Napowrimo Early Bird: A Flute

Tomorrow starts National Poetry Month. Each year I follow NaPoWriMo here and use it for inspiration in a daily prompt. I post those results here. Today's "Early Bird" prompt was to take a term from a list and write an alternative definition.  

[I am not sure] song to and from my soul. this mirthful smirk. the sketch of errant laughter. poltergeist [if this is coming or] behaviors, noticed on the peripheral. Knowledge [going,] unavailable through [interjecting or] a glancing denial of service [silencing]. “hey, aqualung” as sung by a tired forest spirit [the interruption.]. limited time. 

rest stop

 

Today I will write something.

Step into the face of creation, stare at it,

Be blinded by the force of the collective will

Existing within me.

The will to take the winds of time and push sand from the desert to a city

and to get in everybody’s expensive coffees.

Goddamnit, they’ll say, this was 8 dollars.

The sand will only be up to their ankles.

Driving will get harder. Traction being what it is,

And speed being something of a prerequisite.

I have only just begun to reconcile the urge

To dismantle, to build, 

casting sand in all directions, whistling like a desert storm, and you are all fishtailing out of your company parking spaces

Lost in the sand piles. Tires crying a lament as they struggle for purchase.

Time, is not on our side.

As the monuments rise from the piles, as the sand burns to glass, 

Encloses us.

I have made us a record of its passage.

And we are now up to our word holes, spitting grit and trying to speak.

Soon, the sand will cover everything and the time will be complete.

Soon, we will flip ourselves over and see what stays

This sand, a record for something else. 

Will we be a mark on its ledger?

Watering Can

 Raining down love 

and warm feelings

doesn’t grow a person,

doesn’t feed a family,

doesn’t secure a nation,

barely the sound of a single hand

straining to applaud its own 

ingenuity, barely a 

trash bag cut lengthwise for a blanket

in the evening swell of wind, as it rises

like a starlet’s dress over a street grate,

that warm rush of summerish air kissing exposed flesh,

blowing the covering up to the sky and blotting out the moon,

I am so proud of myself

for all I have accomplished

in your names,

I’m just going to give myself a minute

and soak up the goodwill with this unspent rag, saturate it,and 

ring it over the mouths of the thirsty, then wait to be washed clean in their adoration.

Era of Good Feelings

I may be finished with this era of good feelings

though I haven’t decided the consequences of such a declaration.

Each day is a scratch against the wall from my overgrown nails.

Unkempt rows of 4 and a diagonal slash to finish the grouping.


I’m counting down to the day it ends

where I am met by angelic trumpets and barbershop quartets,

everyone applauds, even if they are only doing so out of social pressure.

Friend and foe alike here to watch the light extinguish itself.


Curiosity killed more than a bunch of cats, I’m told.

They have lists down at any city hall rife with the victims of

exploration in the face of what is safe.

Profiles in courage.


I push back my unmanaged hair, tie it off in the back.

My work can meet no interruption, even from me.

Especially from me.

Even in this new era of unknown feelings, I have obligations.


I’m almost to the gold watch.

I’m almost to the clap out on the final day.

I’m almost to the cold stare from Saint Peter.

I’m almost there.


But, first, one final sleight of hand.

One more trick to leave them all guessing.

Before I disappear into the maw of time.

You will know my work. Behold.

 

Highlight, Reel

Sometimes, the possibility snaps into place

and the vision of the golden future shimmers before me

with ease, it is within my grasp, things have never been quite

so obvious. so available to pluck from the ready and waiting 

vine. washed and peeled, unnecessary to cook. each bite

a fulfillment of hunger, satisfying crunch, the gratification of 

friction on the teeth as the food gives way under duress.

I am full. content. waxing poetic, reflective, in rumination. 

thankful. it was here, all along. waiting. 

Wound

 

Give me each piece of the shard of glass I stepped on and you ceremoniously extracted from my heel. Blood-stained, uneven and jagged edges. Found weeks after the cup was dropped. Found in my skin. Found on the splatter-plot of my gory steps to the bathroom to sit on the closed toilet, perform yoga poses to try and identify what has penetrated my foot’s feel good sense of exploration. I want this souvenir. A necklace to wear around my neck. A reminder. No, don’t clean it off. Let it be how it was, fresh in the air as my wound congealed and set itself right and we began to blot up the evidence of my travels. 

Top 40

 

Give me that feel good jukebox snoring away

and let my dance partner be a real looker

in all the right ways, but with none of the attention from the onlooking crow lineup.

Let her move with grace to sound of the good lord’s own warbles

after we provide the proper tribute

in 25 cent intervals.

It’s that old time sneeze of a good time,

the sort that catches the moonshine behind your sweet tooth and stops itself clean in your cough box.

Go ahead and rock me, sweet lady.

Let me move through these steps and let the sound never come across cleaner.

A counter to the humdrum static slipping through the one good speaker and its bastard little brother.

Yeah I know the truth, girl.

Can’t help but shout it from the top of the counter

to a room full of people, maybe our own disciples

or maybe the ones who want the other guy 

and we’re destined for ol’ Golgotha off of Route 206,

Near to the air base 

And the litany of pines.

Bury me in bliss

Let these 3 minutes and 12 seconds

Purify me through the fire of a guitar solo as a bridge

Over my troubled river of a soul.

Make me gurgle and split out from the banks.

See me in all my glory.

Sun Spot

 

Here’s an example for you:

the power of sunshine

on your wounds.

Unfettered solar flares

Collide with the atoms above the skin,

form a pincer molecule to burrow into

The muscle and bone,

breaking, mending with a

daylight suture job.

Yes, the scar is permanent.

So is the healing

The poem that doubles as a prog rock concept album idea

 

We are inside The balloon

Broadcasting a dream

Projecting from each of our eyes

making a communal physical world

out of a shared hallucination.

The balloon floats over Montana,

Or what it thinks is Montana

But is actually a cleared forest

of purple trees and mountains scoured with bite marks.

Rivers made of something that can only be described as “soapy water” but definitely not soapy or water. Ground, a fogged-over glass.

The sound of bird calls, heard in reverse.

A point the balloon is marveling about in its internal calculations. Humming in alphanumerical reverie.

The balloon, set to record,

Ambient weather outside and

Ambiance inside.

Watching the world we make

Undo itself as you and I both reach for 

what we collectively suppose is the last chip in the bowl, As the big game reaches an inflection point that will determine an important outcome.

When our hands touch,

A brief, glancing of flesh,

Something important shorts above us

and the hallucination stutters. fades, and cuts out.

The only sound, aside from the collective gasps, is the deep exhalation from the balloon’s failing air supply.

Now we will never know

Who won.

In Vein/Vain

 

Take it in your hand

absorb the key facts, remember the ridges,

lock this into your memory.

Let it sit, untouched,

held in place with yesterday’s dust,

in the room off of the corner of our home.

Pay it no mind

gentle snoring, a casual scratching,

the foundation is settling, old bones creak.

Your hands, now calluses

and wrinkles and gnarled rootwork, bending in on themselves, they will remember.

It is almost time.

awakening like the crash of a rogue wave,

something has washed ashore.

City Planning

 

This city, bright and mechanical,

Floating like a flower in an vase

Way up past the skyscraper eyesores.

Surrounding industry.

Inside,

Paths like a Wire Beehive.

Electric pulses

Winding paths

Dropping and rising in the space of petal to stem.

Path termination, kicked out

Into the old air

Far beyond, in the rearview.

Bobbing in the space of nothing.

Drooping a little lower each time.

The city loses its footing

Deflates itself

And the wires uncoil

Falling around the empty field

Under a cloudless sky

At the foot of the steel leviathans.

The monument whimpering with the spasms of a dying animal’s determination,
beyond the rear view's eyes. Imagine, it is still out there, trying.

No Zen Required

 

No sunshine will touch my shadow any longer. They've agreed to keep their distance. Agreed to disagree on some critical matters. Not sure of their relative place in the universe as long as the other is present. I am told they are not willing to compromise on this matter. I've tried to help them find reason, bury the hatchet. Worked out the angles between tripping over myself in the darkened room or hiding my eyes from the burn.

It starts early. I'm dragged to darkness by my shadow. He has lost his sense of proportion. Does not know his strength any longer. Pulls me deeper into the corners of my bedroom. Hides me under another set of light-eating blankets.

Sunshine calls me, but my shadow slaps the phone out of my hand. I have to trust him. I have to stay the course. I must not feel the temptation for warmth. For the outside to let the breeze sneak up and gently hug me. For the sounds of birds to welcome me out into the world.

My shadow, he knows me better than I know myself. The sunshine, radiating off of the sidewalk, zeroing in on my pale frame, it is a destroyer of peace. A bringer of skin rash, scaled flesh, eventual cancers, 

Here in the dark, I'm told I am safe, a proper temperature. I am contained. Controllable.  

My shadow, locking me into an iron tether. We shall never know the world apart from one another.

I try to tell him, light will bond us. He reminds me that vision is not a bond. This, this proximity, under cover of multiple darknesses. Us, alone, held fast to one another and shaking, this is the only true connection. Everything else is a sleight of hand and a trick of vision. Illusory. Disguises not fit for truth.

And here we are, in silence, and I just want to sneak a gaze out the tinted window, to see what might be outside. 

If only I’d let me.

A Rumble at the Open Mic Night

Up from the Sea

Lining my pockets with currency

freshly earned by Judas

Take a pound of the tender flesh

Scar tissue’s exchange rate is bad this week.

Flesh, well kept, never goes out of style

I’m a fish-faced enemy of the people

Lending power limited

Credit score infinite.

Up, sea

Let the current take me

See through the flotsam,

Age-old pollution.

The Fish with three eyes,

Glowing in the twilight and whispering sweet bubble nothings to the casual observer.

I take my financial advice from a Ouija board co-piloted by the atomic bomb and a piece of the real cross of Jesus Christ.

From Up

Come to me, sweet oblivion

Short my stock portfolio and eat the good leftovers.

Let my car run overnight but keep it safe from those who trespass against me.

All of the eggs in the fridge

Bloody with disappointment. The farmer’s crude lament. 

Let each meal swell in the intestines of my friends and foes alike. 

Sweet oblivion, decorate my yard with half eaten plastic wrappers and coffee grounds.

They will say, “that is a choice.” I will agree.

From the Sea Up

I am the Lord of Greater Inconvenience

You shall know my nominal wrath and be left shaking your head like all of the other suckers.

I’m not even going to be the better for it

It’s just a cup of coffee to me. Size medium, not even iced.

It’s all nice.

When the curtain closes

The applause concludes and the sound of shuffling feet 

Dies off in the now-dusty quiet of the stage.

Lights off

and we return to the soil.

 

Confessionals

 

Give me the truth as you see fit, my love.

Break it apart into 12 or 13 manageable pieces

rolling off of the tongue in meaningful slobberings

I know this so well.

Even better than you might, the medicated stumble of a mouth

rife with SAT prep lingo from a bygone era. Paleolithic 

shots of affection across the starboard front of the vessel,

whatever that might imply to our friends in the maritime industry.

Whatever that implies to anyone.

Holy, all that is Holy. Attached to sounds of my spindly flesh’s protests under the currents that guide us into what comes and what may.

I am slurring again, letting the closely inspected colors, neat within the lines, leak out and make a perfectly damn fine picture ripe with blurry hues. 

Everything ends up as shit if I’m not careful these days. With no bags to store it and set it on fire outside the local municipality’s domicile.

Go on, say it like I mean it, self.

Let them know how I really feel, this time.

Mea culpa

 I’ve written nothing this week. Made a new year less like the old year in an unsatisfactory way. Obligations and lists lining my walls. I am a glacier of ideas, melting with the speed of cow fart induced heatwaves. Something will find its way into the stratosphere in due time. You know it and so do I. Give me my wilted plants at the appropriate time.