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
More Poems
from Advice for Me and Maybe You
this thing you’re doing
right now it’s called
life
what thing? this?
yes
We want to fall in love.
​
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.
from The Morning I Married the Sky
may i walk with
may i walk with
the unapologetic
gait of the donkey
in pasture at once
purposeful and easy
as he flicks
his ears to drive off
flies
when i rounded the corner
when i rounded the corner
an expanded empty
paper shopping bag
was tipping back
and forth in the road
like a sow that couldn’t
get up but after sorting
through mail on the front
steps i turned again
it was doing cartwheels
towards the intersection
Shackleton’s Men
i listened with a mixture
of disdain and wonder unsure
how to judge
these mad men who ventured
with Shackleton in wooden ships
for hundreds of days through
fields of ice, faces
swollen with frostbite,
limbs black and weak
from scurvy, bickering
in the wake of each
implacable rebuff,
while the great war ate the world,
and all for no reason
except to be first
to cross the snowy crown
of the planet and even then
they failed
until at the end i heard that one
of the men—his name
was Richards—
said he had no regrets
“it was something,” he said,
“the human spirit accomplished.
it was something
you tried to do.”
from Free this Morning
in this ramshackle
in this ramshackle
neighborhood
of small houses
the jay loops
from a wire to alight
nearer the pole
then hops
a wire up
while another
squawks
like Whitman
they don’t care
they don’t care
they don’t care
then they fly
beyond my life
the tree said this
the tree said this
is what I do. I
sing, I cas-
cade up—
a child’s project
made at school of green
felt and wire.
I’m the surf exploding
against the sea-rock, only
this branch
droops away
from the others. I hold
my hands
like this
I do it for you
if you want.
I do it
skyward
and outward.
I do it exactly
like this.
every day i write
every day i write
my book. well,
i say i’m writing a book
but really i’m trying
to build a house
to prove to my father
that i’ve accomplished
something
i’m really laying twigs
on other twigs and backing
carefully away
and yes, there’s a scrap
of satisfaction,
a tiny feeling
of having justified
myself for another day
when i rise from the couch
i write on
being twig-built, though,
the house tends
to collapse at the slightest
wind, like the hint
of disapproval in
a stranger’s voice, and then it’s back
to an empty lot
sometimes though i’ll stop
and look out
the window
while i’m supposed
to be writing
and let myself be carried—
by sun, by air, by distant
sounds, or the impossible
change in direction
of a bug in flight—
and float
downstream
past mansions built
by invisible hands
each empty and waiting
for me to move in
