Free Fall Poetry

essaysbysean.blogspot.com

Hello reader,

it’s Valentine week.

Got love poems?

Green is for grass, green is for trees,

green is for beautiful, beautiful leaves

Green is the vale where my love lies,

green is the love, in my love’s eyes

From a song in my "free fall" story about orphans with green skin

Sean Crawford

One of my little joys in life is going every Friday to my free fall group where we can express ourselves. By “free fall,” as invented by novelist W.O. Mitchell, I mean we write swiftly without stopping or self-editing. People in my group are mostly moved to write fiction. For me personally, since at home I daily write nonfiction, it feels so good to unleash my imagination.

After hearing a common “Prompt,” we all lean over and industriously write in our notebooks for about fifteen minutes; then we go around reading aloud. Somebody in the group told me that when I write “outside the box” I give others permission to write “outside the box.” That’s nice. Sometimes a person will pen a rant, an essay, or a memoir. Sometimes someone will write a spontaneous poem, one that rhymes, the way poems did back in our youth. Did you know modern poems don’t rhyme? Maybe next week I’ll “free fall” a non-rhyming poem.

What is the purpose of a poem? Of writing? Of any art? Why does our city mandate that one per cent of all public works budgets must be set aside for art? (Don’t you love those carved fish along the side of the Glenmore Trail underpass?) Easy: If our city didn’t have any public art, and public trees, then things would be very dull and grey. And then we wouldn’t have all those head offices relocating here. (We have the most head offices in Canada, next to Toronto, partly because of Quebec separatism)

So here are some of my recent free fall poems—not edited, as free fall is not edited, and not for publication—poems that served to brighten some Friday mornings of our group.

Prompt-poem

Is it a love poem if I want to strangle you?

Only if I love you will I say I do

The coin has two sides, of love and hate

As for success, we’ll have to wait.

God will judge us, at the end of our days

Judging our coupleship, and its myriad ways

Of devotion and trials and tea late at night

Of buckets and soaps and smiles so white

I know loves remains, if our voice is strangled

Oh how I love, and it’s all tangled.

Prompt- winning game

When last we took you through the door

You waved your ribbon from principal Gore

And now we set you on your bed so high

With L.E.D.s that spell the sky

You won our hearts, with yours so big

Your heart had a valve, blocked by a twig

A part of nature, like fallen sheaves

I see you in the fallen leaves

You lurched and swayed, without any grace

I ignored that, to see your face

You hugged so well, with the press of love

And now my touch is masked by glove

I can only press, and look fondly down

And hope to join you, in God’s own town.

Prompt-new places

Over the hills and far away

Bears and robins like to play

Every morning I awake and say,

I wonder what will I do today

My friend Piglet will hang out with me

Sometimes we sit and just let be

Sine waves and static, roar like the sea

And I don’t care, no, not me

I want to go where there’s sweets and books

And crazy capes on crazy hooks

And ally-ways narrow and filled with spooks

And twists and turns and little nooks

Prompt- grandma on a ladder

Grandma on a ladder by a reindeer

Swooshhhh!

That’s not how to spend your Halloween,

You might say it was a real good costume

But grandma really wants to vent her spleen

She was having a good time stringing jack-o-lanterns

Her grip on the ladder quite relaxed,

When some fool with a jetpack and a costume

Made her glad that she was wearing slacks

Now grandpa has the perfect excuse

To buy hydraulic cherry pickers and giraffes

And on Halloween he doesn’t dare to wear his jet pack

He just looks like Gandalf with his staffs

Oh you can fly your jet pack over hades

Feeling safe that you are doing well

But anyone who costumes as a reindeer

Will be kicked by grandma straight to hell.

Sean Crawford

February

Calgary

2017