Averted eyes

Who knows why
Comes by surprise
So many faces
Wander by
Averted eyes.

Tilt your face up
That pretty face
Has caught your eye
Has caught your eyes
Averted eyes.

Perhaps tattoo
Some visual cue
Oh what to do
She's caught your cue
Averted eyes.

It's no surprise
It might be wise
To recognize
The otherwise
Avert those eyes.

So many cries
To recognize
So many shys
That smiling face
So many tries
Averted eyes.

Could be some pain
Deep in those eyes
Some hidden pain
You can not feign
Averted eyes
Not asking wise.

Then by surprise
Averted eyes
Will tell you whys
In several tries
To listen is
Revealing prize.

Denis Streeter 11/30/11

Life: An Exploding Diagram...by Mal Peet

The very best stories resonate in your mind and interact with your life long after the story has ended. This story follows three generations of a British working class family from WWI to the Cuban Missile Crisis. It is an excellent portrait of a family trying to find its way...through wars inside the family...and outside. The focal point of these three generations is upwardly mobile Clem...struggling with school, love, and war. The writing is so searingly honest I could feel myself gasping in recognition. This paragraph gives you some sense of the character of Ruth, the mother of Clem...trying to make sense of her mother Win's past...

Sentimentality and nostalgia are closely related. Kissing cous-
ins. I have no time for nostalgia, though. Nostalgics believe that
the past is nicer than the present. It isn't. Or wasn't. Nostalgics
want to cuddle the past like a puppy. But the past has bloody
teeth and bad breath. I look into its mouth like a sorrowing
dentist. (page 26)

Mal Peet weaves pieces of generations together...with insight into the human condition. Ages 12+. This is one of those special books for all ages...personal yet universal...where the power of stories will continue exploding into your life.

Two mythologically startled

Mythologies

Down tribal tunnels
Distant lands
Exploring unknown
Timid stand
Counting blessings
Distant lands
Crying panes
Shards of selves
Justification
For what can not be
Rationally explained
Asking questions
What is belief
What is core.

Denis Streeter 11/18/11


Startled

You
You're honest enough
You're also secretive enough
I don't know where to place you
I love and hate you.
You don't tell an outright lie
Sometimes you tell the TMI truth
And I can feel my body shake
For I wonder
What TMI truth I've told you...
I wish I could remember
My mind a wave of memories
I look up
You're startled
I'm sorry...
What was your name?

Denis Streeter 11/19/11

Lisp chronicles

I got talking to a co-worker today and discovered she too had a lisp growing up. We mostly grew out of it. I had a speech therapist for a year or two in grade school. In an odd sort of way, this may have developed the importance of choosing words...perhaps even the preference for nonsense. I choose words for the way they flow from my tongue, not necessarily whether they make sense. As a fun exercise, she said I should make up lispy words and turn them into a poem. I was up for it...

husky (hufty)
with (wiff)
thank you (sank you)
thought (fought)
teeth (teef)
lisp (lift)
merchandice (merchandife)
yes (yef)

So...with apologies...I made up the following...

Lisp Chronicles

Me: I'll help you wiff that.
Them: Sank you very much. I'm also looking for that dog merchandife.
Me: Oh...you mean the hufty merchandife.
Them: Yef.
Me: I would have fought upstairs.
Them: What are you saying?
Me: Oh...sorry...I can't get my teef around it. I have a lift.

Denis Streeter 11/17/11

A plus shaped zero

The heart is a plus shaped zero
Metaphor breathing beginning
Growing changing experience
Between loving and loneliness
The head hides the heart
Then searches tunnels for excavation
Blending counter-intuitive
Some crosses some plusses
Beginning again
Connecting to
Breathing through
Complex possibility.

Denis Streeter 11/11/11

Greeting cards

I think that's how I first started writing poetry. I was trained at an early age to write thank you notes for everyone. The problem was finding the appropriate card for the occasion. Most cards were incredibly sappy. I found myself gravitating to blank greeting cards and collecting...like the Mary Engelbreit cards of the early 1980's...before her stuff got over produced. I developed a greeting card collection of about 200 cards. I would specially pick out each card to match the occasion or personality...and write some corny rhyme or limerick. People seemed to like them, so I continued. I never really thought of what I was doing as poetry. In fact at the time, I didn't think very highly of poets. When I thought of poets at that time, I thought of Emily Dickinson...which didn't sit well with me then. Only now am I appreciating her works more. I was more fond of riddles or puns...you know...the groaners. Most of my earlier poetry...say 25 years ago...were all rhymes. Then I started writing nonsense verse...often in rhymes...and more recently in free verse with some internal rhymes. I think writing nonsense helped me make sense of an often crazy world. Playing with words for multiple meanings is fun...as is just making words up. For a while, my nickname was "Moonshine" at open mikes. That still somewhat fits, but my work has broadened and deepened. I feel like I write about everything...that connects us in often odd ways to each other. It's not conventional, but it is real. I cover philosophy, theology, psychology....and lighter general stuff. I love exercises where I'm given a number words and told to spin a poem. I write a lot of poems...possibly 500/year recently. Most I don't share. I'm definitely an editor in progress. I'm learning to appreciate the fine art of editing...through writers, readers, poets, non-poets...anyone who will give me feedback. I'm aiming for a better edited style that's incredibly loose and free, yet real and accessible...in my own unique voice. Don't know how that's going to happen...but I feel like it's already beginning... It's strange to think that writing poetry started with greeting cards...but...hmm...maybe that's not quite true. Even when I was nine or ten, I liked riddles and palindrones...always reading the humor section of the Reader's Digest or Boy's Life. And I still like Bennet Cerf...whose wonderful corny pictures and verse always made me laugh as a ten year old.
"What's big, red, and eats rocks?"
"A big, red, rock eater."
This verse and picture always put me in fits of laughter during my tenth birthday party...though not everyone was amused.
So...maybe it was Bennet Cerf who got me started in poetry...

Grocery list

A co-worker left her grocery list behind. That was her first mistake. Her second was me finding it. I wrote this piece, attached it to her list, and taped it next to the schedule. Wonder what she'll think on Thursday...

Bread
Milk
Red sauce
Spinach
Jam
Croutons
Green onions
Garlic
Sour cream
Bagels
Pesto?
Apples
Edamame
Chicken
Veg-oil
Cottage cheese
Bananas

I fed the bread
Milk and red sauce
But it was the spinach
That put me in a jam
The croutons and green onions
Sent the garlic away
While the sour cream
Apple pestoed the bagels
But the edamame
Chickened out
It was allergic to
The vegetable oil
While the cottage cheese
Shrugged its shoulders
This grocery list is
Bananas.

Denis Streeter 11/8/11

Aint farm

Swallowing waspish tunnels down sesame seed holes
Watching organizers eat beans
Wandering the funny farms of time constraints
And all the aints
When the wishing wells were dry
The tin pools were laughing their dinner
Tin pan hats drinking corn husk fees
And the slumbers snored
Waking the distant hours the shadows were removed
Like an unpoached egg, only different
The shaving cream hunted for water
But the ice skates were removed
Placed in something dishwasher safe
With the tin pan hats and the corn husk fees
There's no getting used to it
Spectacle backwards,chins tucked in
You know what I mean
And the grass tucked backward
What to do
I'd lost my sense of taste
I'd lost my sense of aint
When the tins aint green beans
Time slipped away but I heard it pant
The lights out one snip at a time
Two tubes away and sent them to dinner
Returned with a cat, fish, and a nose
I gave up smelling after that except when fishing
I could always smell them a thousand feet below
My pole a smelt divining rod
All covered in felt and garbage compacted
The whole thing seemed silly so I gave up fishing
Just below the surface where aloe veras
Willing the ellipticals into circles
And burns are never the third degree
Egging on the circles, the choke holds came
They're never around when you want them to be
I invited them to dinner but they were all choked up
Some pundit shook his finger at me
Centrist
I wove the ellipticals into circles
Blessed the food and went to bed
The next day the owls were sprouting.

Denis Streeter 11/3/11

Four words

At Duvall poetry tonite we were given four words at the beginning of the first set...to spin into whatever we want! Then we could share them during the second set go-around.

Pelican
Salacious
Endgame
Stock exchange

Okay...so technically they aren't four words...but who cares!
And...I have to admit to not knowing the definition of "salacious", but luckily it was looked up...so we were given a working definition.
Fun exercise! Try it yourself...doesn't have to be these words.
What I came up with and read...

The pelican salacious(ly) answered my question
I'd been fishing for...
"Are cockles and mussels alive, alive oh?"
"Wouldn't you like to know", it answered salaciously...
And opened its mouth to swallow me down.
"What kind of endgame is this?"
"Yours..."
I read it New York Times Stock Exchange reports until it fell asleep...
Then I flew away.

Denis Streeter 11/2/11

Silence

Don't know what this means
Though I was up a ladder
To change a light bulb
I didn't fall, but
It didn't turn out...


Sabbath toothed
The banner came down
Full of luck turned upside down
Nor'windward
Following scent of the sun
Ladders up feelings follow
Waiting mist open embrace
Sensing temperature change
Snored the door, ladders no more
Ladder puppets jump
Nor'windward
Then
Silence

Denis Streeter 11/1/11