Life in a Minor Key

Page from grandfather's notebook

Ok, so... now that I've publicly committed to writing more in 2018, it's time to offer up what I wrote creatively in 2017. Which isn't much...

One sonnet:

I have encased my soul in tempered glass,
Displayed it on the mantel in our home.
The frame collects the dust beside the vase
Of silk flowers embed in styrofoam. 

Beneath this centerpiece, a raging fire,
Timer-controlled, heats wood that doesn't burn.
The warmth is real, and I am safe. Desire
Consumed, I wait alone for love's return. 

Then in you walk... Alarms trip. Cats take flight
And lose several lives. A fake church bell sounds.
You flip the light. Night is day; day is night.
Hamlet, without doubt; Ophelia, undrowned. 

My kingdom would be bound in a nutshell,
Had not your flame engulfed suburban hell.

One cold-weather rant:

A Tale of Suburbia 

I summon you tonight, Evangeline.
As I behold the passage of time
In the breath of the bone-chilling cold. 

My old black dog.
Cloudy-eyed, shedding,
Struggles to his feet and
Shuffles to my side. 

I scratch his dry nose,
And open the back porch door,
Exposing the darkness.
The crack in my bones. 

Come, Evangeline,
Hear the scuttling of time.
The claws of the moments we lost.
My words in the bone-chilling cold. 

I long for the warmth of our souls.
I mourn for the warmth of our souls. 

And three haikus, with photos:

Casting sheets of clouds

Over a muddy river

Ohio, as a ghost

Captured, brown and green

We hold hands in bright colors

And head for the light

Rain at dusk in Queens

Exploding sky to the west

Gatsby in New York

---------

All seem a bit sad -- which actually doesn't mirror my real, outer life... or the spirit of my grandfather, who I loved very much and who used to collect jokes, whimsical thoughts and fragments of poetry in his schoolboy notebook.

Our inner lives are more complicated than our outer lives, though -- and that's not a bad thing. I think our inner life is more fragile than what we let the outside world perceive.

I was reminded of this while reading Entertainment Weekly this week. Check out this story about how Nivana's "Teen Spirit" sounds so very different in a major key, and listen to each version. The original is much more powerful.

Artistic expression in a minor key mirrors real life more than real life itself.

Ok, so... that said, look for me to post something here each Sunday in 2018. That's my goal. And if there's a hint of sadness in what I write, don't worry, it only means I'm trying to scratch beneath the surface of my ordinary life.

Meanwhile, I've posted a photo from one page of my grandfather's notebook. I used to think "A Vegetarian Romance" was original, but a quick Internet search confirms that this was printed at least as early as April 1926 in Brooklyn Life. It was probably around before then, given that my grandfather's notebook predates The Great Depression.

The text also appears in Milton Berle's book, "Private Joke File," published in 1992, without any attribution. So if Milton Berle can steal it, so can my grandfather.

A Vegetarian Romance (source unknown)

"Will your celery keep two?" asked she.
"With carrot will do, and I think, dear,
Something better will turnip," said he.
She replied, slightly radish from blushing,
(Though her rouge was parsley the fault).
"I've always bean true, and I'll still be,
Though your kale may not keep us in salt."
So off to old Pars'n Ipp's cottage
Onion road, the wedding to stage,
They spud, and it took but a second
In this modern taxi-cabbage.
But you can't beet a taxi-cab meter;
Appeasing the bill left him broke,
Caused a lump to sprout in his thorax,
And nearly made poor Artichoke.
However, they were not cress'fallen;
To the house on the corner they went,
Woke the Pars'n Ipp from his slumber,
On the greensward held the event.
Of a Cole 8 he made her a present,
And they now take a spinach night —
And this is the endive my story
For there isn't mushroom left to write.