Jake and his Wife
Posted July 8th, 2007 by Nathan DeGraaf
He gets his
Laughter from her smiles and her eyes
Always make him think of winter mountain tops.
When she sneezes, he stops whatever he's doing to see if she's okay
(She usually is)
And then he asks her if she wants to be blessed
(She usually does).
When she screams out loud in the middle of the night,
He asks her about her dream as he holds her hand.
She never tells him about the dreams,
But he never stops asking.
He gets his
Strength from her soft cooing and her accent
Always makes him think of babies laughing.
Away from her,
He is Mr. Badass-Don't-Fuck-With-Me-I-Will-End-You,
Armed to the teeth and ready to
Kill kill kill kill,
All who come close to his bread
And butter.
He makes his living by
Pushing aside the living,
By securing perimeters
And guarding bodies.
He owns forty-seven different kinds of handguns
(seven are antiques, passed down from his father)
And he knows hundreds of ways
to kill a man.
He's fought in wars, in rings, on streets and inside hotel rooms.
He's disarmed and killed hired killers.
And he once broke the hand of a man
(in sixteen places)
Who forgot that day's password.
He's watched hundreds of men die.
But when he is home
And she makes him breakfast
While singing soft songs from her home country,
He cannot hold back his tears of joy.
He gets his pride from her worth,
He feeds his soul with her love,
And, after she kisses him goodbye,
And he heads out for another day of work,
It takes him several walking blocks
Before he remembers
Just what he does for a living.
Laughter from her smiles and her eyes
Always make him think of winter mountain tops.
When she sneezes, he stops whatever he's doing to see if she's okay
(She usually is)
And then he asks her if she wants to be blessed
(She usually does).
When she screams out loud in the middle of the night,
He asks her about her dream as he holds her hand.
She never tells him about the dreams,
But he never stops asking.
He gets his
Strength from her soft cooing and her accent
Always makes him think of babies laughing.
Away from her,
He is Mr. Badass-Don't-Fuck-With-Me-I-Will-End-You,
Armed to the teeth and ready to
Kill kill kill kill,
All who come close to his bread
And butter.
He makes his living by
Pushing aside the living,
By securing perimeters
And guarding bodies.
He owns forty-seven different kinds of handguns
(seven are antiques, passed down from his father)
And he knows hundreds of ways
to kill a man.
He's fought in wars, in rings, on streets and inside hotel rooms.
He's disarmed and killed hired killers.
And he once broke the hand of a man
(in sixteen places)
Who forgot that day's password.
He's watched hundreds of men die.
But when he is home
And she makes him breakfast
While singing soft songs from her home country,
He cannot hold back his tears of joy.
He gets his pride from her worth,
He feeds his soul with her love,
And, after she kisses him goodbye,
And he heads out for another day of work,
It takes him several walking blocks
Before he remembers
Just what he does for a living.







8 Comments
Not a bad start-up piece, my friend.
Just remember...specificity scares the cliche monster away ;)
Not following you, Nick.
What's a start up piece?
What's a cliche monster?
And why don't you get your phone turned back on so we don't have to converse in comment boxes?
another condescension attempt thwarted
Nate,
Buddy. I consider you a friend; I'm not trying to be condescending.
I'm trying to help you when you write poetry.
Given, you might think you don't need it and if that's the case, you can stop reading here.
What I mean is...
start-up piece= first draft
cliche monster= a little devil who attacks poetry in the form of cliche.
your poem, while interesting...has a little problem with cliche.
I'll break it down for you.
"Always make him think of winter mountain tops."
This is cliche because it's a little sappy and not specific. You need to describe, describe, describe. Where are the mountains? Mountains from home? Mountains from Spain? When in winter? February? March? Aren't the mountains in March in Spain different than February in California?
Why does it make him think that way?
"When she screams out loud in the middle of the night"
-What does it sound like? Where does she scream from? How does she scream? There are a million ways to describe this and you just said "she screams out loud in the middle of the night." Not only are you simply telling the reader something that could quite be a stark image, you're using a cliche.
What I'm saying is show, don't tell.
"He gets his
Strength from her soft cooing and her accent
Always makes him think of babies laughing."
-What is strength? (it's a very abstract concept, you knwo) Mental/physical/emotion/all of the above? When you say "Strength" you're being particularly vague. Vague=cliche. Just the way it is.
That's what I mean by specificity.
You get the point.
It's one of the strangest things about poetry...the more specific you are, the better people can relate.
Give names. Give places. Give times and descriptions. Give unique metaphors and similes. Give specifics!!
That all said, it's not a BAD piece at all. You know I'm a fan of your shit and that I'm just trying to help. Your ending and the description of his job are well-done in their specificity.
That's what I meant.
As for my phone...give me $300 and i'll be glad to son ;)
so if vague = cliche (huh?), why not just say vague?
I'll admit, this took me three minutes to write and I didn't do a second draft, but I think it's supposed to be how it is. I can't explain it any better than that because it's poetry, not a cake. But what the hell do I know?
Anyway, thanks for your help.
I see a lot of comments trying to help Nate out with his writing, but his writing is the only reason I keep reading PIC. I loved this, even if it wasn't so specific that you could know the amount of freckles the lady had on her face. It was beautiful.
yeah, what she said!
"Anybody can be specific & obvious, that's always been the easy way. The leaders of the world take the easy way. It's not that it's so difficult to be unspecific and less obvious; it's just that there's nothing, absolutely nothing, to be specific and obvious about." - Bob Dylan
though that mountain line in the opening stanza did feel like a weak way to open, if I can nit-pick a bit
- Tones
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