Surreptitious

poetry

The most common use of surreptitious is with the -ly suffix: Surreptitiously.
But to use it as a noun, “He is surreptitious” is surely loquacious behavior.
However, I’ve been more interested in the root: Surrep-
which can sound like syrup depending on how you pronounce it.
Although there’s always been something unsavory (no pun intended) about syrup.
It lacks couth, where molasses, with similar viscosity, seems able to maintain integrity.
Syrup, or especially surrep- owns decidedly clandestine attributes.
I stole the idea of molasses, it seems to say, replacing it with an imposter.
And perhaps you aren’t even aware of the difference.

Crisp

poetry

According to etymology crisp is defined as meaning
“to become brittle”
though the use of brittle, I attest, would have to be its pejorative form.
Brittle’s connotations suggest something less desirable
as though calling a potato chip “brittle” would be an insult,
which is the highest of inconsistencies,
since I doubt anyone would want their chip soggy or leastways, malleable.
It is not a mistake that Chips and Crisp are nearly identical and easily mistaken in their spatial relationships:
The isss sounds with no ‘Z’ and the hard ‘P’ defends its case with its own onomatopoeia;
the sound of a chip crisply snapped;
or breaded and fried chicken crunching in my mouth;
or a hard pretzel crumbling over molars;
or glacial mountains thundering with a splash into the ocean;
or the popping of meat over a fire; edges browning, blackening until carbon laces the steak in gristle.

Crisp’s associations with brisk are prevalent.
A winter morning is both crisp, and brisk.
And the proximity of both words in tandem is utterly delicious.
Say it, you’ll see. Crisp. Brisk. Mmm.
The crisp briskness is a crisply aural sound;
the hard sucking of teeth in response to pain or in sympathy to it;
the crust of the snow that has melted and refrozen atop the powder;
the temporal slate that squirrels skitter over unimpeded by the snow’s depth.
My own boots, for a moment look like they will walk on water before crashing inward;
Snapping like a crisp chip, salt particles flinging into the air.

God is Calling

poetry

The backlight is lit and flashing.
The phone is rattling in my hand.
But I wonder if I will answer?

I see him in a hole in my sock.
His peach-colored handiwork swirls
Peek out into a fabric-less world
Where my footprint is his fingerprint.

The words you have said—
I am the door
I am the living bread
I am the light of the world
I am the good shepherd
I am the resurrection
I am the true vine
I am the way
I am the truth
I am the life
I am Jesus

—can I believe that?
Why have you made such a fragile me?

I’m masquerading false humility.
What good is it?
If I got turned inside out
And saw the way I really am
What would I think of me then?

Not intestines, entrails and organs.
But abstractions and presumptions.
I am dead while I breath.
This is fodder to feed my fears
And proof that problems
Never go away by ignoring them.

Hello? I say.
It’s me, he says.
I know.

poem

poetry

here he sits reading
the cliff notes in a
history book
listening to far out
jazz

the main character
in a book he’s
currently working on

is he the writer?
is he the protagonist?
is he both?

every day he wakes
with old eyes and
a young heart
and the pages fill
and disappear

all with the same
fiction
the same drivel
different titles

he finds familiar
dialogue in his stories
he sees his own words
in the history book

he thinks “man,
i must be the
only one alive
out here”

slowing poetry

poetry

because our imaginations seem
to slow as the crowds take vacation
heading home to see mom and dad

hopefully the man in red and determine
to be resolute rather than allow our fingers
to slide somehow romatically over these
keys and lull our blog into blissful
beauty of heartfelt words

but then
blog is such an ugly word
its perhaps best we just act like
you’re reading this in a quality
glue bound journal

unless notified to the contrary please continue to write your horribly distasteful (that is, bad tasting) poetry

poetry

boiled and fried and steamed if you will
a little bit more and the stagnation
ought to settle in exactly as i anticipated
this thought of yours would rest on the
shoulder of a miniature fly (that is a fly
much smaller than a normal fly – a fly
so small in fact it could never be captured
and thrown against a wall so hard as to stun
it and then have a piece of hair tied around
it’s little neck to be kept as a pet because
you see its neck would be much too small)
or at least it would stay that way until next
year sometime in the autumn of course

why the teaching profession is indeed evil

poetry

forcing our words
whether created from inspiration or vomited out
of necessity
requiring we turn them in
as though ratting out our own parents

these words
we say as we staple our pages together
were written to be judged
so go ahead and mark your red all over
these pages
tell me my style is inappropriate
or i misspelled things by ‘accident’

then grade these words
and throw them to the wind
unless YOU decide MY words
are worthy of a refrigerator magnet