4/4/25: living with paint

 Day 4 prompt is here. In keeping with the idea of sharing poems (disclosure: this is something I am borrowing from the same place where I get my prompts [link above]), I'm going to try and link a poem from someone else each day too. Today, I want to share a poem I read yesterday from Rook.

when i was a child, we'd say the "our father" prayer at night. "our father, who art in heaven".
i imagined god as a french painter. beret. full black beard. off-white smock. smile of concentration. sitting and painting a globe in broad strokes;
painting the world where i lived. was i too be part of his canvas? also, if the art was in heaven,
was the world not in on the act? 

god was a painter and i was unsure if i was part of the masterpiece or just a discarded palette of spent paint.

little did i know, art was a verb, but not an action. i can't art (oh, but how hard i try), maybe god could though. god was in heaven. i was on earth. two bills, one show?

was he still painting? was he ever? did he have a beard?

are we all just paint
waiting to be painted?

4/3/25: why i am not Frank O'Hara or a painter

 Today's prompt has me considering why I am not a painter, so I also decided to consider why I can't be Frank O'Hara, writer of "Why I Not A Painter" Also, you should read the 3 pounds of flax's poem linked here. 

Frank O'Hara and I met at a temporal bar somewhere between Heaven and pontificated about process. We were drinking the house wine because everything else was marked up to Hell. There was an irony in that as we weren't in Heaven, but he swears that's where he came from. Hell, he said, has everyone drinking domestics that aren't properly cooled, probably on account of the flames. Nothing worse than a lukewarm Budweiser, we agreed. 

We were served by a poltergeist with a lazy eye. His name was Beeartis Filluthwaven Smith-Jones Arch 21st the Lesser, but we were told just to call him Arch because his mother liked that. He told us to stay away from the artisan meatloaf. Heaven, Arch warned, did meatloaf much better. It was something about the water.

O'Hara told me that everything had synergy. We all feed off of an idea together and when we put it together it becomes a tapestry of meaning. I said that all good ideas were taken. He told me that was the sort of talk that paved the road to hell. Arch shouted that there isn't really a road to hell, it's just a poetic device. O'Hara told Arch he'd probably be a pretty good poet with observations like that.

Arch said there's no use for poetry in the place between Heaven and Earth. We, O'Hara and I, expected that Arch was drinking on the job. I don't think he can drive at least, said O'Hara. You know, he added, pointing to his feet, I don't think poltergeists can operate the pedals.

We were on our 5th House Wine. Arch had a heavy pour. I was worried that I was learning nothing in our conversation. O'Hara told me that we paint with the tools we're given. The room itself was starting to blink in and out of focus. How strong was this wine? It's not the wine, said O'Hara, the time was almost up. 

I was overcome with emotion, not all of it the product of a day drinking wine served by a poltergeist. I still have so much to learn, I said. O'Hara smiled. You kids, he said, always looking somewhere else. He shook my hand and stood up, waved at Arch, and the two left together. The room itself swirled, I stood up myself and my vision blurred. Nothing was going the way I expected.

I was back in my living room, sitting with the radio on, listening to today's hits. I wondered if I dreamt the whole thing. I wondered what it all meant. Maybe it was the time of my life. Maybe it wasn't. 

Maybe I'd write something. Maybe I'd make dinner. The world, it was starting to seem, was mine.

4/2/25: love song radio

 Here is today's prompt for Napowrimo Day 2. I opted to play with the concept of Echo and Narcissus, sort of.

sing sweet, old timey radio songs to the river
because i've seen my face and failed to
understand what it was i was seeing. caught
up in love. caught up in the sweet nothings
of an exacting jawline, such profound eyebrows.

i'm gonna let the horns wash over me like 
the spent flow of a lackluster water heater;
in the dead of winter.it's just to cleanse myself.
were such things possible!
i can't unsee-

what i feel. can't unfeel. from a distance.
from up close. distortions. contortions.
my love an unfinished dream, eyes wet
with taffy tears and dried by night's remains.
i am beholden. i depart. i return. i remain.

little comfort, when the voices blur and 
harmony locks itself into a three minute
resolution of my problems. still, i remain
forever yours. forever my own.
still.

 

4/1/25: Sinfonia

Day 1 of Napowrimo. Here is the prompt. The term I chose was Sinfonia, defined as "Sinfonia (Italian: symphony) in earlier usage indicated a passage or piece of instrumental music, sometimes an introductory piece; it led to the Italian overture, known as the ‘sinfonia before the opera’: the origin of the Italian symphony."

little did we know it. these happy accidents, delightful breadcrumbs of a familiar shape and acceptable taste, were part and parcel for a new movement. heir apparent to a symphony, our symphony. taking up our instruments like metal in arthurian legends-like gun powder in the unsettled west-like fire for the malcontents. swirl and twist-our notes pirouette and bound and fall and screech, beautiful and uninhibited, noble-feral. what began as misfires, errant notes askew on the sheet music, the cough of an uneasy patron of the arts shifting his mass on the metal folding chair, takes beautiful shape-and in slow, uncertain steps- becomes a movement.