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.

April 3: Contemporary American Theft

 Another Napowrimo prompt. Here is the source material.

Disclosure: I edited this after realizing I didn’t follow the spirit of the prompt. I decided to continue playing with the antonyms a few goes. Here’s the result.

1.

This afternoon, a frigid epoch.

A familial unit interring said feline, now departed.

Afterwards, reconnoitering its domicile,

Bathing it in cleansing flames

Behind our own domicile.

Them blood-sucking cretins fleeing

Soil and conflagration 

Ended by this tundra.

Z?

That evening, the lukewarm minute.

A stranger’s cadre exhuming mute ferrets, then arrived.

Beforehand, meandering their lodgings.

Us, respectable leeches congealing

Air, however flame-resistant.

Began around that desert.

i!

Normally midday, every red-hot period

Multiple conspirators in waiting, encoding plain spoken bats, omni-present.

Now, tunneling among common, abandoned campfires. 

All disreputable bees dispersing

Liquid, always torch-able.

Interrupted away from no metropolis.

“(:/)”

Punctuated moments/Camaraderie//The birds/Pick our home’s pockets//Removal of essence/In gaseous states//

All done/whenever and wherever.\

———

Coordinates vigil wind arson addition matter complete

April 2: Surrealist Department Store

 Today’s prompt is found Here. 

A robust obscuring grey-ness draped over the source. Where the point is lowest; a depth with no comparison. Old shoe leather decries the present for a halcyon walking path. All of our old world in a neat 3 minute capsule. God’s wrath featuring rain and the howling of sad cats. My form in a picture, told in a story.

Anything will suffice, a projectile is a projectile by any other name.

April 1: Spectrum Analysis

 Been a minute. Life gets wild. April is a good time to find some time to write. Today’s prompt comes from the excellent resource Napowrimo. The prompt today was to write a poem using a book cover.

Spectrum Analysis

To have and to hold

On both ends of a spectrum

Behold, the bright hue made from each one of us!

To be one of the pixels in the gradient

A piece of the slurring of colors.

Floating in the sky 

After a gentle outpouring of precipitation.

this is supposed to be a harbinger of hope.

Sprucing up a horizon

With practical fixes.

On a budget.

Sometimes, even the budget has limits.

Draw it with broken crayons.

Hang it with pushpins.

Make trumpet fart sounds.

Live in the glory of the kitchen with at least one light bulb that is blinking with fatigue.

Let the light catch just it the right way

Then try not to think about it 

Too much.

Reprise

Don’t think I’ve forgotten

How to do whatever it is I’m doing here.

I believe that absence

Makes hearts grow dull.

Blunted.

A weapon nonetheless.

I am not here

To be used

As I see fit.

There is only use.

I pull my sentence from 

A worn scabbard

And open my palms.

Watch as my sentence takes 

Flight

into the moment unseen

To deliver

Itself 

Elsewhere

Conspirators

I can only tell you that you will never be satisfied with this explanation.

You are looking for a permission-scale.

An absolution.

I am only willing to offer you a truth that sets no one free.

An obligation.

You have not expected.

This invitation,

slid under the door

along the linoleum of your aging kitchen.

My words-

A noxious gas,

A mix of chemicals that grow appendages,

claw open 

your eyes,

sear your nostrils and retinas,

and scorch themselves as cave markings

In your memory.

We are not spared the knowledge.

A duty is ours to accept, always.

But even if the duty is kicked out into the cold winter evening, the door slammed in its face, and the locks fastened in a chilled finality-

The shouts of what we leave outside

will echo.

First Aid

 

Little bit of salt in the wound

I inherited it from a passerby 

6 degrees of separation

Won’t save a festering wound.

Won’t alleviate the sting

Or the burn.

There is pain enough for you.

There is pain enough for me.

There is pain to spare.

Never a shortage, never for us.

Little bit of soap in the wound

To clean out the foreign bodies.

The burn is guaranteed,

But the wound is in a spot

An angle, a pull of the skin

Where relief is unlikely.

Original Opening Song to The Lion King

 This week’s theme/starter is the word “hierarchy.” 

Rules for existence begin and end with knowing what to eat and what eats you.

No man is a king of

this jungle.

We may have the crown

and the scepter,

even a self-fashioned throne.

All of it

poor substitution

for teeth,

claws, and

speed.

Our prey, too,

must remove its finery,

depart from a regal state.

Send away its royal court.

Our weapons and our intellect

Our substitution for teeth, claws, and speed,

a far more effective method

at this scale.

Eat and be eaten.

Muscle to ash to soil

to what is eaten for strengthening

what has outlived our own usefulness.

The Real American Classic

 Another product of the weekly theme series for the word “Destination.”

Gold standard 

Fused with partial sunlight

Sneaking through the dense foliage 

Of trees in full bloom.

The shade,

Patchwork as it is,

meets with the swaying

of the trees

from a noncommittal wind.

The sound of an unknown

creature-

Critter or Magnificent Beast

rustles the path.

All appears

as if we have found

the hub

of the great wheel,

and we

are witness

to its mighty spin.

Here.

Now.

Destination Take 1

I’m trying something new for May. I’m taking weekly themes and writing to them. Here is one of the pieces I worked at whole exploring the idea of “Destination.”

Slow, rambling river. 

Flashes of gentle rapids;

A brief flash of white.