Tag Archives: poems

September 15, 2026 · 12:02 am

Essential Sorting

The internet is a golden treasure chest with an attached bag of holding for me.  In other words, a lot of the writing I do depends heavily on a resource that didn’t really exist until I was almost 40 years old.  I save stuff from my eclectic surfing forays in computer files that tend to become amazingly complex garbage dumps.  So today, I decided to sort one of them to go through stuff I thought might make an interesting blog post.

So, let me show you some of the treasures I have found that could become upcoming blog posts.   I will go through the sorted files from July of 2018.

The Dragon Prince

85682497ebb0d06e0b710059802d86feda4f26e8

This is a funny, fascinating, D&D-type adventure series from Netflix and the creators of Avatar, the Last Air Bender.

I have recently watched the entire first season, and love this show enough to write a gushing love-review.

Fresh Off the Boat

This is a show on regular TV, the ABC network.  It is about an immigrant family originally from China.  I think I am married to the spiritual twin of the lead female character, an obsessively controlling Asian wife who has to have her fingers in every single pie in the neighborhood.

maxresdefault

It is chocked full of little things that are both bizarre and funny about Asian cultures being assimilated in this country.  And the kids are cute and extremely talented.

fresh-off-the-boat-cast

Gene Colan

Gene Colan was one of my favorite comic book artists in the 70’s and 80’s.  I will probably do a more in-depth biography post on him in the future because he really helped me learn to draw in pen and ink.  I copied his work from Daredevil, Howard the Duck, and Tomb of Dracula.  But all of the work I will show you is done not by me, but by Gene.

Miscellany

This is the stuff that didn’t need its own folder.

 

Twitter Nudists

This is one I might not be able to use and still maintain a mild R-rating.  But I am, in fact, a member of the online nudist community.

Theodore Roethke

This one was already turned into a good blog post.

Lovely bliss quotes Theodore Roethke Quotes
PhotoLiaison.com

The Wizard of Ozz

It goes without saying, nobody can have too many Wizard of Oz pictures.

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August 1, 2026 · 11:55 pm

Silly Tyger!

I think I posted this picture once before and told you it was inspired by William Blake’s poem The Tyger!  That is still true.  I wasn’t telling a lie, at least, I don’t believe I was.  So the poem goes like this;

The Tyger

BY WILLIAM BLAKE

 
Tyger Tyger, burning bright,
In the forests of the night;
What immortal hand or eye,
Could frame thy fearful symmetry?
In what distant deeps or skies.
Burnt the fire of thine eyes?
On what wings dare he aspire?
What the hand, dare seize the fire?
And what shoulder, & what art,
Could twist the sinews of thy heart?
And when thy heart began to beat,
What dread hand? & what dread feet?
What the hammer? what the chain,
In what furnace was thy brain?
What the anvil? what dread grasp,
Dare its deadly terrors clasp!
When the stars threw down their spears
And water’d heaven with their tears:
Did he smile his work to see?
Did he who made the Lamb make thee?
Tyger Tyger burning bright,
In the forests of the night:
What immortal hand or eye,
Dare frame thy fearful symmetry?
Tyger
 
The idea is that the Tyger represents some unknowable evil that we must fear and respect because it is beyond our understanding.  But the kid in the picture seems to be unafraid.  Was that a mistake?  Or was I really thinking this?
CalvinHobbes
Apologies to Bill Watterson for stealing his cartoon for this post.  I needed a more dangerous-looking Tyger than the one I had.
 

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February 24, 2026 · 1:35 am

7 Reasons I Count My Lucky Stars

Yes, I am old

===== I probably won’t last 7 more years

=========== Soon I will get grumpy and forgetful and strange

And then I am going to die.

But my life, though it’s practically over, has been valuable.

And not just to me…

Or maybe you need to see 7 reasons why?

  1. I was good at the things I chose to do in life. More students, principals, and school administrators thought so than saw me as a terrible teacher. For 31 years. Plus three years of substitute teaching.
  2. I was never a vampire, zombie, ghost, or… if I was a werewolf in the 1990s. I am cured now.
  3. I never had a broken leg, never drove a car off a cliff, never sank a ship, and never was mauled by a zoo animal that escaped its cage with hunting me on its mind.
  4. No butterfly in China ever flapped its wings and caused a tornado that did anything more than damage the roof of a house I was in.
  5. I knock on wood daily.
  6. As a teacher, I lost a couple of critical battles… suicide and gun deaths, one case of AIDS, and one muscular dystrophy. And I cried at every single one of those final defeats. And yet, they all knew I was trying to help. And there’s a large number who live and love me still for what I was able to give them. The scales are heavy but balanced.
  7. And I am 69 now. 26 years of diabetes. 51 years of arthritis. 70 will probably be the last 7 I can manage if I can manage any more than now. But I woke up alive this morning, and every new day is a precious gift. Painful or not.

And you are probably saying to me in your head right now, “Mickey, this is not a poem. It has no rhyme or rhythm”. It isn’t anything more than a paragraph with a list attached.

“Ah!” I say. “But I am claiming my whole life was a poem. One big, giant, evil poem Lived with more than a little special sauce on the meat of the sandwich. And can you truly say,

This life was not the shortest, clearest, best way to say something so profound it shook the bones of the Universe?”

Susu, my imaginary granddaughter loved it. (She’s imaginary because she was only a possibility for a few weeks and never got born.) And she’d give you a big hug if only she could.

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December 9, 2025 · 1:13 am

The Interstellar Bad Poetry Challenge

c360_2016-12-18-09-40-07-285

The Ixcanixian Cultural Ambassador from the Squeelix Sector of the Planet Ixcanix sent me an e-mail about his planet’s newest idea for a cultural exchange.  He calls it the “Ixcanixian Spleegle Gorn Vorpaloop” which translates to the “Ixcanixian Interstellar Bad Poetry Challenge”.  At least, it does if I am conjugating the verb “Vorpaloop” correctly.  It is difficult because you have to drop the silent “y” before adding the “aloop” without causing it to explode.  I know it is probably a very bad idea to present it here on this planet, but he talked me into it by promising to promote my novel Catch a Falling Star on his homeworld and at least two other planets in the Bugeye Federation.

Here are the rules for the alien poetry contest;

  1. Entries can only come from planets in the Orion Spur of the Sagittarius  Spiral Arm of the Milky Way Galaxy.  (So, for you non-astronomers out there, we on Earth do qualify.)
  2. All poets must be less intelligent than the Mud-Eaters of Paralaxos IV as they will be employed as judges of what poetry is truly bad.  (Again, Earth qualifies as we have recently re-elected Trump and also allow Nigel Farage of Great Britain to continue to exist.)
  3. Entries must not be so long that the total weight of letters exceed critical mass and form black holes in the intergalactic servers when uploaded.
  4. Vogons need not apply.  Their poetry is so bad that they would automatically win, causing the death of trillions of bad poetry readers in the galaxy.
  5. Entries must not cause thermonuclear reactions with cesium.
  6. Please refrain from confusing good poetry with bad poetry.  The Vornloos of Talos XII are looking for poetry they can weaponize, and no one wants a poetry contest winner to suddenly create World Peace on Talos XII.  That would be bad for the galaxy as a whole in ways that are very difficult to explain.

A sample of interstellar bad poetry is included here to inspire the kind of poetry we seek.

Ratzen Bargle’s Bisketoon  (a love poem by Touperary Kloob, Poet Laureate of Antares VI)

Ratzen Bargle was a Doofus,

From the planet Rufus-Ploofiss,

And he had a lovely bride,

With a head not tall, but twice as wide.

She had three eyes, and two were green.

She had the loveliest fleen you’ve ever seen.

And as they sat ‘neath a wayward moon,

He kissed his lovely bisketoon.

Immediately before naught was said,

She bit off his tiny three-eyed head.

And then she ate him bones and all

With sauce that really becomes the fall.

And so it is on Rufus-Ploofiss,

That  males all die with one last roof-kiss.

Because they sit under wayward moons

With their lovely, hungry bisketoons.
Should you have the unfortunate urge to participate in this senseless and probably suicidal poetry contest, you are welcome to offer four-line poems in the comment section, or email longer poems to Mickey at mbeyer51@gmail.com.  I will attempt to transmit the worst offers to the Ixcanixians as soon as I get my interstellar flooglebeeder transmitting again.  I will also post winners in a future alien poetry blog.

I have been warned that prizes range from instant execution by the Lizard Lords of Galtorr Prime to a beat up copy of Mickey’s 2012 novel Catch a Falling Star.  So, good luck with the bad poetry.

I must confess, I did not submit any of my terrible poetry as I don’t want any of the prizes.

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October 3, 2025 · 12:23 am

The Silent Sonata

creativity

Being a writer is a life of music that happens only in your head.  You hear voices constantly.  They pulse rhythmically with insights and ideas that have to be written down and remembered.  Otherwise  the music turns clashing-cymbals dark and depressing.  Monday I wrote a deeply personal thank you to the Methodist minister who saved my life when I was a boy.  I posted a YouTube music video by the acapella group Pentatonix with that essay in a vain attempt to give you an idea of the music in my head when I composed that very difficult piece to give myself a measure of peace.

filch

I realize that I am not writing poetry here.  Poetry can so easily slip into melody and music because of rhythm and meter and rhyme.  And yet, words to me are always about singing, about performing, about doing tricks with metaphor and meaning, rhythm, convoluted sentence structure, and other sneaky things that snake-oil salesman do to get you to think what you are hearing is precisely what you needed to hear.  The Sonata of Silence…  did you notice the alliteration of the silvery letter “S” in that title?  The beat of the syllables?  Da-daah-da a da-da?  The way a mere suggestion of music can bring symphonic sounds to your ear of imagination as you read?  The way a simple metaphor, writing is music, can be wrapped into an essay like a single refrain in a symphonic piece?

psoriasis

A sonata is a musical exercise in three or four movements that is basically instrumental in nature.  You may have noticed that the movements are loosely defined here by the accompanying pictures, of which there are three.  And it is silent only in the way that the instruments I am using themselves make no noise in the physical world.  The only sounds as I type these words are the hum of an old air conditioner and the whirr of my electric fan.  Yet my mind is filled with crescendos of violins and cellos, bold brass, and soft woodwinds.  The voice saying these words aloud only in my head is me.  Not the me you hear when I talk or the me I can hear on recordings of my own voice, but rather the me that I always hear from the inside.  And the voice is not so much “saying” as “singing”.

Writing makes music.  The writer can hear it.  The reader can too.  And whether I croon it to make you cry, or trill it to make you laugh, I am playing the instrument.  And so, the final notes of the sonata are these.  Be happy.  Be well.  And listen for the music.

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August 1, 2025 · 12:41 am

Silly Tyger!

I think I posted this picture once before and told you it was inspired by William Blake’s poem The Tyger!  That is still true.  I wasn’t telling a lie, at least, I don’t believe I was.  So the poem goes like this;

The Tyger

BY WILLIAM BLAKE

 
Tyger Tyger, burning bright,
In the forests of the night;
What immortal hand or eye,
Could frame thy fearful symmetry?
In what distant deeps or skies.
Burnt the fire of thine eyes?
On what wings dare he aspire?
What the hand, dare seize the fire?
And what shoulder, & what art,
Could twist the sinews of thy heart?
And when thy heart began to beat,
What dread hand? & what dread feet?
What the hammer? what the chain,
In what furnace was thy brain?
What the anvil? what dread grasp,
Dare its deadly terrors clasp!
When the stars threw down their spears
And water’d heaven with their tears:
Did he smile his work to see?
Did he who made the Lamb make thee?
Tyger Tyger burning bright,
In the forests of the night:
What immortal hand or eye,
Dare frame thy fearful symmetry?
Tyger
 
The idea is that the Tyger represents some unknowable evil that we must fear and respect because it is beyond our understanding.  But the kid in the picture seems to be unafraid.  Was that a mistake?  Or was I really thinking this?
CalvinHobbes
Apologies to Bill Watterson for stealing his cartoon for this post.  I needed a more dangerous-looking Tyger than the one I had.
 

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March 28, 2025 · 12:03 am

Go and Catch a Falling Star…

You may have looked at the name of my website here on WordPress and wondered, “Why in the heck has that fool Mickey called this thing he writes Catch a Falling Star?”

The answer is, he named it after the first good published novel he wrote at the insistence of the I-Universe Publishing’s marketing adviser. Very poor reason for doing anything, that.

But, the secondary reason is because of where that title came from. Look at the first stanza of this poem by John Donne.

So, now, you are justified in asking, “What nonsense is this? That doesn’t have any coherent meaning, does it?”

And you would be right. These are impossible things that I am being ordered to do by a very religious cleric in the Anglican Church who was originally a Catholic, but, in the time of Henry VIII Catholicism was made illegal, and he wrote this poem about not being able to find an honest woman in his drunken, wasted youth anyway. He is ordering me here to not only “catch a falling star” (and catching a meteorite with your bare hands has rather hot consequences), but also to have sex with a semi-poisonous plant, explain why we can’t go backwards in time, determine whether and why God might’ve given Satan goat feet, listen to probably-nonexistent humanoid creatures singing, find a way to avoid anybody ever looking at me with envy and then doing something to me because of it, and, most importantly, find a place where the wind blows in a way that fills your head with facts that actually makes you smarter.

Challenge accepted!

It is exactly what I wanted to write about. Impossible things actually being accomplished. Finding the meaning behind alien beings from outer space developing an intense love of I Love Lucy television broadcasts and Mickey Mouse Club music. Discovering why intensely shy people need to embrace social nudity. Defining who is actually a werewolf and who is not, uncovering who and what real monsters are. Singing songs so sad that it magically makes people fall in love with you. Talking to clowns in your dreams and getting real answers to the meaning of life, love, and laughter.

Catching falling stars is the stupid idea that this wacky, idiotic little blog is about. It is what I write about constantly. You have to kill me to get me to stop. So, there is your fair warning. Read on at your own peril.

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March 17, 2025 · 12:22 am

The Lyrical Imperative

Creativity

I am always amazed by the fact that things which are inherently silent in nature make music in your mind.  Writing is like that for me.  Drawing is like that.  And so is photography.  That is an actual musical score from Chopin in the background.  My son recognized it from a book of piano pieces I bought for him because he reads music and can turn those squiggle-bugs on the fence into the right plinkety-plunks on a keyboard.  But there is more music in that picture besides.  The nude young girl at the keyboard softly rendered in velvety colored pencil tones is also musical in nature, for more than just the fact of fingers on a silent colored pencil keyboard.  The lyrical loops of black and yellow in the wings of the tiger swallowtail butterfly also make music in my head, sprightly piano music like Chopin’s, or possibly Vivaldi’s violins.

Did you listen to the music?  I don’t mean Vivaldi’s, although if you haven’t heard it, you certainly should.  I mean the music in the words.  The music has to be there for me for the writing to be good.  That’s why I consider Ray Bradbury and Walt Whitman to be masters and Stephenie Meyer and E. L. James to be unreadable hacks.  The beat and the flow of the words need to be patterned and patient and wily.   Do you not hear it in that last sentence? The alliteration of the first two adjectives set off by the counterpoint of the stressed-unstressed beats of the third?  How can I explain this?

Iambic pentameter is the true genius of Shakespeare’s plays.  What the heck is iambic pentameter, you ask?  Well, I realize you have probably never needed to teach poetry to seventh graders, a truly impossible but infinitely rewarding task.  So let me tell you.  Units of stress called iambs consist of an unstressed syllable followed by a stressed syllable.  So naturally, if iambs are put into pentameter, then there must be five of them in a line of iambic pentameter poetry.  It is a simple, rhythmic way to say something profound and interesting.  The classic example is the first line of Shakespeare’s Sonnet 18;

Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day?

Translating that into X’s and O’s where X=stressed and O=unstressed;

O X O X O X O X O X

It’s simple, five oxes, all in a line.  Except that last one about oxes is actually O X O X X O O O O X, a less simple pattern, yet still organized on the beat.  Two iambs, a dactyl and an anapest.  Okay, now I am talking like a poetry geek, and I have to stop it before I hurt someone.

The whole point is, words should be musical, even when they are not the words to a song.  And now I must close on the verge of starting a ten-thousand word thesis.  I shall shut up now.  Here endeth the lesson.

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December 7, 2024 · 1:05 am

The Interstellar Bad Poetry Challenge

c360_2016-12-18-09-40-07-285

The Ixcanixian Cultural Ambassador from the Squeelix Sector of the Planet Ixcanix sent me an e-mail about his planet’s newest idea for a cultural exchange.  He calls it the “Ixcanixian Spleegle Gorn Vorpaloop” which translates to the “Ixcanixian Interstellar Bad Poetry Challenge”.  At least, it does if I am conjugating the verb “Vorpaloop” correctly.  It is difficult because you have to drop the silent “y” before adding the “aloop” without causing it to explode.  I know it is probably a very bad idea to present it here on this planet, but he talked me into it by promising to promote my novel Catch a Falling Star on his homeworld and at least two other planets in the Bugeye Federation.

Here are the rules for the alien poetry contest;

  1. Entries can only come from planets in the Orion Spur of the Sagittarius  Spiral Arm of the Milky Way Galaxy.  (So, for you non-astronomers out there, we on Earth do qualify.)
  2. All poets must be less intelligent than the Mud-Eaters of Paralaxos IV as they will be employed as judges of what poetry is truly bad.  (Again, Earth qualifies as we have recently elected Trump and also allow Nigel Farage of Great Britain to continue to exist.)
  3. Entries must not be so long that the total weight of letters exceed critical mass and form black holes in the intergalactic servers when uploaded.
  4. Vogons need not apply.  Their poetry is so bad, they would automatically win, causing the death of trillions of bad poetry readers in the galaxy.
  5. Entries must not cause thermonuclear reactions with cesium.
  6. Please refrain from confusing good poetry with bad poetry.  The Vornloos of Talos XII are looking for poetry they can weaponize, and no one wants a poetry contest winner to suddenly create World Peace on Talos XII.  That would be bad for the galaxy as a whole in ways that are very difficult to explain.

A sample of interstellar bad poetry is included here to inspire the kind of poetry we seek.

Ratzen Bargle’s Bisketoon  (a love poem by Touperary Kloob, Poet Laureate of Antares VI)

Ratzen Bargle was a Doofus,

From the planet Rufus-Ploofiss,

And he had a lovely bride,

With a head not tall, but twice as wide.

She had three eyes and two were green.

She had the loveliest fleen you’ve ever seen.

And as they sat ‘neath a wayward moon,

He kissed his lovely bisketoon.

Immediately before naught was said,

She bit off his tiny three-eyed head.

And then she ate him bones and all

With sauce that really becomes the fall.

And so it is on Rufus-Ploofiss,

That  males all die with one last roof-kiss.

Because they sit under wayward moons

With their lovely, hungry bisketoons.
 

 

Should you have the unfortunate urge to participate in this senseless and probably suicidal poetry contest, you are welcome to offer four-line poems in the comment section, or email longer poems to Mickey at mbeyer51@gmail.com.  I will attempt to transmit the worst offers to the Ixcanixians as soon as I get my interstellar flooglebeeder transmitting again.  I will also post winners in a future alien poetry blog.

I have been warned that prizes range from instant execution by the Lizard Lords of Galtorr Prime to a beat up copy of Mickey’s 2012 novel Catch a Falling Star.  So, good luck with the bad poetry.

 

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August 1, 2024 · 12:22 am

Silly Tyger!

I think I posted this picture once before and told you it was inspired by William Blake’s poem The Tyger!  That is still true.  I wasn’t telling a lie, at least, I don’t believe I was.  So the poem goes like this;

The Tyger

BY WILLIAM BLAKE

Tyger Tyger, burning bright,
In the forests of the night;
What immortal hand or eye,
Could frame thy fearful symmetry?
In what distant deeps or skies.
Burnt the fire of thine eyes?
On what wings dare he aspire?
What the hand, dare seize the fire?
And what shoulder, & what art,
Could twist the sinews of thy heart?
And when thy heart began to beat,
What dread hand? & what dread feet?
What the hammer? what the chain,
In what furnace was thy brain?
What the anvil? what dread grasp,
Dare its deadly terrors clasp!
When the stars threw down their spears
And water’d heaven with their tears:
Did he smile his work to see?
Did he who made the Lamb make thee?
Tyger Tyger burning bright,
In the forests of the night:
What immortal hand or eye,
Dare frame thy fearful symmetry?
Tyger
The idea is that the Tyger represents some unknowable evil that we must fear and respect because it is beyond our understanding.  But the kid in the picture seems to be unafraid.  Was that a mistake?  Or was I really thinking this?
CalvinHobbes
Apologies to Bill Watterson for stealing his cartoon for this post.  I needed a more dangerous-looking Tyger than the one I had.

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