CHUCK A MONKEY

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Wed, 01 Jan 2014 22:41:00 +0000

lost my marbles
down the mountain I roll
downhill to the sea
under the waves
to the abyss

volcanic vent
sink in the magma
to the center
a giant metal marble
where I laugh

...

social services

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Tue, 17 Sep 2013 18:58:00 +0000

I wait in the corner
barefoot woman walks in
her hands shake
she sits down next to me
arms crossed
she says, "don't be embarassed
I didn't feel like shoes"
I say, "I'm not,
are you alright?"

"I need to go to the hospital," she mumbles
"do you need any help?" I say
her face startles
like she's not used to people hearing her
"this is fucking bullshit
I hate this place
what number are they on?"
"they skip around
I think they forgot me"
"you should go up to a window and tell them"
"I'm patient"
"I'm not"

tattoo man stomps in
knuckles drag on tile
he sees me
I see him
he kisses her
he says, "I love you"
she says, "I love you too"
like she's convincing someone
he leaves

"why are you here?" she asks
the weight of society in her tone
I say "I watch my two kids
ex-wife wanted a career
then she left because I wasn't successful"
"why aren't you successful?"
"because I watch kids"
our eyes meet
barefoot woman says
"I'll never understand women"
we smile

they call my number
I fill out forms
as I drive away
tattoo man
rides his bicycle around
he sees me
I see him
I wonder if he thinks
that when he's mounted her tonight
she'll think of me

...

living in a treehouse journal

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Mon, 16 Sep 2013 22:42:00 +0000

day #1
built a treehouse
seems sensible
since they're the only ones
who seem to get it

day #2
figured out the whole
going to the bathroom thing
that's not pleasant

day #3
snickers running low
what to do

day #4
someone walked underneath
I hid
like I needed to
how often do people look at trees

day #5
woke up with a squirrel on my toe
showed me how to gather acorns
I'm glad
pinecones unappetizing

day #6
think people starting to wonder
where I went

day #7 part 1
yup, they are
they have search dogs
damn dogs
they should be on my side

day #7 part 2
"sir step away from the tree"

day #7 part 3
ex wife says
"what are you doing up there"
I say
"I think this tree cares for me
more than you ever did"

day #7 part 4
kids say
"daddy, come down from there"
I say
"kids
you can live up here with me
I don't mind
the more monkeys the merrier"

day #7 part 5
the police have grappling hooks
guess this is the end
of tree houses

...

everyone has infinite value

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Wed, 04 Sep 2013 19:36:00 +0000

a piece of bread
with the potential energy
of 100 calories
has the value of a few cents

your mind
has the potential energy
of infinite ideas
of infinite words
of infinite power
of infinite value

why do you allow others
to treat you as less than infinite
why do you allow yourself
to treat you as less than infinite

I see your infinite value
it blinds me
this world of billions
of supernova

how different the world looks
when you see everyone’s value
like stars in daytime
as no one is worthless

do not let anyone give you
nothing for you
you are worth infinite value
you are worth living

you say, “how can we be
worth infinite value
we are common
like sand”

I say, “water is infinite value
in a desert
your mind has infinite value
in this universe”

you say, “what of the ones
who treat me as less
than infinite
what of them”

I say, “why believe them
they believe you are worthless
believe my infinity
as I believe in yours”

...

Thursday Morning

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Thu, 29 Aug 2013 14:10:00 +0000

5YO: "You know what, I want a dog that's rainbow."
7YO: "They don't come like that. You'd have to paint it."
"I know but dogs don't like to be painted."
"Then it would be wet."
"I know, dogs don't like to be wet."
"Dogs and cats don't like to be wet. They shake it all off like this."
"Yup."
"You know what? A cat likes to be wet in the bathtub if you put fish in it."
"There's no fish in the bathtub."
"There is at a pet store."
"There's no fish at a pet store."
"Yes, there is, that's where we got Puddles."
"Puddles was a good cat."
"Puddles was a good cat, except he peed on everything."

...

Beliefs are Monkey Bars

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Thu, 29 Aug 2013 03:43:00 +0000

beliefs are monkey bars
you hang on
everyone hangs on
you look up at the sky
you think
“if I hang on long enough I’ll go there”
you look down
you think
“if I let go I’ll land in the tanbark”
(no one likes tanbark)
(it’s pokey)
you look around
everyone hangs on
you hang on
your hands hurt

you hear a voice
that voice is me
I say
“let go of the monkey bars”
you say
“what an idiot”
I say
“hey, I’m not an idiot, let go of the monkey bars”
you say
“I’ll fall in the tanbark”
(no one likes tanbark)
(it’s pokey)
I say
“no you won’t”
you say
“yes I will”
I say
“no you won’t”
you say
“what about gravity”
I say
“there’s no gravity in your mind”
you think
you look around
everyone hangs on
your hands hurt
you decide

a) you hang on
until you die
and you let go anyway

b) you let go
you let go of the past
you let go of the future
you let go of prejudice
you let go of preconceptions
you let go of power
you let go of control
you let go of words
you let go of identity
you let go of hate
you fall
and fall
and fall
and fall
and never hit the ground
because there’s no tanbark
(no one likes tanbark)
(it’s pokey)
you float around
with me
and the rest of the dreamers
and imagine a world without monkey bars
and falling

…

Four Ways to Edit like a Chef

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Tue, 27 Aug 2013 20:18:00 +0000

Last time I used the equation:

Thought + Write + Edit =
Ingredients + Cook + Garnish

Since I’m backasswards, I want to talk about editing first. We have the most control over the last part of the creative process, which is why we fuck it up. We let our insecurities, frustrations, and expectations get involved, and then throw everything away.

You have a disassembled word cake that just came out of the oven. Now what? Here are the pitfalls to editing, and strategies on how to avoid them, all by thinking like a chef:

1) Too Many Cooks in the Kitchen. Cooking is not a democracy. There is a definite hierarchy. Someone is in charge, and anyone who gets in the way is kicked out (sometimes nicely, sometimes not).

In your brain, who’s in charge of your word kitchen? How many parts of your personality are offering “advice” and telling you how to stir your macaroni and cheese? Do you let the images of your family and friends and teachers and critics into your kitchen? Are they hovering over your stove?

If so, politely tell them to get the fuck out of your writing and go wait in the dining room. Especially your critic needs to get out of the kitchen, and wait until you are done cooking.

I know this doesn’t make any sense, and goes contrary to everything you’ve ever been told about writing, but your critic doesn’t edit. You edit. Your critic waits until you are done, then eats your words, then writes a review. They might send the dish back because it’s cold or needs salt or whatever, but never let your critic into your writing space.

Be your own word dictator.

2) Leave the Drama in Your Writing. You are not a five-star restaurant. You don’t eat on gold plates. You aren’t bedecked in diamonds. When a chef cooks a steak, they know it’s just a steak.

So why do writers act all high and mighty about what they do? Your words are just words. Do you freak out about making a sandwich? No you don’t, so don’t freak out about writing a sentence. Don’t act like writing is life and death. Put the melodrama in the story, not in the process of writing the story.

3) Presentation is Everything. Here’s an ugly truth: everyone judges books by their cover. What? No way! That’s not fair. Yup, it isn’t fair, and life is not fair.

If you wrap a sandwich in paper, people will pay less for it than if a dude in a suit brings it on fine china to their table. That’s life. Hardback books cost triple what a paperback costs.

So when you edit, think about how you present your words. It should match the intended audience. For example, I can be edgy and swear on a tumblr blog, but in a college paper or a job, I would clean up my language.

Accentuate befittingly. If you bake a chocolate cake, you might not want to decorate it with mushrooms. Make sure the language you’ve chosen highlights your core idea (or most likely ideas).

When I write haiku, I format them like haiku, and I frame them with hashtags so everyone knows it’s a haiku. In a larger philosophical sense, art is anything in a frame, and as an artist, you need to make a conscious decision about your frame.

4) Know When to Let Go of the Plate. Imagine that a cook takes forever to bring your food, then as they’re about to drop the plate on your table they stick their finger in your mashed potatoes and say, “Oops, sorry, need to add more salt. Be right back.”

You would leave that restaurant and never come back.

When you edit, your goal is to finish, then move on. As I tell my kids, “Stop farting around.” Fix your writing, and send it to the table. Chefs are never like, “Oh no, I’ll never bake a cookie like that one again!”

Here’s your zen moment: you can only grab something new if you’ve let something else go. So let your old writing go. Then you can write something new.

…

Happy writing!

Good Writing is Good Cooking

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Tue, 27 Aug 2013 20:17:00 +0000

oftemm: I just love your poetry. I read it and wonder, “How do you even come up with these kind of things you write about?” I’d ask for an answer but I’d rather be kept in curiousity. :)
Don’t you stop your writing!

Thank you! I’m glad you enjoy my work. I want to answer your question, even though you begged me not to. :)

…

Good Writing is Good Cooking

Think + Write + Edit = Ingredients + Cook + Garnish

1) Think/Ingredients. Words are concrete thoughts, so it makes sense to begin with how to think. The best writing begins with the best thoughts. No one wants a piece of cake made with month-old eggs and moldy flour.

So spend time thinking. Exercise your thinking. Stretch your brain as far in the past as it can go, then imagine being very tiny, then imagine being massive. Imagine love. Remember an enemy. Remember what someone said. Combine thoughts. Mix them around, and see what batter forms. Then when you have a thought that feels roughly like it could exist in reality, stick it in the oven.

2) Write/Cook. Writing is an oven. It’s cramped. It’s hellish. It seems like it takes forever.

It’s also something you have to do over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over again. Anyone who does anything excellent either had luck or had work. You can’t control the former, but you can definitely influence the latter.

I’m a quantity over quality type of person. You think every day, so write down what you think every day. No good chef is like, “Sorry, I have the ingredients, but I’m not going to cook today. I’m waiting until I figure out the Next Great Recipe.” Get in the word kitchen and write. Don’t set out to write lobster and caviar words: write cookies and ice cream and salad and french fries. Write what sustains you.

3) Edit/Garnish. This is the place where a lot of people get stuck. If you only have the first two steps, then all you have is writing, the majority of which is garbage. Most of your word muffins are burnt or lumpy or gooey or dry or clearly inedible. If you pass off your writing to other people without editing it is trash. (Unless you won the word lottery, congratulations! You can retire to your own private literary island!)

"Oh no! My precious words! Everything I write is the best thing ever! That’s how I feel!" Nope. It isn’t. Other people will take one bite of your pastry, and if it tastes like shit, they will not take bite number two.

So how do you edit? Same way you prepare a cake: let it cool, decorate it, and serve it on your best porcelain. Think about what you wrote. Take time with each sentence, every word. Say it out loud. Cut off the burnt pieces, the cliches, the clunky word flow, the lapses in grammar. Frost your writing with a thesaurus.

(At some point you will be able to edit AS you write, but this takes practice or else you might end up throwing everything you write away. Writer’s block is overzealous editing, which is a topic for another post.)

I like the haiku format because it forces me to slow down and edit. Unless I’m lucky and the words taste divine, I’m probably going to have to garnish my work before its tasty.

4) An Example. I start with the thought:

"Good writing is something that is a good thought that you write down, and you do that a bunch and then you read what other people write and you figure out what is good then you edit it and then it has to echo through people like a drum."

Which is absolute drivel. So I edit out the garbage:

"Good writing ~~is something that is a good thought that you write down, and you do that a bunch and then you read what other people write and you figure out what is good then you edit it and then it has to~~ echo through people like a drum.”

I check a thesaurus, and I find that “reverberate” is a stronger word than “echo”. It also means I can get rid of “drum”.

"Good writing reverberates through people."

I look for words better than “people”. I like the alliteration of “being”. Also, this applies not just to writing, but to art in general. A little bit of reformatting and I have:

good art /
reverberates /
in your being

#haiku #sixwords #poetry

Matthew the Monkey

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Tue, 11 Jun 2013 20:14:00 +0000

matthew the monkey kept food on the moon
his favorite grub strewn over the dunes
who'd build a rocket to steal his burgers
or piles of tortillas filled with cheddar
red, yellow, and green curries sloshing down
gulleys of naan and rice where moon-mice drown
if you reckon you've seen a UFO
it might have been a gyro or taco
he planted six different types of pasta
next to the flower bed of lasagna
we cannot forget the ice cream and cake
afloat the middle of the coffee lake
did I forget the pizza and grilled cheese
the french toast perfectly still with no breeze
he likes omelets and bacon and biscuits
and pulled pork sandwiches served with brisket
is there anything matthew will not eat
his gluttony is extremely complete
though be careful if you visit him too
you might also end up in matthew's stew

...

Why Humans Never Want To Contact Aliens

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Sat, 08 Jun 2013 18:04:00 +0000

…

Imagine sometime in the far future we pick up some type of signal from an alien civilization. Since we mastered harnessing an infinite amount of energy using our perpetual motion engines, it’s pretty easy for us to hop in our spaceships and break the speed of light.

Once there we scan for life and find none. Puzzled, we instead find that the entire planet is in a constant state of creation and destruction due to out of control chemical chain reactions. In addition, the harmful radiation from the nearby star, and the corrosive gases in the atmosphere would make life as we know it impossible. And yet, we are still receiving crude repetitive transmissions from this planet.

The captain orders a team sent to the surface to ascertain the planet from the ground. Our anti-matter suits should be effective at reflecting any sort of hostile matter or radiation that would kill us outright. We beam down to the planet, and what we find is horrendous:

Everything on the planet is hostile. From the tiniest groups of molecules to the largest object, anything that moves on the planet will chemically assimilate anything else. Though we are repulsed, we are vaguely curious. From razor sharp blades, to pointed objects, to poisons, to lethal traps and exothermic reactions, everything has a way to consume energy.

Fearing for our lives, we beam back to our ship, carefully decontaminate the team, then place a warning force field around the entire solar system. We build a science station with a nova bomb on a nearby planet in case the contagion spreads, and then hastily head back home.

What would have happened had this planet been exposed to infinite energy? It’s only logical that the chain reaction would have spread infinitely, consuming the entire universe. Photosynthesis and cellular respiration must be quarantined for the safety of the universe.

That’s why this is called, oh wait, I wrote the wrong title. This should be: “Why Aliens Never Want to Contact Humans.”

…

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Fri, 07 Jun 2013 01:32:00 +0000

meek poor crowds sake of /
shall comforted under god /
opened blessed heart

...

Words from the Bible. Written for dVerse Poets Pub.

Writer's Block

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Thu, 18 Oct 2012 03:41:00 +0000

...

writer’s block
is floating on a raft
in the middle of an ocean
schools of words
flicker in the distance
far from mental nets
that panic in the dull sun
as days and days and
days and days and
days pass
no ripples of thought
break the monotony
of normalcy
of go here
do that
eat this
do this
go to sleep
the meditation
goes on and on

until
hint of clouds on the horizon
a drop of rain
falls on parched tongue
and finally
there’s something
to say

...

Pirates and Ninja

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Thu, 18 Oct 2012 03:23:00 +0000

...

I don’t believe in pirate love
that sloshes grog
and swears loyalty
yet with the gleam of treasure
in skull and crossbone eyes
it sails away
and deceptively deserts you
on the island
of yourself

I believe in ninja love
that sneaks past
your wall
and whispers honestly
that today I might love you
and tomorrow I might still
until the day either
the love dies
or I die

...

I Met Myself

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Thu, 04 Oct 2012 19:53:00 +0000

...

I met myself and said, "Stop throwing myself around time. The past and future are just fine without me. Besides, I'm getting everything confused."

Then I said, "I don't understand, what do I know, since I'm just a different version of myself." I stopped to think about this, and as I did, every version of me merged into a we, and we knew only birth and death and triumph and despair and boredom, since there was nothing to separate this from that, and there was no time to be anything other than us, since we saw only the all of us together at last.

We thought, "This must be what it's like before or after a universe creates itself. Before time stretches us out into different people, like an uncoiled rope. Now we have tied ourselves back together. We will always be we, forever and ever."

At least until the next kablooey, and we are blown across time into me and me and me.

...

Written for
dVerse Poets Pub

The World's Largest Booger

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Mon, 01 Oct 2012 16:19:00 +0000

...

the world's largest booger
was lifted by a crane
from it's former owner
and traveled here by train

the museum has a sign
"Do Not Eat The Booger"
since to a toddler mind

snot tastes just like sugar

how did so much mucus
(it's over twelve feet wide!)
fit through a nose, unless
only afterwards it dried

...

Sorry Kids

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Sun, 30 Sep 2012 18:29:00 +0000

...

sorry kids

we won't walk to the zoo today
the animals all have colds
we won't drive to the moon today
too far for cars I'm told

we won't swim in the nile today
so nothing will chomp our toes
we won't gallop in Spain today
like unlucky Lucia, oh no!

we won't fly with eagles today
watch out for pointy talons
we won't drink with fish today
(an ocean is how many gallons?)

we won't ride a comet today
do they even have seat belts
we won't stroll on the sun today
our ice cream would probably melt

wherever will we go today?
come over here and look
of anywhere that's fun, I say
the best place is a book.

...

What is a Haiku?

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Wed, 26 Sep 2012 01:07:00 +0000

...

Someone just sent me this tweet:

"@Happybucket true (ie: not-as culturally appropriated) haiku are meant to include a seasonal reference & juxtaposition: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haiku"

and I responded with this:

I'm sorry that you /
can't open my gift since you /
don't value the box

#haiku #poetry #mp

...

However, I feel that a further explanation is necessary, since I write many, many of what I call haiku, yet others might call something different. (Possibly twaiku or garbage, depending on their inclination.)

I'd like to start with the term "culturally appropriated." What exactly does that mean? It seems like a code phrase for "don't steal ideas from other groups of people because that's bad."

Which means the Romans would have to give up their gods, Christians and Muslims would have toss their bibles, no one could eat french fries except Belgians, who couldn't even really eat those since potatoes are from Peru. The U.S. stole democracy from France. The Beatles "culturally appropriated" their sound from Chuck Berry. In fact, nothing good on this earth would have been passed around, mutated, and evolved into something excellent if it weren't for our ability to culturally appropriate stuff from other people.

So are my haiku culturally appropriated? Heck yes! I am proud of it. I stole the crap out of the form, and I mutated it right along with every school teacher handing down the 5-7-5 format to their 6th graders.

No, I do not write like dead Japanese poets. Nor do I want to. If the Japanese want me to give back their haiku form and the word that goes along with it, then they can hand over hip hop and rap. It amuses me to think that somewhere in Japan, someone is criticizing someone else by saying, "You do not write rap correctly. Rap must be like Snoop Dogg."

Though really, a Japanese person has never said to me, "Hey, stop writing haiku in English. You're doing it wrong." It's generally a well-meaning, yet snotty literary type with an authoritarian internet link and too much time on their hands. They feel the need to correct me, since obviously I haven't already learned what a "real" haiku is on my own, so I need their condescending guidance.

Back off. I know what I'm doing, thank you. I've written thousands upon thousands of haiku now. I dream in haiku. Yes, I call them haiku, therefore they are haiku. Yes, the word comes from another place, and another people, and I respect their language and their version, but right here, right now, this word is mine, and if I want to call what I write haiku, I will. Your wikipedia article be damned. It's written by democratic process anyway, and what good art has ever been voted on? My artistic process is a dictatorship, in which I am the leader, and I decree that 5-7-5 is a haiku.

If you don't like it, then please don't read what I write. It would be lost on you anyway.

Thank you.

...

Constructing my Mind

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Tue, 25 Sep 2012 19:46:00 +0000

My 4YO daughter (who helped me) said: "Daddy, it looks like you!"

Asked an Exasperated Anyone

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Tue, 25 Sep 2012 15:00:00 +0000

...

asked an exasperated anyone:
"oh someone, has a someone, seen no one

a someone's a wave, while that I can be
who'd prefer to wrap their arms 'round a sea

looking for no one, yes, no one at all
breathless and shapeless and massively tall

fanciful hair the color of the breeze
in dazzling night she sings along with trees

her silence fills the spaces when I speak
yet her thoughts on being are quite unique

yes, I'm anyone, anyone at all
though next to her, I'm enormously small

she runs faster than me, this lovely void
she'll be sprinting still when all is destroyed

maybe someone has seen her, you someone!
an anyone wants no one, yes no one

at all"

...

Autumn Kick-Off Event

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Sun, 23 Sep 2012 14:51:00 +0000

...

what do I expect /
to see in mirrored words that /
reflect anyone

...

For New World Creative Union

Two Men Carrying a Canoe

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Wed, 20 Jun 2012 15:43:00 +0000

...

"Dan?"
"I'm sort of busy here, what is it?"
"Don't get grumpy with me, I have a question."
"You always have questions."
"Consider it my philosophical nature."
"I consider it your jackassery nature."
"There's no reason to be rude."
"You're right, well what is it?"
"What is what?"
"What is your question?"
"I've forgotten."
"You forgot the question you wanted to ask me a minute ago?"
"Yes."
"Ethan?"
"Yes?"
"You're an idiot."
"Well, you're a control freak."
"I am not."
"Yes, you are. You are always in front. You don't even know where we're going."
"Yes, I do."
"No, you don't."
"We are going that way."
"Which way is that?"
"The way we need to go."
"How do you know that's the way we need to go, we can't even see anything with this canoe on our heads."
"I've explained this millions of times: it must be the right way to go, because that's the way we are going."
"But you've forgotten the reason!"
"That doesn't matter. What matters is that I must have had a good reason to begin with, so we'll just keep walking in this direction carrying this canoe until we reach our intended destination."
"Which we've forgotten."
"Yes."
"So how will we know when we're at our intended destination?"
"That's the easy part. I believe it will be self-evident."
"What does that mean?"
"Oh shut up."
"Dan?"
"What is it now?"
"Don't be a jerk this time or I'll forget again."
"Okay, but just this once."
"Thank you. Why are we in a desert?"
"We aren't in a desert."
"We must be, there's all this sand."
"Deserts are not necessarily comprised of sand."
"Who ever heard of a desert with no sand?"
"What defines a desert is a lack of precipitation."
"A lack of what?"
"Rain, Ethan, it doesn't rain in a desert."
"It doesn't seem like it's raining now. In fact, I don't think it's ever rained."
"You might be right, but I don't remember."
"We would have heard it on the canoe."
"Yes."
"And we'd probably have walked in puddles."
"Before they evaporated."
"It is unbearably hot. That settles it, we're in a desert."
"If you say so."
"Dan?"
"Just ask the question, you don't need to start every conversation with my name."
"That's a good point. So, Dan?"
"What?"
"What color is the canoe?"
"What does that have to do with anything?"
"Well this side is sort of off-white, but the other side might be a different color."
"The other side?"
"Well what do they call the bottom of a canoe?"
"I don't know. I suppose they call it the bottom."
"That doesn't seem very seafaring of them. Shouldn't it have a nautical name like port or starboard?"
"I doubt very much that Indians ventured into open ocean with canoes."
"Native Americans."
"What?"
"They call themselves Native Americans now. Or at least I think they do."
"Did Ind...I mean Native Americans invent canoes?"
"I don't know."
"I don't know either. So what color is the bottom?"
"I suppose it's red."
"Why is that?"
"Have you ever seen a canoe that isn't red?"
"Sure! Green, brown, I think they make canoes in every color."
"Well I've only seen red canoes."
"You're thinking of wagons."
"No, I'm not. I'm definitely certain that I'm thinking of canoes, since I'm carrying a canoe, and not a freaking wagon."
"But you haven't seen the bottom of the canoe, and it could be any color. For all we know, it could be pink!"
"It can't be pink."
"Why not? That's as good of a color as any."
"Do I look like the sort of man who would carry a pink canoe in the desert?"
"I don't know, I haven't seen your face in a while."
"Trust me, you don't want to."
"We could switch."
"No, we can't."
"Why not?"
"Because we might lose our sense of direction in the shuffle."
"What if we draw a line in the sand, then reorient ourselves around the axis."
"That sounds potentially catastrophic. Also, you don't possess my keen sense of direction."
"How do you know?"
"You are far too preoccupied with your head in the clouds."
"Well, you are far too preoccupied with your head in the canoe."
"As it should be."
"So what color is it really?"
"Ethan?"
"Yes, Dan?"
"Just drop it."
"Drop what, the canoe?"
"What, no! I meant the conversation."
"Well why not drop the canoe?"
"We can't drop the canoe."
"Why not?"
"Because we can't."
"Well, that's not a reason."
"Well, that''s as good of a reason as you are going to get."
"Who put you in charge?"
"I'm in charge because I'm in the front of the canoe, and people in front are generally in charge."
"Not in a canoe. The person in back steers it."
"That's the rule on water. On land, whoever is in front is in charge."
"You just made that up."
"No, I didn't."
"Yes, you did!"
"How would you know? I could be an expert on all things canoeing, and you'd never know the difference."
"You didn't even know the name for the bottom of a canoe. It's called the hull."
"You don't know that, you don't have a dictionary."
"Whenever we get to wherever we are going, I'll prove to you that the bottom of any watercraft is called the hull."
"You keep thinking that."
"Stop kicking sand at me."
"Oh, was I kicking sand at you?"
"Yes, and please stop."
"I'll refrain from kicking sand if you refrain from asking silly questions."
"Fair enough."
"Excellent."
"But Dan?"
"Is this question silly?"
"Wait a second."
"What?"
"I'm thinking whether or not the question I'm about to put forth fits your criteria for a silly question, based on my previous experience with you."
"Take your time."
"Nope, it's not silly."
"Better not be. I have plenty of sand."
"Here goes: why does it sound like the ocean?"
"Everything sounds like the ocean when you stick your head inside it."
"That's just seashells."
"Nope, it's everything."
"Are you telling me it would sound like the ocean if I stuck my head in a colander?"
"No, it has to be an item without holes."
"So what, like a pot or a bucket?"
"Depending on the size of the pot or bucket in question, but yes, that's the general idea."
"It think that's the dumbest thing I've ever heard."
"Hypothetically, you could also hear the ocean if you stuck your head up your ass."
"That was uncalled for."
"You're right, I apologize."
"Thank you. What if it really is the ocean?"
"It couldn't be."
"Why not?"
"What are the chances two people carrying a canoe would walk along a beach perpendicular to the ocean for mile after mile after mile after mile after mile, until they had forgotten the very essence of their purpose, lost themselves in the task at hand, and could no longer consider the big picture enough to direct themselves to their goal?"
"When you put it that way, it doesn't seem very likely."
"Exactly."
"So what do we do then?"
"We do what we've always done, we keep walking, and hope things turn out for the best."
"I hope they do."
"So do I."

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The Squishberry Tree

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Thu, 01 Dec 2011 18:39:00 +0000

Yes, we should run past the squishberry tree
Though care not to squish any berries as we flee
Red squishberries appear as tasty as can be
Yet inside is yellow gunky muck, oh yucky!

Ever since the first ancient squishberries grew
There's a secret even our ancestors knew
Hey! Try not to get any squishberry on your shoe
Since the squish in squishberries is the stickiest glue

Look there, the lump which you mistook for root
Is really another child's shoe minus a foot
"Where are the kids?" you might ask with a hoot
I'm sorry to say, but they are all caput

So eat blackberries
And bing cherries
And blueberries
And boysenberries
And cranberries
And gooseberries
And huckleberries
And raspberries
And strawberries

But never ever play with the squishyberry goo
For a squishberry tree will certainly eat you.

Wonder Where I Put My Brain

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Tue, 12 Jul 2011 20:29:00 +0000

Wonder where I put my brain
did I leave it on the plane
flying from kalamazoo?
although I've got my canoe
luggage that I always take
did I drop it in the lake
as I fled alligators?
didn't see those in brochure
on a train or in a car
I sure hope my brain's not far
did it roll under the bed
as I sat and scratched my head?
silly me, I'm rather dull
my brain is still inside my skull.

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I Didn't Do It

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Mon, 11 Jul 2011 23:46:00 +0000

...

I didn't do it, it must have been
my sister, I know she did it
oh, well, she's taking a nap?
then it fell over by
itself, yes, that's it
what would happen
if maybe
it was
me?

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At First

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Mon, 11 Jul 2011 20:33:00 +0000

...

At first, he commanded a tractor
then he squished things with steamrollers
now he controls the force and
wields a blue lightsaber
whatsoever your
occupation
I'll always
love you
son

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Written for One Stop Poetry's Form Monday.

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