I wrote a poem this morning. You can hear Sparty snoring in the background. He has been sick so I couldn’t bear to move him. Apologies for that.
THE STORY'S STRUCTURE
The beginning is here.
You set up what might happen.
You show all the character’s flaws,
What they need to learn, the lie they believe
About themselves, about the world.
Spoiler: This is what they’ll learn by the end.
They will learn that the lie is not true.
This is where the character waits in the margins
Or hides in cupboards or bedrooms
To come flouncing or trudging onto the page,
Defined by black ink usually, by words and actions and a meet-cute.
The middle is where things get murky.
This is meant to be the bulk of the book’s life.
Your character is past the point of no return,
They have nestled into a giant peach or a wizard world,
And things are fun and games, but not necessarily,
Actually, fun unless they are into hard lessons,
And everything they want being blocked not just by outside forces—
Those beastly antagonists—but also by the lie they keep choosing to believe.
But good things happen here, too. Boys fly brooms.
Enchanted forests are explored. We are into a world of magic, of falling in love.
Until we are not. And that is the end.
Which sounds terrifying, doesn’t it?
It’s a bed without a head on a pillow.
It’s a final set of empty pages without words.
That’s too negative. This is what it is:
The end is the place where realizations happen
For us and for the character we’ve been watching.
We find out that we’ve both been believing a lie.
We find out that we don’t have to wait in the damn
Margins or stay in the lines that march across a life
—I mean a page—and we damn sure don’t have to be
Plath in a kitchen, Sexton in a garage. Hemingway in the foyer.
We can choose to continue. This is what sequels and semicolons are for:
For learning all over again; adventuring all over again; becoming all over again.
We are more than three act structures, aren’t we?
I think we are.
Share this if you want and also because it would be super nice of you!
GHOSTED
It was like one of those self-help blogs
That only talk in abstractions
About the power of self-love
Or how to end a toxic relationship.
That’s when I realized
That the person not showing up
Was me. All that bemoaning
About not putting in the effort,
Not taking the time to make sure
Sentences weren’t orders
And feelings were considered,
To temper my tone with kindness,
It was just me being the bully to myself
Before ghosting off to do other things
For people, with people, to people
without even saying goodbye.
Share this if you want and also because it would be super nice of you!
TOURIST LOVE
At dusk as I tiptoed along the Shore Path,
Between tourists grumbling about fog and the price of lobster,
Listening to the sound of whaler motors humming
out existence, I fell in love with a rose bush.
Not the cultivated kind, but the stubborn ones that cling to sea walls,
Bees fluttering about, wild and limby, stabbing at passersby,
Bright pink and white blooms, calling you in
Without asking for anything back. Just existing. No worries.
It knows it has survived drought and hurricane winds.
It knows it will survive those things again.
It knows it might be noticed or not.
It doesn’t matter.
In the bright morning light, the fog eventually cleared,
And I feel in love with two kids who wandered off the path
To push at a precociously balanced rock, thinking somehow
They’d knock that giant boulder into the sea
Even though a zillion others had tried before, hands flat
Against granite, legs braced, putting all their weight into it.
This is the sweetest kind of belief, of love, that love of self,
Not worried about what others think as you push and push and push.
Share this if you want and also because it would be super nice of you!
Hi! This year (2023), I’m continuing my quest to share a poem on my blog and podcast and read it aloud. It’s all a part of my quest to be brave and apparently the things that I’m scared about still include:
My spoken voice
My raw poems.
Thanks for being here with me and cheering me on, and I hope that you can become braver this year, too!
Hi! This year (2023), I’m continuing my quest to share a poem on my blog and podcast and read it aloud. It’s all a part of my quest to be brave and apparently the things that I’m scared about still include:
My spoken voice
My raw poems.
Thanks for being here with me and cheering me on, and I hope that you can become braver this year, too!
For Anne & Maxine
Why is it that the dead
Never listen to my pillow talk?
I am tired, but can’t sleep
Again and again and again.
You snore next to me
And occasionally twitch
As the dog snuggles in between us,
Released from her crate
Because she cries so much.
Again and again and again,
Why is that my whines
Never wake anyone up?
Not even myself.
Share this if you want and also because it would be super nice of you!
Hi! This year (2023), I’m continuing my quest to share a poem on my blog and podcast and read it aloud. It’s all a part of my quest to be brave and apparently the things that I’m scared about still include:
My spoken voice
My raw poems.
Thanks for being here with me and cheering me on, and I hope that you can become braver this year, too!
For Anne & Maxine
Why is it that the dead
Never listen to my pillow talk?
I am tired, but can’t sleep
Again and again and again.
You snore next to me
And occasionally twitch
As the dog snuggles in between us,
Released from her crate
Because she cries so much.
Again and again and again,
Why is that my whines
Never wake anyone up?
Not even myself.
Share this if you want and also because it would be super nice of you!
Hi! This year (2023), I’m continuing my quest to share a poem on my blog and podcast and read it aloud. It’s all a part of my quest to be brave and apparently the things that I’m scared about still include:
My spoken voice
My raw poems.
Thanks for being here with me and cheering me on, and I hope that you can become braver this year, too!
Hi! This year (2023), I’m continuing my quest to share a poem on my blog and podcast and read it aloud. It’s all a part of my quest to be brave and apparently the things that I’m scared about still include:
My spoken voice
My raw poems.
Thanks for being here with me and cheering me on, and I hope that you can become braver this year, too!
For Anne & Maxine
Why is it that the dead
Never listen to my pillow talk?
I am tired, but can’t sleep
Again and again and again.
You snore next to me
And occasionally twitch
As the dog snuggles in between us,
Released from her crate
Because she cries so much.
Again and again and again,
Why is that my whines
Never wake anyone up?
Not even myself.
Just so you all know, if my poem is about a relationship, it might not be about my own current relationship or even about me.
