A Twitter friend tweeted that everyone criticizing should try and do better, and then specifically challenged me to write and share when I said I wish I’d been invited, and I thought, you know what?

Gauntlet accepted. Bear in mind, I’ve had a few hours, and would revise, but here’s a start:

“Just One Smile”

It’s his smile.
Of few other presidents or men
Do we remember a smile–
Kennedy’s hair and Nixon’s sweaty brow,
Roosevelt’s bear and hat
(Teddy and Frank, respectively)–
But today we have a smile,
a bright bream
wide as the day is long,
true as words on a page,
genuine as the bills in our pockets
and worth every bit as much as that currency.
If we could fold our lips into our wallets,
exchange them, one man to another,
ours today could be a rich country.
We would worry less about tax cuts and the Dow,
less about how we might pay for our children’s health,
because we would know our smiles can heal.
Our smiles can help.

Just one smile,
sure-placed and sincerely bestowed,
offered without restraint, without caveat,
offered, most important, with warm certainty
of its own return,
can change the world.

Just one smile can turn a global tide
and change a single person’s mood.
Just one smile can be the change
we want to see in the world
and offer to all who receive it
the courage to invest in the audacity of hope.

The power of just one smile
is that it does not belong to one man,
charged on this day to accept the great burden
of leadership and generations–
(bring us your tired, your weak, your poor in spirit).

The power of that one smile is that it inspires mine.
And yours.
And yours and yours.
And yours and yours and yours.

Just one smile inspires all of us
to believe again.
Not in a flag or a country or a world,
but in our own ability to change it,
and to shape it.
To believe again in a dream
of a world in which our character might be our capital
and smiles our currency.

Today, we smile.
Some through emotional tears,
many in ecstatic joy,
all in relief and celebration.

Today, we realize that the answer is not solely
“Yes, we can,”
or “have,”
or “did,”
or “will,”
but all those responses punctuated by our certain smiles.

Just one smile
provides relief.

Just one smile
proves we can overcome.

Just one smile
turns the other cheek
to years of heartbreak and struggle,
bullets and tears.

Just one smile
can make a difference.

And so, in these tough times
of darkness and despair,
when it seems impossible
to reach out to your neighbor
to offer your help
to make a difference,
remember that just one smile
can.
And does.
And will.

You don’t remember how long you’ve been out here.
Your skin has leathered.
Your bones form odd angles and crevices beneath it.
It hurts to breathe.
The acrid air burns your lungs.

You mutter to yourself
under your breath.
You may be the only person
who has ever heard your voice.

Your lips are chapped,
cracked,
broken and bled and scabbed over.
You would cry if you could remember
what moisture was.

You shuffle-shamble along.
Sometimes a burst of energy makes you sprint;
most times you are deliberate and going is slow.
Eventually you stop,
thinking you cannot go on.
But there is still much to say,
and so,
unable to find a stick with which to trace in the sand,
you gnaw into your wrist,
letting your blood.
You stain the world.
Whorls and swirls and symbols,
And you write:

II.
In the beginning,
because that’s when the words started.

In the beginning,
before the dryness and the brightness and the sand.

In the beginning was the word,
and with it you create the world.
You populate it with your thoughts and your dreams.
You create your gods to protect yourself;
you create love to save yourself;
you create madness in which to seek sanctuary;
you create cities of gold and jewels,
underwater,
because your dreams remain thirsty.
You create the universe
in your eyes
which,
if you are lucky, and good,
no longer remember your image.

In the beginning,
and on and on and on.
Stars explode in lonely distances you’ll never know;
civilizations thrive and prosper
and are conquered.
People live and die and curse and fuck,
in the beginning,
and eventually,
if you are lucky, and good,
the coyotes come out.

III.
Servants of a trickster god,
they see into your dreams because they are part of them.
They wish to be shared,
and so they give you tools.

They offer you a pen,
which you take,
in exchange for what you are not certain.

They offer you a voice,
which you accept,
and use to ask for
water.
And help.
And salvation.
And redemption.
And a chance.

And they give it to you.

IV.
With your pen,
you record your new stentorian voice.
You speak with authority and conviction.
People hear you.

Your voice carries farther than you had expected.
Sometimes
it says things you did not expect it to.
Some of the time, you regret that.

Your voice carries you to new places that are not the desert.
Places in which water falls from the sky
like a miracle.
Places where you meet other people who feel the same emotions as you,
who see the same world and work with hands like yours,
and so,
when you see a mirror,
you are surprised you do not look like everyone else.

When you see the ocean for the first time,
you cry tears in waves;
it all tastes the same.

V.
You are able to exchange your words
for currency in this different place.
This world of skyscraped clouds,
of hurrying,
of hummingbirds, whose wings blur,
whose hearts beat so fast
just thinking about it makes yours want to burst.

With their long beaks,
they seek single drops of nectar
for sustenance.

And you look out your window
to the city beyond its pane.
The sirens.
The brilliant lights,
the lovers of the night
and the traders of the day.
Cars and engines belch their fumes into the acrid air,
which burns your lungs.
You can’t drink water from the faucet
because it is treated with chemicals
whose names you cannot pronounce.

You lose track of the time,
as you stare out that window,

and you think about
and dream about
and write about
the desert.

VI.
And so,
finished,
blood let and soul exhausted,
you collapse to sleep,
at peace,
deserted.

~~~

“Deserted” is one of my personal favorite pieces if solely because it seems, like “For Cynthia,” something whole and perfect. Not in the sense I think it’s great or anything, but I feel like it captured something better than I had realized I might. I think it works, which is pretty much always the aim.

As always, it’s available in my collection, which is now free. I’d set the price to $2.50 during the two-week drive for pledges, but I think it works better free.

I’ll probably be making the download available some other way aroundabouts the end of October, but I think the print version will, at least temporarily, vanish to remain solely in the ether.

***

One of six poems in the collection, and one of the earliest overall. I wrote it during college, which is also true of “Inspiration Point,” “This Ain’t Wonderland,” and “A New Drink.” This was, of course, at a time when I thought every line of a poem should be capitalized (I’m no longer sure, and I’d concede this one might look better without the capped lines). These and my other college poems were the ones that came closest to not making it into the collection, in fact, because I thought so much else seemed so much stronger, but one of the good things about doing it in the first place was recording those times.

I think every writer has early work that makes them cringe a little. I know I have a novel on the top shelf of the closet in my parents basement, which will, as far as I’m concerned, remain there forever (or at least until they move), a big, thick, hunk of a novel I thought it took nearly a ream of paper to tell. I’m pretty sure it’s up near 500 single-spaced pages.

Better I offer you the poems than that, I think. The poems, it’s fun to see how I’ve grown.

The novel you might just bludgeon me with were I to try to sell it to you.

As well you should.

It’s nice to know, as well as a little ironic, that a couple of you cited this and other poetry as your favorite. We are so rarely good at judging what of our work will appeal to others.

***

Like this? Remember to buy the book; it’s only available for a limited time, and all proceeds go to the United Way NYC as tribute to those we lost on September 11th, 2001.

The class, so far: meh. I don’t have a business background and, indeed, never took any such courses in college, even despite two degrees and graduate school. Which means that, though I’m currently attending Regis, I’m really doing a conditional acceptance sort of thing. I have to pass a couple of Foundations of Business or somesuchlike courses.

Which would be fine. I get that I need to know stuff like statistics. And I can’t wait to get to marketing.

But–

(you knew there was going to be a but, right? Which gives me an opportunity to try out this “more” function thingy I’ve been wanting to use)

This first week has concentrated on Excel spreadsheets. One I’m supposed to create using supplied parameters, which is kinda cool, but no less than four others I’m supposed to “duplicate” off a worksheet. Not to mention, I then have to do some other weirdo thing that makes the spreadsheets display the formulas I did.

So: showing your work.

But yeesh. I’m 30 years old. Is this really frickin’ necessary? I just wrote a business plan last semester.

(funny how life segues sometimes)

Anyway.

I did most of the spreadsheets already. Now for the other.

I might be (re)posting work from Entrekin this next week, as part of the whole September 11th pledge drive thing. I know some of you have already both read and bought it, but I’m pretty certain, too, that many other people besides haven’t.

But this’ll be a bit of a ‘greatest hits’ sort of week.

So, the question is: what’s your favorite story in Entrekin, and why? Any questions you’re burnin’ to ask after reading them? Or otherwise, for that matter?

Tim Minchin, performing Leonard Cohen’s “Hallelujah” with Terry (Jerry?) Quinn:

www.youtube.com/watch?v=OSFCDhLhuB8

And yes, it’s definitely poetry, because for those five minutes, Minchin and his partner made that small bar a church.

(for the record, Minchin was correct that Rufus Wainwright performed the song for the Shrek soundtrack; John Cale has covered it, though, as well–his appears on the Scrubs soundtrack)

Update, 5/20: thanks to Georgie, who notes Minchin’s duet partner as Geraldine Quinn.

Is.

Awesome.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=3IJWZ89taIw

That’s some poetry, right there.

Marty McConnell has been posting poems to her live journal every day. So far, this one is my favorite.

McConnell might well be my favorite poet ever. Few writers have ever hit me as hard as she does.

Enjoy.