The Poems I Have Not Written.
I am outside late at night
writing poems
about the poems
I have not written
the ones I’ve shied away from
because of embarrassment
or timidity
or , worst of all, for fear
that I might offend
and find
somewhat alarmingly
that the poems I have not written
Far outnumber those I have
Reminiscing Rainbows
We were reminiscing rainbows at the writers’ workshop when the mentor
snapped: Get out of the picture. You’re spoiling the view. Let the vision
remain. So I did. I got out and wrote this:
A bright rainbow
scythes
the air:
a gentle crop
of rain
Sometimes my poems are cluttered with adverbs and adjectives,
subjunctive clauses, desultory detours like this front yard is overgrown
with weeds. When my poems gets like this. when you can’t see the structure,
it is time to bring out the whipper snipper. Time for a trim.
Not all poems will leave the tarmac.
Not all are destined to fly.
Some are too heavy to lift off,
weighed down with their own importance,
too mechanically unsound.
Some simply haven’t enough fuel in the tank.
Others are just puzzles, enigmas,
the captain scratching his head in the cockpit,
saying, well, it should fly. Everything appears in order.
It was checked this morning.
Not all poems will leave the tarmac.
Not all are destined to fly.
You used to call out when we had sex, he said.
You would raise the roof and ululate.
Street lights would flare, power lines fizz
with excitement, fruit bats rise from their roosts in alarm.
Whole shrouds of them.
Why, even the bed shook as if it were coming.
The very veins in my wrists wanted to pop.
It’s awfully florid, the editor said.
It’s meant to be a romance novel, not a porno.
Can you tone it down a little?
Parth serves me.
He deals with my query,
sets me up for Unlimited Data.
The next day
is Mother’s Day.
If you want anything to happen,
changes to your laptop,
forget it.
Mothers Day: the Holy of Holies.
but the next day
is all good
BUT
when I message Parth to thank him
auto correct does not like ‘Parth’
but changes it to
‘Parthenon’ !
What the %#$%^&
He’s not a Greek temple, he’s a person, I say.
And besides he’s Indian NOT Greek
and when I correct it, auto correct
over-rides me.
We come to blows.
I change it back
end with a
‘Have a good one, Parth’ and quickly press ‘send’
but the next day
I get a message
‘Hey John! What is it with ‘Parthenon?
When my writing ‘seizes up’ like my laptop
when it gets too stiff, formal, clunky
I call in my little imp
that firecracker of mischief
to get in amongst the words
like a dog
amongst the sheep
to shake them out of their torpor,
their locked in state,
nip a few ankles if necessary
give them the run-around
so everything’s loosened, wide awake,
shifted,
moving again
then ,
I can call him off
& when the dust settles the poem settles too
into something like
normalcy
relaxed, loose, easy.
There’s an ad on some Word Press posts saying,
‘Don’t Cover up Your Dark Spots’ and I thought,
Whoa, isn’t that what we’re supposed to do?
Keep our sins and prejudices in the attic,
not hang them out like dirty linen in public,
to hide our inner trolls, I know what the ad means.
I’m not stupid. Just got carried away by the metaphor.
And anyway I almost put up a post yesterday
Revealing a darker, nasty side of me but my therapist
Urged me not to put it up, that there are dark spots,
she said, that are best concealed.
Some of my poems end up like this,
bashed, broken , bent beyond repair,
car wrecks,
the ones you don’t usually see
in the showroom
of my blog,
the ones abandoned in the junkyard
out the back,
but sometimes I remember a part that worked
when the rest of the poem didn’t
and I go down & look for it amongst
all that scrap metal
of words
misshapen phrases
give it a polish, an oil change
a bit of love
& fit it into the poem I’m working on now
so the old gives vigor
to the new.
It works every time.
John Malone 