Poetry—Keep it Brief, Mr. Murfin, Keep it Brief

Three years ago I started an experiment with high hopes.  Based on the then strictly enforced word limits on Facebook status updates, I decided to try to experiment with poetry that would fit.  I see other folks have since done the same thing with the even briefer limitations of Tweeting.

In the rich fantasy world of my head, I envisioned inventing a sort of Haiku for the age of Social Media.  I started a page on which I would save these dazzling little gems envisioning it to blossom somehow into, I don’t know, maybe a collection.  I was sure that I could come up with something killer almost every day.

Didn’t quite work out that way.  I may be naturally too long winded for the medium.  Maybe the ol’ creative juices have just slowed to a trickle. 

I stumbled on that abortive page or so while trying to find something else.  Eight measly entries.  And by the end I was straining against the limitations.

Anyway, for lack of anything else in the quiver today, here they are.

Poems for Electrons

A new series

1.

…wrote a poem this morning.

            Thought I had forgotten how—

a   new beginning?

2.

Everyone works on some kind of wisdom

            just doesn’t know it—

the drunk pissing on the third rail—

I and my presumptions.

3.

…nurtures hope

            like the kid on the bicycle

            counting his change out of a baggie

            for a box of—

                        condoms.

4.

Poetry does not come back automatically

            throw a leg over this battered Schwinn—

            fall off and skin your knee. 

5.

In that endless verbose series

            stuffed with modifying clauses

            the inner Victorian

            scatters semi-colons—

                        periods taking a shit.

6. 

Pleasantries with a wave and nod acquaintance of some years. 

Don’t know each other’s last names. 

You know—

weather, sports, a bit of family trivia. 

A passing word betrays an affiliation. 

The eyes narrow, the jaw sets just so. 

In an instant the other,

the enemy,

the sub-human. 

Whose eyes, whose jaw?

7.

...dusk falling with admirable punctuality. 

Birds make last visits to the feeder. 

The breath of what-is-to-come stirs the skeleton trees.

8.

Getting morning coffee at the convenience store—

a youngish grandmother—

my age probably—

nice blond hair designed to fool nobody,

tight designer jeans from a few years back,

and a diamond stud in her nose.

Exchanged smiles.

—Patrick Murfin