My touch brings a chill
A golden leaf, she trembles
Our summer is gone
Category: Poetry
Why Dogs Love Snow
Anyone who owns a dog has witnessed their reaction to snow and has probably wondered why they get so get excited.
The recent blizzard that rolled through the Northeast U.S. last night, leaving behind several inches of the stuff, has the dogs in my neighborhood in a special type of euphoria.
Here is a simple villanelle that I think does a good job of explaining why all the fuss.
Why Dogs Love Snow
This is why all dogs love snow
They were once angels like Gabriel
Dog reversed spells God, you know
Who will protect man if we go?
They have no claws, teeth or sense of smell
This is why all dogs love snow
Man’s wits its true are keen, although
They’re often led astray to Hell
Dog reversed spells God, you know
Winter sky; lonely howls come from below
Send news divine in an epistle
This is why all dogs love snow
On every crystal flake words flow
From quills dipped in seraphim’s inkwell
Dog reversed spells God, you know
Frozen to his fur, dog plucks a folio
And reads aloud to man this sacred mail
This is why all dogs love snow
Dog reversed spells God, you know
9 Word Football
I have always enjoyed “Dynamism of a Soccer Player” by Umberto Boccioni. I have visited it many times at the MoMA here in New York.
In the painting Boccioni breaks down the form of a soccer player into pure energy that moves out into the surrounding atmosphere.
I have never been very good with a paint brush, as many an art teacher and the dingy walls of my apartment can attest. I did, however, attempt to deconstruct a soccer game I saw recently. Here’s to all you strikers out there who like to keep your game simple.
9 Word Football
Kick, Kick, Kick
Head…Head
Kick, Kick…Foul…Card
Throw…Head…
Kick, Kick, Kick…
Miss!
Frustration.
Exultation!
Kick, Head…Kick
Score!
Exultation!
Frustration.
Kick, Kick, Kick
Morrissey Plays Bass in a Country Band
I must play the one and fifth only
And listen to myths troubling and lonely
Of cheatin’ and lyin’ and blue eyes a’cryin’
In the rain where farms burn to the ground
The whisky and smoky refrains
The rumbling rhythm of trains
The drawl and the twang and Good Old Boy slang
The Nashville and Bakersfield sound
Long roads, hard times and good people
Faith and the little white steeple
Captured in verse for better or worse
Troubles and joys are entwined
With four-string and passport in hand
I am leaving this old country band
For England’s bleak shores and her moldy old bores
Where sorrow is much more refined
Violence
Violence is a terrible thing for a child to carry around
When I was young I often saw my parents fight
My father would tell my mother he would kill her
Then he would threaten us kids
My mother would threaten to leave
And he would threaten to kill himself
Mrs Wilson lived two houses down the street
She would come over for coffee
Sometimes her face was puffy and discolored
We would be sent outside to play
Once I hid in the laundry room beside the kitchen and watched them
Through the wooden louvers of the door
My mother comforted our sobbing neighbor
Like she would one of us after falling off a bicycle
Violence is a terrible thing for a child to carry around
Like receiving a shining silver dollar
From the moldy purse of a distant relative who smells of mothballs
They don’t understand what it is or its purpose
Until one day a playground bully turns them upside down
And shakes the coin from their pocket
Other children scramble to pick it up screaming
“Money, get the money.”
Their circle tightens around the gleaming profile of Eisenhower
Little fingers with dirty nails claw desperately
To be the new owner of this hypnotizing treasure
John Truelove 