Monday, July 9, 2012

Father

father |ˈfäðər|
noun
1 a man in relation to his natural child or children



Will you call him 'father'? The emaciated man, pale with dust in the glare of a yellow highway light stoops again to pick up with his tired back the weight of his generation. He bends and sweats, his calloused hands strong and sure around his struggle for freedom, for hope, for sunlight. Will you call him 'father' as you pass at ten past midnight on a Sunday, staring out at the lights of a city that you love but do not know? You will watch him grow to the size of ominous machines, dozing in the shadow of industry and development until he moves and scrapes and weeps into the hands that have no room to clutch the crumbs of his efforts or the body of his child, no time to caress the hips of his lover or a new blade of grass. The man will sweat on the highway until he crumbles into the pale dust around the freedom and hope and sunlight of his sons. Will you call him 'father'?                                               

Wednesday, July 4, 2012

Poetry

poetry |ˈpōətrē; ˈpōitrē|
noun
literary work in which special intensity is given to the expression of feelings and ideas by the use of distinctive style and rhythm; poems collectively or as a genre of literature : he is chiefly famous for his love poetry.



Let's change the variables. Let's adjust one 'yes' to 'no'. Let's see how many changes lead to Tom Waits days, to daisy sadness and small-town beauty pageants. Let's kick the dust up under our shoes and howl at the full moon in white cotton. We can run somewhere for no reason at all and fall in the wet grass. It can all be lighter and brighter and easier, maybe in a small villa with red floors and blue shutters where it's hot, hot all the time and flies buzz overhead like small machines, where we'll listen to far-off village children shrieking, where the glare from the ocean will blind our sleepy eyes if we dared peek out, where I'm always a poet and never just a me.