Poetry for People
Who Don't Read Poetry. Advice for Me
and Maybe You.
Chris Spark
"[Spark] definitely has something going here: the quick take, unexpected turn-arounds, lots of playfulness... delightful in many instances." —Billy Collins, former US Poet Laureate
Also Available at California Bay Area Bookstores (see below)
You’ve been perhaps
​
wanting
normal people to like you.
Otherwise you think you’ll die
lonely and poor, because normal
people have all the love and all
the money.
But you are not normal and nor
is anyone else.
Say it a lot, until it just becomes
a funny sound—
Normal. Normal. Normal.
Normal, normal, normal,
normal, normal—
or a small, furry, burrowing,
blind creature.
You are not a straight rod; you’re a bent
and arching branch of the one
great tree.
Advice for Me & Maybe You
Poems to Live By
This thing you're doing​
right now
it's called life.
​
What thing? This?
​
Yes.
Probably every
​
person around you
believes and will tell you
with great
assurance
that you must think
of others, compromise, do things
to make them happy.
It’s tricky because this is in
the vicinity of truth
and yet off.
You can feel it.
What isn’t taught
is that you already want
others to be happy.
That’s part of you
being happy. In fact,
you love it.
Oh, except
when it feels
imposed.
Sleep in.
Find your footing.
Eat the last
donut.
Don’t gather
wood for
the fire. Be it.
We want to
​
be loved, to have
someone
fall
in love with us.
It’s always someone else
that we want
to love us.
Always someone else we want
to do what we won’t.
That’s like saying, “Come on in,
the door’s locked.”
In the Gospels,
​
the word
in the original
Greek that English-
men translated as “sin”
did not mean sin.
It meant “to miss
the mark” as when
in Homer, a spear curves
off target.
That’s all.
There was another
Greek word that meant
sin. It was not used.
Christ did not speak of sin.
He spoke of missing the mark.
He wasn’t fierce about morality.
He was fierce about turning
from error.
Be fierce about turning
from any thought
that says you are not loved.
