Poems by Michael DeVoe
Bar Napkin Prophet
I tried to write a poem
Blunt like Andrea Gibson
But it came out like a sledgehammer
Killing a mockingbird
Wrong in twenty different ways
I tried to write a poem
In a whole new world like Anis Mojgani
But it ended up somewhere between
Dallas and Hell
In the small distance between
I tried to write a poem
Silly and serious like Rives
But it started silly ended horrible
Serious was the five lines I lost
When my dog wouldn't even eat it
I tried to write a poem
As cleaver as George Watsky
But it was line after line
Of self deprecation
With no real purpose in the end
And by the time I tried to write a poem
As confused as me
I broke my pencil my pen had no ink
And my laptop crashed
So I found a bar napkin
Borrowed a pen from the waitress
When she wasn't looking
And wrote in scratch paper cursive
?Smile your beautiful?
Signed it with a heart above the ?I?
Gave up on ever being good at this
Got up cause I'd had enough of this
Stopped at the store for frozen peas
To ice my sore wrist
And in the bath I took to relax
Starting spewing words
Like the chick in the Exorcist
Spewing split pea soup
No pencil no pen no marker no computer
Just my mind the air and some steam
I recited the only poem I've ever loved
The only poem I've ever yelled
The only poem that has ever been good enough
The steam cleared as my bath water chilled
I dried quickly
Ran to the kitchen grabbed a pencil and paper
Then drew a blank
Wrote my name on the top
And called it great
I may never be famous for the words I write
I may never be as good as the poets I envy
I may not make history books about American literature
But I bought a tape recorder for my bathroom
So in case my mind ever gets half a mind
To be a genius again
Maybe the video titled
?Naked Poetry in My Bathtub?
Will go viral
8,000,000 hits on Youtube
I'll rival the evolution of dance
On the top viewed play list
And get my fifteen minutes to be famous
Not for the words I wrote
But for the brief nudity in minute 3
And maybe somebody with take it off mute
Long enough to hear me
But if they don't least they'll have seen it
The moment of genius
That we all have inside us
Because I tried to write a poem
As momentous as Robert Frost
But it came out like Bob Chill
Not quite long enough to be Robert
And not quite cool enough to be Frost
But even without a style to emulate
And riches to extrapolate
Maybe someone is reading my bar napkin prophecy
And having a slightly better day
Translating that prescription chicken scratch
Into a a warm feeling in their heart
And a smile that's blessing anyone around to see it
And all twenty people in the bar will have better days
With smiles that send like waves
Across the city, the state, the world
Maybe I'll bring peace to the middle east
I may never win a national poetry slam
Get a book deal or release a CD
But maybe being a bar napkin prophet ain't too bad
Cause I tried to write a poem
Ode To Lost Innocence
She sat on a park bench crying at the moon
Because that's what wolves do
And wolves were a lot closer to her than family
He lied under a park bench
And spoke to the ants
Because ants were more like friends than any friends he'd ever had
And once upon a time
These two were children full of innocence
Full of vigor and life ready for anything
Like anything was the everything they did everyday
And this is an ode to lost innocence
But I'm not sure he's lost
We may have just forgotten where to find him
Or maybe he forgot where he lives
And right now he's wandering the streets
Finding refuge in anyone willing to dream while the sun is out
Our children are seeing things like they live in the third world
They're spending their days providing
For families their fathers left them
Watching gun shots count for the census
Seeing thriving turn in to surviving
And surviving turning in to not even worth it anymore
Our mothers can't afford gifts for Christmas
And sometimes they can't even buy their kids imagination for breakfast
We have kids knowing their pimp hands
Before their clock hands
Surprising their math teachers
With their extraordinary knowledge of ounces and grams
Innocence has been gone for a while
So I put up missing posters on the same telephone poles
Those once innocent children sell themselves on
I place fliers in the newspapers
The teenagers are rolling their weed in
Then I see an old man
Looking at a painting with eyes I once had
Admiring the image, not the brush strokes
Loving the feeling it provokes
Not the conflict it's trying to resolve
And I see in him the innocence that's lost
But it doesn't stay long
His cell phone rings and he hunches over
As if no matter who it is, it's the real world
And the weight of that is crushing him
So I crawl under the same park bench
And pray to the same moon
The young woman cried to
And I ask the man in the moon to save us
To use his huge eyes to find the innocence
And put it back in talking to ants
And howling at the moon
And to let the children we were
We are
We never got the chance to be
Run free
This is an ode to lost innocence
To lighters and cigarettes in the lost and found
To Anti Depressants in the nurses office
And Ex-Lax in the girls bathroom
They used to have four square and hopscotch courts
Now the only chalk on sidewalks is outlining a corpse
Explaining to our kids about pregnancy and STD's
Before we teach them the infield fly rule
This is an ode to the innocence that ran away
Because maybe he's not lost at all
Maybe he's just sick and tired of being ripped out of people
Of being raped out of young girls
Beaten out of young children
And shot out of young boys
He could be courting aliens
Or wooing dolphins
Because it's clear we don't care about him anymore
This is an ode to lost innocence
The cops came and took her away
And before her head was tucked into the car
She howled one last time at the moon
And from my balcony as loud as my lungs could let me
I howled back
And the next day I crawled under a park bench and talked to ants
A week later I found myself howling at the moon
Because it seemed the whole block
Caught a case of insomnia the day they arrested the wolf lady
This is an ode to lost innocence
Please come home, our children need you
The Simple Things
I take pleasure in the simple things
And I know a lot of people say that
But I think a lot of people get carried away
With the idea of getting carried away
They watch movies for the special effects
Go to baseball games for the big names
And watch trains go by for the wrecks
But I take pleasure in the simple things
The other day I paced in the rain
It was summer so the warm water
Reminded me of growing up in Shanghai
Where the chemical rain would burn when it touched you
And that's a happy memory for me
I watch movies for the kisses
The Humphrey Bogart
Reach out and kiss the crap out of them kisses
The Ingrid Bergman sly, seductive kisses
The Audrey Hepburn innocent, eyes closed kisses
I go to baseball games to smell the air
Little league games, high school games,
Minor league games, professional games
It doesn't matter they all smell like dirt and leather
I like to walk by freshly mowed lawns
Because it reminds me of when I was younger
And played soccer every Saturday morning
On just cut grass
I love, love, love to watch little kids run in circles
For absolutely no reason at all
I take pleasure in the simple things
I think too often people
Try to measure the was of each day
Against the could be of every dream
Forgetting that we don't ask our dreams
To accomplish themselves between 9-5
Some people get caught up in
Trying to live their life
Like it was a scene from a dream
They drempt while they slept last night
And though sometimes life can seem like a movie
We are not producers or directors
Merely actors following our lines
Trying to feel out someone else's vision
So I find pleasure in the simple things
The parts no producer could control
The lines that aren't in the script
The prettiest rose on my bike ride home
Warm Rain
Dirt
Leather
Cut grass, little kids, and puppy dogs
Because if we limit the pleasure we find
To the greatest moments in our lives
We're never going to believe it's happening when it is
Always dreaming there could be more to our life then there is
And when we do finally believe
The only chance we'll have to smile
Will be at a memory
And we'll miss all the beauty and pleasure
The world and life
Has put in front of you and me
The Land Of Eventually
Evidence is evident in the land of eventually
That the world will some day end
In the land of eventually
Hope is the water flowing through river beds
And disappointment is the dam
Just passed the land of promises
Which believe it or not is a pretty empty place
The land of eventually is not where dreams go to die
It's where they go to grow up
That age between forty and sixty where
Eventually could still happen but times are getting shorter
And in eventually they do eventually throw away dreams
In the land of eventually one revolution takes twelve hours
And going around the sun takes a week
And all you remember from every year that goes by
Is the paper we print out of
Bullet pointed highlights at the end
Here 'neath the blue sun and yellow sky
Pigs do fly
And trees don't grow in dirt they grow in achievements
We bury our dead in coats
So they can stay warm in hell
We drive cars fueled by wishes
Your miles per gallon depend on how hard you wish
The landfills are overflowing with dreams
Which if you burn don't melt like other metals
They drip like tears
Our congress is made of congressmen
And the king of the land of eventually
Is a step father
Who by all accounts means well
But will be buried in a tank top
For crimes committed after dark
In the land of eventually
If you shit in one hand and wish in the other
The shit hand still fills up first
But only by a little bit
Cause everyone knows you can't shit and wish at the same time
And in case you were wondering what wishes look like
They're magnificent
They're tri-colored prisms
That don't refract light into rainbows
But into pictures of your childhood
And bigger wishes get smaller prisms
So if you only have one big wish it's easy to carry around
But if you have lots of little wishes
You'll need a red flyer wagon to drag them behind you
If you do have a wagon it makes it easier
For the granting fairies to find them
But they only take one at a time
So some old folks say it's better to just have one
Because even though the fairies may never find it
If they do it's your last one
And when a granting fairy grants your last wish
You get to leave the land of eventually
And live forever in the valley of happiness
Where the days and years are longer
And the memories of each year fill up books
The river beds flow with joy
And the dead are buried in shorts
Because it's always 75 and
sunny in heaven
And it's where I will live
Eventually