McLife

This is a poem I wrote in my first creative writing class I took in college. At the end of the semester, we all got to read our work to the class and have everyone vote on their favorites. Mine won, which was pretty cool. Now that I look at the poem, I'm not sure what there is to like about it, other than perhaps the rhythm. In class, we read "Black Helicopters," by R. S. Gwynn, which follows a pantoum form, where you take the second and fourth lines of a stanza and make it the first and third in the next to see how meanings shift as the poem develops. If you have a chance, you should read Gwynn's poem. His sounds much better than mine, for one, and you'll notice that I kind of copied his tone and approach.
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Package it, call it McLife—

Can you keep up with the pace?

Nitro-boost and expedite,

Mount and aim, get into place!

Can you keep up with the pace?

China’s got more than us!

Mount and aim, get into place!

Double overtime or bust!

China’s got more than us—

Diversify! Fill up the space.

Double overtime or bust—

The unevolved’ll lose the race.

Diversify! Fill up the space—

The backyard’s got a little room.

The unevolved’ll lose the race—

Produce, exhaust, and consume.

The backyard’s got a little room—

Nitro-boost and expedite!

Produce, exhaust, and consume,

Package it and call it McLife.

T'was a Night and a Month and Twenty-five Days Before Christmas

This is a poem about starting Christmas early. The Christmas Gifts braided essay gives some backstory to this poem. I wrote it 9 years ago, which dates its message a little. Nowadays, it's totally cool to get Christmas up and going before Halloween is even over. I know some people out there like Christmas starting early. Aubrey will, under no uncertain terms, allow Christmas music to be played or decorations to be put up until after Thanksgiving. I do sneak in some Christmas tunes on the piano pretty early, though.
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T’was a night and a month and twenty-five days before Christmas and all through the house.

Not a creature was stirring, not even a mouse.

The ghoulish costumes were flung on the floor without care

And, to the delight of the parents, the pumpkins on the porch were still there.

All the children were tucked safely away in their beds

While visions of eating candy for breakfast danced in their heads.

But little did they know of the department store scurry

To get all their Christmas stuff up in a hurry.

For a new marketing scheme was well underway

To cheer on all shoppers till Christmas day.

The morning brought tinsel, trinkets, truffles, and trees,

Twinkling icicle lights and candy canes from See’s,

The hottest and latest and best-selling toy

And clothes and gadgets for every girl and boy.

And what’s more, the neighbors felt they had to keep up too

With the department store’s new little Christmasy doo.

There was a mad rush to the store for fresh Christmas trees

But farmers in Oregon found it difficult to please;

For the trees were not yet cut and sheered to perfection

And hauled off to parking lots in the Christmas tree section.

The radio stations caught on the trend soon

And switched the old stuff to a great Christmas tune.

And to the buyer’s delight there were many holiday sprees

On clothes, toys and stuff to spruce up the trees.

It seemed the true meaning of Christmas was lost from the start

As everyone scrambled to fill the shopping cart.

Yes, the holidays were off to a great start this year

With three weeks to go till Thanksgiving was here.

Little Tommy and Jill brought out boxes and bags

Family stockings, towels, and the little Christmas rags

And looked up at Daddy sweetly imploring

To break out the decorations from their long, dormant storing.

And putting his foot down, with jaw firmly set,

Father exclaimed with a shout: “It’s not Thanksgiving yet!”

So off they went and put it all back away,

Till they could make their appearance after Thanksgiving Day.

And but a day after Thanksgiving, O what a surprise

For the children to see with their very own eyes

A miniature sleigh and eight tiny reindeer

Soaring up in the air, as if Christmas was here!

And what a shock it was for dear old Santa to learn

That he still had a month of vacation to burn.

Yes, he had flown from the North Pole all this way

To find out that Christmas was still a whole month away.

And soon the store clerk was beginning to dread

Another day of Christmas music pounding in her head.

The holidays were beginning to lose their Christmas cheer

As the repetition of “Jingle Bells” caused pandemonial fear.

On December first “Frosty the Snowman” reached a record millionth play,

And store managers were able to scrounge out another sale for the day.

That stupid commercial for this year’s Christmas toy

 Was really starting to fester and greatly annoy.

And more than one Christmas scrooge could be found,

In fact, humbugs could be heard from practically everyone in town.

And then Daddy became a real Christmas Jerk

As the holiday madness drove him completely berserk.

He tore down the lights and set the Christmas tree on fire,

Screaming he who spread Christmas Cheer was a big fat liar.

There was no telling what this holiday madman would do

For he obliterated the radio with a hammer through and through.

And finally worn out, he shouted, “That’s it!”

“Christmas morning we’ll sleep in and just sit

On the couch until the day’s through

 And after that, I don’t know what we’ll do,

Clean up, I guess.” And the children trudged off to bed

And had visions of daddy shooting the sugar plum fairies dead.

And some homes still had Christmas, but swore to remember

To never start Christmas on the first of November.

If a Leaf Falls

This poem represents a place I like to escape to in my mind when I am stressed. I remember writing it while under the influence of one of my favorite poets, T. S. Eliot, and some crazy desire to get something into iambic pentameter.
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A limestone boulder, chipped haphazardly

Across the face: the dead anti-crystal—

Lies buried by rotting peat and pine fur.

Beside it a brook of cold, black water

Passes like a fog across barren shards—

Progeny of the limestone boulder,

Strewn like a ruined city, twice destroyed

By violence and by flood, while brook trout

Prowl—phantoms of an aqueous desert,

Poking their snouts at the corporeal

Parts and celestial apertures of

Honey bees and dragon flies that once touched

Veins with strawberry blossoms and heart-shaped

Leaves, now gone cold—gold—quaking on the blanched
Bones of the aspens; but no one observed.

Blue Hues

This is a poem I wrote when I first started dating Aubrey. I was taking a poetry class in college, something I didn't see myself doing before, but was really enjoying learning about crafting tight, well-spun phrases. The idea of this poem started at a football game when I was looking into Aubrey's eyes and was just hypnotized by the blue. I had to write a poem using metaphor and color, and this is the result.
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Blue is the sign
that stops the bus
I take to work,
and it's fraying chair I sit in
as I look up into the sky,

and it is the sky,
that's been blue since the sun
stretched out his waking arms
this morning--
he seems to have stretched them to the stars
because they have faded to this
blueness

that's like your eyes,
only different--
for they're sky blue at the football games
but stone blue in the kitchen
where we eat
white rice
and sweet and sour chicken
dripping in red sauce.

But it's the same blue
that holds the world together--
it keeps the sun and moon up in the sky,
it is the last color to touch the stars.

It is also bravery:
As the ship droops head first,
and the oceans seethe below,
and the sky makes war above,
hammering down
light and fire
with the rain,
I stand, clinging to the bow,
and the lifeboat
below me
calls me down,
and it is blue
that helps me

jump.

Blue can be the coldest shard of ice
or the hottest tongue of fire,
but it can also be

the flower

that stands out in a field of green,
as if wearing a prom dress
was how it went to school every day.
And you could pick it
and put it in that blue vase
on the kitchen table,
or you could let it unfold
                  its blue petals
                                    out to the sky.

Blue is the color of love
when red has faded.
It is the horizon,
or the mountains on the horizon
whereupon reaching them
all you have proven
is that there is more blue beyond.

Christmas Gifts

This is a story (braided essay, really) that I wrote for a writing class I was teaching. I had a student who raised the question in class why you couldn't mix creative writing with research. It really got me thinking, and I turned to the braided essay as a possibility of bringing the two together. For a final project, I invited some of my students to try out a braided essay format. I joined with them as a way to guide them along, and ended up with this:

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My Grandpa Burr was an interesting man. He was tall and thin, clean shaven and bald. He wore plaid shirts tucked into his jeans, and had big glasses--all characteristics of a typical grandpa. He gave big, wet kisses on our cheeks. My other grandpa didn't do that. Grandpa Henrie would grip my hand super-tight as he shook it, squeezing until I cried out.

When I was seventeen, my parents bought a ten-year-old, blue little Honda for my sister and I to use. We would sometimes drive over to my grandparents house, only a few blocks from ours, and stop and say hello. Grandpa Burr didn't talk much, which made it awkward when Grandma wasn't there. Instead of talking, Grandpa would go out to our car, pull a tire-pressure gauge from his pocket and check all our tires. He'd lift the hood, look over the engine, and check the oil level. He had a paper towel in his back pocket to wipe the oil dip-stick on. He was always prepared to do this every time we came over, as if he'd been waiting for us. Then he would have us drive him over in our car to Holiday, a gas station by the post office, to fill up on gas. He insisted that Holiday had the best quality gas in town. We told him he didn't have to, but he never let us reject the offer.

***

I remember when I first grew cynical about Christmas.

It was November 1st.  I was on my lunch break. I decided to go to Subway just down the street for a sandwich. I walked in the door, and a little bell rang to announce my arrival. The scent of baking bread welcomed me in, followed by the smell of deli meats: salami, ham, turkey, and chicken. The next thing to hit my senses rang the wrong bell: Andy Williams singing "It's the Most Wonderful Time of the Year." I paused, wondering if I was dreaming, or had amnesia and missed the fact that we had Thanksgiving.

I stepped up to the counter. A young woman with a black hat on her blond head and plastic gloves on her hands smiled and asked for my order.

"Is that really Christmas music?"

Her smile faded and her cheeks blushed. "They give us the music that we play here in the restaurant."

"Oh," was all I said. I ordered the Spicy Italian BMT on white. I paid for my order next to a new advertisement on using Subway gift cards as stocking stuffers.

As I walked back to work, thoughts came to my head for a great poem. It started by mixing "T'was the Night Before Christmas" with Halloween. Costumes on the floor, kids dreaming of candy, department and grocery stores putting up Christmas decorations in the middle of the night to the surprise of all. When I returned to the copy shop, I quickly grabbed a paper and pen, jotting down the ideas. Then I thought of people growing sick of the sales, the music. Maybe Santa Claus showing up a month early on accident. Then I snickered--the best thought of all! Some dad just losing it on Christmas Eve: tearing down the lights and decorations, smashing the radio, burning the Christmas tree! And then the last two stanzas came:

And finally worn out, he shouted, “That’s it!”

“Christmas morning we’ll sleep in and just sit

On the couch until the day’s through,

 And after that, I don’t know what we’ll do;

Clean up, I guess.” And the children trudged off to bed

And had visions of daddy shooting the sugar plum fairies dead.

And some homes still had Christmas, but swore to remember

To never start Christmas on the first of November.

***

The commercialization of Christmas is not something recent, but something that has been taking place for well over a century. In an 1832 New York newspaper, one person wrote:

"Christmas eve, in the city of New-York, exhibits a spectacle, which, to a stranger, must be highly pleasing and effective. Whole rows of confectionery stores and toy shops, fancifully, and often splendidly, decorated with festoons of bright silk drapery, interspersed with flowers and evergreens, are brilliantly illuminated with gas-lights, arranged in every shape and figure that fancy can devise. During the evening, until midnight, these places are crowded with visitors of both sexes and all ages; others merely lounging from shop to shop to enjoy the varied scene."¹

Schmidt, a Harvard professor of History and Religion, marked the rise of commercial products tailored for specific holidays, especially Christmas, since the 1800’s. He also explored the religious reactions to the commercialization of the Christmas holiday, noting the very mixed reactions. Some, especially the Puritans, were antagonistic towards festivities of any kind, and outlawed any celebrating of Christmas. Other religions found Christmas as an opportunity to share the message of Christ with those caught up in the spirit of the holiday. In fact, Schmidt has noted that religion is discussed significantly more at Christmas time than at any other time in the year.²

Slowly, however, the religious symbols of Christmas, particularly the Nativity, have either been replaced or outlawed from public expression. Many have noted a change in the spirit of the holidays. A Pew poll in 2005 noted that “about half of Americans say they are bothered by the commercialization of Christmas.” The Pew poll also noted, however, that “most Americans are not highly concerned about the matter” (Allen 16).³

While the attitude towards the meaning of the holiday is mixed, Schmidt comments on the possible affect of the holiday trend:

"The machinations of the marketplace are seen as subverting free participation in the effervescence of the festival; manipulation and obligation displace spontaneity and sincerity. Both the profit-making of merchants and the gift-seeking of individuals are viewed as supplanting community celebration; the integrative, unifying powers of festivity are lost amid the impersonal world of malls and the private dreams of consumers."⁴

***

Grandpa complained about his feet always being cold and hurting. When we'd go to visit, he'd rub lotion on his feet and then tuck them under an electric heating pad. The doctors told him to stop the practice because it was causing infection in his feet. Every so often, Grandpa would go to the hospital for surgery to remove an infected toe, but he insisted on the pad and the lotion.

About the same time, my grandma had hired me to mow their lawn. Grandpa used to do it, but his feet and back were getting too bad. I think he'd still do it if Grandma didn't stop him. Instead, Grandpa would go out and fill the lawn mower with gas and clean off all the old grass clippings. It was an old mower, and he made it work for a long time.

Most edges of the yard met a cement foundation and chain-link fence. In some places, the ground was much higher than the foundation. Grandpa would lay down two-by-fours on the cement, giving a more level track for the wheels of the lawn mower. That way the blades wouldn't chop down the grass to the roots in the sunken spots of the foundation. Those two-by-fours got annoying to me, however. It was easy to knock the boards out of place. I'd have to stop mowing, replace the board and try to approach it more carefully the next time.

There were many weeks that I would come to mow and somehow Grandpa had snuck out of Grandma's supervision and had mowed all the edges of the lawn. It could have been that he thought I wasn't doing a good job on the edges, but I believe he did it to make the job easier.

***

My family practiced the ritual of assigning who you bought Christmas gifts for. The rationale for the ritual was to alleviate the financial burden of having to buy Christmas gifts for everyone in the family, while at the same time making it a little more possible to spend more money on the gift. Only the siblings in my family practiced the ritual. My parents gave presents to us all.

My wife, Aubrey, and I were at Sportsman's Warehouse, the fifth store in what was becoming a vain search for a Christmas gift for my brother and his wife, who were our gift-giving assignment for this holiday season. They both loved the outdoors, and we thought Sportsman's would provide something up that alley worthy of a Christmas gift. We wandered up the isles, hoping something would strike our eye. We saw camping chairs, dutch ovens, cooking tables, emergency kits, and flashlights. But what would be the best gift? My concern was that I had no idea what they already owned and what they could use and appreciate.

I dug my cell phone out of my pocket and called my mother, hoping she knew what my brother and his wife both wanted and what they didn't already have. I didn't want to call my brother about it and give it away that I didn't know him well enough now to buy him a thoughtful Christmas gift.

"They did say they wanted a cooking table," my mother suggested.

I strolled to the isle where I last saw cooking tables, Aubrey close behind me. There were several styles--each over our budget.

"What about a dutch oven?" It was something I would appreciate. One dutch oven style fit within our budget, though it was on the small side. My wife gave me the look: dumb choice. I shot her a look in return: you got a better idea?!

"I don't know. Maybe they would like it," my mother answered. She didn't sound encouraging.

I pursed my lips. "Hmmm. Okay...."

"Just do it."

"But what if they already have one?"

"Who knows? Do whatever you want."

I hate that answer sometimes. I looked up at the head mounts on the wall. The antelope looking over our isle didn't seem to have any opinion on the dutch oven idea either. After thanking my mother and hanging up, I strolled to the cheaper isles, hoping something there would pop out at me. Small shovels, water bottles, pocket knives, fold-up cookware, emergency kits.

"This is stupid," I finally said.

"Yep," Aubrey replied.

"Christmas gifts are so forced. It's not even a real gift. I'm just buying them stuff because that's what we do for Christmas."

Aubrey had no answer for that one.

"Hey brother! I got you this cool emergency kit. The three-dollar wrapping paper is almost just as cool. Merry Christmas."

***

“Gift giving is the cement of social relationships,” Komter and Vollebergh declared in a study on the giving of gifts.⁵ It is how will build and strengthen our bonds between each other.

Komter and Vollebergh wanted to learn more about the affects and practices of gift-giving. They sent out a survey to a random population and received about 500 responses on who people give gifts to and what their feelings are in regards to the gift-giving. Komter and Vollebergh broke the gift-receivers into groups in relation to the gift-giver: children, parents/parents-in-law, extended kin, friends, acquaintances or colleagues, and neighbors. They also separated the responses of feelings associated with the giving of the gift into two categories: feelings of affection or feelings of obligation. From the study, they learned that the greatest affection was felt in the giving to children, parents, and friends, whereas greatest obligation was felt in the giving to extended kin and neighbors. What surprised them, however, was that the feelings of affection were more highly reported in all groups than feelings of obligation.

In the end, Komter and Vollebergh mentioned that measuring the feelings towards gift-giving was complicated, as the open-ended questionnaire may not have been direct enough, and the feelings towards gift-giving is often something many do not reflect on.

***

A little over a week after I got engaged to Aubrey, I received a phone call early in the morning from my mother to tell me that Grandpa had died. It was an unexpected death. My mom kept saying that it was a good thing--that he had been in so much pain.

At his funeral, my mom, her two sisters, and her brother all spoke. They told stories of him taking them to Disneyland as kids, of him sneaking treats and table scraps to our dog when we he thought we weren't looking, of him mowing neighbor's lawns or taking out their trash cans.

My uncle spoke of the humble home where my grandpa came from. His parents herded sheep in central Utah, and they had very little. Grandpa seemed to insist on being able to provide better for his family with the best that he knew how. He worked as a school bus driver. He also took up a job at the post office where he worked a late evening shift, sorting mail. The work gave him arthritis and a sore back. My uncle said that they had to be extra quiet as kids because Grandpa had to sleep during the day. The post office didn't provide much, but it did provide a home, health care, and food. Grandma didn't have to work.

"Though we had little growing up, Dad always found a way to give," he said.

***

Another Halloween was ending. Trick-or-treaters had long since come to our door. Aubrey and I had just finished flipping through a Walter Wick's Eye Spy book. It was the Halloween one, where the book progresses from a spooky city up to a tower in a spooky castle. We found all the cleverly hidden bats, frogs, and keys. Aubrey decided to get ready for bed. She takes longer than I do, so I looked for something else to keep me entertained. Next to the Halloween Eye Spy book on the book shelf was the Christmas one. I pulled it down and thumbed through it. I thought I'd save the actual searching for a date closer to Christmas, but I was curious to see what we had to look forward to. What I hadn't noticed before was the poem "T'was the Night Before Christmas," printed on both ends of the book. Boredom drew me to its words:

His eyes--how they twinkled! his dimples how merry!

His cheeks were like roses, his nose like a cherry!

His droll little mouth was drawn up like a bow,

And the beard of his chin was as white as the snow.

The stump of a pipe he held tight in his teeth,

And the smoke of it encircled his head like a wreath.

He had a broad face and a little round belly,

That shook when he laughed, like a bowlful of jelly!

He was chubby and plump, a right jolly old elf,

And I laughed when I saw him, in spite of myself!

A wink of his eye and a twist of his head,

Soon gave me to know I had nothing to dread.

He spoke not a word, but went straight to his work,

And filled all the stockings, then turned with a jerk.

And then I stopped, the questions jumping out at me: Why were Santa's eyes twinkling? His dimples so merry? And why was his laugh so jolly? Year after year, bringing gifts, doing this work, no mention of him getting anything in return. 

***

Of the many influences of our present-day understanding of Santa Claus, Saint Nicholas certainly is a strong influence.

Nicholas had been born into a family of wealth in Patara, a city of ancient Turkey. His parents died when he was young, leaving Nicholas to be raised by his uncle, a local priest. The story goes that Nicholas spent much of his time visiting and helping those in need.

His ordination to the office of bishop is a miraculous one. Myra, a nearby city, was in need of a new bishop. In preparation for the choosing and ordination of a new bishop of Myra, an elder bishop received a revelation that the first person to enter the church should be ordained as the new bishop. The next morning, Nicholas happened to be the one who entered.

A prominent social custom in Nicholas's day was the giving of dowries for a marriage. The dowry was a gift of money, land, clothing, jewels, or servants, and was given by the bride's family. Some say the custom helped unify the marrying families, provide financial support to the new family, or to improve social status.

As legend goes, a father was unable to provide a dowry for his three young daughters. Without this dowry, it was believed that women would not properly marry, and would have to find other means to support themselves should their family be unable to do so. Many of these women turned to prostitution in order to survive.

Nicholas heard of the young girls' plight. Stashing gold in three little purses, he stole away in the darkness of night and slipped the purses through an open window of the family's house. This, and other accounts of giving anonymously to those in need, led to Saint Nicholas being known as the Secret Gift-Giver.⁶

***

I had a dream. I was with family, though I don't remember seeing exactly who was there. The sky was a soft yellow. The air was warm. Tall branches of trees reached high overhead. For all I know, we were in my grandparents backyard. We all sat at tables, having a family dinner. The only person I knew was there for sure, other than myself, was my grandpa.

What startled me was not that he was standing before me, alive as ever, but that it seemed so right and ordinary that he was alive. He had his typical plaid, button-up shirt tucked into his jeans. He smiled a lot. I knew somehow, in that strange dream-understanding, that we had been talking about Christmas. It must have been about gifts because my grandpa looked down at his feet and said, "It's not plane tickets or anything." My wife and I were planning on visiting her Dad down in Arizona for Christmas, but we had plenty of money for the trip. Grandpa's eyes were distant. He looked ashamed, like he was confessing some dark secret. But then he looked up and turned to me, his eyes bright and friendly, the smile returning to his face.

"But I hope it makes your life better."

Notes

1. Quoted in Schmidt, Leigh Eric. "Christianity In The Marketplace: Christmas And The Consumer Culture." Cross Currents 42.3 (1992): 342. Academic Search Premier. Web. 15 Nov. 2011.

2. Schmidt, Leigh Eric. "Christianity In The Marketplace: Christmas And The Consumer Culture." Cross Currents 42.3 (1992): 342. Academic Search Premier. Web. 15 Nov. 2011. See also Schmidt, Leigh Eric. “The Commercialization of the Calendar: American Holidays and the Culture of Consumption, 1870-1930.” The Journal of American History 78.3 (1991): 887-916. JSTOR.org. Web. 6 Nov. 2011.

3. Allen, Jodie. "Allen: Merry Whatever." U.S. News Digital Weekly 1.49 (2009): 16. Academic Search Premier. Web. 15 Nov. 2011.

4. Schmidt, Leigh Eric. "Christianity In The Marketplace: Christmas And The Consumer Culture." Cross Currents 42.3 (1992): 342. Academic Search Premier. Web. 15 Nov. 2011.

5. Komter, Aafke and Wilma Vollebergh, “Gift Giving and the Emotional Significance of Family and Friends.” Journal of Marriage and Family 59.3 (1997): 747-757. JSTOR.org. Web. 6 Nov. 2011.

6. "St. Nicholas." Encyclopedia of World Biography. 2004. Encyclopedia.com. Web. 7 Nov. 2011. See also: "Saint Nicholas." Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia. n. d. Wikipedia. Web. 7 Nov. 2011; "Dowry." International Encyclopedia of Marriage and Family. 2003. Encyclopedia.com. Web. 7 Nov. 2011.