Tag Archives: poems

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The room where it happened

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A green sofa is pressed against the wall.
The ottoman is where it should be.
And the phone is damp and cold.
Fingers of the dark play in the corner.
Pale empty roses are in a clear vase.
A dictionary is open on the desk.
A word is highlighted: ‘singularity’.
Those who make the journey wince.
A fool takes a donut from a yellow box.
He studies the hole. Time won’t fill it.
The computer hums. A lady from
Chicago has dropped her bags in
  the front room. She plans to stay.
No amount of death and taxes will
  stop us now. Off to the next race.
Pretend you hedged your bet.
The walls were once painted green.
Now, nothing matters but the
  window.
It looks north—toward Minnesota.

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My Boots Have Gone to Fresno: thoughts on the value of silly poetry

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In today’s world, with so much tragedy and disfunction going on around us, I think that sometimes we need a bit more frivolity in our lives. Sometimes instead of trying to write the Great American Novel, or write the world’s best poem, simply sitting back and writing something totally silly and worthless can be of value.

Hence the topic of today’s blog. I’d like to mention the value of ‘silly’ poetry. Silly poetry can be a great stress reliever. I discovered the value of silly poetry years ago. My paying job as a technical writer can be stressful, to say the least. Tight delivery schedules, unresponsive management, endless meetings, and long hours can all take their toll on a writer. One time, many years ago, very late at night, while working on a particularly challenging project, I became frustrated and, on a whim, I simply opened a blank Word document and began writing the most nonsensical poem that I could think of. I don’t remember much about the poem. I don’t even remember if I saved it. But I do know that the poem totally removed me from the technical document that I was working on, and when I returned to the technical material, I was mentally refreshed. After that time, I continued to write silly poetry now and then.

So, are there any ‘rules’ to writing ‘silly’ poetry. No. It wouldn’t be silly if there were rules. But generally, a silly poem should:

  1. Make some attempt at rhyming. No stress about that though. Lame rhymes are OK.
  2. Be totally spontaneous – if it doesn’t come easy, forget it. And NO rewrites!!! This poem isn’t going anywhere.
  3. Be relatively short – nobody needs a rhyming spontaneous poem that goes on forever.

Which brings me to my latest silly poem. It all started about ten years ago when I listed a pair of cowboy boots for sale on eBay. I purchased the boots in the mid-90s before my wife and I left the North Country and moved to South Florida. They were a great pair of boots, but South Florida is not ‘boots’ country. This is flip-flops and sandals country. Therefore, my boots remained in our closet taking up space for years before finally, at my wife’s urging, I decided to part with them. I listed the boots on eBay for $100, about a third the amount I paid for them, thinking they would be gone in a week. But that didn’t happen. Nobody wanted my boots. A year passed, then another year – until I forgot about the boots. My boots languished on eBay and in my closet. Then one day, I remembered them and lowered the price to $50. That should do it, right? Naw – the boots wouldn’t sell. Nobody wanted them. Finally, before dropping the boots off at Goodwill, I lowered the price a little. Again, nobody wanted the boots…until last week…

Driving home from an evening out on Saturday, the familiar eBay cash register went off on my phone: ca-ching! You’ve made a sale. When I got home and checked my account, I was shocked to find it was the boots that sold…after all these years.

“They’re going to Fresno, California,” I told my wife.

“Good,” she said. “I think they will be happy there.”

And so, if you are a reader in Fresno, and you have just ordered a pair of cowboy boots from an eBayer in Florida, this silly poem is for you. Enjoy the poem and the boots:

My boots have gone to Fresno.

My boots have gone to Fresno
But in F L A I’ll stay
UPS picked them up today
they’re on a westbound highway.

Thru rain and hail, and twisters and sleet
they’ll be a whole lot happier
now on
someone else’s feet.

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Phoning it in – wonderment and dismay in the age of the small screen

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A few years ago, I was eating lunch at an outdoor café. Halfway through my club sandwich, a thought darted across my mental palate – not just any thought but a terrific first line for a poem. I needed to jot it down fast, but I had no pen and paper. Who carries a pen and paper these days. I repeated the words over and over thinking I would note it when I got back to the office. Of course, by the time I returned to my desk, the words to the epic poem I had hoped to remember were long gone. I tried to compose the line, and I came close, but it wasn’t the line that I had thought of an hour earlier. When I told my wife about this later, she said, “Why didn’t you just make a note on your phone?” Embarrassed for overlooking something so obvious, I muttered that I hadn’t thought of it.

A few days later, I had not only an idea for a poem, but the first half dozen lines for one, ready to be set to paper. This time, I opened the Notes app on my Samsung Galaxy phone. After tapping a few keys, my Pulitzer Prize winning poem was committed to the cloud for eternal safekeeping.

At the time, I intended to use my Android Notes app to only store a few raw poem ‘materials’ and not to be used to complete a piece of work. Soon, however, I discovered just how easy writing a poem can be when using only the simple Notes app on my phone.

The first poem that I wrote was not nearly as good as I had originally thought. In fact, I was disappointed in my product (yes, I consider poems a ‘product’). But I had mastered a new technique for capturing my ideas on-the-go. Over the next few months, I would find my Android phone a most convenient tool for writing poetry. I found myself composing poems in restaurants, motel rooms, on airplanes and just about anywhere else that inspiration found me.

Of course, I came to the game far too late for this to be real news. After doing some internet research, I found out that poets are composing on their phones every day and there are now a number of poetry apps for both Android and iPhone that are quite popular. These apps allow you to share your poems with other users. I have installed two of these more popular apps, Poetizer and Miraquill. I’ll let you know how it goes as I familiarize myself with them.

In the meantime, what would a blog about telephone poetry be without a poem that I wrote on a phone? This poem I wrote while sitting on a Florida beach one afternoon. When considering a topic for a new poem, sand came immediately to mind:

Sand
Crushed quartz –
metamorphosized granite
muscovite and feldspar
washed
across half a continent,
remnants of runoff from
a West Virginia
coal company wash plant,
still
catch lazy afternoon sun.
Distant visions of a hard glacial
tide slowly rising for the
first time in ten millenniums,
swept clean in a thousand
Rivers; down The Kanawa,
down the Potomac, force fed into
the Ohio and the Savanna
and the ambling blackwater Edisto.
A million years before Sherman
and Sumter,
and the white washed porches
that face The Swanee.
Crushing, rushing
to the great Atlantic;
pulsing pulverized
pieces of the
Great Sassafras Mountain
and Mount Pinnacle
now churned beneath the toes
of a hundred fifty thousand toes
(on any given day)..
oh the great continental grind
pepper of the eons.

Like the poem, or hate it, you must admit it’s not every day you see the word ‘metamorphosized’ used in a poem. Thanks for reading. Mahalo – Ed.

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My latest poetry book now available on Amazon

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Few creative endeavors are as unlikely to bear fruit as publishing a poetry book. Paint a painting and you can at least hang it somewhere, and someone will look at it and say, “well, that’s a fine painting” or they will say “I wouldn’t hang that in my garage”. But in the end, they will look at the painting and it will receive the reviews that it deserves. Songs are much the same. Write a song and push it to YouTube and you will get plenty of input, good and bad.

But poetry books can fall into that proverbial crack of obscurity.

Poetry books are largely a labor of love, so getting reviews can be difficult. While putting together my second poetry book (which I am going to discuss shortly), I found that there are some truly great poets out there doing some impressive work. In upcoming blogs, I would like to talk about them. But today I want to announce that I have published my second poetry collection.

My latest collection of poems is titled “downed lines” and it is available on Amazon.com. You can search for it there, or you can simply click the link at the top of the page under “Books by W.E. Patterson”.  

So, what would a book launch be unless I give something away? That’s why I am giving away copies of my book to the first five or six people who ask. I might even give more away, I don’t know. Poetry is an inexact science, so the give-away will end when it feels right. I will even fork out the dough for the postage.

Thanks to all!

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Horizon line

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we’re in rented
beach chairs on
Pompano Beach,
it’s late November – two days
before Thanksgiving
when she asks me how far it is
to the horizon
and I tell her it is 3 miles
give or take a foot or two…

I further explain:

…that it’s 3 miles from the point
where her lavender painted
toes touch the water
to where the water touches the sky.

I go on:

That’s fifteen thousand
eight hundred forty
feet I say to her —
from your toe tips to
horizon line

then I say…

That’s one foot
for every year that
we’ve known each other…

she laughs

then she tells me that I am not
the world’s most renown

mathematician.

You’re no Euclid, she says
you’re no Blaise Pascal,
no Pythagoras, and
certainly you are no
Archimedes…

then she tells me that
we’ve known each other
much, much longer than that

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National Poetry Month

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I know that it’s been quiet around here at the EEOTPB website. So quiet that my friend Tulip, who disappeared into the depths of Southern California (somewhere near Toluca Lake) nearly two years ago, finally surfaced. She called me the other night to find out if I was okay. I told her that I was fine, but because of my current professional situation, I had been forced to spend most of my time concentrating on paying writing jobs, and my day job of writing technical books had left me creatively drained.

In the course of our conversation, she reminded me that April is National Poetry Month. She went on to say that if I had any true appreciation for the art form of poetry, I would not let the month go by without firing off at least one post into the blogosphere mentioning this fact.

So to recognize the month, I will respond here, to the reader who wrote to me some time ago to ask if I actually ever READ any poetry. I told that reader that I did read quite a bit of poetry and someday, when I got time, I would go into details.

Recently (ok within the last six months), I have read these three books of poems. I recommend them all for anyone with the slightest interest in poetry, writing, or in the assemblage of words in any unique and meaningful order:

  1. Weldon Kees, The Collected Poems of Weldon Kees – Probably the finest poet to come out of Beatrice, Nebraska to date, Weldon Kees is perhaps best known for his dramatic, albeit suspicious exit from life, rather than his fine body of work. Known by some as the “Missing Poet”, Kees committed suicide by jumping from the Golden Gate Bridge on July 18, 1955. Although some believe that Kees staged his own death and fled to a new life in Mexico, his typewriter fell silent after that date. Known as “a bitter poet”, I didn’t read any of his works until fairly recently, and I wish I had discovered him sooner. But bitter…yeah, a little.
  2. Louis Jenkins, Before You Know It: Prose Poems 1970-2005 – I was never a fan of the prose poem, until I read Louis Jenkins. I enjoyed his work so much that I tried writing a few prose poems myself, and although they fall far short of Jenkins’ poems, I have gained a new appreciation for the form. Jenkins is a native Oklahoman, but he lived for decades up in Duluth, Minnesota. Why that’s worth mentioning, I can’t say, but there is something about that neck of the woods that brings out the poet in some people. Bob Dylan is from Duluth, and I have always suspicioned that his talent may have been in someway channeled by the large iron deposits underlying that part of the country – but that is just my theory.
  3. Ernest Hemingway, Complete Poems – A couple of years ago, my wife and I attended a reading of Papa’s poetry at the Blue Heaven Bar on Thomas Street in Key West. It was during Hemingway Days, which occurs each year in July – not the greatest time of year to visit Key West. It is truly a 24 hour sauna in the Keys that time of year, but if you are up for it, head on down, order a cold one at the bar, and sip it slowly as you listen to The Old Man’s best poems read by dedicated members of the Key West Poetry Guild. Up until that time, I had never considered Hemingway a poet, and from what I’ve read that’s the way he liked it. He never really wanted be remembered for his verse. In any case, I picked up a copy of his Collected Works on my way out of town. It sat on my bookshelf untouched for more than two years until I recently picked it up and read it. I shall consider him a poet whether he likes it or not, and as things stand right now, there is little he can do about it.

So that’s what I’ve been reading. I would like to hear what you’ve been reading as well, so feel free to comment here.

I will close my tribute to National Poetry Month with a short, whimsical poem that I wrote several years ago. It’s been collecting virtual dust on my hard drive since 2009, so this seems as good a time as any to let go of it:

 

ON WRITING A POEM

Writing a poem is often like,
pushing a wheelbarrow full of bricks,
up a steep hill, for absolutely
no reason, whatsoever.

Nobody really needs the bricks,
nobody cares if you make it
to the top, or if you spill half
of the load on the way up.

In the end, you’ll be just
another forlorn, but tired
wheelbarrow pusher, you’ll never be
a real bricklayer.

If you were a real bricklayer,
you’d write a novel,
And carry your bricks up…
…one at a time,
and position them very carefully.

But you’re no bricklayer – so,
be content with your task,
concentrate on the load,
rejoice at the summit.

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Lift me up

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Sometimes it is more about blind luck
than it is about perseverance.
Sometimes it is more about grace,
than beauty,
more about class than
canned, recycled elegance.
You know what I mean
you’ve watched the
stars and the starlets,
and read the right Magazines.
You’ve read Nietzsche, and
Hemingway – after that, what’s left?
You’ve been scared as hell
in the night, and
yet you’ve welcomed
the dark.
Tonight, I am going to
read “Death in the Afternoon”.

I need a lift.

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God, you’ve moved your moon

. Climate change, Poetry . , . Leave a comment

God, you’ve moved your moon,
and I was the last one to see it go,
but I had nothing to do with it,
you probably decided it was in
the wrong spot all along
you probably wanted to…

…push those tides in the another direction,
after all, who cares about the coastline?
Fragile, my eye, it’ll wash away
in another hundred thousand years
screw the migratory birds too
they were more trouble than they were worth
give them space, they’ll find somewhere to nest
where it’s warm – the New Yorkers do —
it’s called Miami Beach.

To hell with the dolphins, what good are they
to the people in Cincinnati and Tulsa
and Paducah, it makes no difference in the Great End!

After all, we are all just casual victims of circumstance
aren’t we? We didn’t ask for any of it…

yet, here we are, misunderstood and praying for daylight
huddled under blankets and
hiding in the backseat of an ’85 Buick
as the great 21st Century manhunt thunders
through the Streets like those Pamplona bulls
…stay ahead of them if you can fella’
it’s a young man’s game — not for the
old and rickety…not for the faint of heart
you are but a step away
from death by horn or hoof.
So phone the Vicar, let’s get to the bottom of it,
write a poem, write a song,
Garcia is long gone, we’re on our own.

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short sale

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don’t put it on the market
yet
just tell the neighbors,
you are
waiting
for the next
bubble
…you don’t really need it…
do you?
you can still walk, can’t you?
you can still pretend
…when you have to
can’t you?
So
don’t spend all day
at the casino
you don’t need the grief
forget
the dollar slots
they are
not the
answer
JUST
plant your
beach chair in the sand
and wait for
sunrise.

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dry land sailor

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write me a little
poem
a day or two after I die
that’s all I ask,
just type it up
on some borrowed
copy paper from
the back room at
Ryan’s Irish Pub.

Type it on that
Olivetti typewriter
that I keep
oiled and ready
on the back porch.

…
no need for
something flowery
make it a little
gritty,
think:
the Missouri River
at flood stage
and

Just
think:
Rock Island, Illinois
think:
Brockway trucks

think:
St. Paul, Minnesota and Kansas City

…

Or don’t make anything
of it,
just keep it inside of you
and call
the El Cortez Casino
where you know I would go
when the chips are down

when the spirit is free
and

say to them…
be on the lookout for a
roulette hound

a dry land sailor

a hundred dollar millionaire

…

the dogs are all you can bet

with any success

“you damned dry land gambler”

…

you told me that lots of times
so why not
bet heavy on the long-shot dog
I’ll look for you at
the Palm Beach Kennel Club