Anthony Carelli is coming to campus today! Fasten your bow ties, poetry fans!

So; I found the high school poems but have been reluctant to share them. They make me cringe a bit; it’s like looking through old photos of a much more awkward younger self. Sometimes I want so much to say to A.Y.S., “Oh, sixteen/seventeen-year old Rich; if only you knew –– (what awaits.) All of this is a bit naive, isn’t it, son?” Sometimes I want to go back and to rescue him. To tell him, like a meddlesome parent, “This is what you should do/should not do.” But he has to go through all of that. The parent realizes he must allow the child to make those mistakes. Is this how the child becomes father to the man, Father Manley?

Statistics Poems

1.
I slept with the window opened
last night and I think the
night seeped in and swallowed-up
my soul.

2.
I feel poetical
like a sparrow’s spirit––
a ghost! which stirs in darkness
(night) and whistles in the
weeping tree which cries,
tears of laughter and the
tittering spirit sparrow––
spiritual sparrows.

(where are the chickens?)

***

Clearly those were written in the margins of my Statistics notebook. (It’s a bit precious you thought to type them up and save them though, no?)

This one is still rather well, ok, mostly because I like the allusion to Alanis on my Walkman; I’m going to go Spotify some Jagged Little Pill now; you read, but be kind to A.Y.S., please.

Car Trip

Legs of jello, Alanis
ache, agony
twitch, itch
Stop: Rest. Wiggle, wobble
Stumble, stagger, stretch––
eat styrofoam
Time to go, keep going
Weave our wending, winding
weary way in and out.
the sky darkens, the dashboard
lit-up like a ship, a vessel
We voyage, we journey onward,
upward: rising, Rising, falling
squirm, worm, twist your hair into knots.
nothing to do: it’s all been done.
Try to sleep––oh, my neck!
crimped, cramped
How much further? Farther.
Are we there yet? Is our
car trip done?
We’ve only just begun