belz

Your parents told you
Someday you’ll change the world
They weren’t wrong
They just didn’t tell you
By how much

• • •
 

Son: What’s a carpenter’s favorite Pink Floyd song?

Dad: I don’t know… “Shine On, You Crazy Diamond Bit”?

Son: “Comfortably Plumb”

Dad: Nice

Son (an hour later): What’s the fav Pink Floyd song of someone successfully coping with depression?

Dad: “Shine On, You Crazy Person”?

Son: “Comfortably Bummed”

Dad: That works

• • •
 

Nobody is doing anything,
and it isn’t anybody’s fault
but all of ours. We’ve found
that by waiting we develop
new strategies for not only
holding everything at arm’s
length but having no real
conversation about changes
we’d all need to make to
emerge from this morass.

• • •

So we had a meeting to discuss our meeting format.
Fair enough, but then we had a debrief to discuss
how that meeting went. Fair enough, but then
we had a fourth powwow. By the fifth confab
I was penciling in a sixth session on the calendar.
It was far enough in the future that, for enough of us,
“fair enough” didn’t fire enough of our imaginations
measurably. Immeasurably, time loped not onward
but inward—and it looped. My schedule became
a circular well. Strike that. It was a square well.
Well, it was a square. Easy enough to delete
the invitation everybody sent to everybody else.

• • •

Valentine’s Day 2018

Daughters can be reckless
with their old dad’s heart
They can smile or cry
their way out of anything
They can ask for money
They will get the money
They can ask for help
They will get it
Daughters can be hasty
But the way they are hasty
Is the same way a butterfly is
or the way a ladybug is
That is to say they know
when to hop mysteriously
from where your hand
is about to land
to over by the curtains
where their beauty is enhanced
They can ask for your life
They will get it instantly
Daughters are scary good
at what they do

• • •
 

• Lent is Here
• Lent Begins Today
• Let’s Get Into Lent
• Something Borrowed, Something Lent
• Lent Is a Four Letter Word
• What Is Lent to YOU?
• Lent’s Impact Upon All of Us
• The Lenten Season Is Upon Us
• Today Marks Day One of Lent
• Today’s the First Day of Lent
• How About Lent?
• Start Lent Today Or You Missed The First Day of Lent
• Lent Begins—Visit Our Site (Unless You Gave Up the Internet for Lent)

 
• • •
 

Enjoy my warm casserole.
It’s on the kitchen counter.
Me? I’m out chopping wood
(felled a small cedar yesterday).

I know you’re expecting me
to tell you how to dress.
Be patient. I’ll help you soon.
In the meantime, wear black.

When the men show up, flex.
Make a list of what they want.
Offer them casserole if you like.
It’s on the kitchen counter.

• • •
 

I wondered what “content” meant.
Contentment. And I wondered
how I’d labored, lumbered
homeward under rain and thunder.
None of us know “resent” meant,
and yet our resentment flourished
even as we were overnourished.
Our cocktail cups burnished.
Our attitude girlish.
And I wished
I’d listened harder in grade school.
Wished i’d taken notes instead
of learning by rote
like a damn goat.

And above each eye, a strip of hair,
said God early in the design process.
To stanch the flow of sweat? an angel asked,
Yes, and for good looks, said God.
At that, the workshop laughed.
I’m serious, said God.
There has to be a horizontal rule
between the pair of peepers
and the forehead, right here at the bend
where socket rims to brow.
He pointed with his cane.
Hard brow, said God, about to drift
into one of his soliloquys – but
stopped himself. Time for a break?
asked God. Oh yes, he said to them.

• • •
 

for the Ottos

Just walked into the kitchen for a cookie.
Five poets were hunkered around the cookie jar,
apparently defending it. “This isn’t a poem,”
said one, rubbing his eyes from lack of sleep—
referring, somehow, to this very text.
“Ah, but it is,” said another. “It has line endings.”
“May I have a cookie?” I asked, expectantly.
“Only if you stop narrating yourself
into your own poem,” said one of them.
By now, however, I was nearly deaf
from the sound of poetry in my ears,
the stopping and starting, the lilting,
the framed sorrow, the personal burdens.
“Personal Burdens,” I told the cookie guardians.
“That’s what I’ll call my punk band.”
“No cookie for you,” announced one of them.
I left the kitchen disappointed—but inspired.

• • •