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Like a Metaphor

One of those poems that was built around the title. It ends up exploring a common trigger for daydreaming — one of my favorite pastimes.

What is it about songwriters and metaphors?
To a carousing gadabout, women
are catfish dangling on the end of his line.
And would-be lovers, in their oblivion,
are two ships that pass in the night.
(Imagine if they actually had engine rooms,
and swank cabana lounges
and starboard sides.)

The same holds true of cold business types
who urge us to hit one out of the park,
or better yet, go after the low-hanging fruit.
When I hear that one, I want to
leap up and snag a plump Bartlett pear
right there in the shiny mahogany
conference room.

But there’s an inherent danger in metaphors,
especially the evocative ones:
Instead of clarifying a complex point,
they invite us to take the ball and run!

Like right now, for instance,
My mind is lost somewhere ‘twixt a cruise ship
and the corridors of a pear orchard
steeping under the Tuscan sun,

and if I’m not real careful,
soon I might be frying up that catfish
or racing toward the end zone,
stiff-arming would-be tacklers into the ground —
forty, thirty, twenty, ten … touchdown! —

when all the while I really should focus
on how to finish off this poem.

Provocative Title

An attempt at existentialism. For some reason, “rimy ground” has always jumped out at me as being perfectly placed here.

Many times the way I start a poem
Is by thinking first of its name,
Some playful twist of words will do,
Or maybe a bold, colorful claim.

Like the way a jockey’s riding crop,
Whips him across the rimy ground,
That’s what a clever title does for me:
It sends me snorting for the Downs.

But more than that, a name may coax
People to actually read
The illuminating lines that follow —
Lines quite similar to these.

Sunday Paper

Inspiration often comes from unexpected places.

A lot of times I get ideas for poems
from the pages of Arizona Highways,
or National Geographic, or the voluminous
Sunday edition of the Boston Globe.

I can’t help myself, really.
I’ll just be reading along,
when some wonderfully descriptive word
will leap off the page and bat me on my nose,
like a man might whack his hyperactive
Spaniel with the same rolled-up paper.

Words like upslope and dither, churlish and brio,
numinous, effervescent and imbue,
Smack-smack-smack-smack-smack!

Impossible to deter, they continue their assault
for days, until I finally jot them down.
Then, and only then, will they relent.

But, truth be told,
it’s hard to build an entire poem around
a few words here or there —
no matter how pleasant-sounding or evocative.
(For example, how could I possibly work “serendipitous”
into a poem without it seeming forced?)

So most of these words just remain individual
lonely scribbles,
languishing naked on my clipboard,
lacking context to give them meaning.

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Unfinished Poetry

marginal-brilliance

They begin as scribbled notes in the margins of a notebook. Some make it. Some don’t. This one’s for all those ideas that never saw the light.

‘Tis unfinished poetry,
That finds me on the fence,
‘Twixt razing or engaging
My marginal brilliance —

There’s the robin fallen from its nest,
Harried in homespun twine …
And gray December twenty-sixth,
When all the world’s reclined …

There’s the hand-in-hand walk,
To that little red school …
And the lone cryptic phrase,
Scratched on every spool …

There’s the soft thund’rous din,
Of a breaker’s ebbless rumble …
(And countless other germs,
From whence my pen doth stumbled.)

‘Tis unfinished poetry,
That keeps my mind askew;
Like a many-splintered love,
That sends my heart a-stew.

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Write What You Know

write-what-you-know

Not exactly groundbreaking existentialism, but still fun. (I’m writing a poem about writing a poem … then before you know it … boom! … a poem). Like a Charlie Kaufman–written movie, it kind of sneaks up on you.

Whenever I’m at a loss,
For what I want to write,
For a subject matter that invites
My brain, my heart,
My fingertips,
To orchestrate a concert with my lips,
I always recall the rule,
That so many writers hold:
Simply …
“Write what you know!”

And if ever there was a thing,
That I know beyond a doubt,
It’s the feeling that I feel
When trying to figure out …
What the hell I want to write about!

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