Thomas McPhee's Frantic Scrabblings

It’s been a while since I posted anything, and I figured that sense I’ve wound up with an, extra surplus of poems if you will, I’d throw one up for kicks!

Vulcan once stood proud here,
until he spewed his parts from his dirty mouth,
shattering his body and the land alike.

As each sun sets,
his mighty torso reaches out
shadowy fingers, casting out to his scattered body,
canvassing it,
hoping his net might make a catch
and bring it home to rebuild
himself come morning.

Aren’t there times
when they have felt, as we in turn have felt,
that gorged with such goodness they could die now?
-Melissa Kwasny

1.

We are fashioned to love,
to bond, assemble, and engage with each other.

We are composed to give compassion,
build each other up from the simple foundations of the humanity we are born with.

We are brewed to share desire,
to fail at extricating our senses from the tumble of passion, love, friendship and sexual tension.

We are taught to test the world,
but also, that the world will test us.

2.

Unrest
is defined
as “a uneasy
state” or “turmoil”, and
unrest is what this process
gives me in boxing hits; unexpected,
unlimited, full force blows that break hearts.

Graduation
is seen
by many as
a success, championing “the
system” and moving on up.
But that implies that we are
lessor. This requires high school friendships to
be abandoned for lifeboats that sail into
seas not yet mapped by Magellan or Christopher Columbus.

Will
I really
ever see you
in a future life,
in an internet cafe somewhere,
where we might share a coffee
and trade names of the new re-invented
people we have become since we last met?

Maybe,
just maybe,
this time together
was intended to fill
us with all we were
built for, so that when it
came to die and be reborn in
the name of college, rebellion, adulthood and independence,
that we would go willingly, reveling in our memories.

3.

Our test was to share,
knowing full well that we would
soon be torn apart,

sooner than we thought
possible. Our cure for these
growing pains is that

sense of nostalgia
when remembering these times,
these beginning times.

We are not built to
suffer sadness, but to find joy
in all that we do.

This poem was written for the high school graduating class of 2010. I hope it will help keep the sweet memories savory as they go out into the world.

The grey cumulus slid against heaven
like plates beneath the earth,
and they could only suffer
to see him suffer.

The sea raised a surfy fist
and knocked against the
rocks that were the door
to the cliff’s face.

The face stayed absolute,
letting the fist shrink and surrender,
before it rose once more,
to again demand entry.

All the pebbles could be washed away,
the cliff purexed of its outer shell
but the answer would still be the same,
what it had always been.

“No.”

A hand and cane made their way to the edge,
the balding head peered over to watch
the repeated struggle for admittance.

The mind and soul remembered all the times they had been told,

“No.”

The heart finally and irrevocably snapped,
falling,
causing a cacophony inside as it struck all the other pieces of
                                                                                   16 carat clockwork.

The feet became heavy as all the remaining nuts and bolts trickled
then crashed to the very bottom.

The right foot hung out over the edge
and tipped like rocking horses
as the excess baggage removed what little
balance
the body ever had.

As the broken frame hit the waves,
neither face nor fist changed its ways.
As precious life was lost,
the planet remained unchanged.
The way things are did not come into question,
and the answer remained the same.

“No.”

This poem was written as part of a application for the Minnesota Lake Region Arts Council’s Mentorship Grant. I got the grant and am now working with my mentor.

All the world’s a stage,
And all the men and women merely players.
Yet when it comes to love,
we sometimes depart the script.

In the face of what the silent audience expects of us secular thespians,
we surprise and confound them with our own volition.

Some would argue that all the little inconsequential choices we make
that slowly walk us up the hill of substance
is proof of destiny and the lack of our own free will.

I see it conversely,
that the fact that the universe exists exactly as you see it now
is a sign of the purest of chance.

(If a butterfly flaps its wings….)

It is this chance that startles me when I try to understand the world.

The miracle that the fine lady would bring all of us together
is so astonishing,
that it makes love seem so much more beautiful.

And because of the volatile nature of human existence
and the uncertainty of anything,
love is strong.

It needs to be, or else
it would never happen.

Crowded

Shoving

Reaching forward

trying to get

a better look at what’s

right in front of their pretty pale faces.

The entirety of beauty and life stands in the marque happy to be.

I couldn’t trust the honesty in your face as you departed this world for the next,
telling me that this was my

1942

was the year my father died,
while so many people became alive again
he died and we wept and
the priest took us by the hand
and his were as weathered as stones
and he told us not to worry
for he was “in a better
place”. I knew this was a lie so
I wrote it down in a note book where
I now have every lie I’ve ever heard.
“I’ll be okay”
“Your mother loves you”
“You’re completely normal”
and now the most recent entry is
a drawing of your face with the blackened
bullet hole between your eyes
which you, my favorite brother,
got in return for
refusing to let my father’s honor be tarnished.
The last thing I write before I
toss the book out onto the street for someone
else to find and learn from is
“Fairness exists”

This poem was stylized after Albert Goldbarth’s Sentimental

The bathtub is full of bees waiting expectantly
for the honey to flow forth from the faucet.

The bed has long since burned away
the burning passion of who we were together,
and our life beneath the sheets.

The doorknob has become a snake
that will bite the hand that feeds and the hand that fights,
just always fighting.

The house is retreating back into the forests to be repainted with mold and life and death and the cycle that we all must abide by,
even though I wish I mustn’t.

The god you pray to wont solace me,
but I can’t bring myself to tell you to stop trying.

Pray harder,
then at least one will be happy.

4 months gone, 6 years
left, and all eternity
at stake for me. Feel.

The second hand flows smoothly
then sticks to the black eight like the shipwrecked to the last raft,
the last hope,
before heading back to twelve.

Doomed to repeat,
dizzy from the endless heat,
this all seems all too familiar.

Me,
like this,
and those who bared their fangs are now
at my throat ready to bite down,
clamp on sweet victory over the evil
that terrorized their lives.

I think this fate is fair.

and its waters were older than Methuselah’s bones,
and this water was fed to us all.

We all received
but some got more.
We all received
but some did more.

The few went out
and took their intake and made
it intake for others,
kept the water flowing as if they were
the river of life.

But what will come of the day when,
we aren’t allowed at the well,
when it’s all but wet
and all the water is called cheap imitation.