4 Poems

It hasn’t been a dynamically productive day, I taught two classes, worked a bit on my book, accompanied Isabel to her  ballet lesson, and helped Sam a bit with a homework assignment, but I did get four poems written, so I feel pretty good about  that.

The first two were responses to things on facebook.  Some may  argue that that is an inappropriate usage of  rhyme – certainly, it tends to kill a thread – but I like doing  it, and a rhyming comment can outlast whatever transient conversation it’s in, in the  same way that a single song is often greater than the musical it’s in.

First was a thread about how everybody using social  media to jump on one  person kind of sucks, but the thread had veered off course and become about feminism, and feminist’s well known  lack of a sense of humor, and the original poster was trying to get everybody  back on course, so I wrote this:

Once the so called ‘thread’ gets started
Once the train of thought’s departed
There’s no human way of knowing
Which direction it is going
Once the subject’s in the breeze
It will go where it will please
So, it seems a bit myopic
To shout at people “Stay on topic!”

Then, on a thread about how teardrops are different depending on whether they are tears of joy, sadness, or onions:

There is room in the world for science
There is room in the world for art
Observing drops of water
Is a lovely place to start

The next  two were  written while waiting  for Isabel’s ballet lesson to finish because, seriously, you have to find something to do to kill that  hour, and you have the additional advantage of  a machine that  dispenses coffee for only 10 kc.  So, there’s this  one:

There are  plenty of fish in the ocean

there are plenty of fish  in  the seas

there are infinite words on infinite pages

and billions of birds in the trees

There are infinite  doors to open

with an  infinite  number of keys

there are more movies that have been made

than a person ever  could see

the aspects of our  existence are  more

than raindrops when it rains

than a thousand beaches’ grains of sand

than flowers on  the plain

Everything is infinite

in infinite time and space

but the universe stays  together

because everything’s in  its place

 

and this  one, because they’ve got lots of  kids’ drawings lining the walls:

Kids draw pictures, they’re pretty bad

but, they make their parents glad

they say “Oooh, that’s pretty” and that’s O.K.

but they never throw the damned things away

When kids grow up, and they’re no longer kids

they don’t want to see  everything that they did

 

That’s it for today’s blog.  Good night.