At the Bottom of Nearly Everything (Prose Poetry)

Being an author lets you take wild risks: If you’re successful, you win. If you’re not successful, you write an awesome story about it. Still win.

Boom. I’m lucky like that. 

This piece I’m sharing with you is a failed success. Or successful failure. Something like that. I’m sharing because I believe some of my best writing comes from my worst moments. Maybe we’re most human when life is tough. It’s prose poetry (which means drink it slowly). And thank you, Christopher Nolan, for inspiring the non-linear plot. Lastly, don’t worry: I’m okay. I’m happy. Sad and happy.

Hope you enjoy it. : )

It’s night.

The crickets are whistling.

I’m lying on my back in a parking lot. A vast, empty parking lot. The same parking lot, in fact, that I walked blind across in my essay “On Understanding.” Flat on my back, spread eagle, like the Vitruvian man but with clothes.

I haven’t had a crush like this in awhile. Although it’s usually the smile that gets me, with her it was her laugh.

I see headlights below my jaw. I jerk my head up to check their trajectory—don’t kill me! Not an ideal way to go—lying down in a dark, empty parking lot. Tires are especially scary from this angle.

Before the call, I had some interest in several girls. After, though, I’ve somehow narrowed my options down to zero.

I put my shoulder blades and skull back on the blacktop. Okay, kill me.

From this perspective the sky is almost all I see. A vast dark blue, full of stars. The cool thing is that if I tilt my head back, I finally get the perspective of the world as it really is. The stars are below, then me, then the earth at my back. I’m at the bottom of nearly everything.

I haven’t asked any girl in the ward on two dates—I haven’t chosen a particular interest. In other words, this has nothing to do with my actions. But these individuals, yes, more than one, got first dibs on me, so I’m out of the game. I don’t even know who.

Trees hang down in a giant circle around me. Luckily gravity holds my spine to the earth so I don’t fall into outer space. Or not so luckily. I have an inkling to tell him to let go: Okay, gravity, that’s enough. I’m done here. You’ve been awesome.

Two days ago at the pool, I finally got the guts to ask out Mallory. Yes, finally.

But tonight when I called her, she’d changed her mind, declining my offer because she didn’t want to cause conflict with certain other unnamed individuals who she knows are interested in me. It was awful—she was so nice about it. To smooth things out, she added that we’re probably not compatible anyway, meaning, I think, that I’m a scholar and she’s a skater. I can learn. That’s what I wanted to say.

The cars whiz past on three distant sides. They’re all upside down. Everyone but me. The tires stick to the bottom of the giant sphere. Headlights point ahead into the darkness.

It’s amazing how big the earth is. And the sky beneath. Then there’s little old me.

I really want to find her—my future wife.

Really.

Just like I want to reach down and touch one of those stars.

Uranus, a Phriddle

Uranus,
like urn.
And poor
Pluto.
Bullied by semantic astronomers
Because he doesn’t dominate his neighborhood.
Urim,
like urn.
Paired with
Perfections.
Meaning, the lights, in Hebrew.
A mystical artifact from Heaven.
Uvula,
like super.
A polemic
Point of view.
Doc says it’s, uh, cancer of the diphthong,
and I have just one chance in five.
If you must, make it a eulogy.
Understand?


Sorry for reposting old junk, but I just got a rejection letter for this, and I still think it’s pretty good—wildly underrated even. [That guy needs a slice of humble pie.]

Anyways.

Nobody gets it. But there’s a cool meaning clearly hidden in there.

The Argument My Mind Scratched on the Green Sunday-School Chalkboard

I just got this published on www.everydaymormonwriter.com (featured post)! 

(I thought of this when I was trying to wrap my head around the term Transgression, as mentioned in the Bible. And, it's funny, it has my old "anonymous" URL.)

(I'm always making abstract concepts into images—in my head at least. Does anyone else do this? Is it helpful? To me it's essential.)

The Rich Young Ruler (poem)

Here’s a poem I wrote for class this summer. I hope you like it. : )

(And if you click the picture, it loads the full wallpaper-size for download.)

The Rich Young Ruler

One thing thou lackest:

go thy way, sell whatsoever thou hast, and give to the poor,
    and thou shalt have treasure in heaven:

  and come,

take up the cross,

and follow me.

And he was sad at that saying, and went away

grieved: for he had

great possessions.

— St. Mark 10:21-22 KJV

1

As the night fell, he arose and walked alone,
wrestling in his heart beneath black clouds,
all the night long,
until the dawn shone upon the sea.

2

The sheep brought a fair price.
The cattle did not.
Neither did the coat off his back.

Many, many silver shekels
clinked into the grimy hand
he had passed daily.

They fell silently into the woolen pouch
of the one who leaned on a crutch
in the streets of Machaerus.

They brought tears to
the wretch draped in rags
at the River Jordan.

3

 His stout young shoulders carried the cross to

the streets of Bethany,

the walls of Jerusalem,

the palace of Ciaphas,

to Antonia,

and even to Calvary.

It was no burden when he carried it

to the mountain where the Lord ascended.

And when his jeweled father

spit on him

and his gilded brother

cast him out,

he carried the cross.

He carried it still, against the Romans,

against insults,

against mockery,

against lashings, like the Lord’s, that sliced flesh to the bone.

He carried the cross

while James was slain by the sword of Herod Agrippa.

He carried the cross

when Peter was crucified, unworthy,

with his head and arms to the earth.

He carried the cross,

alone,

when no new Matthias was called as

the rock.

4
After his skin
had leathered and aged,
his son, his only son,
denied the testimony,
turning to Jupiters of gold.

And his strength failed at last.

As he fell on his knees, tipping
the beam to the ground,
he heard a whisper,
still and small:

Take up the cross.

Want more? Here’s some incredible Messianic artwork of Christ.

How to Write a Poem (Part 2): The Rules of Good Poetry

1.   Tell a story. And for a poem to tell a story, it needs real characters (not abstract ones) with recognizable, specific qualities. This means adding flesh to bare bones (more description, less riddle). It also means it needs a setting, conflict, and some sort of reversal or resolution at the end that changes what was at the beginning. Take Tony Hoagland’s “The Perfect Moment” (73) for example. There are three characters: “Kath”, “I” (the narrator), and the son. The setting—the house, iced tea, the “ragged net hanging from the hoop,” and the wind bending the marsh grass—is solid concrete. And the perfect day described in the start is reversed when you realize the son has cancer.

1a. Include concrete images. And make sure they’re not cliche. This means you should prefer “stage-four lymphoma” to being “sick in bed”.

1b. Have a reveal at the end. The last stanza, couplet, or sometimes last word, should pack a lot of punch, probably the strongest punch of the poem. So use it wisely. And, if need be, cut your poem short. You don’t want things to get boring after the punchline. You’ll see this done well in all sorts of published poetry. I’ll use James Wright’s “What Does the King of the Jungle Truly Do?”. The majority of the short poem describes a family of lions in the Serengeti plains using specific imagery. It concludes with this solitary fragment: “Small wonder Jesus wept at a human city.” The isolation of the line and its position at the end both give it more punch.

1c. Sometimes you can set up an expectation with the title, and then do the opposite in the body (like Charles Simic’s “Our Salvation,” the title of which makes you expect a religious, hopeful poem, while the body turns out to be the exact opposite).

2.   Your poetry should be you—your voice—not someone or something else. It’s a natural tendency to want to write like some famous writer—it’s great to learn from the greats. But it can lead to being superficial or false. So don’t leave your real self out. Also, trying to be a great poet can get in the way of writing in a genuine way (see rule 4). So be genuine first and great second. You could look at any of Elaine Equi’s poems as an example: They feel like she’s a real person just talking to you. Here’s a stanza from “The Return of the Sensuous Reader” as an example: “Unless you are especially comfortable / with your body, reading in the nude is likely / to be more of a distraction than an enhancement.”

3.   Make sure to include tongue candy. Of course, you shouldn’t put cleverness over heart (genuineness). But don’t forget cleverness either. Tongue candy can mean the right word, the right repetition, or a witty juxtaposition. Here’s a small example from Vievee Francis’s “Smoke under the Bale”: “How can you know me? Tin and bridle, / neigh and crocker sack. My gandy-song— / the blue-buzz of flies. / Sugar from your palm?” The words are like candy, only better—so sweet on the tongue.

3a. Pros Enjamb. In case you don’t know, enjambment is when sentences (and phrases) don’t match line-breaks. For example, Poe in his “Eldorado” (simple, but one of my favorites) breaks this line after the second-to-last word, rather than the last: “And o’er his heart a Shadow / fell” (later he end-rhymes “shadow” with “Eldorado”). Using enjambment can add flavor to a line by highlighting (or sometimes hiding) a word or phrase. Use it wisely. But use it.

4.   Don’t take yourself too seriously. (Ah, yes.) This one may be the most important. Again Elaine Equi is a master of this. Her poems are fun, engaging, and personal. This playful way of being personal comes through in her “Word and Sentence”, which defines terms and then uses them in an unexpected way: “flense: v. To strip the blubber or skin from (a whale, for example). / Serial killer, Ed Gein, once said he could outflense Melville in a second.” You can tell when you read her poems that she thinks more about the audience and the subject than she does about herself. She’s not showing off as a poet or academic. Put simply, a poet needs to be humble.

4a. Implicate yourself too. Some poems take on social or political issues in a judgemental sort of way. That’s a good thing—nothing wrong with trying to change the world. But if you’re going to be judgemental, make sure you have the humility to implicate yourself too. After all, poets are anything but perfect. Tony Hoagland, in his “Hard Rain”, talks about how America commercializes horrible things into good things. And he concludes with, “I used to think I was not part of this, / that I could mind my own business and get along, / but that was just another song / that had been taught to me since birth— / whose words I was humming under my breath / as I was walking through the Springdale Mall.”

I’m sure there are exceptions to each of these rules. And while I think it’s okay to think of them as guidelines, I do think they’re each important principles that help make poetry more accessible and reader-friendly. And as such, I’m going to continue to implement them as best I can from here on out, so that hopefully my readers (you) and I will communicate more exactly and gain some of that genuine, elusive empathy.

How to Write a Poem (Part 1): Poetry and Empathy

I believe the greatest superpower is empathy. But I mean real empathy. Not just the run-of-the-mill “I empathize.” I mean really understanding another person’s feelings. Paradoxically, I believe (kind of agreeing with Nietzsche) that this is practically impossible (that’s why I call it a superpower). But if it is achievable, or achievable to a degree, then it will happen through practice. Accordingly, one of my main goals as a writer is to connect with the audience (you)—real communication that will let us understand each other. I strive for absolute clarity—and I’ll even repeat things here and there just to make sure you get it. As Tony Hoagland says (slightly out of context), “I believe in saying it all and taking it all back and saying it all again for good measure...” (48).

On the opposite end of the court, I’ve also been practicing speed reading. I try to let my brain suck in details as rapidly as it can. Mainly because there are so many great books and never—never—enough time to get it all inside. My case is particularly bad, as my mind is like a sieve, and by the time I’ve crammed a couple books into it, the grains of some other book have already dropped out the bottom. Of course, if it’s what I consider a classic, I’ll reread it. Otherwise, about all that stays is the residue called a title (if that).

Now let’s take these readerly and writerly concepts and flip them upside down. (We’re moving from prose to poetry.) Poetry is gold—it’s the most dense, thus most valuable of literary metals. As a poetry reader, if I expect to get anything out of it, I have to shift my speed-reading into neutral, coast for a while, put on the brakes, back it up, let it idle, maybe open the door and push it forward with my foot a little bit, and so on. The old paradigm of speed just doesn’t work.

As a poetry writer (I mean poet, but I wanted parallel sentences), instead of following my normal ideal of perfect clarity, I tend toward a bare-bones, bare-naked style, where you have to read it several times to understand. Instead of giving you a 100-word poem, I give you a 25-word poem that you have to read 4 times if you want the 100-word meaning. Almost like they’re riddles. (I do have a soft spot for riddles.) But I struggle, because I face a catch-22 (okay, that’s one book I didn’t entirely forget): If I write explicitly, it becomes prose—an essay. But I’m not trying to write essays, I’m trying to write poems. On the other hand, if I write in riddles, the reader doesn’t like it (do you).

Still, the bottom line remains the same—I’m here to communicate with another person—a real audience (you). If my poetry doesn’t fit you, it might as well not exist. Elaine Equi said, “I deliberately try to make my work as accessible, reader-friendly, and entertaining (a bad thing for serious poets I guess) as possible.” That line fits my philosophy for essays (and novels) to a tee. But for some reason I struggle with being too obscure in my poetry—which is turning my back on the audience (you). Because I want to become a better poet, I’ve written down a few things I’ve learned this semester that, when followed, help poetry fit the audience while still being good poetry (breaking the catch-22). Mostly, this is for my own benefit so what I’ve learned from Professor Lance Larsen and my workshop peers doesn’t escape so quickly through the sieve. But I hope it’s also helpful to anyone who wants to become a more reader-friendly writer and poet (you).

To Be Continued...

How to Write a Pantoum Poem

A pantoum is type of poem that comes from Malaysia--it's basically a woven rope of repeating lines. It's made with quatrains in which the 2nd and 4th lines of each stanza are repeated as the first and third lines of the next stanza.

And here's the real gem:

A Cheat Sheet

This spreadsheet lets you enter each of the original lines, and then it updates the repetitions automatically. That way, when you're revising (and it'll NEED revising), the process goes much more smoothly, with the form doing lots of the work for you.

Here's an example from Elain Equi (an excellent poet whose Ripple Effect we studied this semester). I've illustrated how the lines repeat by labeling them with letters:


A Date with Robbe-Grillet by Elaine Equi

(A) What I remember didn’t happen.
(B) Birds stuttering.
(C) Torches huddled together.
(D) The café empty, with no place to sit.

(B) Birds stuttering.
(E) On our ride in the country
(D) the café empty, with no place to sit.
(F) Your hair was like a doll’s.

(E) On our ride in the country
(G) it was winter.
(F) Your hair was like a doll’s
(H) and when we met it was as children.

(G) It was winter
(I)  when it rained
(H) and when we met it was as children.
(J)  You, for example, made a lovely girl.

(I)  When it rained
(K) the sky turned the color of Pernod.
(J)  You, for example, made a lovely girl.
(L) Birds strutted.

(K) The sky turned the color of Pernod.
(M) Within the forest
(L) birds strutted
(N) and we came upon a second forest

(M) within the forest
(O) identical to the first.
(N) And we came upon a second forest
(P) where I was alone

(O) identical to the first
(Q) only smaller and without music
(P) where I was alone
(R) where I alone could tell the story.


If you want more examples, Verse Per Se has a nice list of pantoums.

Last Girlfriend

This

summer I

didn’t go on a

vacation to Egypt with

my girlfriend. And we didn’t

take a cruise down the Nile. We didn’t

stand on the deck and lean up against the rails,

while the sun cast pink and orange rays across the rippling

waters. And on the third day, from the top of the highest Gizan monolith,

as the stars winked overhead, we didn’t have our first, passionate kiss. We didn’t

visit the great sphinx of Ramses and wonder why it had to be his nose. We didn’t walk hand-

in-hand into Tutankhamen’s tomb and touch the dust of distant dynasties.

In fact, we didn’t even see each other again.

☧ (poem)

☧

(Chi Rho)

The tachyon dances invisible,
mechanical,
faster than light,

to rachmaninov,
an architect of chaos,

through silver, magnetic earbuds,
its morethanlight echoing the heartache
of the young scholar, michael,

who is not the archangel,
who is an unwitting catechumen
because his achilles heel won’t stop

crying for truth,
and who pretends

to study chemical reactions, but who
deep down

understands the dichotomy of science
and human alchemy,

which has run deep in the blood
from adam to zechariah,

who, after all, remembered the lord,
who, in turn, remembered him back,

through angelic chorus, as he did
with enoch’s city and
as he does each time we do or don’t

take the eucharist,
whether literally or metaphorically
consuming the patriarch of all tachyons.

Ride, Boldly Ride!

I would like to find El Dorado some day.

I came across this poem last October. It gave me chills the first time I read it. A few months later, my student Matt wrote a song about El Dorado as well, which reminded me of the specter's admonition: "Ride, boldly ride!"

Keep questing. It's out there.

“Eldorado” by Edgar Allen Poe

Gaily bedight,
A gallant knight,
In sunshine and in shadow,
Had journeyed long,
Singing a song,
In search of Eldorado.

But he grew old—
This knight so bold—
And o'er his heart a shadow
Fell as he found
No spot of ground
That looked like Eldorado.

And, as his strength
Failed him at length,
He met a pilgrim shadow—
“Shadow,” said he,
“Where can it be—
This land of Eldorado?”

“Over the Mountains
Of the Moon,
Down the Valley of the Shadow,
Ride, boldly ride,”
The shade replied—
“If you seek for Eldorado!”

I don't even write poetry. (poem)

I don’t even write poetry.
I stand to the side and tell the muse to write it.
I’m not going to waste my freaking time transcribing.

Powdered Sugar Cookie

Today at 2:16 pm (I try to wait about two hours between snacks), I ate powdered sugar cookies. Which is different than powdered-sugar cookies. Huh. This turned out to be an unexpected lesson in hyphenated adjectives.

Lizard

They say Roosevelt was a lion. John Wayne was a bear. Tony, my coworker, is a mouse. I, on the other hand, am a lizard.

(Sticking to a warm rock, holding very still.)

Happy St. Fecking Patty's Day!

feck (fek) (slang, has no sexual connotations)
n., 1. explicit nominative
[e.g., It's not just switching a vowel, ya twisted feck.]
2. one who fecks
[e.g., You mean that arseways fecker?]

v., 1. to steal
[e.g., "They had fecked cash" (James Joyce, Portrait
of the Artist).]
2. to throw
[e.g., He's a rude gobshite--I asked him for a drink and
he fecked the glass at me.]

adj. 1. expletive [e.g., Bloody feckin' 'ell.]
Commonly used by religious authorities and school teachers.
May be combined for added effect (e.g., I asked that feck to explain, but the fecker just fecked a feckin' rock at me or, more concisely, Feck the feckin' fecker).

*   *   *

Hope you have a wonderful day. And watch out for the fecking leprechauns.

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Facebook Statuses

(I just want to say that clever status updates are a good way to impress the ladies. In theory. Ha. Anyways, just put yours truly infront of each of these statements. And, please, let me know if any of these actually are clever:-)

would like to be a ghostwriter—after he dies.

hates those days when nobody comments on his status.

| My only friends are pirates.

cried at Mr. Bonsai's funeral.

was born on a Friday and was born for Fridays.

is an extreme mnmlst.

is friends with himself on Facebook.

| It was un-bloody-necess'ry.

| The final product should cause envy. If you're getting a different reaction, go back to cooking school...

is a would-be drug addict. (Thanks, Jolysa.)

is feeling rather good about all this—spiritually, ecumenically, grammatically.

just had his morning dose of saturated fat. The stringy kind.

prefers the phrase "If I grow up.." to "When I grow up..."

| I'm not trying to be obscene. I'm trying to be casual.

is glad to know that he has an audience for his status updates. Welcome. (Yes, you.)

wants to tell everyone his new password because it's so clever. (But it's my password. So the answer's no.)

recommends that you switch to Chrome. It is useless to resist.

altarsofscience

got a cold from somebody on Facebook...

Nate and the South-American Crossing

Today, as the world completed
a revolution, I traveled from
winter into summer, from
the eye of Polaris to
the watch of Chiron.

My Last Night in Chile

My last night in Chile,
I walked up the hill.
Five busses passed me with the lights off
—out of service—
crammed with people standing in the center.
That happened last night too.
So I walked up the hill.
Yellow streetlights bathed the sidewalk,
the shrubs,
the houses.
I was practicing my rrrr’s.
Chorrrrrrrillana.
Rrrrrueda.
Malorrrrri.
I felt the humidity of sweat in my armpits
and under my backpack.
So I sat down on the bald spot on the hill,
and waited.
A dog in the distance was throwing a fit,
like a two-year old,
the same bark over and over,
twenty times.
Another replied with four or five.
Then the first did twenty more,
this time in pairs—
makes you want to club him one.
Then it got quiet.
The sound of the cars faded away
like the foam on the ocean.
The dogs were silent.
I heard glass clinking in a kitchen
somewhere down below.
The yellow lights brightened the rim of the sky.
But the light faded as my eyes climbed upward.
The darkness took over.
And I could almost hear the stars.
I continued walking when the sweat had turned cold.

Wisdom from Nate Tucker

if i were you,
i'd want to switch back.

More from Nate

The enter key was depressed
as a result of his being used.

I think I know how he feels.

Hyde

I just want to scream out loud.
What’s happening to me?
The ‘was’ I was…

But no, he’s gone
I want to shoot someone,
And I could crush you with
an open palm.

You took my home…
And I’m
Screaming, inside.

…What?
What’s the matter?
Are you okay?
Oh, I’m sorry.
Don’t mind him.
That’s just Hyde.
He’s quite harmless

most of the time.