1. This poem, if I remember correctly, was a collaboration with my good friend Kathleen.
My writing makes bread rise.
My writing is the hum of the radiator
My writing makes birds fly
My writing is as silent as the grave
Vocabulary is like a lost child
Who wanders the grocery store
Frantically calling for his mother
Bruising the tomato he was sent for
My writing calls me on the phone
Late at night and tells me stories
My writing revives dinosaurs
Like Kathleen’s oatmeal
2. Parachute Man, or, He does not know that he will be set on fire
I once met a parachute man,
Orange and brave was he.
"I am willing," he said,
"To give my life for this country."
I protested, begged, and pleaded.
Please get down, and we'll have tea!
But still he dangles from his plastic chute,
Always above, forever without me.
3. My grandfather's favorite poem, by Edgar Allen Poe
Eldorado
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!"
4. One of my favorite poems, by Walt Whitman
Earth, my likeness,
Though you look so impassive, ample and spheric there,
I now suspect that is not all;
I now suspect there is something fierce in you eligible to burst forth,
For an athlete is enamour'd of me, and I of him,
But toward him there is something fierce and terrible in me eligible
to burst forth,
I dare not tell it in words, not even in these songs.
5. Ode to Professor Mann
William's omniscience
Is passed on to his pupils
We will drink at five.
6.My October Regrets in Decasyllables
I think it was the coldest day that fall
Though I remember nothing of it all,
Except for the sick smell of the exhaust,
The look in your eyes as if you were lost,
The cold hard ground under our anxious feet,
And the finality of your retreat.
I should have told you, told you that I cared.
You didn’t try, you would never have dared.
That hideous moment is too far gone.
I have since forgiven you, and moved on,
But I won’t forgive my own cowardice,
I won’t stop longing for that one last kiss.
