"Reverse Dexterity" and "On Rumination and/or writing"
Two slower poems, lacking the odd punch of the last poem posted, showing more of my melancholy artistic side. In short, I don't know why I'm posting these, but they were asking me to put them up. I had no choice. It was a poetic hostage situation.
Reverse Dexterity was written for a poetry class but also for Amanda. So I suppose it was written for Amanda using the cover of a Poetry Class. I don't write enough for her anymore. I should. I will.
On Rumination has an odd title, and odd words in it. For ease of use, and in order not to confuse those of you who don't often peruse dictionaries looking for odd words, I will define the three words I selected to be at the center of my work.
Homoousian - the characteristic of God the Father that says that he is one and the same and yet separated from God the Son.
Homopteran - of or belonging to the Cicada family.
Martensite - the resulting hard brittle metal that hot steel will become when immersed in cold water or otherwise cooled too quickly. It tends to be useless.
Happy reading!
reverse dexterityI had a mirror on my desk
in which I used to practice
writing sentences backwards,
just so I would be able to bring up
reverse dexterity at parties.
I talked to myself then,
wondered aloud at the thought
of a first kiss. Decided it was
the soul at the speed of light;
electromagnetic innocence soaring in space,
until it breaks against beaches of stars.
One day the mirror itself broke.
I no longer remember how,
certainly not against beaches of stars,
but it did fracture perfectly.
The center, dusty silver, was surrounded
by hundreds of lives at different angles,
tinkling dizzily like the cocktail glasses
people’s hands write with, scribbling backwards
as the stars kiss at the speed of the soul.
on rumination and/or writingRobert Frost’s typewriter
must have gone through
reams of snowy paper
and miles of inky ribbon.
I have no typewriter, no ribbon, but
my monitor screen goes on for miles,
or inches that seem like miles,
or just inches of tri-colored pixels.
Tri-colored like a TV screen,
like the one we had when I was young.
I’d spray the screen with the ironing water
or spit and watch, magnified, the pixels split.
They split. Tri colored. Three. Three. Three.
Down the screen, water ran. Three. Three. Three
tiles of different size repeating on a bathroom floor
always make for an interesting pee.
A pattern. A pattern. I’ll find it. It’s there.
I’ll cross my eyes. I close them. The tiles
dance. Outside, a homopterous buzz disturbs my squares,
my pattern-less tiles, and they flee into post-August air.
I ruminate blankly with no squares to turn in my head.
The cicada sings again. Sings again. And again and…
Or. And/or. I love the way that looks. Inclusive and
exclusive
at the same time. God the Father and/or God the son.
Homoousian, they are of the same nature.
Exclusive, they are not the same.
I’ll be a father and/or a son one day.
And? Or?
My poetry is martensitic. Hot steel
made for hammers will become brittle,
fissured, useless carbide of iron,
when immersed in cold water.
Martensite strength will shatter against
real steel unaltered. My molten against
Robert Frost. Frost. Cold.
Crack.
Andrew
Hooray, another poem... this time a biggie...
I hesitate to put this poem down because it's very long and people will probably stop talking to me when they read it because it's weird. That said, now that I think about it I'm an odd guy myself and I suppose that it won't matter that much if I post something extremely odd on the web. Okay here goes...
This poem came from the aforementioned (like three weeks ago) poetry class. The theme was that we had to write a poem that detailed our own murder. The choices of how people chose to go out were pretty regular, mob hits, angry boyfriend or girlfriend, death in an alleyway, murder in a dream sequence. I of course chose angry robots.
Yes. Angry robots. They are out there. You've probably seen the SNL skits about the insurance that protects you in the case of a robot attack. This is kind of like that. Yep. Okay. Enjoy.
maybe this time…The day the robots came to get me
I was trying to fix my sink.
It clogs when I put eggshells in the disposal,
gunks up the whole system,
a real mess you’d better believe.
My omelet was getting cold while I
banged away at a pipe with my wrench.
You’d think I’d get the message and stop
shoving eggshells in the disposal, but I always think,
maybe this time.While I worked on the clog, the robots came in
through the front door, which I always leave unlocked
cause once I locked myself in and had to call the
fire department. I probably could have gone out the window,
but the firemen in our town always seem bored.
I thought they might be glad to get a call.
Locking the door wouldn’t have helped anyhow.
One robot had a circular saw blade on the end of his arm,
so he could have cut right through the wood.
I wouldn’t have even noticed the noise, since I was busy
yelling angrily into the sink, pummeling it with my wrench
shoving a broom handle into the drain.
I’m surprised none of my neighbors called the police
Or the fire department because of the racket.
It must have sounded like I was being abducted
by robots.
And soon I was! There were four of them
buzzing and whirring just like those cheap robots
you always see on badly made sci-fi films.
Had I noticed a few moments earlier, I could have
called for help, or at least tried to fend them off with
my wrench and my broom. They didn’t look very sturdy.
Regardless, before I could defend myself they knocked me down.
The robot with the circular saw blade cut my arms off,
and the others beeped and whizzed, for joy it seemed,
as they carried me towards the open front door.
I couldn’t call the fire department then, because I had no arms,
and you can’t make a phone call with no arms, you just can’t!
I was yelling and waving my useless stumps
spraying blood everywhere, making quite a racket
not so much out of pain or fear, but rather
because I had just installed new carpets.
Now there would be bloodstains all over!
If I’d have gotten stain resistant carpeting
I may have gone more quietly,
who knows?
I was carried outside, past the flower beds my
sprinkler system normally waters at 11:32 every morning.
That day I’d turned off the system because I wanted to
leave my car windows rolled down. My car seat had gotten
wet the last time I’d left the windows down and the sprinkler on.
If the robots had gotten wet, they might have
shorted out. I wondered what time it was, but since I
wear my watch on my wrist,
and my wrist happened to be lying on the kitchen floor
I couldn’t check.
A van pulled up when we got to the driveway,
black, like in the mafia movies, and I was tossed inside.
The van drove to the bridge just outside the city limits
and I was tossed over the rail into the river.
Since I had no arms, I couldn’t swim,
but I was almost out of blood anyway.
Most of it was on my carpets and in the van.
As I was drowning slowly, I wondered if the
future owners of my house would ever get the blood
out of the carpets or put eggshells
in the disposal thinking,
maybe this time…andrew
