Writing Exercises on a Sunday Morning

She's loosely attuned to "Air Force One"
over the shoulder of our son,
giggling as he holds tightly
to crossed leg and bouncing knee.
She's unaware we disagree.

What we did has become what we do.

Held hands across bucket seats,
a Burgundy Bonneville parked once
on a dusty road by a Crooked Lake
and once at the drive in. Made plans
for long movie nights in. Passed through
open house by popping in a DVD. Survived
without in the lounge by the smoking oven
watching football, in arms, relaxing.

Sighing, grinning, turning again
to a collection of poems, stapled and
waiting for my scolding pen.

Ease everyday, he knows what the silver button
does and why you clutch the toy with
the red, green, and yellow things to push
and watch the colors change.

In the next half hour, if he grows in
knowledge will he grow in stupor?
The stain is reaching within my oneness
and I no longer wish for separation.

Old patterns die, please, smile and laugh
and be buried.
And to the new and simple: rise.

Writing Exercises from a Chocolate Wrapper

"Trust with your heart, not
your head," adolescent sentiment,
Arms folded, puzzled, stern,
above makeshift lectern I discern
minor nods of unkempt, untended,
unused heads. Rhythmically, alongside
secrecy, written and crossed out,
community avoided with eight scribbled x's.

Icy black mechanical pencils move in angst
across the tablets of the holy and
frustrated. Tired, he writes, I'm tired
of trouble and those who do nothing and
thus compose it. Perversity? Bury it.
Fresh falling snow of January, contain it
like the frozen, bent limbs in the school courtyard,
until we give it up for Lent, I guess.

Lying beneath rippled round tables,
wrapping matted strands around lead
stained hands, and constantly reaching,
with innocence, imagination of adult desire.
Blissful depression marks this cursive that
strips the page of its pure white,
a hanging sadness of what its never known.
Live life scratched with fear,

she sits in skinny jeans and leans,
scrawny elbows against raw umber desk.
Tiny foil curls from the milk chocolate
her parents provided as Christmas tokens
of thanks cascade in reflection to the floor,
her auburn falls aside her hand and scrapes
across metallic notebook rings with no sound.
Perhaps this is the place for trite advice:

"Laugh until your heart overflows."

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.