Napo 4/9/24 An Ode, to You

Today's prompt. While we are at it, I've been writing reviews of current music over at Medium, my most current one on Tierra Whack's World Wide Whack, is available here.

There were big plans for you,
a couch meant to last an era, a seat
invincible.

Only, an errant fork in the cushions, 
tongs buried deep
by a canine friend turned temporary foe;
Only, the feline's favorite scratching point.
Only, some upholster's nightmare taking 
Place behind the penultimate cushion.

Slowly, we watched as your cushions
sink deeper into defeat; we adjusted our 
aging frames as you found our familiar points
and said "no more, please." A demand more 
than a cry for help.

You, swallower of remotes, lost phones,
the toys of children, the concerns of adults;
perch for our canine and feline antagonists,
them of the mind that you will forgive their
past transgressions. 

You, loyal servant to our communal comfort,
wrapping us in your aged fabric, your fraying lines, 
your creaking and dubious form. You, loyal and true.
The model for all living room furniture, big and small.
You have given all you had and we have still asked for more
and still you are willing to accept our demands.

We do not deserve you.

Napo 4/8/24 Mother, Son, Sky

Today's prompt. 

All of that heat
and all of that light,
mother of the sky
bringer of the day.

Interloping rock, hell spawn
in the orbit of a bigger rock.
A less celestial body, a smaller
also-ran. The lesser beacon of the night.
become the usurper.

Stand in the light, raise your arms to full length,
like praying, like victory. Cast your stretched shadow,
darken the plains, change water to an unseeing abyss,
force the ants to look up. Show us,
how wrong we've been. We've underestimated you,
and now
look what you've done.

Napo 4/7/24 Season Greeting

 Today's prompt. I opted for the minimalist today.

Like waves, like the unending sea meeting the horizon. Like the river searching, continuing:

you and me. 

Napo 4/6/24 Surveying the Landscape

 Today's prompt. 

The flowers revealed their truth to me,
a humble listener, drinking in the tenets to
a life lived in the elements. "Don't drink 
old rainwater after business hours."

My father told me to question 
anything that sounded like a sales pitch.
"Gold glitters and the soul latches on
with its tendrils of avarice."

The flowers were apoplectic. "Who did
I take them for? Garden weeds?"

Why mention business hours? It seemed 
like a racket to me and I said so.  

My father, away on business, said "Keep holy the
separation of business and health."

I wondered aloud, "what does health mean?"

The flowers responded, "Health is the thing with
muscular legs that carries us from one commercial to the next.
We are living in a glorious time to move capital."

I took my weed eater and turned the errant garden to a finely 
ripped up, dry dirt. We were praying for rain again.
I contemplated drinking the standing water, flush with the buzz
of mosquito and the dull smell of eggs.

My father once said, "to know thirst is our greatest advantage."

I wondered, as the flowers howled their apologies, their remediations
for living life in service of currency, their action-plans and committees
to become better, if I were doing the right thing. In the silence
of the hot afternoon that followed, I looked to the sky and heard the distant grumble of thunder.

Napo 4/5/24: Blessings, Given and Received

 Today's prompt. Also, Thank you, Napowrimo.net for featuring yesterday's prompt on your website!

Bless me, Kitchen Sink, for I
have once again been selfish,
rinsing the reusable coffee filter clean,
clogging your drain up with the finer particulate
of yesterday's dregs. Drawn you deeper into the
mystery of the health of our septic system. Made
you an unwilling participant to my imperfection. I come
to you, a humble sinner, and beg you forgive my transgressions.

I bless you, Street Light with Faulty Bulb. Shine forever,
even when you are intermittently blinking, even when
you fail and those who walk beneath you are thrown to
the dark path of publicly-funded sidewalks, ones with
root systems pushing the tectonic plates of cement, 
ones that break up the Pangea that is this walkway.
They and I know your honest light will return. May
you shine with the purity of your being. 

Great communion of of the grocery checkout line,
let us pass through your fire, your slings, your arrows,
the small talk and insidious tabloid headlines, the
inevitable bagging of cumbersome goods. Let us
recognize our grace as other lines move faster.
We are, all of us, unclean and searching for nourishment.
Give us the clarity of self and the willingness to know
all about the 14 ways to use potatoes in the Crock Pot.
May we all know true salvation.

 

Napo 4/4/24 Fiend Chorus of the Damned

 Today's prompt. I strongly recommend you read through some of the entries from the book that inspired this activity. 

Oh, my stars. All of the constellations in the sky. Hurling abuse downwards. The screams of adolescence, arriving late in your adulthood. Time and distance are imperfect vessels for your discontent. 

I cannot be mad, my errant children, never at you. You will learn your mistake in the form of a late message in blinking morse code over eons. Your father is disappointed, but your father will be long evaporated by the grunts of time. You, of course, will learn this retroactively, and then your wailings, cosmic grief, shaking the flight paths of garbage and broken rocks.

Know too, even in my disappointment, stern and fatherly, I am also ever in awe by your grace. A proud progenitor. I will send this message too, in a series of nods and winks across the night sky. Know that disappointment only comes from a place of love. Where it comes, where it goes, where it ends, we can only guess.

The universe expands. The universe shrinks. All things become dust or black holes or something that has yet to be discovered. Hear my song. See me love. Begin, end, repeat.  

Napo 4/3/24: Scorches

 Here's the poem prompt for today.

My wife said "I didn't realize it, but car fires scorch the road for a long time." She pointed at a blackened bit of road. "Hell fire scorches longer," I said. We arrived to our destination in silence. 

The devil is always playing tricks of fire. Out here, inside too. We told the fire inspector so, and he just stared. "You folks aren't from around here, are you?" We definitely were not. We definitely were playing what folks like to call "insider baseball." I know nothing about a cutter or a slider, but I know something of the devil himself. I know that sulfurous tinge in the space where nose and throat meet, the tickle in the back of your knowledge box. I know that the water regularly looks like an oil spill caught fire on top of it, and I know, sure as Hell's born, what it looks like coming out of the tap. I have swallowed it down my heathen esophagus, felt the acids of my sinning stomach gurgle up in protest, in praise song? 

The destination served small hot dogs wrapped in bacon. Chocolate fondue was allegedly present as well. Perhaps we deserved this, these Earthen pleasures. My wife, seeming to read my thoughts smiled and said "This is just temporary." 

She was right. Everything eventually stops, mercifully. 

Napo 4/2/24: (Platonic Love Song)

Bweep da da 
these are the sounds of platonic love.
Fills your heart with a rollicking bass line, but in the "everybody clap"
sort of way. Nothing untoward.

Gazong kaswish
a comedy of errors. Will they? They won't. That's the point. They will, however,
1. Eat buffalo wings and not care about getting messy.
2. Listen to jazz and really "get it."
3. Wonder aloud about all manners of futures. Nondescript offerings.

Zip kashopsha
give me a hug, you lovely son of a gun, you. I covet routine. I covet my neighbor's routine. How long has it been? Bible times a recent memory.

Pa-Zoo:callingaglingaling
I don't know what to say when I see you. It's like "how are you?" It means more, like
this piece of me has returned. Like, thank you for remembering me across time and space.

Like, thank you.

cymbal shimmer and chords resolve. No fade out necessary.

Napo 4/1/24: Cosmopolis in Dialogue

 Today's prompt. I chose to write about Don Delillo's Cosmopolis.

This guy, he's rich? How rich is he? We're talking "buy the future and send everyone a postcard about how it now belongs to him" rich.

This guy, he's riding around the city in a limousine and he wants a haircut. What kind of haircut? Not really important here, probably something that involves the dreaded "product" to style though. Product is a four letter word in your house. I have my reasons. He might pay someone to do the styling daily. Perhaps there is a machine that will do it at cost. Stuff us normal shills can only dream of, that's this guy's proverbial "artisan bread and free-range butter." Free-range butter. Yeah, kid, think big.

He's also wanted dead by...someone. Why? You know, I don't remember, but probably because someone is jealous of his limousine and his robot hair device. That's no reason to kill anyone, well, most people. I didn't say that was fair, I'm just telling you that it's a wild world out there.

You know, I think it's time for a quick haiku interlude:

Dreams of wealth, new
Give us a little off the
top, where's my foot rub?

You call that a haiku? 

Sometimes the bird cries
Wake us from autumnal snores,
Sometimes it's winter.

That was beautiful. I'm fighting back tears. Thanks, I am openly sobbing myself.

Well, look, I should probably talk about the rapper too. This story has everything, huh? I guess so, but I don't remember that much of it anymore. The memory hole took most of it, that and all of the nightmare that was my divorce and the subsequent fight about who kept our DIY arboretum. I would've killed to keep that arboretum; it really completed the neighborhood. Well, yes, but then I'd have to reconcile that with the Lord. I'm not sure I want to do that. You know, this story, I don't think it had haikus though. We've got one up on it right now. That's something, isn't it? 

I'd say it is.

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.