I Asked Grace
I asked Grace if it was okay for me to re-post this poem she wrote a dozen years ago, because it’s been one of my favorite poems ever since she posted it in the Bad Poetry topic in an online community we’ve both been members of more or less forever. And she said yes I could. Not exactly in those words, but close enough.
Bad Poetry
by Grace Twain
I asked God if it was okay to write bad poetry
and they said you betcha
be sure and make lots of
broken lines
and write from the point of
view of a dust mote
floating above a sea of sharks
Be two cardiologists
dancing life’s dream together
Forget proprietry
just write for the moment
But will that be
poe
tree
I asked
yes yes yes
said all the gods
and all the dogs and some of the cats
but not the sailers
who said no no no
poetry is precise and me
trickle
and bound in books
and recited before your relatives
on Christmas Day
Poetry is grand and minted in gold
and lasts forever
inspires great thoughts
Wait a minute I said
What lasts forever?
Poetry I said?
You must be joking
Forever is for ever a very long time
when all the hu mans are
turned to ash
and the books have fallen into dust
and the cockroaches run
the world
will poetry still be minted in gold
and inspire great thoughts?
What about after
that big ass asteroid hits the earth
and it breaks up into
11 bazillion pieces
and the cockroaches
are floating through space
like little bitty dustmotes
and all the poems in the world
are gone and the world is gone
and silence rains down upon the asteroids
who are the kings of everything
What about then?
God told me not to worry my head
about it all
God said.
Look babe (sometimes he calls me that)
When people say poetry will live forever
they just mean for a time
The time of blooming roses
and the time of bad poetry
and broken verse
and metrickality
Rhymes come and rimes go
You write what comes from inside
that’s me trying to get out
Someone else will write the
gilt-edged rhymes
Yes yes yes rimes
with no no no
and all the people said amen
and all the gods chorused
loud poems in response
and the cockroaches
they didn’t care
and the asteroids
they didn’t either
The dustmotes had to laugh.
Copyright © 2003 by Grace Twain. Used with permission of the poet.
Then Grace told me her poem was a bit of a riff on another poem, one by Kaylin Haught. And when I found that one, it immediately became another favorite poem of mine.
God Says Yes To Me
by Kaylin Haught
I asked God if it was okay to be melodramatic
and she said yes
I asked her if it was okay to be short
and she said it sure is
I asked her if I could wear nail polish
or not wear nail polish
and she said honey
she calls me that sometimes
she said you can do just exactly
what you want to
Thanks God I said
And is it even okay if I don’t paragraph
my letters
Sweetcakes God said
who knows where she picked that up
what I’m telling you is
Yes Yes Yes
From In the Palm of Your Hand, copyright © 1995 by Kaylin Haught. Used without permission, asking forgiveness.
it’s just sohmteing you gotta feel man. you have to find sohmteing to write about that really means sohmteing to you. but as for the actual writting part i like to use an abc rhyme scheme.