Writing Exercises on Board Book Editions

Written entirely of lines, phrases and words from children's books, with one exception

Behind the door, I am in bed.
Sound, like a hand on the door,
I am trying to catch a lot of growing.
I see children looking at me, a son,
munching on a crisp apple, purple grapes,
with lots of teeth. More are coming.
What do you see baby boy?
Your fingers make a fist, but
your silly side comes through and through,
so I thump my chest, you giggle,
slap your hands on your knees.
Now clap your hands, yes, you can do it!
Busy wriggling feet, chubby knees,
book-books in both hands,
If your son asks for bread...
but you ask for books instead.

Writing Exercise on Our Spiritual Condition

Pastors and parents cherish
their seeds,
small churches and children
become mustard trees.
Slowly learning addition, with luck
multiplication.
My son stutters "truck",
clarion to
a once humble father.
Emphatic and
direct, he points out our
Craftsman windows,
extending tense thumb and
forefinger, with
inquisitive eyes peeping, scarcely
seeing over the top
of a sun-worn ottoman.
He longs
for approval of knowledge,
and I approve.
Depth and detail and the words
to describe,
love and life and freedom.
Please, water,
milk, daddy, no, please, go.
Please grow,
ideas like the branches where
the sparrows
will make their rest.
But do not grow
limbs of enormous size, difficult,
not dexterous.
Large group study rooms with
songs and steeples,
and comfortable padded backs,
where everyone
is seated and satiated
but nothing
is truly in Sabbath.
Do not grow
from diminutive state,
for the gospel
calls for nimble feet, not
concrete towers
built to stay secure within the sway
of the whole reality.
Multiple souls, unless you will act,
do not seat
yourselves in my company.
There is a depth
in which your immensity will flail.
So, souls and seats,
simply fail and fail and fail.

Writing Exercises from a New Year's Drive

Northern Indiana roads
decompose and rust away
with strip mall homes;
the older the back way
the more blandly effiecient
aluminum eye sores. Bleakly
brightened by half broken
stone walls, sooty snow in the
corners of curbs, muted lawns
and a countryside sketched in dead gold.

New Year's weekend, we grew up here.
Resolutely we have been moving on,
starting new and putting our feet down.
In dullness, you drift into leathered repose;
if we were formed in these blank winters,
and even your resident parents are sprawled in our back seat,
what then unstills the un-unique?
Trite and true, I blink and smile,
the love on my tongue tastes of cream,
the crimson inside pumps of routine,
blessed, my God, the blessed unseen.

The Poetry of the Mid-Majority

Taken from the first paragraph of G!O!T!N! from www.midmajority.com, January 2, 2009. Written as a writing exercise as I read "The Complete Idiot's Guide to Writing Poetry." I know, I know, it seems trite and such... but since I don't have the money for an official poetry course, this fills in.

We don't often keep the game
of the night camera crew in one place
for any significant time,
but after the events of New Year's Eve afternoon,
we have a situation in the Valley
that requires additional monitoring.
On Wednesday, Illinois State absolutely
destroyed Evansville, a total shutdown
in every facet.
This result wouldn't have looked
very impressive, say, last year,
but the Purple Aces came in with
a legit record against a tough schedule,
and the Redbirds were looking
for validation
of an undefeated record
against one of the country's softest slates.
Immediately after the contest, Illinois State
jumped into the thirties, and its strength
climbed thirty-five spots.
So even though it was late
December in the Missouri Valley,
this was an important result.

Writing Exercises from the Junk Drawer

Coupons and keys,
my wife's practicalities and back door fears,
scissors and twisties to
keep bread fresh, the reason
we freeze communion all year.

In a white wire basket we cherish
thoughtfulness, Chile's gift cards,
one hundred dollars for Menards,
scraps of paper with once meaningful numbers,
all by this December forgotten.

But useful in this resurfacing,
sifting through needles and tape,
locks without combinations,
and scrape the rust off an orange handled
screwdriver, pointed downward,

useful in this mess
is every single thing,
removed from the place we've dumped them,
from the labels we've hung on them,
their uniqueness restored to them.

My Tree Cutter

Just cut, my son, continue cutting.
Swing at the deep roots
or at sprouting shallows.
For the unknowing bow down
before altars men built tall,
planted in fertile, fearful ground.
So cut them down, son, cut them down.

Sister Elizabeth

Elizabeth, there is mystery and certainty
in a husband who cannot speak.
As on the peaks there is a majestic silence,
secluded from a life lived in hope of mercy.
A change in scenery like the ceasing words
that leads into a preparation of praise.
You are the wind that sweeps above the rays
and looks at life from breathless heights,
leaving the barren below, seeing God in the sights,
for He has yet to show up in ways you know.
Beauty and mystery speak as whispers between
the Aspen trees when our regular dreams are
crowded out by the weeds.
In cornfields sewn but in mountainsides find
the God that miraculously steps into life.
What then will this be? So separately called than
we, so far from our normality, from our
self-defined reality. What then will this be?
Sisti, pour some hot cocoa for me,
come sit by me here under the tree...