Schrödinger’s Letter

As long as the envelope is unopened

it is both good news and bad.

Not knowing is both hopeless and hopeful,

and there is no joy in such a state.

Anticipation is a rusty blade that

slips into the gut faster than pain, but

the anticipation gives the blade a twist

and the pain is there. The twist of fate.

The autobiographical plot-twist,

and there is no end to this without

opening that damn envelope.

‘Wanting to know' battles ‘it’s better

not to know.’  Fear of not knowing

begins to hurt worse than fear of

knowing.  Eventually.  To know

‘Knowing’ is, however, the natural

death of hope.  Not knowing is the

most essential ingredient of Hope.

 

Useless Wings by tex norman

Useless Wings by tex norman

 

Some birds don't fly, but they have wings.

What that must be like to have something

that should impart an ability but it doesn't.

 

How painful it must be to want do something

that, for all apparent reasons, you should be

able to do, and yet you clearly, demonstrably

 

cannot do.  It is doubtful the turkey would be

on so many plates for Thanksgiving if they

had the gift of soaring flight.  And chickens

 

are like sitting ducks.  No. It's worse than that,

and it explains why so many are consumed

daily.  Do Penguins pensively stand patiently

 

huddled on a sheet of ice, all winter, because,

being nonflying birds, it is safer for them there?

Are Ostriches so unpredictable mean because

 

they are just so pissed off about not being

able to use the wing they were bone with?

Having a few useless gifts of my own I am

 

not totally clueless to how the might feel.

I can see the edge, and I'm thinking, do

I dare dash to the edge determined

 

to place my faith in what has failed me so

many times before?  Is my lack of faith

the flaw that keeps from from success?

 

Do I dare try to do what I've been unable

to do a dozen times before?  Is my flaw

never taking that one, no turning back try?

Definition poems

This is a word count poem of 25 words.

The pattern is like this:  The poem is 9 lines lone and each line has a set number of words:

1.                 One Word--------The first word is the word you are going to define.

2.                Two Words------Followed by the words defining line one.

3.                Three Words

4.                Four Words

5.                Five Words

6.                Four Words

7.                Three Words

8.                Two Words

9.                One Word--------Then if possible use a synonym for line one 

                                      or some cleaver ending.

Example but when you are done you can eliminate the numbers:

1.       DOUBT                                  --by tex norman

2.      When you

3.      ask a child

4.      ‘who ate the cookies?’

5.      and they say they have

6.      no idea,. . .  with their

7.      mouths full . . . and

8.      they’re chewing

9.      something.

Just try defining some short common words or unusual words in this manner.  It could be enough for a book all by itself.

Faith:

Trust in

an unsubstantiated story,

a myth, because it’s

shared by many non-thinking beings

too lazy to think

for themselves, too

dumb to

doubt.

Dog:

A living

thing so delightful

its presence almost proves

the existence of a loving,

all powerful, all loving 

higher power.  Well,

they're almost

enough.

Money:

An idea

That, when accepted

by all, turns ordinary

paper into our idea of

money, when it is

still, just ordinary

slips of

paper

Intimacy:

A combination

of vulnerability and

trust with a dash

of believing you are desired

and able to return

your ecstasy for

her delightful

ecstasy.

Fortuitous:

It has

Nothing to do

With fortune. It’s occurring

By chance, serendipitous, lucky, an

Unexpected accident like the
day I meet

you.

Assurance:

No knowledge

and no doubt

equals absolute assurance and

makes intolerance and short term

solutions the political norm.

No doubt creates

the stupidly

sure.

  

Doubter:

Knowledge plus

doubt results in

intellectual hesitancy that

will watch the world

implode, while absolutely certain they

know a better way. . .

maybe.  But doubt

says, “Maybe

not.”

  

Putative:

Believed to

be – assumed to

be – as in ‘putitive

father’  – not confirmed by DNA

but mom was there

and pretty sure

who she

screwed.

  

Insomniac:

You lay

in your bed

like meatloaf in an

oven at a low temp

and you think and

wait and until

you're finally

done.

  

Talent:

Do something

until you’re the

best one among all

the people you know and

never consider that that

doesn’t make

all that

good.

Republican:

Someone so

selfish and lucky

they believe they have

the power to take care

of themselves, so piss

on everyone who

is less

lucky.

Weakness:

The truth

behind every strength.

We are stronger than’

we know, and weaker than

we imagine.  Over time,

only our weakness

strengthens.  That’s

life.

  

Shitty:

Some days

are so shitty

you wake up and

immediately you can just smell

that shitty day heading

your way.  There’s

no way

out.

Selcouth:

It is

a synonym, for

cool.  If something is

wondrous, marvelous, delightfully rare and 

strange in a strangely

magnificent way then this

is the word 

to use.  

Cool.

Selcouth

is not

a word easily

used in a sentence.

Left alone, I made up

several selcouth plans to

change my life

Let it

be.

Malarkey:

Sounds like

bullshit, blither blather

yahdah, yahdah, double speak.

It is something you’d rather

not hear and damn

near to “them

is fightin’

words.

  

Uxorious:

Yes, dear.

No dear.  Can

I bring you something

please, dear.  Can I visit

my balls, my sweetness, my

warmness, my white throated

dove.  Sorry if

I’m bothering

you.

Schwinn

The Christmas I was 9 I got

A Schwinn, red, no basket.

By May I’d discovered

Suicide Hill.  I was the only

one calling it Suicide Hill,

but coasting down this hill

felt dangerous.  As I grew

confident, it seemed not

dangerous but thrilling.  I

reached a speed that filled me

with joy.  I was going so it felt

like I could almost leave myself

behind

which was the ultimate

relief.    For a few moments I

escaped myself

I left me behind

 I remember looking back.  I could

almost so myself panting, weary,

out of breath

free of me finally.

Dandelion Days

We are fast approaching

                                      the dandelion days

when a weed    with  a    noble history

teaches us all 
                        an important life lesson. 

From early spring to

                                  the first icy touches of winter,

the dandelion thrives. 

                      Some of us pull them,

                                               cut them

                                                    poison them

but the dandelion

                               keeps    showing up

                 holding no grudge. 

The dandelions      are 
                        just there,    
                                              alive,

                                                   flourishing,

                                                            

allowing us to observe a cycle of life

                                    we wish were ours.

Who among us would not want
                                        to survive,

                                              to thrive

                                        to live until
like the flower

                     our heads turn white, and lite
 our thoughts     are     fluffy little stars

                   
  thoughts that could be,
                            would be 
                                      will be
swept up by even the most subtle 
                                               breath of breeze,

thoughts that scattered
                              in all the obvious directions
                         landing in unexpected  places 

Each thought becomes a floating reminder

                     that we have one unequivocal  promise:

                                    
                                    life  goes  on.

Let Go

My dog is half lab which is,

as you know, short for

Labrador Retriever.  He will,

with no hesitation, run after

and retrieve whatever is thrown

but once retrieved he won’t

let go.  “Drop it!  Let Go, dog-gone-

it!”  I beg.  But he won’t let go,

he will not, no way in hell

is he going to let go despite

the fact that he delights in

chasing after whatever is thrown.

We hold on so tightly, even when

There are advantages to letting go.

Why is it so hard to let go?

Why is it so incredibly difficult

to accept nothing in exchange

for the utter bliss of the chase?

Poetry is not Prose

More poetry is being written, and less poetry is being read than at any other time in history.  Most people who write poetry rarely read poetry.  Does that seem odd to you?  The thing is that most of us do not get poetry.  We had lousy education in poetry by high school English teachers who didn't like, or understand poetry themselves.  For me, poetry is important.  I read poetry every single day of my life.  I have a mailing list of friends that I send a poem to every morning.  

Poetry is not like any other form of writing and its differences have value to us.  If only we can discover that those differences have value and a unique power waiting for us inside every successfully written poem. 

The first point I would make is that poetry is not prose broken up into short lines.  Since most modern poetry does not rhyme a lot of uninformed people assume that if you just put what is written into short lines you have turned prose into poetry presto-chango.

Consider a poem by William Stafford.  First look at it as a prose version of the poem:

I was driving home one night, on an icy mountain road, when I came upon something in the road that turned out to be this dead deer.  I was afraid some driver might come along behind me, maybe not paying attention, get surprised by this large dead animal on the road, and by trying to avoid hitting the deer they might have an accident.  Being the good citizen that I am I got out to push this animal off the road and that is when I noticed it was a female deer and it was pregnant.  I was taken aback by when I discovered that this deer had not been dead long, and I think the unborn fawn was still alive.  I'm not vet, and I was in no position to do anything about all this, so I pushed the deer off the road into the icy river below.

Now look at how Mr. Stafford tells the same story in a poem.

Traveling through the Dark
By William Stafford 

Stanza 1

Traveling through the dark I found a deer
dead on the edge of the Wilson River road.
It is usually best to roll them into the canyon:
that road is narrow; to swerve might make more dead.
Stanza 2

By glow of the tail-light I stumbled back of the car                         5
and stood by the heap, a doe, a recent killing;
she had stiffened already, almost cold.
I dragged her off; she was large in the belly.

Stanza 3

My fingers touching her side brought me the reason-
her side was warm; her fawn lay there waiting,                             10
alive, still, never to be born.
Beside that mountain road I hesitated.

Stanza 4

The car aimed ahead its lowered parking lights;
under the hood purred the steady engine.
I stood in the glare of the warm exhaust turning red;                                 15
around our group I could hear the wilderness listen.

Stanza 5

I thought hard for us all-my only swerving-,
then pushed her over the edge into the river.

First, notice the title.  The poem's title is:  Traveling through the Dark.  Now what was the speaker of the poem doing?  Literally, the speaker is driving.  The word traveling has certain connotations that are just not found in the word driving.  Traveling is more than just driving.  Traveling implies a journey, a trip.  There is something more significant going on when you travel.  By using the word traveling the poet has send us a message.  This story is not just a story.  There is something more significant going on here.  This story symbolizes the journey of life, not driving home from work.  This is a journey through the dark.  For me, this is a perfect image of my life.  I am on a journey through life and I am in the dark.  I can't see or know everything that is going on around me.  I'm often "in the dark."

First Stanza: "Traveling through the dark I found a deer"

In the first line of the first stanza, ends with the word deer.  By placing the word deer at the end of the first line the poet has positioned the word in a very prominent place in the poem.   It is also a trick.  You see your eye ends line one with the word deer, and then the eye scans back to the beginning of line 2 and there sits the disconcerting word dead.  It is not the common way of wording things.  Most people would say, "I found a dead deer."  That is, after all, what happened isn't it?  By reversing that normal or more common word order the poem now reflects what always happens when we encounter death.  Every death, even coming upon a dead piece of road kill is a little surprise to us.  We are surprised by death.  Death is something we tend to want to ignore and it is always a little startling when we encounter death without expecting it.  

The speaker of this poem tells us he will push the dead animal off the road because another car may come upon this dead animal and be forced to veer, and "to swerve might make more dead."

The last line of the first stanza used alliteration. Alliteration is the repetition of the beginning sound in two or more words, but this is not just any ole alliteration, this is the repetition of the M sound.  An M is harder to say than say the E sound.  You have to use more lip action to say an M word.  The words Might Make More slows the line down when it is read aloud, and this slowing down is exactly what the speaker did when he encountered the dead deer, he slows down.

Second Stanza: "By glow of the tail-light I stumbled back of the car" 

In line 6 (the second line in stanza 2) we have the words,  ". . . the heap, a doe, a recent killing."  Usually when we encounter death the full knowledge of it comes to us in stages.  The speaker in the poem first sees a heap.  Next, the speaker notices that it is a doe.  Finally, the speaker finds that it is not just a doe, it is a recently killed doe.  As he drags her body over to the lip of the canyon, the speaker of the poem realizes that "the deer is large in the belly." This poor doe is pregnant!

Third Stanza: "My fingers touching her side brought me the reason"

Now the speaker knows that  the doe has a fawn inside her, a fawn that is still alive.  How does he know this?  Because:  "her side was warm." 

Perhaps the most interesting trick the poet has pulled is found in stanza 3.  line 11.  Note:  the fawn is:  alive, still, never to be born.

Why did the poet separate out the word still, isolating it between commas?  It wasn't just to force the voice to pause.  By isolating that still the poet has made the line and the language denser.  This fawn is STILL because it is not moving, it is STILL because it is NOT MOVING, and it is also STILL BORN.

The speaker in the poem knows that if he pushes the dead doe over the cliff, he is killing the unborn fawn.  Here we have a conflict.  To save life, the speaker has to take life. :"Beside that mountain road [he] hesitates." Life and death are intertwined, entangled.  The speaker is forced to make a judgment.  Is the death of the unborn fawn less valuable than the life of some driver that may come along later?  Yes. Even knowing that the life of a human is worth more than the life of a fawn (that has no hope of surviving long anyway), the speaker finds this whole situation off-putting, disconcerting, and troubling. 

Fourth Stanza: "The car aimed ahead its lowered parking lights"

Some personification is going on here.  The car aims.  A weapon is aimed.  Of course, a car is, at least in this case, a weapon.  It was a car that killed the doe.  The engine purrs.  This is not personification because cats purr, not humans, nevertheless, it is ascribing something to a car that belongs to a living thing.

Whenever I share this poem with teenagers they always want the person in the poem to perform an emergency C-section.  Maybe that is theoretically possible, but it is not likely that anyone in this situation would have the Know-How or the inclination to do something like that.  The C-section option is not an option at all. Because even if he could successfully deliver the fawn, he knows he could not keep it alive.

Fifth Stanza: "I thought hard for us all-my only swerving"

Notice the word swerving in this fifth stanza.  Where have we heard that word before?  Oh, yeah.  Stanza one:  to swerve might make more dead.  He was right.  This, the speakers only personal swerving is indeed making more dead, because when he realized that the doe was with fawn, his straight-forward action was tossed a curve.

This poem is so much more than the prose story I provided at the top of this article.  In poetry words do double duty.  The words selected are picked because they can mean more than one thing.  The place on the line can add to the meaning of the work.  Even punctuation can do more than just punctuate.

Knowing that the poem is dense and that the words are selected with great care makes it something different from prose.  Yes, of course, great prose is poetic, dense, and words are carefully chosen and often the words do double duty, but while it happens with prose, it is suppose to happen all the time in poetry.  That Evelyn Wood speed reader is not going to get all that a poem has to give if he zips through the poem at 100 words per second.

For those wishing to write poetry, it is my hope that this Stafford poem can be an inspiration, setting the bar for what is possible with a carefully constructed poem.