Twenty Questions for Ego

1. Who gave you your nickname? 2. Does it still fit? 3. How has your identity evolved over the past five years? 4. Do you feel you belong to an identifiable community or do you fly solo? 5. Which caresses your ego more: flattery or affirmation?  6. When was the last time you took a bath? 7. Have you ever foraged for mushrooms? 8. Did you find a Destroying Angel? 9. Did you taste it? 10. In your theology, does grace have meaning? 11. Should it? 12. Why didn’t your parents name you Chris? 13. If your name is Chris, wouldn’t you rather be Gene? 14. How old were you when you spied your first gray hair? 15. If no gray hair yet, when do you anticipate going bald? 16. Do you find life is one impossible question after another? 17. Have you ever free-associated with the word “hinge?” 18. What about free-based? 19. On a jejune note, do your socks match? 20. Why is that?

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--a prompt from Jim Moore

Panning for Staurolites

We hunted for Fairy rocks on the Mississippi river bank
today. Water over Blanchard Dam crashed upriver,
cicadas droned in their torpor of late day heat.
My cheeks rosied-up without my straw hat,
and despite our modest success, my son
sat on a jutting rock, marked by indifference.

When a boy nears his 15^th year, indifference
might as well be capitalized. His father, but a bank
and chauffeur, his mother, even less, a son’s
embarrassment. But we paddle forth on this adolescent river
of hormones and hope for the best. Hang on to your hat,
chuckles Grandpa, that boy’s burning heat.

When Grandpa was 15, WWII heated
the air. His parents doffed their different-
sounding German accents, wore their hats
low. At night, Mutti would pull shades, bank
the fire, make the sign of the cross while the river
took her eldest son away to the coast. Her son

vowed to aim low in case the enemy was the son
of her sister still in Berlin. Then lightning heats
the air and Grandpa sighs remembering the river
that took his brother away returned an indifferent
shell of a man who could only put money in the bank,
no treasure in his heart, who kept his hat

on his head when Old Glory waved. His hat
on his head, whispered Mutti, tears for her lost son
who came home from Paris like a 1930’s banker’s
book, closed and beaten, an indifferent
man. Yellow chin of a Blanding’s turtle flashes in the river

next to the rock where my son sits, Upriver,
a cacophony of gulls call; one swoops the hat
off an old man’s head. Hey, he cries, but it is indifferent
to our protestations, all a superfluous chatter, assonance
without meaning. Our feet blue, we seek the heat
of our dry socks and shoes lying on the bank.

Pascal insisted that a river made no difference
On either side of the bank, a man still wears a hat
And a son still grows up to pack heat in wartime

Lessons

Warm milk might soothe unless it’s sour
Likewise hands and fingers know
The tempestuous ridge of your brow
Icy palms induce your stern glower

This eggshell floor that on knees I scour
With dainty brush to elicit glow
To your ego, I daily kowtow
Genuflect to your stony tower

But what if I saw my reflection
Exclaimed in an unconscious voice
Who’s that sniveling pathetic creature
Without a map and no direction?
Would I recognize my choice
Could I be my own good teacher?

A Writer's Vice

Carol Jean always takes her coffee black
Like the inky sky on a moonless night
Digging in her pocket for a Salem pack
A pair of essentials so that she can write

Like the inky sky on a moonless night
She needs a smoke as well as a lamp
A pair of essentials so that she can write
She scrawls with a writer's cramp

She needs a smoke as well as a lamp
Both burn holes if left forgotten
She scrawls with a writer's cramp
Black words, dark thoughts--all rotten

Both burn holes if left forgotten
The torment of an elusive word
Black words, dark thoughts--all rotten
Stanzas: first, second, then third

The torment of an elusive word
Digging in her pocket for a Salem pack
Stanzas: first, second, then third
Carol Jean always takes her coffee black

Fibonacci's Numbers Poetry

Fibonacci's sequence of numbers

Here's how this poem format works.
Fibonacci's numbers start like this: 0, 1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13...The first two numbers were provided, after that, the reader must figure them out. Easy enough in the beginning.
Poems can be any length, but must follow the syllabic count as suggested by Fibonacci's numbers.
Here's one that I pulled from the visual thesaurus, which also provided me with this new way of writing poetry.

Yearn
pine
desire:
how I feel
for the Nintendo
sitting in the Gamestop window.

Now I'll try some of my own:

Some
Times
Only
Hand holding
Will heal the broken
Hearted, the bone weary trav'ler
Who finds the universe an alien oasis
Yet stands beside every other castaway and waves to sweet Jesus, my Nazarene


Je
t'aime
bien
à jamais
parce que je suis libre.
Tu es libre, aussi. S'il tu plaît
m'aimer, mon cher, mon cher. Tu es libre de m'aimer, belle.


Kiss
Hug
Some tongue
Hoping for
Sex in bed tonight
After a full day of foreplay.