The Goolah Song

Goolahs are the type of thing
About which I propose to sing.
Many a child, cat and king
Has endured their pestering.

Little fluffy balls with eyes
Round my head like little spies
Whooshing in with little cries
Open ears their greatest prize.

Whispering imps of smoke and fear,
Scary lies for me to hear,
Giggling with demented cheer
To quiver a lip or spawn a tear.

But you can swat these little thugs,
Punish them like Raid on bugs,
Make them flee with "Eeeks!" and "Ughs!"
Simply give me lots of hugs!

Would You Rather 2

Think about this closely,
For I'll only ask you once...

Would you rather write an action movie,
Or be the one who does the stunts?

A Poem of Woe

The Sacrifice

Eight years have I fought and bled
And strove upon this earth.
Warrior king of my backyard
Where monsters try my worth.

I have faced a hellish horde
Of mutant soldier mud.
I crushed them with my own bare hands.
The lawn ran brown with blood.

Once at night a vile gang
Of vampires came to call.
I carved a stake from mother’s broom
And made those suckheads bawl.

Sometimes, when I’m in my room,
I hear the soil burst.
I roll my eyes and strap my piece.
“Come zombies, do your worst!”

But when the werewolf rises up
To howl beneath the moon,
No doggy leash can er’ restrain
His base voracious tune.

One offering alone will do.
Such misery and folly!
Yes that is why, beloved Sis,
I sacrificed your dolly.

Would you rather?

Would you rather have three nostrils
Or twelve fingers on each hand?

Or would you rather be compelled
To burp upon demand?

Another poem for kids (you) to act out loud

Scream With Me

Who will scream and shout with me?
Whoop and holler out with me?
Set those monster's claws a clattering!
Send their hopes and dreams a splattering!

Who will shriek and howl with me?
Roar and screech and growl with me?
Hear ye creatures of the night!
Wail and weep and take to flight!

Who will blare and boom with me?
Bellow in their room with me?
Drain the blood from evil faces!
Even those in outer spaces!

Who will hi-yi-yi-yi with me?
Give a fierce war cry with me?
Make it stab and shatter through!
Wait a minute, was that you?

A story with only a beginning. How do you think it should end?

Did you ever wake up with the warmth of the sun on your face, and manage to just catch the fading whispers of your last dream? For a second, it may have felt like you were still in the dream, even though you were awake. And what's more, you were sure you heard someone calling out to you.

You were right! That voice was calling you to the greatest adventure you have ever had. Most people have forgotten about the voice, but I think that call still remains in each of us, like treasure buried deep and forgotten inside the heart.

Once in a great while, a particularly wild soul will dig up the treasure. And wherever their story is told, there is hope that another bold spirit will awaken… and remember the call.

Let me tell you about one such wild one: young Cusi of the Moche Indians.

In the long ago town of Titsuyaanya, past the hills of Morinamwe "the land of the sun," an ancient road begins. It is a magical road, but the citizens of Titsuyaanya have grown accustomed to its sight. The smell of wet grass in the morning mingles with the dung of the llamas. “Earth’s incense to the sun,” they call it. The concoction is baked throughout the sweltering afternoon, hardening mud formed by a million hooves and feet across the endless pastures. Most folks accept it’s presence with a kind of familiar comfort.

Don’t ask them about the magic. They and their parent’s before them have been raising llamas here all their lives, leaving the village only upon necessity, and for as short a time as possible. They are content to stay and tend to the road’s beginning, living simple, beautiful lives, but never having any grand adventures.

Occasionally, the road brings merchants and traders from distant lands, offering every kind of foreign delight. Tiger and monkey skins, pottery and tools for cooking, noisy toys made from cedar and bamboo; but most importantly, strange tales of danger and mystery. These are the folks you want to ask about the magic.

Cusi could always be found among the children listening to the stranger’s stories. You could spot his big, dark eyes shining from the tales of heroic wars with mountain giants, bizarre descriptions of beasts that breathed fire for air, and vivid accounts of princesses so fair that one look from their eyes would turn the stone heart of a troll to clay.

This was how Cusi first began to feel the magic of the road. Dozing on the thatch roof of his family’s hut one afternoon after the departure of the latest visiting merchant, it occurred to him that he knew everything there was to know about where the road began, but nothing about where it ended!

“Maybe there is a great city at the end, where fair princesses keep magical beasts as pets. Or maybe there are mountains that I could climb and see the entire world from the top!”

As is bound to happen with anyone who is daydreaming on a warm, comfortable afternoon, he thought and he thought, until finally a long, dream-filled sleep overtook him. When next he opened his eyes, the thought of the road consumed him more than ever. So when he suddenly heard a strange voice call his name from below, he felt quite sure it was the road itself that spoke.

“Cusi!”

A Poem from Ted Scheu

Hey guys, this bit of genius comes from Ted Scheu at poetryguy.com. Ted wrote me an email this week telling me to keep being myself. For me, that's great encouragement because it's coming from someone who is introduced in schools across the country as "a third or fourth grader in a grown-ups body!"

Art Museum

“Please, don’t touch!
Please, no noise!
Pay attention,
girls and boys!”

“Please don’t yawn!
Please, don’t sit!
Chewing gum
we don’t permit!”

They’ve dragged us on a field trip to
this musty old museum.
We’re lookin’ at some paintings now,
but I don’t wanna see ‘em.

We have to “stay together” and “be quiet”--
that’s “the rule.”
I thought I’d never say this, but
I’d rather be in school.

Wait a second... Holy smokes!
It’s getting better now!
If you could see what I am seeing,
all you’d say is... “WOW!”

Museums are amazing,
as anybody knows.
‘Cause people in some paintings,
(and on a bunch of statues, too)

AREN’T WEARING ANY CLOTHES!
© 2007 Ted Scheu

A song for Quechua boys and girls!

Manwe's panpipe song







I am a song
that trills and trongs
That soars beyond the sky
Lift me past the mountains
Sing and play for Viracocha
Let me be the one to bring
a tear for Manwe to his eye
Oh creator root of all
Viracocha end of all
Lord in shining garments hear
these humble shepherd calls
The llamas cease their grazing
when his panpipe song is praising
For he plays the Incan music
The ancient Incan music
Eternal like the ychu grass
Old as the canyon walls

Hide and Seek, Dream and Wake

“How do you describe what magic feels like, or how do you know when you're in it?"

Leif Erickson considered his mother's question as the two of them pulled into the driveway of their new country house.

He stepped slowly out of the car and considered the forest he was about to claim as his own.

"I think it's kind of like waking up," his mother continued. "You know when you get out of bed in the morning, and your eyes are groggy and your mind is still kind of snagged on that last dream? A bowl of cheerios, some jelly toast, and you're ready to go, but what if you could wake up again after that? What would you wake up into?”

The 12-year-old explorer breathed in the smell of birdsong, allowing it to stir every wild impulse within him.

“Close your eyes,” mother said. She led him, squinting, around to the back of the house. “Okay, open!”

Only the grin that slowly cracked across his face could begin to do justice to the sight that met his eyes. There, in his own backyard, lay a forest thicker and wilder than any he had ever seen. There were tall pines with their tips tickling the sky, stately spruces smelling of Christmas, and broad junipers with vivid clumps of blue-colored berries. It was a bright morning, and the sun seemed to catch the dew on every leaf and branch, turning the entire wood to jewels.

“Diamond Forest, we’ll call it.” said Leif, for it was his nature to name things.

“So be it,” said Mom. Then she leaned into his ear, "We must explore it all."

"Will there be climbing?" asked Leif.

"And tree houses," she replied.

It was decided they could do nothing else that day until they had had a game of hide and seek in Diamond Forest.

Leif Erickson ran into the thicket while Mom counted 60 Mississippi’s with her eyes closed. As he crunched along on the dry pine-needle carpet, he felt a change in the air; something like breathing fruit and pine cones and sunlight all at once, and as he breathed in, his senses heightened like they never had before. He absorbed the chittering of the tree-top birds, and the laughing of the leaves, and the "nack nack nack" of squirrels cracking nuts on the branches. He bathed in the pockets of light where the trees were wide enough apart, and the forest dust that danced in ribbons within them. All together, he smelled the fragrance of magic.

There was a crashing further up, and a bobbing patch of white fluff that diminished away into the thicket. Leif Erickson bounded after it. The fluff paused after a few yards, and he discovered that it belonged to the back side of a little wide-eyed doe. She had especially huge ears that flopped a bit when she darted and twitched when at last she stopped from a distance to look at him.

“Hello you,” he called, but not loud enough for Mom to hear. “Now if you’ll show me the greatest hiding spot in Diamond Forest, I’ll let you graze in our garden!”
Her big ears twitched forward involuntarily when he said this last bit, for what is harder for a warm-blooded cervidae to resist than a juicy bit of vegetable garden?
And so he found himself crashing after her again, weaving through trees and over shrubs, until he broke upon a clearing that made him forget about everything else.

The ground was completely covered with roots. Not small, normal sized roots like you might find arching up from the base of an oak or juniper, but thick, damp, twisty roots that wove and dove around each other. Gnarls and gnarls of them twisted so tightly that you couldn’t see the ground.

But it was the very unusual and very large trunk which arose from their center that had caught Leif’s attention. Trunk, I call it. Really it was more like a hundred trunks, for all the roots came together in the middle and rose straight up in a dense tangle so wide that Leif had no doubt it would have taken up their whole house. After about Mom’s height, they splashed outwards in all directions and began sprouting branches that bore green leaves broad enough to wrap yourself up in like a blanket. At the base of each leaf was a clump of dark, orange berries. They were as fat as small plumbs, or large grapes, and made you think of cobbler and jam just by looking at them.

He found the little deer at the foot of tree, munching from one of the lower clumps of berries. She looked up at him casually, and spoke out loud with his mother’s voice, “Ready or not, here I come!”

Leif Erickson laughed.

The doe bounded forward and began dancing in circles around him. Laughing still, Leif made for the tree, for though in this new twist, he had already been found, it seemed they both understood that the game had just begun, and a whole forest of hiding spots remained within the tree itself.

Scrambling up the tree didn’t prove to be difficult because the mysterious roots bent graciously as he squeezed inside. The bark was mostly smooth, and gave off a distinct fragrance that sank into his lungs with a kind of living weight. I can't think of any comparable smell on earth, but Leif thought there was something rather filling about it. Like how you feel after consuming a large piece of hot apple pie.

Can a smell be filling?

When at last he reached a thick branch that poked out the top, he forgot to breathe, for here again, he had passed through into another place. Here, he realized, was the source of the magic that overflowed through all of Diamond Forest. No longer was he in the forest, but it stretched below him in all directions with only the tallest pines matching his height. And no longer was it morning, for all the world now rested quietly under the moon’s silver blanket. So quietly, in fact, that not a sound could be heard. No wind blew through the tangled branches of a tree. No twig broke beneath the fleet foot of a fox. No cricket chirped its nightly prayer. All creatures of the night seemed hushed as if before the start of some great celestial show.

Leif, who had begun to feel strangely affectionate for the color of fire, had the sudden, curious sensation that the stars were watching him with interest. They burned with such clarity he thought he might just be able to reach his hand up and touch one.

Against that sky, a clump of glowing orange berries hanging farther up the branch caught his eye. The same berries, he realized then, that had given the deer his mother's voice.

He plucked one of them off and held it out in his hand. As it passed into his shadow, the orange glow faded. He put it back under open starlight, and the glow returned.

Star berries.

Leif Erickson put the fruit in his mouth. It was warm and sweet, and settled rather quickly into his stomache. As he felt the juice tingling down his throat, he noticed that one star directly above him appeared brighter than the others. He stared at it closely, and blinked hard. Had it grown brighter still? In a moment, he was sure of it. It wasn't until it had taken up a third of the sky that he realized he was no longer clinging to the branch, or to anything at all.

The star spoke to him in his mother's voice.

“How do you describe what magic feels like, or how do you know when you're in it...

I think it's kind of like waking up.”

Tough Guys - Part 2

Warning: this gets a little intense!

Queue the bullet time.
The sounds of the arena drift into the distance as Achilles and I circle closer; eyes locked, muscles tensed.
I fake a jab to the right and step in with a left hook. Catching my fist in mid-air, he punches me in the nose, sending me reeling into the ropes.
The world is spinning, but I'm not slowing down. I use the ropes for momentum and swing back towards him.
He ducks low as I make for his head, unleashing a two-punch combo to my rib cage. The crowd gasps collectively.
I crumple to the floor, deprived of breath and orientation.
Moments later I’m on my feet, staggering towards my foe.
Achilles is provoked to speech.
“Who are you?”
Fear my triumphant laugh.
“I am the sun, my daisy!”
I grit my teeth as hands viciously grab my shoulder and thigh. Achilles lifts me high into the air and tosses me into the post on the opposite corner of the ring.
The pain is blinding, but I'm not stopping now. I regain a foot, half lunging, half swaying towards him.
“I am the breeze, my sweet carnation!”
An uppercut to my chin sends me crashing back into the post.
I scramble to my feet again, leaving a few teeth on the floor.
My eyes are black. My nose is a mess. I shuffle towards Achilles like one of the living dead.
The crowd gapes in deathly silence.
“Stop this madness!” the sickened warrior pleads.
“I am the rain, my thoft thunflower!”
Knuckles are the last thing I see.

The lights are out, but I’m still home. A tiny speck of blue flickers somewhere in front of me.
The speck looms large, growing until I find myself high above the clouds on the summit of a snow-capped mountain. The sun is bright. The air is thin and cool. Looking up, I watch a small meteorite burn up in the atmosphere. Looking down, I make out the shape of an eagle soaring straight up towards me.
The eagle thinks it’s some kind of rocket, zooming right past me and up into the blue. I hear it call out as it passes by.
“Follow me!”
I leap up after it and don’t come down. I gain more momentum the further up I go, but the echo of a noisy crowd reaches my ear from somewhere down below.
I remember. I smile. I allow myself to fall back down.

As I break past the clouds, my eyes open and the arena ceiling comes into focus.
My body is still slick with sweat, but it feels like some kind of electric current is coursing through my veins.
I sit up straight.
Achilles has his back to me, his fist raised in victory. Only moments have passed.
I stand to my feet as a hush falls over the crowd.
Achilles freezes. Slowly, he turns.
A quiver underlines his voice as he asks the question for the second time.
“Who are you?”
Marvel at my regal bow.
“Imagination, my daffodil. I am the thinker; you are the thought.”
I wonder if I’m glowing, because the look on his face reminds me of an animal caught in the headlights of a car.
Without a word, he leaps over the side of the ring and breaks for the door.
The crowd goes wild, but I don’t chase him...
I’ve got a date with the sky.

Tough Guys - Part 1

Warning: this story contains some fanciful fighting

“Attention Ladies and not-so-gentle men!”
The announcer’s voice thunders into the sweaty air as I muscle my way to a seat in the back of the arena.
“The one and only Toughest Guy Ever Tournament is about to begin! The steeliest, crustiest, fiercest fighters of all time have stepped from out of the pages of history to make their case for the title here tonight!”
I’m just in time to witness a single-file line of hulky legends strut down an aisle toward the raised wrestling ring in the middle of the arena. Roving spotlights and pounding heavy metal music accompany their puff-chested entrance.
I grin with pleasure at the sight of so many famous egomaniacs. It’s easily history’s greatest ‘who’s who’ event this side of judgment day.
Goliath is the first to catch my eye. The 10-foot man-tree may not be the handsomest philistine to have ever walked the earth, but tries to make up for it with intimidation.
“I’ll feed your flesh to the birds of the air!” he bellows at the preening gallant in front of him.
Blackbeard isn’t impressed. One-eyed and scowl-faced, the buccaneer spits back, “I’ll run ye through with me cutlass and swab the deck with yer innards, thou lumpish, flap-mouthed lubber lover!”
The manly parade continues to fill the ring: Eric the Red, William Wallace, Sir Lancelot, Billy the Kid. Jaws drop as each new celebrity takes the stage.
When all the fighters have assembled along the ring’s perimeter, a pinstriped referee steps up to explain the rules.
“Tonight’s contestants will fight bare-fisted. In order for a match to end, one fighter must be rendered completely incapacitated. Power and skill alone will determine the champion.”
“Let the battle begin!” the announcer booms.
The matches are brutal, mesmerizing the ecstatic crowd. Each man brings his own flavor of ferocity and menace to the ring, but one warrior stands out above the rest.
Wiry Achilles makes dispatching history’s greatest legends seem effortless. The Spartan armored golden boy strides around the ring with his fist in the air after every victory.
Blackbeard limps away with a grumbling “Arrgh,” deprived of his other eye.
Goliath crashes to the deck, crushed under Achilles’ heel.
The Rock curls up in the fetal position, crying in a corner.
Eventually, every other contestant is bested to the point of defeat.
Time has not retired Achilles' title as greatest warrior on Earth.
“Is there no one else?” His voice is a petrifying roar of testosterone. “Is there no one else?”
For the first time tonight, silence permeates the arena. Achilles is content to let the moment linger…
Until I stand up.
Clad in a white robe with hawaiian shorts underneath, I swagger my way down the aisle. Every head in the arena turns toward me, open mouths all.
Achilles shakes his head, catching the crazed sincerity in my eyes.
The referee throws up his hands and walks away.
I shrug off my robe and step up into the ring, peels of laughter ensueing.
Achilles is all grimace as he regards me from the other side. The certainty of victory lights his eyes a wicked, crimson hue.
I crack my neck and raise my fists. A psychotic grin splits my face.
“Shall we dance, my red, red rose?”