Genius comes with revision
Like the way the best line in a poem delivers an emotional punch
That can't be described, only recreated
By other poets with their sharply focused emotions filtered through words like a camera lens.
Take your poem and photoshop it. Add in blurred edges for
Vagueness. Adjust for context.
Revise, revise again.
I want to revise the way I feel about you
Put it aside like a short story and return in a month with a red pen to make corrections
Love is for people who can't focus
Love is for people with bad photoshop skills
Who keep moving the eraser tool over and over your picture but can't seem to make you fade away
And the images are saved to a permanent file in my heart's hard drive
I want to delete the way I feel about you
It's the wrong extension, and a more experienced photographer would know not to make this kind of stupid mistake
Don't let your emotions get in the way of a good picture
Don't let a good picture get in the way of a major revision
Hold the pen in your hand and deliver an emotional punch
I want to punch the way I feel about you
Crossing you out in every stanza
Until revision makes me a genius
A poem with red lines over my heart.
Written as a wedding gift for two dear friends, Gregg and Lisa.
This is a love poem.
This is a clashing skylines over mountain tops love poem.
This is a desert wind kicking dust clouds off of the earthen floor like time love poem.
It's a phoenix rising from the ashes again and again, smoothing every rough edge to make them beautiful, burning faults like paper lanterns love poem.
It's giant monument cascading down in a rainstorm of embers as the lone giant tumbles to the earth in a offering of solidarity.
This is a love poem.
It's wind and water and trees bowing limbs in genuflect out of respect for the hearts combined.
It's wild and fierce, like great beasts and flashing storms that match the primal song of the passion of two souls aligning.
It's hanging by a single chord from the tallest of ancient brothers. It's laughter echoing off of canyon walls and echoed back like majesty.
This is a love poem.
This is an urban jungle alive with life and color love poem.
This is a chain link fence and beat pounding to vibrate two heart strings into a single rhythm, striking a beautiful chord love poem.
This poem is spinning lights and a body of hundreds. Legion, moving as one, rich with the scent of joy and effort.
It's late nights and early mornings, adorned in affection and whispers. It's music and dance and holding tight and holding on.
This is a love poem.
This is a timeless love moving at the speed of thought, pushing clocks to keep pace in futility love poem.
This is a hand touching skin, like ink touching paper to record the poems of your past, present, and future, to only be recited with a kiss love poem.
It's a forever has too few letters for how long this love has been destined and how long it will continue on love poem.
This poem is learning the other like morning prayer. It's tasting each goodnight kiss like Eucharist.
This poem is sound and fury and steadfast through every storm and letting the wind of your whirling dance fill the sails of the wooden ship you build together.
This poem is aging. Building monoliths of your past. Tearing them down and using the stones to build the cobbled path of your future. It's a new laugh. An innocent laugh. Fresh eyes glimpsing a future made from the hearts of two that will carry the love forward so that it can remain forever a wave giving back to the shore. Rich. Tidal. Steady.
This is a love poem.
This is a wrinkles and cracks forming like cuneiform. Making the sculpture more beautiful with time love poem. A lines spreading out across the cover of the book, wrinkled to resemble a road map of the winding path of the journey of two, circling one and other like a binary star. Bright and radiant.
It's a patina heart. Showing through with red and blue. Lines lit by fire that warms aching bones on even the coldest nights of our minds.
This is a love poem.
This is a celebration.
This is a gathering of witnesses who checked their wings at the door, that we may stand below and watch the dance above. Quaking parishioners glimpsing the face of God and beauty. Jaws agape eyes shining with tears like morning dew.
This is a love poem trying in vain to describe the beauty of soul mates finding their way back home. For sometimes home is not a destination, but a person.
This is a love poem.
This is a poem about love.
We argued over that Marc Bolan record
That I knew wasn’t mine anyway
We argued over that Marc Bolan record
It’s my demented way of passing the day
I love to see the lines on your forehead appear
They run so incredibly deep
I love to see the lines on your forehead appear
When you’ve got the bit between your teeth
So when I hear ride a white swan
I can’t help but think of your face
Fighting your corner for T.Rex
That cosmic dancer in outer space
As you drop,
brigades marching
at the sky's command.
You are not rejected by the heavens,
rather chosen to act as a
prophet of wet whiteness.
And you coat me
a noble, but ignorant attempt
at giving me warmth,
a job my jacket did exceedingly
well at before
your arrival.
Dancing down with
gravity, the Earth asks
for a cool bath in you.
A poem for school. Can you guess what it's about? ;)
Under the darkness
That's where we were
The light of the moon
Lighting the car
I see your eyes
As they stare at my face
As your fingers touch me
And my body they trace
The feeling between us
Was unbelievable
It's undeniable
At least for me
Who knows if we'll ever be
What I know in my heart
All I ever want to see
Is us never to be apart
I cry in the night
By that same moonlight
Thinking about what I've lost
And the lines I've crossed
To try to be with you
Something I'll always do
Like I said I'll always be chasing
Even when it's heartbreak I'm facing.
Contentment is admirable,
complacency is dangerous.
Lines be b
t l
w often u
ee r.
n .
.
..
.
.
.
.
26 combinations of arcs and dashes:
the foundation on which
we build meaning,
names created from nothing.
Generous swoops like cradles and pointed lines
that tango in a dangerous duet.
We think:
to not employ such a terribly powerful tool
is to diminish it, but this absence only hurts us more,
leaving the waiting soul as barren as the womb
of the mother-to-never-be.
An intangible monster whose strength
stems from paradox, lighter than
a butterfly’s kiss that crashes
down in volcanic eruption. A bomb
that can never be disarmed.
When confronted I try tell myself, "I am not scared to die".
I tell others my most misleading lie, one I've told myself recently.
As well looked into my lovers eyes, in all her emotional freedom.
She asked me, "Aren't you afraid to never wake up again?
That you and everything we do will one day never exist."
Uttered back, something along the lines of "Lets just think about now".
But my mind goes to work thinking back to when I was ten.
Crawling into the bed closing my eyes listening to my thoughts.
Feeling the cool sheets, allowing the pillow to take in my head.
Having similar doubts, as questions formed. Just learning of death.
Through the anxiety of never waking up.
I'm holding her right now. Because I need her just as bad.
Part One
Ethel, you wouldn’t believe it,
I don’t even need your binoculars to see
The buffalo’s horns,
And the bear’s teeth.
But your binoculars can’t see
Through mountains
And concrete dams
To our Saturday morning visits
With hissing cats and white washed walls
And your eyes can’t see
Through hanging laundry
And power lines
To my morning visits with
Trumpeting elk and white water rafts
When I come home and tell you,
I won’t be whole anymore
Part Two
I went home
Not to our house
To our home
But it was gone
Nobody noticed
Playgrounds turned patios
Beaches turned deserts
But they were gone
And nobody noticed
Girl turned woman
Boy turned sailor
And Alex, nobody noticed
That we were gone
......................................
Nordbert paid me
A visit today,
And it's something
Nordbert never does.
Perhaps Nordbert had
Something to say
In his oddly-oddish
Nordbert way.
Now, Nordbert usually
Keeps to himself,
We rarely ever
Heed his name,
He treasures his
Own privacy,
And believes that we
Ought do the same.
When Nordbert confessed
All his problems to me-
I dreaded each odd little a, b and c.
He told me his wife
Had abandoned her post,
But the one thing that
Irritated Nordbert the most
Was that she took every
Cooking mit in the house,
He called her a dribbit,
A goon, and a louse.
He'd unfriend her on Facebook
In less than a day
If she brought any more
Of her evil his way,
Such as hiding his
Butterbean marmalade toast,
Or stealing away
Nordberts treasured pet mouse.
Or tossing his popsicle pie
Out the door
When she did not understand
What he used the pie for.
And then Nordbert studied
The me that I am,
And seemed not at all
Pleased I was there.
He grumbled somewhat that
My name was just Sam,
And told me I needed
To color my hair
A green-blue, perhaps red,
Or maybe a brown.
And did I have any qualms
About painting it pink?
Oh, the neighbors will cheer
When they see you in town
Wearing a dabble
Of porcupine ink.
He told me I'm too short
And fat for my age,
And then laughed at
The way that I dress.
He told me the wisdom's
He'd learned from a Sage,
That I was a literal
Nincompoops mess.
He told me I needed
A shave and a shower,
That I was rather offensive,
Polluting his air.
And it took almost the whole
Belly lot of an hour
Before I had realized
He'd insulted me there.
He said that we ought
Have our dog put to sleep.
And he offered to
Help make it so.
He said every good dog
Has it's very dog day
And it was time
For our dog to go.
He told me my kids
Were annoying,
That they rackled
The bin of his brain.
He mentioned my wife
Was quite fetching
Except he thought she
Was insane.
He told me my lawn
Was an utter disgrace,
Then pointed out all the
Stress lines on my face.
He said our tap water
Is all full of lead,
And we're all gonna die.
At least that's what he said.
Nordbert told me my house
Needs a coat of new paint,
Something more homey,
And not at all quaint.
He explained how I'd brought
His fine neighborhood down,
To the grit and the gluster
Of the bad part of town.
And he patted my shoulder
And whispered, "But all's well.
If it gets any worse
We may all have to sell."
And he hobbled away
As he picked at his ear,
In the thick of the day,
With his neighborly cheer.
And I had to acknowledge,
Concede and admit
I did not like Nordbert,
Not one little bit.
Copyright © 2013 Richard D. Remler
.........................................................................
"A good neighbor is a fellow who smiles
at you over the back fence, but doesn't
climb over it."
~ Arthur Baer
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