Napowrimo 4/6/26: garbage day

 Today's prompt for Napowrimo tasks writers with a casual tone and dream imagery fusion.

I don't know, I told myself that life has no meaning so I wouldn't be disappointed when the trash guy didn't take that extra bag I left off to the side. Strict limits, he said. 

I don't recognize limits; I'm a citizen of the world, I said. He stared at me and started to say something, then his face wrinkled up,
he started gagging. I thought he might be faking it so I started laughing at him.
You know, play his game back at him and see if he caved.

He fell to his knees. Eyes bulged out,
deep sobs of coughing or something. I swore I heard music, jagged string hits and cymbal
crashes, but
that might be what I'm telling myself now. His whole body got
caked in sweat or something.
Inside the trash truck I heard rumbling from the compactor.
Oh come on, it said. Not again. Will you hurry up?

The trash guy, now a different, yet unnamed color was like, crying, and
I was sort of mortified but my feet told me to stay put. My feet weren't actually talking
or anything, but my shoes got really firm in their beliefs and I couldn't go
anywhere.
Meanwhile, the cymbal crashes I might have been hearing got angry,
I guess.
I could've sworn the sky looked a little meaner, but I
couldn't tell you what that means, even now.

Look, I'll pay the difference, I said.
We only accept crypto, shouted the truck. That's when I realized
I was being hustled.
I get it too. It's hard out here.
So I left that gasping trash guy con artist and his talking truck and my extra trash
outside. I had to clean the bathrooms something awful and it was already midday.

I've reevaluated my life a little. That trash shakedown has changed me;
I now have a belief system. I think life is
mostly nonsense,
but we all have a breaking point, at least that's what I'm thinking
as I look out and see the trash truck's wheel nudging the limp figure, lying
inert next to my extra trash bag outside.
Somebody should really go and check on that situation, but I still need
to dust the light fixtures.

Tomorrow is recycling day.

Napowrimo 4/5/26: Loathsome Highway

 Today's prompt from Napowrimo tasks the poet to consider an over the top reaction to something innocuous; I've been waiting for this my whole life.

The "Speed to the Red Light" crowd formed a likely alliance with the "Race to the Stop Sign" crew. Together, they extended a half-chewed olive branch to the "Loud Pickup Truck I Don't Use for Anything But Aesthetic Reasons" brigade. They met outside my home, engines revving, house music playing with the bass knob turned all the way up. They were helping Brigadier General Richard P. Drencher start his beater, but they couldn't remember how to jump a battery. They were all out of ideas, so they all jumped out of their cars and tried to push the Ford EFFOneWhatever to the non existent shoulder of the road, but the truck was too heavy for their arms, despite the amount of bench they hit at the gym, known only because they all bragged about on their Tik Tok channels and had bumper stickers on their cars indicating their Personal Records. 

Noting the need for backup, they called Comrade Walter Rutherford Spencer III to bring his winch and haul them up and over to the Gas Station Parking Lot. He obliged and they formed a Freedom Flotilla and budget Memorial Day Parade, cars backfiring to the tune of the latest Morgan Wallen symphony.

There wasn't much to say and the road was littered with energy drinks and Pre-Workout mix packets, so the good people of my hometown cleaned up the battlefield, shaking their heads and praying that winter wasn't far away. The battalions didn't know how to drive in winter and hated getting salt on their steeds.

I knew better though. It was only getting hotter out here and if this wasn't Hell just yet, well, the Devil doesn't believe in green lights. He's here and now and he's turning the heat up every day.

I for one say take those stop signs and lights away. Let them rev and speed and squeal all the way into the horizon. Do a burn out and smell clutch and put the pedal to the space next to the whole in the floor. Let them drive into the sun and find what they've been looking for all along. What we've all been craving: peace.

Napowrimo 4/4/26: Microburst

 Today's Napowrimo prompt challenges the writer to write a short, rhyming poem including a weather phenomenon. Here's something like that, but without the rhymes.

When Wind met
the Neighborhood and 
bent trees like stale hard pretzels-
snapping them, chewing with
his mouth open, and leaving
the crumbs behind-I don't
think he realized that his
little tantrum, his funhouse
feasting, would ruin the 
weekend for the rest of Us.
All that line work and all that
heat. Vinegar in the milk.
Last week's groceries out for 
the garbage crew to drink in
the aroma of spoil on a day
with just enough of a Breeze
to otherwise be considered
charming. 

Napowrimo 4/3/26: town crier

Here's today's Napowrimo prompt. 

Some speak the sounds
news let fly
news let fall. 

Let it fall all where it may.

I've been here long enough to know
what needs saying.
More is never less, and I've said nothing that bears
repeating. Yet I've bared it all. 

The good words used to flow through me. I used to
know them all. And still I've withheld so much of
what was given to me to say. 

The words stay inside/stacking themselves and digging
in to my stomach/climbing up my throat in imitation-reflux.

They want out. They don't know what it takes to unwind
the wires of this tired voice box. To let the hiss and crackle take
hold. To cough out the bargains of the day and the cookie cutter
pronouncements. They'll be waiting without patience/toe tapping/
sighing. They'll be waiting for the truth.

They'll know it when they hear it.

They've heard it from me all along.

It's everything I'm not saying.

I've said nothing,
that bears repeating.

Napowrimo 4/2/26: pathetic happenings, a record

 Today's Napowrimo prompt tasks writers with recounting a childhood memory. Here is one of those.

[injustice crawls from under the fire doors. our hero, 8 and a rule follower, listens at the end of his elementary school gym class. let the record show it was raining outside] 

gym teacher, with all of the authority of a blowhard: I don't want to hear voices.

a peer, talking: words, etc.

me to the peer: he just said stop talking.

gym teacher, to me: and your name is on the board. [let the record show that this was a punishment our hero was not eager to report home]

me, aggrieved, to gym teacher: but I was telling her to stop talking.

gym teacher, getting progressively angry and lecturing me, probably misusing a word and generally being a caricature of his role: words I don't remember. some variable of "I am the god of this elementary school gymnasium and you, pitiful 8 year old, will give me tithes."

me, feeling the slight of authority's half-nelson, probably crying: this isn't fair.

my classroom teacher, arriving and huddling with the gym teacher:  inaudible whispers.

me, hoping for vindication, thinking to myself: today, a wrong will be righted.

[silent walk back to class. tension rippling through the air fused with the smell of the hallway lunch cart's lingering odor. peas and some unnamed meat.]

my teacher, closing out the day and awarding the good behavior award that [let the record show] I never once received: thank you, ______ [let the record show this was my peer who was initially talking], for waiting patiently for your award since I had to deal with that situation. [let the record show that my behavior was the implied situation].

[moments pass. our hero is in the car with his mother explaining the day].

me, observing the rain on the windshield; feeling each second of the slowed, school-dismissal-in-a-too-small-town traffic conspiring against an easy arrival, against refuge; staring at the blur of light and water and the war of windshield wipers and their squeak on conditioned glass: it's just pathetic.

[let the record show it still is]

Napowrimo 4/1/26: Love in the Time of Tanka

 Day 1 of Napowrimo challenges us to write in verses of Tanka. I do not adhere strictly to the meter of haiku/tanka/senryu but the form is still honored.

I.
these good winds
spin dead leaves in the yard
into the sun's path
a carousel
of broken things

II.
today, some rain
let dirt become mud
and fed the flowers
more than their fill. they lurch,
leaning over, in surrender. 

III.
the snow died
in spring's esteemed glance
left its memory
in my basement's floor, covered
remembered, through damp and mold

IV.
humid tappings
on these sweating skulls
another scorcher
outside is a sauna
inside, an oasis.

Napo-Prelude 3/31/26: Store Bought

 Prompt from NapoWrimo. It starts tomorrow, y'all.

I don't know if this is hard won
or just another compromise. Sanitized,
pre-packaged. Off-brand (never off flavor)
snack-shaped objects and the family is
fed another week. As we elbow through
three aisle calamity to weave through essentials
and the excess. Balancing the checkbook of
wants and needs. Now and Later. 
Mouth's watering at the impending coin coming
back into our pocket when we return our carts.
This, at least, is free.

Munch's The Scream was stolen
right from our collective throats. The sight and
sound, on display in some bunker of excess and
the finer things. In front of some interpretation of
controlled flame and feet up.
No sense of a bargain. Just
a mouth, hanging open. Maybe, it's just
hungry. Maybe, it has never known fullness.
Maybe, it just waits for the rest of us to check
out in the controlled lines of the overworked
for the cart to be returned and the parking space to
free itself from our collective presence.
for the lights to go out in the store.
in our homes. in our
hearts.

Then, and only then, will it close its mouth.
Only then, it will be satisfied.

holistic

all of the time, soul and body telling each other stories through a tin can walkie talkie. old friends, known it all along. mistakes were made and yet, let the record show, they aren't blaming the other just yet. not the time. bonds aren't meant to fray so easily.

give it time. let the understanding run its course. we'll see what they're made of yet. and soon enough, we'll know beyond the shadow of any doubt.

everything, in time.

Healer

some version of me/past perfect/you/ know the type
made myself/reimagined./this is me and you/and you
likely have a different version of the events./i want to
right the ship/all the time, subconscious fixes/fixations.

me/aberration in the wavelengths/wave tables/we are
here /never/.

we were here/maybe?

i want to dress it up the way it could have or should have
been/and/this is personal./

i'm sorry for involving you/this go around/let it
be/good, and buried/

reminiscing/lord, help each of us/we'll make
it right/soon/

enough.

deep-fried life

misconnected flare signals. traffic akimbo.
awash with guilt and buyer's remorse.
porch-bound tourists
see the grid go ahead and lock itself.
never willing to look the neighbors
in their eyes.
fueled by batter and an enterprising
sense of propriety.
anything and everything will be fried.
what do we wait
for, out here? out there?
where to?

my misgivings from the crunch
and disbursements of flavor profile
too good
to deny. my own
bashful denials come
in rushes of blood to
the offending pieces of me:
heart and mind.

we will wait.
we are full and drunk
on power. soon direction
will be given and the wave
will crest and we will be
gifted movement.
soon we will know our
fullness.

careful cheerful

we are forms in socks
sliding on the floor
dreaming of flying
not quite ready to leave the ground.

I will never be quite
sure of myself, but I 
want you to believe in 
yourself when I tell you sweet nothings.

anything I've ever tried to say
was destined to end up in the wind
just hoping that it landed and
hit the mark before it went on its way.

I hope we'll follow suit.
I hope we'll find our way
sooner than later
before too long
becomes never.

simpler moments

 let me believe
that this is
not so short-lived

let me imagine
some brilliant day
sooner than later

and I'll be
fine for just
a little longer.

let me just
say what I
was thinking

then

now

whenever the moment
seizes my voice.
and sees itself 

out.

twilit

the limits to my creative spirit
eek out of the liver spots
cropping up on my skin,
once unblemished,
now puckering itself up
for whatever good will comes
its way. my words too,
less gumption. less pizzazz.
horn arrangements in the halcyon days
remind me of what the sun felt or
rolling down another hill or
flinging myself with abandon
into a pile of leaves or
trying to flip on a trampoline.
trying to get closer to some feeling.
trying to let any old song
feel new. hoping there is
still some time for me 
to flourish. for me to 
have something to say. 

Shhhhhh

 glad to help and happy to assist/get yourself something from the back/be right/with you

i will yell and tell you what you/wanted to hear/unspeakable horrors

don’t you dare?/look away

anything else/thank you/for your time.

portions

seen from the periphery
disbelief is a feature-noise
in the picture. the scope, limited
time.
only in theaters. only for the

theatre.

these performances-unlimited 
servings, famine of understandings.
lessons left on the stove-well past
done.

everything

is up for interpretation.
especially this.
especially me.