A Prayer for Optimus Prime

My son over Thanksgiving week
volunteered for the first time
to say the blessing on the food at dinner time.

In his honest orison,
in the most stereotypical
heartfelt tone I've heard
from him yet,
he thanked God
for the things he
treasures most:

Optimus Prime,
Bumblebee,
and sundry other characters
from the Transformers franchise'
lastest efforts to ensnare the young
in consumerist culture:
Rescuebots.

That's how you know you have market penetration:
4-year olds are praying thanks over your fictions
and asking blessings on their well-being.

I think that Hasbro needs to cut us
a bit of a check
for the benedictions since then
that have fallen from Pete's lips,
undoubtedly benefiting
the brand.

Till then,
I suppose my pay will be
the smirks,
side-long glances exchanged with my wife,
and satisfaction
from hearing my son
pray for Deus' sublime
gift
of Optimus Prime.

My 6-Month-Old Kisses Herself in the Mirror

And not just some little peck -
A big wet one -
Like she's trying to eat ice cream,
Which she is as sweet as,
But her reflection,
Judging by the confused reaction on her face,
Is a little disappoitning...
and flat.

And which of us doesn't
Like ice cream?

And who of us doesn't engage in some sort of
Self-aggrandizing personal osculation
Ultimately to discover that
Whatever mirror we're first-basing with
Dissapoints,
Reflecting
Not the finer traits
We'd intended and hoped
But a more 2-dimensional perspective of our character,
As if the very act of introspection for the sake of vanity
Sucks all the Depth out of one's character in order to
Satisfy the growing Heights and Breadths of
Self-promotion's demands,
No magnanimous mysteries or secret successes left in the shadows of our own
Non-disclosure.

That depth of character
Which can only be plumbed
When it is left to pool quietly dowsnstream
Rather than dumped wholesale on one's head
Like an Ice Bucket Challenge
(the YouTube video of mine being
available for you to like online.
I'm already at 1,200,000.
No really!)

A Moral Dilemma with a Spider

Part I

I don't know
if I should
mercy-kill
this spider
struggling up the blue
cinder block high school
bathroom wall.

Is it struggling because it's half poisoned,
or just because it's on a slick surface?

Is it famished from a lack
of flies during this
famine of a winter?

How did it get into such an
interior lavatory anyway?

Will quickly stepping on it
save it from the fate it could face
if some feckless freshman
tried to squash half of it
or snip off its legs
in some
pseudo-scientific
zoologically sadistic
Dr. Heideggerish
experiment
designed (subconsciously) to
reveal some deep truth
about pain and death
to this sophomoric mind,
yet unschooled in the full
nature of life's bitter cafeteria-style cup?

Or, am I the real junior here
to this imagined student,
so young in feature
but
perhaps
senior in terms of
exposure to some unthinkable
home life,
one that I
as a teacher
often catch a glimpse of
but shut my eyes to
and quickly turn from
to avoid the culpability
that would come with full
knowledge,
even though I have the
innocence-bestowing ignorance
of what to actually do
to help
(though we try our darndest
by telling ourselves they can be saved
with the help of
the quadratic formula,
a poster project about the Crusades,
mitosis and meiosis,
and the ability to identify symbolism).

Anyway, I still don't know know
what the ethical thing to do is
with this spider
(or with this imagined student
for that matter,
who seems to be struggling up their own
cinder block
wall
without the aid of Spiderman's mutation).

I partly feel morally obligated
to put the 8-legged creature
out of its misery
due to what might be in store:
a mangled existence
or starvation.

That seems like a logical thing to do.

But
I'll do what's always easiest -
inaction -
and walk
away.


Part II
Writing this poem
one week after the fact
I realize
I could've set the spider
free outside.

(I don't know what spiders do
during winter, but I guess the species survives
from year to year, which makes me think
it would find something instinctively self-preserving
to do, maybe.)

I still don't know about that freshman, though.

Fe: A Jeremiad

Where is

the iron pillar
defending those who make
needed societal denunciations (Jeremiah 1:18)?

the iron rod
for guiding the lost, as the word of God, through the mists of darkness (1 Nephi 8:24; 11:25),
for ruling the nations (Revelation 19:15)?

Where is that missing element
so key to strengthening and stabilizing
the periodically turning tables
of our atomizing culture?

Has it been too much alloyed
or clouded by some ignoble gas?

Has it not Fe-
elings enough

to give this fainting nation's
blood its smell and color back?

to give its spinning compass
a point?

to imbue its morally diaspora-ed people
with magnetoreception enough
to find its way home?


They don't even see
the destruction ahead.

And isn't that dramatically iron-
ic.

Phonewich

It was a spur of the moment word
she uttered
when describing what she did
to rectify the dreaded
phone-fell-in-the-toilet
incident.

"There was no rice,"
she explained,
"so I put 2 pieces of bread on top
and 2 pieces on bottom
and sealed it in a ziploc."

I googled this seemingly freshly minted
coin of the English language
to see if it had already been uttered,
(as I so often find with words
I thought should be proprietarily mine,
like "infinition" or "thith").

All I found were people foruming about phones,
writing "wich" instead of "which" afterwards,
like "im looking for a phone wich has a keyboard"

as well as this picture:

Picture source here.

Given that Google couldn't prove
anyone else had concocted
this delicious compound word
which so perfectly evokes a common
21st century American intersection
of technology, tragedy, and DIY folk wisdom,
I told her to copyright it.

She said she had gone to snapchat it,
but her phone was in a bag.

Familysick

My dad is the only one home tonight,

yet on the Google Hangout

between some of my 6 siblings 

- spread from Wyoming to the Carolinas -

and him,

he reports a pang of homesickness.

Isn't that what all of us should feel for where he is?

And he should be feeling "homewell"?

Instantly, I feel it, too: not so much a longing for home,

(indeed, I'd travel far to feel it)

but rather a yearning for

inside jokes,

comfort built of an inability to maintain pretense,

argument-mates who'll still be around tomorrow,

conversationalists conversant with certain topics of interest and geekiness,

and other ineffable qualities

that all mean just a fraction of what family is 

to me.

That is why I am family-sick, 

which seems weird to say,

having a family of my own that is upstairs as we speak,

but sometimes don't you adults just wonder what it would be like

if all your early-years family were under the same roof again?

Perhaps it would get ugly at times - I'm sure it would - 

but you still wonder, 

or,

at least,

I do. 

I Cannot Let this Week Pass

I cannot let this week pass
without taking the time to...

do whatever it is one does
to write a poem:

concoct or conjure,

mine and refine,

reflect but also refract.

Whichever it is
- or the sum of them all -

I need to do it.