I Wrote a Poem With My Face

I wrote a poem with my face
It had a lot of Z's
And too many exclamation points
And a hundred lines of these <<<< 

My nose typed R until it beeped
My chin filled a page with C
I knew it must mean something deep
When my lips pressed only D 

A poem full of dreamy thoughts
A poem of regret
Of keyboard pillows that leave a mark
We never will forget 

And as my face was finishing
I startled and I woke
My drool had leaked between the keys
The soggy laptop broke 

My napping poem cut off short
Computer erased the rest
Too bad 'cause it was shaping up
To be my very best

-B.C. Byron

You may have wondered where I get my strange ideas. You see, I do most of my poeming late at night, when I should be catching up on sleep. I learned from reading about the famous painter, Salvador Dali, that our brains work differently when we’re about to fall asleep or in the middle of dreaming. Mr. Dali would purposely start doing his work when he was about to fall asleep, having a friend or crude alarm system rouse him at the critical moment of brain change. His famous paintings of melting wall clocks on the beach and elephants with spindly legs as tall as buildings show the oddity of what happens to one’s head during sleep. I don’t do it on purpose like Salvador Dali, exactly, but all too often I feel my creative urges come during the very late hours and I give in to them. Our brain’s signal paths actually have lowered resistance during this dreamy time and ideas mix in new and weird ways. Our memories and senses get “leaky” and it results in the crazyness of dreams and, occasionally, a new and useful idea. Now, I’m not advocating that people deprive themselves of sleep to be more creative. Much more often, we end up with drool on our computer than clever inventions. Thiugh writing a poem with my face and messing up a laptop makes for a fun story, I guess. The poem my face made did not turn out to be the big hit I expected when I shared it with my family. I think you have to be in that leaky-brained, sleepy mind state to appreciate its profound depths.

This routine may not be sustainable for very long, though. I wake up at 6 a.m. Drive kids to school. Work at engineering until 6 p.m. Drive home. Eat dinner. Play with my kids. Entertain my wife with my stories of engineering and abundant puns. Read. Renew a promise to myself to get more sleep. Then the poems and drawing begin. I blink, and then the alarm rings to wake up and start again. The weekend isn’t enough time to re-establish a normal sleeping pattern, so I start the next week with a good start toward writing my next face poem. Get your sleep, everyone.