Puff Of Smoke Poems

Acquiring as a habit
dulls the world overloads
the circuits sure
at first there’s all the sparkle
and fizz till one huge pop
of light and it goes dark
another cookie or gift
wrapped unwrapped deals
delivered to your inbox while
you are busy wrapping unwrapping
but always more to buy time
Time. Time is pounding at my
heart yelling Stop. Just stop. Listen
to the snow. Drink the tea already in
our cupboards. Light
the shabby candles we already own
since the circuits are blown open
our arms let all the giving and
receiving dissolve in the air
let it become the snow
as it rises, as it falls.

Make the best of this
Eve’s Christmas quiet
Rollicking future tumbling closer
Rolling echo in every room of
Yesterdays, all the rushing past

Even
the fragile
grow strong
as each ornament
works
a little harder each year
to glow through
the gathered dust
of accumulating Christmas Past

WordPress just told me that with Leftover Words I had posted 500 poems.  Honestly.  I am so amazed.  I know they are not 500 amazing poems.  But when I look back over them, or leaf through the pages of them in book form, I stumble over many I’m fond of, many I remember arriving out of thin air and dailiness, the regular habit of trying regardless of mood or inspiration. This everydayness, no drama, just keeping at it and being kind to myself on the days it doesn’t work out–this teaches me more about creativity than any book or class ever could.  To you, my reading friends, I say–Go on.  Try.  If I can, you can. Do it.  You know you want to. So, start. Today.

P.S. I’m so excited for you to begin.

Hullabaloo and Valencia
privacy and pirate
ammunition, Andromeda
gabardine Barbados cinnamon sill
Leftover words, abandoned
on their slips of paper
hoping to be chosen next
even for a small poem or advertisement
If not a libretto, a ransom note,
a thick winter novel, anything really
anything except this endless
waiting on paper– to grow, to be a tiny
bit of something larger to be
part of a moving whole If not
a love letter or breaking news
at least a grocery list at least a reason
to mingle in a group of their fellows
In the end, that’s all every word wants.

No poem this morning just
words, jumbledandfallen
Undisciplined
tumbling down
around my feet
like jovial puppies.

Adorned
is the word
the tree uses
to talk about
itself

stretching the
connection between
Adore
and
Adorn

to describe
a life bigger
than merely
decorated (with its hint of
frippery)
while
Adorn sails on
beneath its
gleaming regal mantle.

Other winter sports
have their enthusiasts, players,
and superstitions. My sport believes
in spoons beneath pillows
pajamas turned inside out
tried and true methods
for predicting the outcome
in this early-morning game.
Amateurs can play
but it’s the semi-pro leagues
of elementary school students
who really shine.
Parents and teachers,
rooting for opposites sides,
wait for the final call.

Slow moving bands of snow
are crossing our region
on their annual tour. The closest
band travels in an old bus painted
white, of course.
The horn section sits in the back
bickering over where to stop
for dinner. The driver, who
says his job is driving snow,
ignores them all, intent on his path
ignores especially the lead singer
who keeps complaining, asking him to
Speed It Up, the whole band is moving too
slowly says the singer, telling the drummer
when no one else will listen but the drummer isn’t
listening either. He is staring out the window,
dreaming, watching the road whiten beneath them.

My shiny new words of the day–
an academic discipline
which studies old,
abandoned knowledge
once common as
alchemy and magic but
swept aside now,
episodes the world
would just as soon forget
like history’s hair in a bad photo
buried in the high school yearbook