Short Story: A Poem
October 29, 2017 by at 9:34 am
“For my pleasure I had as soon write free verse as play tennis with the net down.”
—Robert Frost
*
I. The Boxer Rebellion
Your turn of that page
has opened a drawer.
My home. I am his underwear.
He’ll always show you
the contents of his drawers
but never what he’s wearing.
He’s that kind of fellow.
But I’ll give you a clue:
I am his only pair of boxers.
To put it briefly,
he suffers a shortage.
Why only one of me?
Why only one day
of freedom per week
when he could have seven?
That is the question
I once heard
his girlfriend ask.
He replied like Robert Frost
that a little freedom
is almost too much
and went home and
put on briefs.
Short changed.
*
II. A Brief History of the Work Week
Briefs #1 (Sunday)
Freedom’s just another word for lost
In funhouse laundromats where dreams are tossed.
Briefs #2 (Monday)
You’ve got to work to make a living wage,
You’ve got to button up your daily rage.
Briefs #3 (Tuesday)
You’ve got to count your syllables and keep
Your cock and scrotum snug and fast asleep.
Briefs #4 (Wednesday)
You’ve got to keep your humpday hopes pressed down,
It makes no difference if you smile or frown.
Briefs #5 (Thursday)
You might love her, she might love you, but then
Your Adam’s apple bulges up again.
Briefs #6 (Friday)
Thank God? Well, maybe in the morning light,
But Eden’s underwear gets torn at night.
Briefs Chorus (all together)
Like Frost said, don’t play tennis without net.
Don’t let your balls fly free from match to set.
*
III. The Girl Who Was Saturday
I like it when my man is frisky
But when he drinks too much he gets so frisky
Like a shooting star on a Saturday night
He shines so bright but then he passes out.
I like it when he takes me out dancing,
I like it when he cuts loose a little bit, you know,
On a Saturday night after a long week of work,
When he takes off that tie, loosens up his collar, and swings like a birch tree.
I like it when my man gets frisky
And I like to drink and have a good time
But if he drinks too much too fast he passes out too soon
And when I’m ready for the fun to continue on, he’s gone.
He’s lying there in his boxer shorts. I love those boxers,
The ones with the palm trees and the Christmas lights,
He looks so peaceful sleeping there, like an angel, like a fallen soldier, like a child,
But I want my man to wake up and take me to the promised land.
I like it when my man is frisky, when he’s had just a little whisky.
But when I see him on a Wednesday or a Thursday,
He never has those boxers on, he’s wound up tight and white,
But I love my man when he gets frisky on a Saturday night.
*
IV. The Naked Poet Speaks
O boxers, I hear the siren call
Of your easy-open fly
And your free and airy ways.
O briefs, you’ve
held me close and kept me
Safe since childhood.
O Adam, O Eve, O Fruit
Of the Loom, what have you wrought?
Who told you you were naked?
Since childhood, I’ve been
Burdened and blessed with the words
For the days of the week.
I’ve been clothed
With the fabric of toil and dread,
Of yesterday and tomorrow.
But now I stand undressed
Before the dresser of my shame,
I stare into the abyss of my drawers.
In this present moment
I ask of you, O Robert Frost: speak
Your will and testament to me.
*
V. The Shorts Not Worn
(with apologies to Robert Frost and his underwear)
Two shorts submerged in a yellow drawer
And sorry I could not model both
And be one wearer, long I wore
The tighter briefs till I was sore
And then I bent and scratched my undergrowth.
Then took the boxers, just as fair
And having no doubt the looser fit
They were the ones I wanted to wear;
So easy to whip it out and piss anywhere,
The opening truly being made for it.
And both that morning equally lay
In my drawer with shirtsers and socksers.
Oh, I kept the briefs for another day!
Yet knowing how freedom has to have its way
I doubted if I should ever change from boxers.
I shall be telling this with a sigh
On Korrektiv.org ages and ages hence.
Two pairs of shorts in a drawer, and I—
I wore the ones more loose to thigh
And that has made all the difference.
*
VI. Whose Woods These Are
We hope you’ve enjoyed our brief exposé.
The frost is coming, so bundle up, okay?
Be it brief or boxer, boxer or brief,
Relax, unwind, get some relief.
*
VII. Epilogue
The page has turned, the drawer
is closed. The leaves are
falling from the trees.
One brisk fall morn, in the middle of the week,
whistling a carefree tune, he put me on,
slipped on some pants, a shirt, socks and loafers.
I said, Man are you puttin’ me on?
He said: Well,
I’m taking the day off.
And we went shopping
over at that dress-for-less place
and bought a bunch more of me.
Two packs of three, to be exact,
and that’s enough to form a tribe,
for seven days of freedom every goddam week.
The woodchucks and squirrels
are squirreling away their nuts
in the backyard as daylight declines.
But his are hanging loose now
as he kneels and asks his girl
if she’ll tie the knot with him next summer.
So it seems that just when he found
his freedom, he gives it up.
I’m not surprised. He’s that kind of fellow.
*
*
*
THE END
Dept. of Doggerel
February 9, 2014 by at 11:18 am
I’m sure this has been done, but last night, while in my cups at a party featuring poetry and music from those in attendance, I scribbled this.
I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence
Two roads diverged in a wood and I
I took the one less traveled by
And that has made all the difference.
– “The Road Not Taken,” by Robert Frost
I am that rambling wanderer who
Took that road that was less traveled by
It made all the difference, it’s true
But not in the way one might like it to
In fact, I think upon that path and cry
For as I set upon that way so lightly trod
I missed the sign that read, “This way be bears”
And soon I learned the painful truth, by God
That there is cause for some to think it odd
For me to walk a road that leads to rips and tears
I lost one arm, an eye, and six of my ten toes
Before I reached the end of that most bearful road
It made a difference, oh yes, cruel heaven knows
So please, dear wanderer, search out where each trail goes
Ere you set out to stride where few have strode
Travis Naught, Pinsky, Frost, and “The Poet’s Next of Kin in College”
May 12, 2012 by at 2:13 pm
I’d like to introduce my good friend Travis Naught by way of something my good friend Bob Pinsky said when he was in Spokane not long ago. In a Q&A session, someone asked Pinsky what drew him to poetry and in his answer Pinsky spoke of how writing poetry is more about practice and play than it is about study or critical thinking. He referenced an essay by Robert Frost called “The Poet’s Next of Kin in College” where Frost elaborates on the notion of poetry as the development of prowess in form that is more akin to what happens in athletics than it is to what happens in the English, Philosophy, or Social Sciences departments. Here’s a snippet of Frost’s essay:
Poetry is a young thing, as we all know. Most of the poets have struck their notes between the ages of fifteen and twenty-five. That is just the time when you are in college and graduate school. It is in those ten years that you will strike your note or never. And it is very like athletic prowess in that respect. They are very close together…. The thing itself is indescribable, but it is felt like athletic form. To have form, feel form in sports — and by analogy feel form in verse. One works and waits for form in both.
[Robert Frost: Collected Poems, Prose and Plays, Library of America, p. 771.]
So what does this have to do with Travis Naught? Well, consider the fact that Travis pursued grad studies in Sports Psychology and that he worked with the Eastern Washington University basketball program for ten years before he set that aside to pursue poetry more or less full time. Consider further that Travis is limited by Spinal Muscular Atrophy to a body that will never in this life be able to throw a ball or swing a bat — and Frost’s analogy takes on an even greater significance and poignancy.
Here’s a poem from Travis’s extraordinary book, The Virgin Journals which you all should buy a copy of if you haven’t yet. The poem is called “Lack of Physicality” and I think you’ll see how it ties into what Pinsky said about what Frost said and what I just said about Travis:
Lack of Physicality
It does not matter
That my body of work
Is less physical than yours
Because the number of words
Counted on my page
Are counted likeYour number of barbell curls
Each clever rhyme
Adds up like an assist
Bodies collide in a screen
At the top of the key
Rolling down the lane
A give and go style dimeAiming to win with each shot
Poised for action
Just like you
So take a look at my lines
See their double meaning
Forget everything about
What you thought you knew(The Virgin Journals, p. 21)
So listen up people. Forget everything you thought you knew about poetry and check out Travis Naught.
Stopping by Blogs on a Frosty Evening
November 23, 2005 by at 5:19 pm
Whose blog this is, a neo-con,
His book is available on Amazon.
He will not see me lurking here;
My comments all will be anon.
My online friends won’t think it queer
If I blog while drinking a six-pack of beer
Between dinner and the ten o’clock news;
It fills my comments with good cheer.
My wife has the spouse-of-a-blogger blues
And asks me if I’ve noticed her cues.
The only other sound’s the click
Of mouse and key as I peruse
This blog and the next one till I’m sick
Of beating a dead horse with a stick
And another evening’s burned its wick,
And another evening’s burned its wick.
Some say the world