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
Just relax and let your face do the work. This poem is going to be great.
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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.

Hide and Seek Champion

I'm the best there is at hide-and-seek.
Been waiting here at least a week.
"How clever, me," I say and grin,
"to be hiding in the garbage bin."
Now when is trash day again? 

Bump, bump, ow!
It's moving now,
with me still tucked inside.
Thump! Inside a truck I'm dumped,
I'm going for a ride.
Maybe trash cans really aren't
the smartest place to hide. 

I end up in a giant trash heap,
buried deeply in.
To survive, I munch on half-chewed bits
from other people's din.
Those hide-and-seekers will NEVER find me.
So...
I guess I win.

-B.C. Byron
Hey! This burger is only half eaten. Might as well eat while I wait for them to find me.
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I remember two times when I found the perfect hiding place while playing hide and seek. The first was when I was probably ten, playing with my brother and sister and some of my cousins. I quietly emptied the toy box at high speed (we only had until a count of 30), shoved the toys in corners and under tables, then folded myself in half to fit inside the box. The hardest part was getting the lid shut. I smiled as I heard the seekers opening doors and curtains right next to the toy box. It was hard to keep in a snicker at my own cleverness. The game went on for a long time, or so it seemed all cramped in my tiny, dark container. Eventually, things got quiet and I assumed everyone was now looking for me outside. I was sure they were determined to not let me win and would exhaust all optiins before finally admitting my hiding superiority. I waited patiently in physical discomfort for that shout of, “okay! We give up.” That shout never came. When I finally gave up and pried myself out, I found everyone in another room playing video games. They had completely forgotten about me and tge hide-and-seek game. There was no clapping for my victory.

You’d think I would learn a lesson about taking hide-and-seek too seriously from the first experience, but I repeated it as a teenager while playing Kick the Can. If you’re not familiar, Kick the Can is just hide-and-seek with a few extra bits. There’s a person guarding a can while another seeks the hiders. If you’re found and tagged, you lose. If you manage to sneak past the guard and kick the can, you win. I decided to hide just outside the campfire light’s range by laying face down in an empty field. No one thought to search in a completely open, non-hiding place. Their flashlight beams nearly touched me on several occasions, but I avoided detection by staying as still as possible. For my extreme patience, willingness to endure the hard ground, and being covered in dirt, I was rewarded with… people getting bored and moving on to a different game without me. Sometimes winning isn’t really the point of the game. Just having fun and not winning is okay, too.