Today I put my savior
on the roof of my car
and drove off.
Just like that
another fine fiddle
and your dog is gone.
Pussy cat wish me luck
with nightfall approaching. Please, Lord,
do not mangle me.
Stapled
to the telephone pole
LOST GOD
I’m frequently careless
but rarely quiet. Some would say
a turbulent alphabetizer.
I draw back my defenses
and let the world wash over me.
No jellyfish. No swordplay.
Too many nouns
to keep track of. Thunderbolt. Umbrella. Butterflies
seem important again.
Brian Builta likes to observe Lent
but rarely participates. He
has a Cinnabon mentality.
My savior finds himself
in a neighborhood lousy
with people who rain.
Looks like another long day
in paradise, less and less concern
with the firing squad.
Click here to read Brian Builta on the origin of the poem.
Brian Builta:
I build poems the way a bird builds a nest, using a bowl of my favorite words, snippets from previously abandoned work, lines captured in the Notes app on my iPhone, jottings from my journal, vague happenings from my dreams, and memories from the previous day. Basically, I create the circumstances for a poem to appear (butt in chair + time) and let the muse/universe/great coherence do the rest. I read poetry every morning and every evening and have to think that those poets contribute to the music and rhythms in my head that also guide construction.
For “Teeth Beneath the Surface,” I began composition on May 14, 2021, the month my daughter was graduating from high school. Having lost a son to suicide in June 2015 (he was 16), the innocence of children and the cruelty of the world are always on my mind. The title came to me while looking at a sunset off a body of water, thinking how beautifully water reflects the sky, and what the hell must be going on beneath the surface. Unless you are photosynthesizing, you gotta eat somehow.
I tend to wait three to six months after composition to start revising a poem. I’ve found after that amount of time the poem seems to have been written by someone else and is sooo much easier to revise and edit. Also, after a poem has been rejected a number of times, I tend to look at it more critically, to the benefit of the poem. “Teeth Beneath the Surface” was revised five times over three and a half years and was rejected nine times before Pangyrus took it in off the street. But who’s counting?
Image by Neha Maheen Mahfin on unsplash.com, licensed under CC 2.0.
Brian Builta lives in Arlington, Texas, and works at Texas Wesleyan University in Fort Worth. His poetry has been published most recently in The Broadkill Review, Impossible Task and Sheila-Na-Gig. He is currently experiencing a dark night of the soul. He is the author of A Thursday in June and more of his poetry can be found at brianbuilta.com.
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