Wednesday, December 8, 2010

Christmas Cheer

To offset the darkness of the last poem and to bring in the holidays with a big HOORAY!!! I present you with a Christmas time poem in the form of a letter titled, "Dear Santa."

Dear Santa

I have been a very, very good boy this year and I teased my little sister only a teeny bit. Somebody at school said that you weren't real and I called him a grumpy old man. I believe in you. I believe in you with all my heart because if I don't, then what else is there to believe in? God? Because that story seems to be made of magic too.

Well Santa, I hope I am on your good list because I don't want to disappoint you. The excitement of walking down the stairs to see a heap of presents under the glow of the tree can't be described in like images because it is what everything else is compared to. If only one of those boxes held a Lego set, the open possibility of anything that I can Imagine. A world that I can sink into and forget that it is my fingers that make their arms and legs move. Or maybe a toy gun so I can protect my family and the world across. BANG BANG! The hero is me! Or a bucket of army men that I can lead to the victory of everything good. Oh oh, it could be a ball glove and Dad can teach me how to play pastimes. But most of all now as a grown man, I'd love to be as excited about these toys or anything as I was back then. 

P.S. Cookies and milk will be waiting for you.

Michael Schenk

Brand New inspired

"The Archers Bows Are Broken" by Brand New inspired this poem. It's darker than the other poems I have been posting, but I don't think Brand new has ever written a happy song.

Hysterical grins and gurgled cackles

I tried to imitate humor rather
than horror because the mess is less
and nobody will start to worry.

This is funny, isn't it? 
A scalding wreckage of a 
lacerated body, unsettled and loose, 
like a cannon off its hinges,
careless of the firing commands. 
The wild man performing for everyone. 
A joke of a person, void of 
ambitions or stipulations
worthy to earn respect.

I danced on the bridge,
hat on the ground, begging 
only for a compliment or a friend. 
As I twirled and twisted, kicking piles 
of gravel rhythmically, believing that 
the pebbles sang, "You can only blame yourself."
and I agreed.

So I pinched my head long enough
and I hit my brain hard enough,
to cause a reaction,
to catalyze a movement
within myself to make a new disease. 
Something fierce enough,
something strong enough
I'd have to invent a new attack.
And in the hopes of a formula
I'd work a solution, into a being felt fit
to garner something more than a blink.