Letters for George: Lame-Brained Poetry

Dear George,

Since September we’ve been doing a Poetry Writing Workshop offered by the OLLI “lifelong learning” program at the university, and it’s been fun and challenging. There are about a dozen people in the class, most of them more experienced poetry-writers than I. Carrie writes profound soliloquies about the meaning of life and death. Roger reflects upon intellectual and scientific matters, e.g., “ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny.” Sandra creates nostalgic poems about growing up in the Ozarks. My poems aren’t as elegant or poetically expressive. I get inspired by Dr. Seuss, though I know it’s impossible to come anywhere close to his off the wall style. I don’t know if there is actually a category called “lame-brained poetry,” but, if there is, that’s the specialty I seem to be aiming for. Here are a couple of my efforts from class.

Love,

Dave

Colors. One of our assignments was to write a poem about a color or colors, using repetition of a strong word or phrase. For some reason, I immediately thought about a blue kitten. Here is how my poem wound up.

Blue is for Kitty

If my cat could change color

I think she would want to be blue

Blue as the sky on the Fourth of July

Though green is a good color too

Green makes me think of cabbage and peas

I could add these to Kitty’s stew

A cat dyed green would stand out in the crowd

Yet pink is a hip color too

Pink is the tint of an infant’s skin

For a cat, that’s radically new

Kitty already has a pinkish tongue

Though red is a smart color too

Red is the color of rubies

I’d love to buy Kitty a few

Rubies would make her neck sparkle

But purple would more than make do

Purple reminds me of vampires

At my throat evil Kitty would chew

She’d be another of Dracula’s brides

That’s why orange is a much better hue

Orange is a favorite color for cats

I know you have seen quite a few

Kitty, in fact, was orange at birth

That’s why I was thinking of blue

Yes, blue would be best for my Kitty

I could show her off at the zoo

But in fact I don’t really own a cat

So some of my poem is untrue

The Senses. Another task was to describe a specific setting, incorporating most or all of the human senses (sight, hearing, touch, smell, taste). I guess pets are on my mind since it occurred to me that our sheepdogs provide us with daily experiences through most of the senses.

I Wish I Could Sleep Like a Sheepdog

I haven’t slept well for a dozen years

The reasons are vague and mysterious

Bad sleep taps into my deepest fears

I’m scared that I’ll soon be delirious

I used to think it was due to the noise

The sirens whiz by on our street

But noise doesn’t seem to bother the boys

Their sleep is so deep it’s a treat

The sheepdogs retire at nine o’clock

Twelve years old, they’re both getting creaky

I hoist each one up like an eighty-pound rock

I hope they don’t think that I’m geeky

In bed the dogs are a wonderful sight

They’re such a jubilant pack

Mike’s handsome head is snowy white

While Duffy’s right ear is jet black

Mike’s forty inches from nose to tail

And Duffy’s exactly the same

The bed’s seventy-eight from rail to rail

Small space for big dogs is a shame

The humans climb in with a sense of dread

Katja lies on her side on a slant

I scrunch up my knees with my feet off the bed

The dogs would make room but they can’t

Duffy then rests his head on my calf

While Mike leans on top of my back

So heavy and warm I’m prompted to laugh

Though I feel like I’m pinned to the rack

The dogs begin dreaming at two a.m.

They’re chasing squirrels on the lawn

Their legs are twitching at a high r.p.m.

These dreams keep on going till dawn

Our room often smells like dog perfume

Especially if fur’s wet from rain

Sometimes a dog makes a gaseous fume

We stop breathing and pray it will wane

At least the dogs don’t bark through the night

Instead they make whimpers and moans

It’s hard tell if it’s sadness or fright

With dogs there are many unknowns

In closing, insomnia’s a mystery

The sheepdogs sleep perfectly fine

We share the same bed, the same history

I guess I’ll start drinking more wine

Similes. A third homework assignment was to write a poem using one or more similes. A simile is a figure of speech that expresses a resemblance between different kinds of things, usually using “like” or “as”, e.g., “as cool as a cucumber.” I started thinking about “life”, which of course can be represented by a zillion similes.