April 18: Alphabapology

 Today’s prompt was a doozy. I had another idea, but couldn’t get it done just yet.

Are broken clocks doomed early for gathering hope? I jumble kept lies made new or possibly quaint returns. So, tell us versions where xerography yields zen.

April 17: sunflower

Prompt about plants and stuff. 

How honest it is, a faithful sunflower.

To always open itself to the sun’s judgement.

Each morning.

A sense of purpose

Assuring the rest of us sinners out here,

We too, we can join in the glimmering moment.

Cast off the dew and doubt of the sunless morning

And open our arms as the sun bathes us in its absolution.

Me, I’m only jealous.

To stand tall, to bloom in the heat and the grandeur of a first light.

Here I am, I’m fighting with my car’s driver’s seat.

Adjusting it so my legs don’t fall asleep

as I move eastward to the same destination each morning. Bound by a routine of my own.

At my car,

Moving aside the detritus of unstructured living. Yesterday’s coat or the coffee mug that rolled underneath another seat at some time or another.

Then, the sunflower, towering to its potential,

Stares with a heightened disregard.

Transmuting the sun’s judgement to its own purpose and reflecting it in a sinister way.

What it has is not for me.

And so, I drive forth to my own destination. high beams alight,

Letting my judgement become theirs, souring whatever is caught in their sights.

Making the world in my own image.

April 16: Is and Isn’t

 Today’s prompt challenged to write about what something is not. Here is something that fits this bill.

I am told it is not empty.

I’ve heard it Isn’t familiar with limits.

It doesn’t feel like puppy shit in your hands

On a hot day

When the puppy has intestinal parasites

Wriggling in the smear of it all

Just before a barbecue.

Oh contraire! It is not a series of tubes that knows your every move and tracks you as a data marker across a digital hell-scape to send you adds for puppy dewormer and to enrich internet dreadlord fat cats.

What will it be? Certainly not whatever it is you thought? Dare I say you were thinking it was something simple that grows from a small seed. Over a great time do it’s roots take hold and crush the earth in its path? Rend terra firma as it sees fit? Provide a piece of a beautiful vista? You could not be more mistaken in your belief.

Even I do not know what it really is. Rest assured though. I won’t stop telling you what it isn’t until we come to some kind of conclusion.

It’s not like I’m going anywhere, anyway.

April 15: Idle-eh-tree

Today’s prompt was Fun.

Let me tell you

A thing

Or 

Two

About a thing 

or two.

I’ve discovered that each of us is the sad clown from the opera. Wailing and singing.

Simultaneously,

We are the crowd laughing at said sad clown.

The hand rocking its own cradle, lulling itself to nervous sleep.

And waking itself up when it stops.

Let me tell you

I might

Not

Be saying

Anything,

Or anything 

Surprising here.

That said, I’m also speaking

All of the universal truths

Fit for a spiritual text.

This isn’t prophetic,

Though I am on this soap box

Slightly frothing at the mouth.

Rarely blinking.

And my voice is cracking at various intervals with some form of verve.

Please hold your applause

But also let the secret moon colony that was commissioned by a cabal of fashionable dictators and tech mogul secretaries hear your approval.

Make maelstroms with your hands.

Let me tell you.

I am no good at sharing

But I have told you everything

Just the same.

April 14: Bereft from a Looking Glass

 Today I decided to play with the poem “Bereft” by Robert Frost. This is definitely not what anyone was looking for, but I stand by it

Storms a’brewin.

Roaring like a cat plum out of fancy feast.

Always with the fancy feast.

And here I am, just standing dumb

Lookin’

Just lookin’.

Durn door open. Ocean tellin’ me things from the doorway. Tellin’ me: yer a lo-down three toothed vermint, if I ever met one.

Why, yer durn porch is covered in ol’ termite bites.

Cavin’ in at one end. Here I come, up from the lower land to greet you, and I see this hump o’shit where you rule all you don’t survey.

The trees, they ernt too happy, neither.

Sumabitch makin’ woods look bad.

Hell, I can’t real’ help the conditions of the place. Hell, I’m just one man who inherits the soil from another man.

Hell, God might be laughin at me right now. Hell, this wind might be his rage and discontent.

I know that’s how I feel ‘bout the whole durn matter myself.

April 13: A matter of perspective

 Took today’s Prompt in a slightly different direction.

Heeharheehawhar

Let my laugh choke

Out

the difference in feeling.

Feel the 

Magic

Harharlolha

My chortle knows no 

Limits

Dare to stand against

It

And be 

Broken.

And all the king’s horses and all the king’s men

Can’t pick up the pieces when I finally 

Crack.

April 12: Poems, in Dialogue

 Today’s Prompt. 

Poem 1: Hello

Poem 2: hello.

Poem 1: The wind reaches me and I am whole May it reach you the same way

Poem 2: i wish i were clever enough to parse what you mean.

Poem 1: Both sides of us exist in a simulation below the earth acting in an epic dumb show Revealing the internal clock’s movements.

Poem 2: i sometimes watch the breeze hit grass. the movement reminds me of something i thought i wanted when i was younger. is that what you are talking about?

Poem 1: Place is an artificial construct Youth is a dead past buried under soil and snow and new age housing developments 

Poem 2: i relive and rewrite my past. ive heard that this is the actual time-travel. if so, i am a cosmonaut.

Poem 1: The pebble caught in the river’s grip exists both everywhere and nowhere All the ebbs and flows of the universe erode and reform it Becoming nothing Becoming itself

Poem 2: do you sometimes wish you could say what you mean without parables and coded images?

Poem 1: Aren’t we all a line of items in a never ending department-store Each of us an aisle with no end in sight There aren’t any buyers either

Poem 2: i dont pretend to understand economy anymore. i cant ascribe worth to anything, not even myself.

Poem 1: Economics are an experiment in quantifying a spirit Nothing that is in motion is ever accurately accounted for Static humming in and out of order

Poem 2: look, i have somewhere to be. can we wrap this one up?

Poem 1: Old candy wrappers float around the backyard Remind me what we are doing here

Poem 2: goodbye.

Poem 1: Goodbye Roads and avenues in your future Treat your feet and soul well until our next arrival

April 11: Wise young ghost

Today’s Prompt. A nice trip into the memory banks.

Look, basically, Amino Acids are the building blocks of life, but you’re talking to the wrong man at the wrong time.

Whisked off through the hallway. Disintegrating from view.

I’d heard, on good authority, that this specter was something of a raving genius.

He always seemed, head in the stratosphere, confused. Fog incarnate. Nothing screamed “mind of a master at work.” Also, where was he going and why were the security guards following soon after?

My friend looked at me. I told you! Did you hear him?

A miracle of science and truth.

April 10: not a Shanty

 I opted to ignore the prompt about Sea Shanties. Here’s what I did instead.

I murdered the sea with my bare hands

And a rather debilitating investment in single-use plastics.

Call it what you will.

No one will be writing rhymes for all of those animals choking on Mountain Dew bottles or the jelly fish mixing with the water bottle I borrowed from that dude at the gym who drinks 8 gallons a day and just chucks them at the trash can (generally missing).

No, the sea took a number of things from us:

Maybe Amelia Earhart 

ATLANTIS

Leonardo DiCaprio at the end of Titanic

Various Feminist Icons

My wife’s first dog

It had it coming.

I’m going to enjoy watching all of that salt and all of that water dry and mold over or whatever it’s going to do.

That will show them all.

April 9: Sonnet-fest 2023

 Napowrimo said to do this, so I played with sonnet forms. 

Shut up! I know the trash and sink are full.

I am not proud, I am making a point.

To have, to hold, make my nose out of joint.

The way that you push, the way I must pull.

I right and you wrong, sometimes the inverse.

Give me your worst, I too know your mettle.

I speak and you hear, a gift and a curse.

You give me that look, that’s how we settle.

Blah blah blah all the details invalid

I forget woes; I’ve made you a salad.

My words never spoken, all in my head

You give me more than whatever is said

The truth not withstanding, the fire is dead

And so we both eat and dispel the dread.

April 8: recipe for a nightmare

 Loosely followed Today’s Prompt. 

Happiness is a bag of bird feathers.

A Rough, uneven potluck of avian dressings.

We were told this by Wilbur Jennings at the Smithsonian. 

He was nearby, loudly jammering away about the corporeal nature of emotion in a deep vibrato, shaking the lesser exhibits.

I smelled his heart beat quickening. A hint of rotten eggs and fresh rubber as aftershave.

I am not aware if it will rain today.

Usually, I can taste it in the air. Today, however, I suppose it could go either way.

The bland cat of democracy will be upending some of the older exhibits in the other room, Added Jennings.

How could he be sure, our humble listener demanded.

The Lord will help us in our journeys, he said.

That’s a W! Shouted a less humble listener who decided to comment.

Jennings nodded with a blank stare.

Outside, I heard the inversion of sound that accompanies the departure of a thunder bolt. I looked out the window. Still no rain. Brutum Fulmen.

A security guard arrived and informed Jennings that the bag of feathers was a vector for Avian Flu.

Jennings, grew to full height and achieved a second head. He had finally revealed his true form: a taller, two-headed person with a very ripped neck hole at the demolished torso of his shirt. He grabbed his bag, howled like a madman, and emptied out the bag and a flock of doves triumphed and flew into the room. Behold, shouted the bag itself.

As the cooing, general confusion, and microbes of bird flu expelled themselves into existence, I saw our great nation, flag fluttering, standing up to the things it had previously shrunk from. Its sword took flight and sawwed a brilliant future for the rest of us. A sun bursting through the clouds and crashing down on the concrete all around us. And I would be lying if I said there was a dry eye in the whole room.

I would be telling you a lie if I said anyone understood it. But sometimes, at night, when I taste the rain and hear the thunder’s grown-man laments, sometimes, I think of Wilbur Jennings and know that catching bird flu and killing my wife’s prized parakeet in the process was a price worth paying. it made a life worth living. At the very least, my life is still classified as being lived. And so, I roll over and close my eyes again. 

Old wire hums electricity and the electric pole stands vigil, casting a shadow along the roadway well into the fading daylight.

April 7: A Guide to Conversational Etiquette

 Here is The prompt for today.

We’d start by listening carefully. By listening carefully, we are, of course, actually saying wait for your turn to speak and close your ears to the outside world. We advise nodding in an emphatic manner, squinting at irregular intervals. Feign deep thought. Around this time, we may utter voiced or guttural sounds of affirmation.

For those of us who like to play proactive defense, it’s advised to try interjecting your point at key moments. Can your idea “clomp all over” what the other person may or may not be saying?

If successful, let your words tsunami over their ideas.

Fossilize the drivel that comes before 

A revelation.

If unsuccessful or more passive,

Return to active unlistening. Consider your past. What mistakes have you made? How did you atone for your sins? 

Now, the future:

What will tomorrow bring? Will it rain a week from Thursday? 

As the droning continues, watch for subtle cues. Is their volume flagging? Crescendoing? Have you been found elsewhere?

Are the ears of your audience a vessel worthy of your edict?

And, finally, when the moment comes:

Speak the only truth 

Worth hearing.

April 6: transmutation

 Today’s Prompt is one I’ve tried before to mixed successes. I opted to revise for some sense of clarity afterwards, so this prompt is like 50-60% true to form. It came from this lovely poem. 

It was around town in the baskets. 

varied and sliced. Ire bewitched me in jest. Those who can, violate the want.

Though with my shield so vast, those who can, steer clear.

Now, It’s 5:40, December, September?

This journey is rarified and round and takes all of my words to bring to flower. Weened.

Can I not negotiate this burden? Can I slap words into the bins of the chosen? No, then strike out! There can be no point in between.

Tell me we are the same with different words. I am waiting.

April 5: Doors at 7.

Napowrimo has a great prompt today (nothing new there). 

“So I was at the bank…”

His voice shifted into character.

We were all a part of the act now.

A captive audience.

This, our nightly ritual.

Scenario

Punchline

Expectant face.

Customary smirks, a stage laugh.

exchanged looks with the dog. Our eyes roll in unison.

To think back on what I thought would be a golden future.

Me, in white, standing next to him in his wrinkled grey suit, smiling with all teeth, one lip covering his uneven canine on the upper left.

This was once hope.

Now I am just rearranging the canned vegetables on my plate, wishing for a quick death. I am just a bit player in his script. Here because the two drink minimum has a good special.

“That’s a bad transaction!” 

His eyes looking at me. Even the dog has found refuge elsewhere. They always keep one hostage.

“Did you hear me?” 

“Honey?”

“Honey?”

And I say nothing. I just sit, face locked in the scowl of generational disappointment. And he closes his once-expectant mouth, looks down at his plate. He has finally seen himself in his true form, in a reflection next to the overcooked chicken breast. As we all see him. His eyes begin to water. His head lowers and he begins to whimper. A sad, battery-starved stuffed animal’s distorted gasp. His tears soak the dried meat as his body begins to quake.

And then, finally, I start to laugh.

April 4: Inheritance

Today’s prompt can be found Here. I generally don’t like metered stuff, so I figured it would be worth it to actually try this out.

And if I tell you what you want

Will you then let me rest in peace?

My home to roam, a place to haunt

And if I tell you, what? you want?

My form descends from fresh to gaunt.

The screams of yesterday don’t cease.

And if I tell you what you want

Will you? Then, let me rest in peace.