Independence Day

Got off on a mental tangent this weekend, thinking about a "Doomsday" poetry prompt from Robert Lee Brewer, and wondering how my Amish neighbors might handle an alien invasion...


After the Fourth of July holiday,
there are no famous landmarks left standing.
The Golden Gate Bridge, The Eiffel Tower,
Big Ben, The White House – none of them survive.

But here in town, no one knows much about
all that. At the Village Inn, plain-dressed men
eat heaping plates of scrapple and head cheese
and joke in low German about tourists,

while girls in coverings and tennis shoes
giggle about ketchup and the panties
they got at the U.P. Mall. No one looks
twice at the thing sitting in the corner.

When all you wear is dark pants and blue shirts
everyone else looks like an alien.
You love your enemies, and sympathize
with all who sing: “This world is not my home.”

Outside in the parking lot, the horses
make strange at the iridescent saucer
hitched awkwardly to the post between them
swishing their tails to keep the flies at bay.

When Amos Yoder’s barn is vaporized
the Amish refuse to retaliate.
Instead, volunteers come from miles around
and raise a brand new building by milking time.

This pattern is repeated for a week
until the invaders give up and leave.
At the Village Inn, they are serving pie,
and there are no planes flying overhead.

Something worth saving (the Octain Refrain)

Before you start to save my soul

from hell, it’s hardly worth it yet.

There so much life I want to get

to, if you’d spare the time. My goal

is this: to take a week to break

the rules. And laugh. I want to roll

back here, sky-high on being whole,

before you start to save my soul.

. . . . .

Sometime last year, I ran into the poetic work of Luke Prater.  He writes a great blog under the title WordSalad.  Well worth your time checking him out.  The Octain Refrain is one of Luke's creations, and I find it a fascinating form within which to write. 

It has eight lines, arranged as two tercets followed by a couplet.  Each line has eight syllables, normally in iambic or trochaic meter (but it's also OK just to count syllables if you prefer).  The last line is a repeat of the first line, as much as possible.

The rhyme scheme is as follows:
A-b-b
a-c/c-a  [note the middle line here has a mid-line rhyme:c-c]
b-A

 or, alternatively

A
b-b-A
c/c-a-b
A

A bit confusing just to read the rubric.  Probably easier to read a couple of examples to see how it works in practice.  The poem I started this post with is an Octain Refrain.  Here's a link to another, by poet Beth Winter.  Why not try an Octain Refrain yourself?  And drop me, or Luke, a note to say how you get on!

How we got to Vegas

(a quatern)

Looking back on it, we might have
thought twice before bringing a kid
blessed with agoraphobia
thirteen hours to the Grand Canyon.

It just never occurred to us.
Looking back on it, we might have
noticed the first signs of distress
when he stopped in the parking lot

at the South Rim and turned around,
striding away from the view, not
looking back at it. We might have
forced him to stay, but why go there?

Nature’s overrated, I said.
Let’s go to Vegas. So we did.
Did we have the best time ever?
Looking back on it, we might have!

When the well has run dry

When the well has run dry
it comes without warning.
The tongue swells in your cheek,
thick and livid, so that
your words no longer speak.

When the well has run dry,
you curse Providence for
this damming of the source
of such early growth. You
rail. Yet it is, of course,

when the well has run dry
that the real work begins.
This is the place you give
yourself to the long task
of learning how to live

when the well has run dry,
the daily love affair
with hardy words you kiss
into unlikely soil
to bloom up from the dust.

1967

The Summer of Love,

I bit my baby-sitter.

She was beautiful.

 

The most important day of your life - VIDEO

Video from a recent performance - the World Cup wedding epic: "The most important day of your life."  Enjoy!

New school

He didn’t want to go to school that day

The kids were scary, he hated lunch

And the custodian was mean.

At last, his mother told him

The first day is the worst

But it’s a nice place

And besides that

You’re a fine

Teacher,

Son.

Love fell laughing

Love fell laughing into the gulf
between our feet. We burned the lies
to stay warm, those that had lashed us

together, hobbled. Some saw us
as one splendid flesh, to engulf
their own griefs. They were wrong What lies

in us is a hope that belies
all expectation. For both of us
we owe our lives to this new gulf

the gulf, hard-won, that lies between us.



Posted to share with friends at dVerse Poets Pub.

To be alive

A thousand eager faces hold the stage

in rapt attention. Slowly every heart

unfurls within this sacred arc. We start

by watching from afar, thinking our sage

or cynical remove can keep the rage

of fractured love at bay. But in the art

of light and gesture, we are pulled apart

by words astounding from the poet’s page.

The veil of separation has been torn

with rude abandon, making every breast

complicit in the tragedy before

us. For we share their breath, yet do not warn

them of their fate. Seeing our lives expressed

we ache to be alive, and cry for more.

Maybe we all exist

Maybe we all exist
only to inflict pain
on the ones that we care
the most about, without
even being aware;

maybe we all exist
only to light the sky
and fill each other's dreams.
Neither one seems true. From
these desert years, it seems

maybe we all exist
to each other only
when we chance through the sieve
which asks our heart for "yes"
where it can only give

"maybe." We all exist
firstly to be ourselves;
willing to stand alone
and trust our heart's desire
to plumb their own unknown.