NaPoWriMo Challenge - April 1 - April 30

[Remec]

9/30

White Rabbit

I woke with a start,
eyes wider than one might think,
and hopped from bed
in a rush to dress and dash
through the kitchen
for something to eat on the run;

Late again,
head shakes and I know my body
trembles with every step
as I fly out the door,
hoping without much hope to
beat Her to work;

Maybe I’ll keep my head,
if I’m lucky,
but I’ve forgotten my gloves again,
Shall have to send Mary Ann for them.

 

[Remec]

10/30

Mid-month

Writing is behind again, but at least all the month's bills are paid.

 

[Piscator]

XVII/XXX

Still Life on Mars?

From the dawn of history, man has
looked to the sky with wonder at this unblinking
red star which has been central to our mythology
and imagination from before Roman times to
the canals first viewed through Schiaparelli’s
telescope in the music of Holst’ s Planets, and
the wonder of Burroughs and Wells’ tales

To date, we’ve thrown some forty-eight
chunks of metal at this planet, with
varying degrees of success, searching
for answers to fundamental questions.
What happened to Mars’s atmosphere,
does water lie frozen under those ragged
craters at the planet’s poles and was there or
is there still life on Mars?​

 

[Piscator]

XVIII/XXX

Waves

As we enter another lockdown
for the third wave of this inexorable
pandemic, with new variants appearing
almost daily, and vaccination is progressing
hesitantly, while our school children are going
to remote again, and the ICU’s on the verge of over
flowing, I just can’t help wondering if the seventh wave
will be a tsunami.

 

[champagne1982]

An Isotope Of Life 18/30

I have moments of spiritual communion
with this small blue gem while it floats
within the infinite void, as if nothing
is a place and we are someplace in nowhere.

When nature surrounds me with changes,
the seasons remind me of how much
my soul depends on this beautiful world,
and how selfish my childish life is.

I forget I am a curator of this small
invaluable collection, how much of it
is irreplaceable, and how careless
I can be when I blind my conscience.

I don't want to see the depths we dig
to bring poison out of the safety
of earth's reservoirs as she filters
and recycles the filth into what is good.

My shortsighted youth and infinitely
microscopic presence in the universe
translates to one large and damaging
blemish, a footprint in pristine snow.

Now, because a cascade of antibodies
can rapidly turn a boil into sepsis;
I realize, that because I've ignored
the vileness for too long, I am doomed.

There is no surgery or cure for this cancer
but I pray that with effort, we can mitigate
the damage and hand our children, at least
a hope that theirs will survive what's to come.

 

[Angeline]

18-30

What Happens When I Listen to Jazz*

No two ways about it:
Spring is here, that brief
tender softening of ground,
buds opening to rain
like hungry little mouths,
small hopeful signs.

Your ballad is a metaphor,
warm and strong. It's a Sun
or is it flowers with such sweet
intoxicating riffs and rills?
I want to be held like your flowers
in that promise of a lush life,
the build to a crescendo, a climax
of notes sustained, heat
and bounty.

*It Might As Well Be Spring

 

[Tzara]

20

I have moments of spiritual communion. . .

Shy Beauty

Her body, naked in the moonlight, is a glorious thing.
....Were I religious, she would be my Tao,
.......My path towards Enlightenment, my joy, my hymn;
Her breasts and hips an aria I would brightly sing
....And venerate her nightly with my low, obeisant bow,
........Whispering devotion between those twinned legs—tanned, long, and slim.

This holy service, delightful, daft, I would arrange
....As often as is possible, for fine example—now,
........In midday sun or evening's dusk when light's limns dim
Through which her shoulders, neck, sweet breasts remain unchanged:
................Praise them.

 

[Lyricalli]

18/30

As if I was just along for the ride
I'd hop in
destination be damned
the journey was you

We talked about everything
nothing
and I miss the white noise of the road
when words weren't necessary
and how it all somehow made sense
of the mess that is me

I'm so alive when you and me are drivin'
and like a kid
I want to knock on your door
ask if you can come out and play
in the space we made
for each other





"I'm so alive when you and me are drivin'"
Come Out Tonight - Jeffrey Gaines
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0CzEXVbrfug (live)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7fQMgYVvYpY (album version)

 

[Levitating_Bed]

17/30

Through the plexiglass, behind masks, two tired workers laugh together.

 

[29wordsforsnow]

20/30

We hurt the ones we love the most
It's a subtle form of discipline
"I Don't Care" - Shakespears Sister, 1992

Russian Roulette

Ewa, you are where I began
deviated here from Bhutan
well, stranded on my divan
tell me one, the best you can
rhyming phonetic caravan
claiming a lot in my Diwan

Anna, the lovely twin ...!... Alina, elegant and proud
light for my darkness ...!... with your tinsel and glitter
tight sheath on my sin ...!... demeanor I should avoid
hips clad in mystique ...!... care about myself instead
lips made of shyness ...!... more of your cheap fetter
anagrams they speak ...!... bath me in all your greed
re
volv
er
Kira, ruler of my lore ...!... Alla, the weasel twin
shake up my conflicts ...!... reverted corpse smile
we saw within my core ...!... vile blooded creature
wake me up with kicks ...!... coarse is your nature
be raw, make me sore ...!... perverted crops within
break up my verdicts ...!... calamitous of course

Zoya, love and life, and end
had we met in the first place
all days would have been yours
but caught in my schedules
that stop over at you, triggering
my head's spinning again
​

 

[Moochienanu]

18April2021

Taking Shape

Poured over
Smoothed out
Used and finished
By eyes with momentum
While the past played
Eager to get down -
Exposed,
Received,
Open.

 

[todski28]

put that song on the music box
and I'm lost in the night
want to thank God for all the good I've found
despite the bad I've done
but haven't been to confession
since the church excommunicated me as a child
because I was wild, untamed
and taught the language of revelry
was in the deviltry of smashing my fist into the face
of the next person that decided to open their mouth

so now I'm here listening to music
swallowing my moral sins as if they'll
magically dissolve and not simply
become a part of me again
it tastes like memories and self-pity
that I want to hawk up and spit on the bar

you don't know me bar these images
and I'm breaking the fourth wall
as if you're on the next stool and
we're talking the way normal people used to
pre-covid as if you care what I'm saying
nodding sagely before stopping to have a sip
then dropping back to silence to let the drunkard
ramble on
acting as if the stools a confessional

whiskeys is the blood of Christ

bar nuts are communion

holding onto wafer thin belief in a deity that probably
abandoned us


my scarred knuckles crack
the fire in my mouth dulls the arthritic ache
because I've hit rocks at the bottom
torn my fingernails off trying to dig through it

redemption is simply
6 more drinks away
so I'll toast what I forget
until the hangover cries like
bats in the night trying to see in the dark

 

[Levitating_Bed]

18/30

A True Story

Emphysema and COPD slow dancing together inside her tiny torso,
the last years of my grandmother's life were difficult. It isn't
slow dancing she'd say, it must be Latin and then pause before
adding, usually with a wink, because It takes my breath away.

Out of thirteen of us sons and daughters of sons and daughters
I was, for reasons that belong in another poem, her favorite.
And despite it's being unearned I never took it for granted:
hers was the kind of love that, despite however freely she
gave it, however endless the supply, you wanted to be worth.

She was so upset when I stopped believing in God. Tell me, I
said, How faith is anything more than an accident of
geography, of who you're born to? Tell me, I said, how
any God's love could possibly be better than yours?
I will still pray for you she said, and I smiled, kept quiet,
knowing her prayers bettered the world no matter who heard them.

She moved in with my mom as she declined. I saw her often
those last couple of years. Cups of Salada tea, caramel bullseyes,
and every season of MASH on DVD. She'd had six kids, had lost one
of them in their first year. There had never been enough money -
she knew it was always triage, always meatball surgery.

Nearer to the end, I would often hold her hand as we watched.
Or maybe she held mine. We played Gin, drank tea. Even closer
to the end, though she slept more and more, and ate less and less,
she was in better spirits as the time finally approached.

She learned all of the hospice nurses' names and got their life
stories. They all loved her: she's-so-funny-she's-so-sweet-
she's-so-kind-she's-so-sharp-It's-really-something-to-be-so-
at-peace... She was almost smug about all of it.

On the last day, she woke up for me when I kissed her forehead.
Won't be long now. she smiled. Tell him what we did today she
said to the nurse. The nurse laughed and said No! You tell him.
Jesus, mom... said my mom from behind me with surprise and shock.
Haven't been pooping so I got an enema. she said. You what now?
I said, confused, and for a moment, worried her mind had gone -

I'm not going to heaven covered in shit.

said my grandmother. The sweetest, kindest, and most loving person
I have ever known. And, having delivered it - really landed it like a
punchline - she smiled so wide, her eyes so full of mirth and trouble
and glee, that the whole room laughed with her, and so did I,
long and deep and real and true, and tears came with the laughter.

I got you she said. I got you good.

Always. I said through my tears. Always. She said,
and squeezed my hand as tightly as she could.

 

[Piscator]

XIX/XXX

mfm versus fmf

In these delightful interludes
do problems arise
when two cocks protrude?

Perchance we find a willing lass
will she take
in mouth, pussy and in ass?

In sharing with two stumpets free
are there
problems with geometry?

If I, two wanton wenches find
will one strap
on and take me from behind?

 

[Moochienanu]

19April2021

during

poetry happens
in those moments

before

jagged intake of breath
pleading bodies
walls built around souls
layers crumbling
reaching for more​

after

drawn-out music of sighs
languid motions
puzzle pieces found
clicking together
immovably entwined​

in those moments
poetry happens

 

[Angeline]

19-30

Trayvon

Two families not in fair Verona
but America, the scene of our case.
It's a rainy night. He walks alone, a
child with candy, a phone. His damp face
a dark beacon some fear, misunderstand.
Their ignorance set in unseeing eyes:
a plague on our houses! Capricious land
of innocence spoiled, too late the cries
when the deed is done and the child dead.
How many lives ruined by rancor and lies?
A whole country locked in discord and dread.
Cameras zoom, flash, sensationalize

all of us under these lopsided skies,
all of us under these lopsided skies.

 

[Tzara]

21

Technical Clarification Needed

Is it instead a Canadian Sentence if it starts out with "Please?"

 

[Tzara]

22

my wanton tongue seeks your heat

Midnight

A nightingale sings
in the darkness for its mate,
as I must cry out
to you, kneeling before me.
....Yet, I must leave before dawn.

 

[29wordsforsnow]

21/30

Nothing to say
today, a year gone by
of eternal yesterday
when you had said
Nothing, today
a heartbeat
eternally
gone
by
_-_ _-_
/...You...\
\ ... + ... /
\.me./
\./
​

 

[champagne1982]

In midday sun or evening's dusk when light's limns dim

Option Four - A Triolet 19/30

In midday sun or evening's dusk when light's limns dim
and shadows sway in darkness edged with brilliant starshine
cathedrals echo with choral chants of Dies Irae hymns
In midday sun or evening's dusk when light's limns dim
those grape stained lips, so rich and full, brush over mine
focus blurs in lash-fringed glances over a wineglass rim
In midday sun or evening's dusk when light's limns dim
and shadows sway in darkness edged with brilliant starshine

Shadows sway in darkness edged with blue moonlight
soft susurrant murmurs float through an open window
as two figures merge into one in the night
Shadows sway in darkness edged with blue moonlight
You hear her sweet voice whisper please don't go
she needs him to hold her with his arms wrapped tight
against the shadows of darkness edged with blue moonlight
and soft susurrant murmurs float through the open window

(this leaves me unsatisfied but I'm struggling to make it work. I'll edit later)

 

[Tzara]

23

Harmony Guitar

Thinking about St. Vincent's instrument

The thing just sings distortion,
so forget the fuzz pedal
and don't bend so many notes
it won't stay true in tune.

Change the strings often,
for the sharpness of its frets
slice right through those Ernie Ball
slinky nickel wounds

like the snip of a wire cutter
on a country fence.
It's probably best to just play blues.
Because a crap guitar

always sounds more misery
than a three thousand dollar Gibson
when playing in a dive bar
where both the whiskey and the women

are never anything but cheap.


In one of the bands I was in when I was in high school, our lead guitarist had one of these. Who knew that 50 years later it would be a status instrument?

 

[Lyricalli]

19/30

Sitting, minding my own business
when this stupid song plays
........okay, it's not stupid, but...
this stupid song plays
and takes me back
to where I didn't want to go
not right now
with all the other hurts and sorrow
layered through my April

But, here we are

I'm haunted with memories
of breaking your heart
couldn't ignore the part of me
that knew I couldn't be your forever
grateful that forgiveness
and attempts to understand
kept us friends
that we fought through it
fought for it

Pissed off
that we never had the big talk
never really walked through it all
the whys and hows
of loving you and wanting you to move on

Because I wanted you to know
you couldn't have loved me better
now lingering doubts
are mine
there was supposed to be more time

Doesn't matter that I wasn't wrong
it broke my heart, too
so I'm writing to you
crying
remembering when the pain was new
and that you're gone

damn song





"And I want you to know you couldn't have loved me better"
Already Gone - Kelly Clarkson

 

[Levitating_Bed]

19/30

Thermals

I'm tired of flapping my wings.

Did you know that there are rules and best practices
even for moving through seemingly empty space?

It's hard to think about invisible things having fluid dynamics
masses of air moving against and over and around each other...

We get so lost in what we can see
that we forget all of the things we don't know.
All of the things that haven't happened to you
cannot compete with the things you're sure of.
But there's a space between knowledge and faith.

Looking for that invisible, warm, column of air:
the one that will let you rise,
the thing you cannot see until it suddenly surrounds you -
turning into and out of it
mapping it's edges in the moment
by the way you rise and fall
the way the right combination of turning
outwards and inwards regulates altitude.

Nothing in this universe
is moving in a straight line
and it is only moving at all
because of what surrounds it.

And yet we think in straight lines
lines of attack
lines in the sand.

But it's only ever memory that turns
what was a curve into a straight line.

 

[todski28]

Lingering on the cursor
it flashes it glaring eye at me
as I ponder the universe in its insanity
at every point of Energy there’s a circle
a never ending ever-receding matryoshka of circles
and so even though I’m holding your hand right now
at the highest levels of resolution
there’s still a microcosm of space
between us

it feels like a chasm
because I feel nothing from you
and I’m alone

 

[Piscator]

XX/XXX

Delight in Our Company

Spring blossoms of mimosa tree
may wilt at touch of tardy frost
yet at the merest glance from thee
these withered blooms at once defrost.
For we are young our hearts are free
to celebrate this time not lost.
Come with me love, abide with me
to delight in our company.

With summer's warmth, the honeybees
bustle between flower and hive
from nectar they craft sweet honey
but sweeter still with you to swive.
This priceless time I spend with thee
tis that for which all mortals strive.
Come with me love, abide with me
to delight in our company.

In autumn congregations we
all celebrate at Harvest Fair
the providence of nature free.
We bind entwined with loving care
these precious moments we can share
for now and all eternity.
Come with me love, abide with me
to delight in our company.

With winter comes serenity
refuge from life's wearisome cost.
Though young we now, no longer be
fond memories glow of time not lost
those precious moments we can share
for now and all eternity.
Come with me love, abide with me
to delight in our company.