NaPoWriMo Challenge - April 1 - April 30

[Neonurotic]

Ruby Wooed - 5/30

She sips tea in a pout
for no red marks left on the rim,
somehow eats juicy Sumatras
with fervor without a smear.

She perfects the art of
kissing me with a feathery wisp
on the mouth leaving tiny fires
everywhere, me breathless and still,
no messing up her makeup.

She carefully lines and paints Mac's
famous shade on her masterpiece,
all the while smiling, catching me
watching her on her pocket mirror

That lipstick is magic or a miracle,
though, undeniably anything
that draws my eyes to her lips is
a sexy damn good thing.

 

[Piscator]

VI/XXX

There is No Sense

There is no sense like nonsense
or so you said to me at the
beginning of this century
before I did penance for my maleficence
although prayer, fasting and abstinence
haven’t reduced my dolor at your absence
as according to my counselor, my continued inability
to internalize my rhyme after all this time
and my failure to face reality
may lead to unexpected coincidence
although one can never expect the unexpected.

Although well past Conway Twitty’s Fifteen Years Ago
I too look back on our affair, my midlife crisis,
with a mixture of fondness and sad regret.
But we each had families with the Atlantic between us
and that move to Tennessee was fantasy
and in the end - to be was not to be.

But like you said there is no sense in nonsense.

 

[Levitating_Bed]

5/30

This Song

There's a way that this song is about the past.
It's about my past. Yours too, maybe.
It might be the thing all of us have most in common:
the way we make everything about ourselves.

It's about loss. About no matter how tightly you try and hold on
you can't stop the sand getting to the bottom half of the glass.

There's another way that it's about the future,
all of those moments that will build and build and build;
relationships and achievements, lives
beautiful or broken and both at once. Inevitably,
for any, and every, and all of the reasons
that could be, may be, will be.

There's a guitar in either ear. They're warm with secrets
and smiles and sadness. Sometimes repeating or
chasing each other, sometimes together in
complementing harmonies. Playing counterpoint,
dancing with each other, floating above the cantus firmus.

I imagine one of them is the past and the other
the future. Outside rushing in, from either side,
toward the center of my head.
To meet each other in

this perfect moment.

 

[Moochienanu]

5April2021

The First Rise

sweet, yeasty waft
punch down
knuckles pulled back
the lofty heart at the center
removed

scraped bowl, sticky
dragging stretchy remnants
forming a whole, one, while
building anew, bringing all
together

turn out, thud
hands of flour
separating, rolling, placing
a lined tray filled, set for a
second

 

[29wordsforsnow]

6/30 - running a bath - or life

as we drop into life
circles form
expanding
ebb and flow
amplifying
waves we meet
till we reach the shore

don't let the world run dry

 

[Tzara]

5

On Vision

Blind in the moonless night, my
hands search for your
body, my restless fingers
surf the gentle waves of your
skin, seeking the warmth of that
central core of your being, where we
join in that tidal ebb and flow that
renews our lives each night. When I

stroke your inner thighs, it's like
tracing an elegant sculpture, the
Venus de Milo, for example, her
smooth, hard marble mimicking your
athleticism, but not the
suppleness of your pliant muscles. What I
miss most, though, in this enforced darkness is your
eyes—are they open or, my God, blissfully shut?

 

[champagne1982]

Catharsis 5/30

Bend backward until your spine is about to break
then write the pain into a poem
Write how your heart burns with every sorrow
and make me feel that wrench
When reality pulls the departing from your grip.

The vertebrae snap back into alignment with release
now write the relief onto a page
Write how your heart gasps like a drowning child
and make my lungs fill in reply
until with the next exhale I draw it back with a sob

When the bile vomits anger and hurt through teeth
clenched against what makes you sick
write your disgust and nausea into dark phrases
that become a story filling up white space
and show me frustration and exhaustion until
I can read no more .

 

[Angeline]

5-30

Kōel

Jazz comes in many hues
Sibilant cymbal, sonorous sax
Wordless stories told in blues

 

[todski28]

6-30

I'm bleeding nightmares
from my right eye
as I stare at the state life has brought
to once powerful fingers

few men in my life have scared me
even fewer still have I respected
in an earnest attempt to emulate what I believe
masculinity should be

I knew you were broken
but at the same time there was strength in the insanity
of driving a blade into your own heart
screaming even this too shall pass
because you strode like a giant
bellowed war chants at 4am
slamming shelves through screaming blades
throwing boards around most normal men struggled to lift
as if they were nothing more than playthings

shaking your hand was like holding concrete
cinder blocks that had come to life...

I never expected to be cleaning your shit
off of piss stained sheets
rolling you around a mattress
waiting to see your hollowed memories
watching you,
you who used to stride staircases with
mirrored panels that took 3 normal people to lift
struggle with a cup of water
struggle to brush your teeth

I hated you
I hate you
I somewhere
love you

and I'm not someone who's often conflicted
but this twisted knot in my gut
is enough
to stare as you take in every shallow
harrowing breath
remember the best and worst of you
see past the flaws
realise you're human
and did the best you could

 

[Moochienanu]

6April2021

Church

Pulling the chairs of the living room into a circle
My favorite, cushioned wooden frame with springs
Marked on the side
With my initials scraped slowly
Scratched in open safety pin
Shavings built in the corners
Of each letter

Lifting heavy books down
Off the shelf they sit 6 days of the week
Count out the hymnals
Always the same songs
Always a cappella altos
And my sister’s birdy soprano
Ringing above a little too loud

Sitting with one leg under me
Small dog curling into the triangle of my lap
A space for her
And an open good book I attempted to read once
I daydream about being somewhere else
For the one, two, three hours

A wilderness in Borneo
Swinging machetes in the underbrush
Searching for a lost treasure

A hammock at a tropical beach
Swaying as the sounds of ocean waves
Lulled my body into a relaxed state

An echoing footfall at The Globe
Spotlight warmth finding my light
Delivering a soliloquy to no one else

Keeping quietly occupied inside other worlds
Until the nag of my foot, ignored
Sat on long enough by my body, a dog’s, and a heavy book
Cries out for a shift of weight
Stands unsteady for the final hymn,
The turned out pup waiting at my feet
For that lap to reappear

 

[Neonurotic]

I Wake For This? - 6/30

Morning is everything to an early riser,
the epitome, 'happy as a lark' until
I smell no bacon, no biscuits.
It's an egg white mushroom omelet
in a non-stick pan.
I'm wondering, what's the flavor?
I'd rather eat a shoe.
A flip-flop walked across
a beach at low tide,
essence of rubber dead fish!

Cajun food has too much salt,
too much fat, too much cholesterol;
all the very tasty things.
Crawfish, catfish,
goo fish (yes, there is goo)
boudin and fried alligator,
cracklins, okra, hushpuppies
and soft shell crab--all fried
then smothered in shrimp etouffee.

A good dark roux makes
gumbo, jambalaya (no tomatoes,
if you do, that's jambaly'in)
Booya, shrimp po' boy!
Andouille sausage, red beans
and rice. BBQ everything,
plate lunches, extra starches,
no fresh fresh vegetables.
Muscadine wine, keg of beer,
what's a hurricane party without beer?

It's tasteless in a pan, served with a
handful of anti-cholesterol pills.
Thanks Ma, for the heredity Cajun-blocker,
got myself a devil in a blue apron!

 

[champagne1982]

You Talk Of Gesso 6/30

Come over here, under my pen and let me turn
my imagination from bland to layered imagery
full of entendre and magic words at work and play.
There's a glossy line down the cord that leads
from your ear to your collar. I can taste the salty
pheremone cluster that pools in the hollow below
your Adam's apple. Did my tongue do that?

Or was it my fingernail? Dipped in that puddle
as if it were a brush erasing all our faults
with a single stroke. Spilling gesso down over
that blemish, the one that formed from a hair
follicle inflamed after you carefully denuded
your secret skin of coarse, wiry pubic hair.

Or do we paint a tattoo to change a scar
into a story that celebrates the life the surgeon
extended so that beauty can be experienced over
and over, with colour changing history from tears
to smiles? My lips kiss the upturned corners
of your mouth when you smile in answer to my sighs

My questions teased your reply out with soft breathy
exhales against your ear, fingers tickling down across
that tiny masculine nipple and lower still, to stir creamy
gesso leaking from the tube left uncapped, that a naughty
pussy squeezed when she sat down on it. My pen
becomes a brush and you become the canvas and oh!
What paintings emerge when spring is left unwritten.

 

[Tzara]

6

Ode in Five Limericks
—more or less for my wife, with apologies

In puberty, I behaved shyly.
At seduction I never was wily.
Though I valued good looks,
And I hoped she'd like books,
'Twas intelligence I valued highly.

I had not many dates, like if ever.
I'd converse as if stupid, not clever.
Were she sexy and sweet,
I'd go white as a sheet,
So thought dating a hopeless endeavor.

Then commenced a long time of depression,
With my sanity open to question.
Though attracted, I thought
Women thought me a nought—
An embarrassment, or indiscretion.

Then one night I met M. at a friend's house
And, magnetic as ten trillion ten Gauss,
We talked through the night
(Which I know will sound trite)
And waltzed off to the music of—Yay!—Strauss.

And so here's what to take away from this—
Your convictions on love are worth bupkis.
There is someone out there
Whom you'll love. Don't despair.
And while love is not perfect, it's some bliss.

 

[Angeline]

6-30

Unfinished

Sisters. They're everywhere.

Parochial iron crows,
Sr Theodora Beneficent
or Malevolent, beady or punitive.
Sisters of mercy, earnest brides
of Christ who smile without rancor
and feed the hungry.

Sisters
burning bras and marching,
Betty Bella Gloria,
sisters in arms parading-
past hoots and jeers working
the network or the mimeograph,
solidarity of motherhood
of bodies that nourish bodies.
Sisters who learn to break chains,
who won't be property.

There's a sister one loses
in a flash, a private Hiroshima
that blows up the world
though no one else sees
the slow half-life that follows,
the quiet decay in which one tries
to animate moments.

There's even a father's sister
one discovers too late
for anything but resembling
from a distance, a smile,
an expression that connects
however tenuous, however
lost.

 

[Lyricalli]

6/30

Can't count the times --
such a colorful expression
but I can

I remember them all
every time you turned away
while I held steady

Well, best as I could
grabbing at anything
that held me up when I wobbled

Never said I wasn't clumsy
and sometimes my words fumble
intentions tumbling
rolling all over the floor
marbles of me just getting under feet

Could've been worse
like Legos

All those times I've lost you
don't add up to how often
you've found me
and I can't count the times



Some days you just go with whatever you've got, yeah?

 

[Levitating_Bed]

6/30

like something

like something forgotten
out of a mutual self-preservation
a negative space

which rendered mutual moot

risk-averse even in contemplation
easier thought than said
and easier said than

done

like something wounded
reaching out, blind, numb,
touch unrecognized

in cold and dark rooms,
in the occasional
close and shared quiet

we know what
we had always known

Nothing was ever going to remain perfect.

when i do see your smile
i remember those times,
how it felt to be a source

i feel it in the center of my body

like something hopeful
as our eyes meet only for a moment

it might be all i ever get and
sometimes,
it is enough

 

[29wordsforsnow]

7/30

Let me start this journey
knowing so well, there lies
wetness waiting beneath
the soft surface I walk
along the narrow trail
overgrown with thicket
asking me to gather
most greedy lungfills of
nature's earthy aromas
present all the way up
as pace and breathing swell
till the scenery blurs
reaching the final peak

Catching my wind
I draw in peace
in the dense woods
on Knobstone Trail

 

[todski28]

7-30

There’s something in
the stare she bares
the way it cuts me

to the marrow of consciousness
the pretentious mess
of an apology
isn’t quite what is needed
just enough of a band-aid
to hide the lies that spill from
aching jaws

we’ve been here before
danced on the thin lines
of despair
and the moment of almost goodbyes
sees us rutting like
animals

some messages we can’t deliver
they’re blocked by
our inability to seperate
logic from loins

and as I ram my rage home
and she screams as if this
this moment is what she was made for
I realise we’re simply
sanding away at each other

eventually we’ll
be nothing but sawdust
but for now
she’s hot
and wet
and willing

 

[Piscator]

VII/XXX

Seven Birthday Cakes

“no matter how tightly you try and hold on
you can't stop the sand getting to the bottom half of the glass.”
Levitating Bed - 5/30 - This Song

It’s not the flow but the erosion that gets me
each day it takes a little bit more
leaving a little less.

Mom will be 90 this summer but there will be
no grand celebration of her life, just
a sigh at what is lost.

As all seven siblings arrived together, would
only confuse her, we’ll visit separately
if the US sisters are allowed
across the border.

Seven birthday cakes, the day and number
don’t really matter, she likes cake
and lives in the present moment.

 

[Angeline]

7-30

Barbara

Remember West 45th Street
and all those monks, chanting
past the Martin Beck Theater?
Frank Langella starred in Dracula,
sets by Edward Gorey. My dear
I never drink...wine. We missed

the last train home, spent the night
in Penn Station, drank scotch
till the bars closed and talked
all night. So many adventures

and I still wake thinking of what
I want to tell you, how I want
to hear your opinions, watch
your eyes, hear that gentle laugh,
the cadence of your voice
so ingrained in my memory.

Nobody laughed like us.

 

[Lyricalli]

7/30

I've wandered for years
in a search for solid ground
but you are a beach
and the waves just keep coming
I sink deeper into you

 

[Tzara]

7

Cigarettes

Glamour clings to her like the smell of Gitanes in wool.
—Edmund White, The Beautiful Room Is Empty

They helped me know what to do
with my hands,
while I was waiting

for that second drink or your knee
to nudge mine under the tablecloth.
Even lighting one

was an event—the scrape of the match
like your leg stretched, unclothed
along asphalt

or splayed out in bed, afterwards,
when we would try to make conversation before
going at each other again,

because that's the only way we knew
how to be together.
First, the little spurt of flame,

followed by the long, slow smolder
as I thought about how and where
I should touch you, run my lips and tongue

along and into and around, to tune
the instrument of your body
to produce that perfect, resonant trill.

How we would litter the bed with ash,
as if in our fervent coupling we had shed
siftings of our own scorched skin.

 

[Moochienanu]

7April2021

Villainess

Trying to figure out what happened
When spiraling whirlpool of self-doubt starts pulling my toe,
I run through the tattered remnants of a teenage memory
There are highlights that are so frayed by time
That their validity likely has no purchase.

There is a night - possibly my birthday party? -
Rebelling, I traded 2nd base for a date to homecoming
With this badboy friend of a friend
Who went to a locked school for delinquents.

A bridesmaid dress from my brother’s wedding
Hunter green monstrosity my sister sewed
And he insisted that he didn’t “dance.”

So I danced with a guy I had a crush on since AP Calc -
His name was Dave.
And wore red suspenders, which I pulled toward me
While we danced.

The entire memory of the night ended at the dance
And I remember it all as a great night.

But see, we are all the villain in someone else’s story
And I had a great night with these fantastic memories
Of smiles
And twirling
And flirting...
But my date? He walked away with the opposite.

Learning this years later through our mutual friend,
He had felt “forced” into taking me to the dance
He thought that we were boyfriend-girlfriend when we did
He assumed I would continue to date him after the dance.

When I flirted and danced with Dave,
When I didn’t insist he dance with me,
When I didn’t go out with him again,
He took it as a personal slight -
Which apparently, with time compounding,
Turned into a belief that no woman would ever choose him.

He has never dated again.
Ever.

It always seems so extreme to me -
That I could ever be so cruelly malicious without the memories to back it up,
But I’ve combed through each of them,
Over and over,
Searching for the nit I was told exists
And just can’t seem to find.

 

[champagne1982]

Guilt 7/30

It's not something simple.
There's complexity there
in the mille feuilles
of human emotion.

A thousand layers,
a thousand times
to amend, append
and apprehend
what went wrong.

How can you put it in a box
when it still shoots filaments
of piercing denunciation
of all you stand for? Yet
you failed to stand up.

This is how it plays out.
You see a proclamation
that hurts and slices away
all pretense that you're ok.

You're not standing there
with white privelege
dripping off your skin.
Why should you be ashamed?

Yesterday you didn't over-tip
your waitress because
you didn't want to look patronizing.
Why should you be ashamed?

You didn't steal, you didn't kill,
you didn't hate - or did you?
How can you be ok
with the scalpel of truth
incising your innocence
and laying bare your justification.

No not guilt, just blind indifference.
I think that's worse.

 

[29wordsforsnow]

8/30

challenged by the latest clock change
we still try to trick the prefrontal cortex
and plan to start with mug of coffee
only to wake up to a 'What, so late?'
kicking us from our B-movie dreams
that miss colors, sound and subtitles
thus complaining about decaf poems
would be senseless

confused by climate change
we thought of yesterday's sun
and danced in today's snow
only to leave socks and sweaters on
rolling on the floor heating
to change positions more often
than a fresh briefs disordered
would find sane

caught in between lockdown changes
we lost track of weekdays, tea times
and proper bed positions
only to find us diagonally or across
lying on the bed blanket facing upwards
the ceiling still has last year's pattern
time to give this a fresh make-over
wouldn't you think