in a photo once,
without realizing I was doing it -
stuck my big fat swimmer's arm out
and chopped her in half.
It's hilarious
How obnoxious I look...
and how happy I look to be feeling that way. Sorry 'bout it.

At swim practice, I tickled that same friend
during a pep talk at
5 am
(a fruitless effort
when delivered to shivering teenagers on Christmas break)
and the coach's head blew off:
An unfortunate side effect.
I didn't tickle anyone for a very long time;
post-coach-explosion-stress-disorder.

Once
I was at a swimming competition
and the water was so murky
that I couldn't see
not even one inch in front of me
so I whacked my face
into the wall
(just to make sure it was still there)
and got semi-permanent goggle marks around my eyes.
Probably karma in advance
for chopping my friend in half.

I accidentally set a trend
of pumpkin orange swim caps.
I'm so, so sorry.
Everyone else thought I was a trend setter,
but I was secretly
just buying the cheapest
swim cap I could find.

So I must confess
that most of the comedy
that I come up with,
really isn't comedy.
It's not pre-meditated,
it's not scripted,
it's just that
nothing ever goes the way I wish it to
and somehow everyone else finds that funny.