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From runenklinge. (when you see this, post a poem in your journal.
Knight in Shining Armor
God only knows where my grandmother found him.
She collects antique advertising
Flat pieces of painted tin
Selling cigars, spring water, Coca Cola, and condensed milk
Sometimes for companies that no longer exist.
Ralph is not an advertisement.
Hollow tin armor,
seven feet high from helm to boots,
He guards the head of the staircase,
Draped in ropes of bright red tinsel
That went up one Christmas and never came down.
God only knows where she found him
And God only knows why she named him Ralph.
I’d have called him “Lancelot” or “Pellinore,”
“Richard” or “Black Edward”
Even “Hal” or “Hotspur”—anything but Ralph,
But maybe imitation armor
doesn’t deserve a knightly name.
When she moved house this spring,
He was one of the first
Things to be transported,
Loaded into the back of my Dad’s truck.
Standing upright, held in place
By tie-downs normally used on motorcycles,
He went down the road in style.
Tall and proud in the back of a red chariot
With the sun gleaming on his breastplate,
And the wind ruffling his tinsel.
And a bonus sonnet (with wholescale cheating via blatant use of slant rhyme):
Motorcycles
They are rebellion cast in steel and chrome,
All engine noise and danger, speed and fire.
And through the years, both novelists and film
Have learned two wheels hold more romance than four.
How many kids have copied James Dean’s sneer
And painted up their Honda’s tank with flames,
Followed Daytona racing every year,
And watched “On Any Sunday” thirteen times?
How many county fairgrounds have played home
To flat track races run for cheering crowds?
To ride one links you backwards to a time
When men were men and tracks were made of wood,
With turns so steeply banked that racers slid
And splinters killed more men than impact did.
Knight in Shining Armor
God only knows where my grandmother found him.
She collects antique advertising
Flat pieces of painted tin
Selling cigars, spring water, Coca Cola, and condensed milk
Sometimes for companies that no longer exist.
Ralph is not an advertisement.
Hollow tin armor,
seven feet high from helm to boots,
He guards the head of the staircase,
Draped in ropes of bright red tinsel
That went up one Christmas and never came down.
God only knows where she found him
And God only knows why she named him Ralph.
I’d have called him “Lancelot” or “Pellinore,”
“Richard” or “Black Edward”
Even “Hal” or “Hotspur”—anything but Ralph,
But maybe imitation armor
doesn’t deserve a knightly name.
When she moved house this spring,
He was one of the first
Things to be transported,
Loaded into the back of my Dad’s truck.
Standing upright, held in place
By tie-downs normally used on motorcycles,
He went down the road in style.
Tall and proud in the back of a red chariot
With the sun gleaming on his breastplate,
And the wind ruffling his tinsel.
And a bonus sonnet (with wholescale cheating via blatant use of slant rhyme):
Motorcycles
They are rebellion cast in steel and chrome,
All engine noise and danger, speed and fire.
And through the years, both novelists and film
Have learned two wheels hold more romance than four.
How many kids have copied James Dean’s sneer
And painted up their Honda’s tank with flames,
Followed Daytona racing every year,
And watched “On Any Sunday” thirteen times?
How many county fairgrounds have played home
To flat track races run for cheering crowds?
To ride one links you backwards to a time
When men were men and tracks were made of wood,
With turns so steeply banked that racers slid
And splinters killed more men than impact did.