The Familial Devolution of Poetry and Prose

Those in my family take pride in their love of poetry and we all take pride in our ability to be wordsmiths.

But yesterday, I posted a poem titled, “Colors” that I had written back in 1983 and I became a bit alarmed.

I could see that from my dad, to me, and now onto my son, Ryan, our poetic ability has actually devolved.

Let me show you…

Here’s a poem that my dad wrote for his second book, Credo.

The Silent Earth

From this silent earth,
I take a handful of dust…

Whose sacred ashes do I hold?
Whose wind-kissed lips are in this mold?

Does Helen’s beauty slumber here,
Beneath the dust of Sappho’s bier?

Are David’s lyric sonnets pressed,
Against Bathsheba’s fertile breast?

My lovely one, we have the key;
the fields of earth are you and me.

A century hence, this dust will bear,
your bright-eyed laughter in the air.

And someone else will lift the sand,
and toast your beauty in his hand.

Embrace this dust, the wind, the sea,
they hold the heartbeats of eternity.

Jack Mahoney ©1981

Ahhhhh, very nicely done, Dad. Let’s see the poetic genes that you passed on to me, shall we?

When I was at Bowling Green State University the campus newspaper did a story on me because I put up all of the poetry I was writing up on my dorm room door. Here’s a couple of examples:

The Sun

The Sun is hot.
Hot, Hot, Hot.
The Sun is yellow.
Yellow, Yellow, Yellow.
Well, not exactly yellow.

The Final Spring Break

The car went down the mountain road
Down the road it sped.
The car went off the mountain pass
Everyone was dead.

Unreelquited Love

The tuna swam for miles
In search of his one true sole mate
He trudged and plodded all the while
For a chance to boink and procreate

He met her at the sandbar
Her eyes and his did lock
But she swished her tail, and turned around
And said, “Sorry Charlie, I have a haddock.”

Matt-Man ©1983

I recently came across a book of poetry that my son Ryno wrote in school when he was 10 years old. Let’s look at his work.

Couplets

I went to a kid and said, “Do you rhyme?”
He said, “Not all the time.”

The kid is a kid named, Dude.
He’s pretty crude.

Practicing Kung Fu---
It makes me have to poo.

Triplets

Indians had a house
They called it a wigwam.
They did not have pom poms.

Haiku

A frog hung on
To a stick in the harbor
As the sun comes up.

Do ya see what I mean? Our poetic gene pool may be wide but it ain’t deep. Oh dear God, what hath been wrought?

You know the saddest thing about all of this is? Both my dad and my son have had books published, and me?

I appeared in the November 8, 1983 issue of the BG News. Life ain’t fair.

Cheers!!