NaPoWriMo 30

My father and I tour the basement.
I hold my breath, forgetting I needn't
close my eyes for the bathroom -
they replaced the tortured toilet,
bashed-in sink six years ago. We talk
mildew on the windowledge, do not
worry about falling through the floor.
He says the sliding door is single pane
my mother yells down it's double.
I put my fingers either side, verify
his version. The day darkens here
in the dark corner. She wants me
to look at the broken German clock
and the broken blonde one behind
she's giving to my brother. Why?
I ask. Because he remembers it,
she says, and I say, I remember it,
but that doesn't mean I want it.
She points at 33's and 78's my sister
has told her she doesn't want.
She fusses about shipping them.
I say, She doesn't want the records.
My mother sits on the stuffy sofa
blossoming batting out its ugly arm.
"Such a lovely piece," she says, points
to the end table my sister does want.
The detritus of two lives jumbled
around us, ill cared for as we were,
even cases of his Mark Fable wine
mixed - empty, full, stacked together
like a mind perpetually elsewhere.

NaPoWriMo 25

I want badly to be heard
but I have nothing to say
am mum on the matter of money
impotent as to prosperity

for you to get what you want
I must sacrifice what I want
and I'm not willing to do that
whimsical as you say.

---

You wear the gauge that measures depth
neoprene mitts and wetsuit dull the act
your partner gives thumbs up,
flutters through fan coral's vertical array
all for fun and beauty until POW
your air has fled you're in the cave, no Tom
to save you now. Just so we go for broke
for all that glitters in the proverb
face mask whether fogged or vented
fresh water muddies what you thought was ease.
Oh please. Keep your mind on pressure, ami,
before this boat lets drop another rider --
if only we could plan this from a desk!
Orca bulk menaces like Orson
your fingers ridiculous and reedy
reserve tank holds more air to draw
you give yourself a moment to adapt
nothing in the midst is solid
how will you provide, provide?

NaPoWriMo 24

Rhodie buds swell to Christmas lights as I pass
tolerating shade like me and Yew
this spring when winter cannot seem to stop,
that which was to be demonstrated, not.
Robin drops straw, dips, flies off with more --
a million tales in this not so naked city acre.
Sprays stop rot and encourage blossom set
in the 40s here, but 59 degrees in Oslo.
English ivy pushes itself upwards
I yank its fingers from fir trunk furrows
jump away as it falls around my arm.
Sky thickens from gray to puce,
alder splats spent catkins as it sways
above the wavering chicken windvane.
Maples begin within asphalt crack
and in spaces between decking.
Last year's thumbthick seedlings hide
in the prickly hawthorne between yards.
For all I have missed I wish to be forgiven.

NaPoWri Mo 22

I scrape carefully at the price sticker
pasted across Mozart's profile
this is no metaphor, I plucked
this chocolate from the plastic pail
at the grocery checkout stand
"Mozart Herz'l" from the Austrian cafe
on the way to your D.C. newsroom
before we knew your dad had cancer
I carefree under the Calder mobiles,
meeting you underground for tea.




----




Mozart's measured sweetness
survives the oboeist's combover. In our era
I listen on YouTube, my heart open, avid.
Too many needles in the internet haystack
and Google finds them. I needn't go a mile.
Bach's passion on foot across Germany
to hear an organ. I can hear eleven
any hour.

---

Humane Impulse of the Lyric
After Hearing Ed Hirsch at Intiman Theater


He wanted to write an American poetry
intellectually robust but with heart. Modernists
were cold and their fascistic tendencies, Elliot,
Pound, not unrelated. Poetry precedes prose
and there is poetry in every culture - he doesn't
want ours to be the one to drop the ball.
The tendencies of poetry are two: elegy and
celebration. Time for more celebration. At his age
he says it too has darkness, not a poetry for the young.
"Give me back my father," he began, emotional
high C, embracing Tsvetaeva's short poem power.
He warmed with help from Mandelstam,
Milosz, Zbigniew Herbert, Adam Zagajewski.
Poetry is social, he said, conjured more poets -
Paul Celan to say poems are messages in bottles -
the poet sends one out, you find it, it is yours.
Ninito Neruda glimpsing another child's hand
through a fence hole, exchanging wheeled sheep
for his treasured resinous cone - gift for gift,
writing and reading, humane impulse of the lyric.

NaPoWriMo 21

Lake surface appears to move towards town
action that can be lifted off from thing
though the geese blown out of their V
a thousand feet above us are inseparable
from the movement of their wings which fight
we can tell, even down here, to stay
together and stay their course. now
two V's, now a V and a wandering line,
geese forging ahead of the group like
the strongest from the peloton pressing
forward, pumping calf muscles intent
on what? These birds no longer migrate.
After snowmelt we surprise
a starling from its mailbox nest. It rockets
like comic superhero from the stick
mess on top of a soppy folded phonebook.
You want to know why I think this is.

NaPoWriMo 20

Ye Gods and Little Fish Hooks


Holy crap! he says as the day begins
April 20 and the sky awash with flakes
hillside tree limbs and cabin roofs,
our neighbor's new boat lift white.
In front of me, Lake Chelan undulates
gray near shore, melds into weather
overhead and around us. Will we
see color open from six stiff-necked
tulips or will their lips stay sealed?
Arbor grapes with leaf buds the size
of bebes and our apricot blossoms
falling with the snow. Where are
the birds today? Can the fishes see
it snowing?

NaPoWriMo 19

Auto Penitence


Forgive me others for I have directed
another to fill the oil receptacle
of my vehicle with water to the brim
I have turned the key, oblivious
to grim consequence, and I have
phoned AAA in willful ignorance
of my error. I have stood haughty
and sniggering at the piddly belief
a boy held that water would spew
and burn us if we did not wait two
hours for the engine to cool. I chided
him "you silly" for his ignorance
as I turned the oil receptacle cap,
turning my face away from water
contained to my left. My ego grown
godly my haughtiness knew no
bounds as I bid him from his carwash
hose to pour. "How much?" he asked
and I said, "More!"

NaPoWriMo 15

Mineralite structure defines opal
ugly gumption fills the toad
Refind Bogachiel on this map
Don't choose only at the deli
squirrel shares color with the hare
mugclub mits on microbrew ale
a penny for your etiquette
we have eternity to rot
wonder at ginzu knives' hundred uses
take time and take your pique
it all has value Bogus Basin
on Sol Duc trail and off the menu
So here is where we are, Egad!
Hesitate you lose. The Frankest
sourpuss, picklepuss, gloomy gus
urges latex gloves and tongs
cautions delays, defy them too
cedars do not emulate sequoias
pursue your pencil to its stub
Quillayute moves as does the Ural
Dig beneath the soil it's fiery
golden geese emerge from beans
poplars' sticky gum makes balm
Ungulates look forward to the rut
feldspar and copper form turquoise
missives take the sky along this arc
who cares what Joseph did to Essau
the sentimental crap from Noel
do-si-do my way just don't say Doh!
I'll miss my life more than its data.

npwm 14

Limulus polyphemus


Its carapace outlives the horseshoe crab
beach house chatchka ashtry scams
aside, fishery vessels mine the copper
in their blood not blessed like ours with hemo-
globin, the true blue bloods of Maryland.
Arthropods like trilobites except they lived.
Red knots and loggerheads eat their eggs.
Regrow limbs like seastars, check your notes,
Paleozoic lives in them and they're not over.
Hoover upright ugly, salt marsh cord grass,
book gills so they breathe awhile on land.
Rough surf flips them helpless as ladybugs,
Mezozoic underdogs who outlasted dinosaurs.

NaPoWriMo April Poetry Challenge Day 3

NapoWriMo 3

Near Valladolid a man shows us old pesos
burro on his porch, his wife serves Oreos,
chicken scratch, the polyp on his neck, now
buitres shade our map, a temple, on the road,
Colonial town squares yellow as ether
old encountered new we stare agog
Mayans in hardhats oompaloompas at the inn
Quintana Roo all candy for our ids.
Jaguar rite ball court I'm a mutt
no family here a thousand years ago.
Tulum women to my shoulder, prim,
their laundry in the ditch, do not quote Hesse--
no one on earth as smug as we
who milk it all and swipe the cream
gave the world flush toilets and sonata
x's on the map for cinnamon, gold, and oil
worthless hump of coins we're on the town
there's more where that came at the ATM.

NaPoWriMo April Poetry Challenge Day 2

NaPoWriMo 2: 4/2 Sheffer Puzzle Poem Draft

Nereocystis bobs above its holdfast
branched and gripping fist sized rocks else
no surface tassel forest, no hollow tube
to blow. To be alive we must assert.
Earthworms, superior annelids, elude
trowel; tulips bloom, tomatoes set.
Ocean bulbs sway to waning crescent,
we dream of conquest and The Blob.
Glacial till filters upward through rake.
Moles make holes so voles eat calla,
trumpet and aurelian. Strain yin,
no Paraguayan pineapple for Dole.
It's not worldly, our argument for gain
another had to fall for you to chacha.

National Poetry Month Daily Poetry Challenge from NaPoWriMo

NaPoWriMo 1: April 1 Sheffer Puzzle Poem Draft





Primal Therapy lowered my range to alto

purple egg carton ceiling, foam wall, No Zen,

scraped grains of old wrath from the silo.

I lost composure at the Royal Fork, loon

beside the withering green beans, plod

to red lit roast beef stalled as my sea

wall burst through older folks and teens.

I was twenty two, ran sobbing to the car.

Resist reenacting this with emoticon rebus.

Olympics block Pacific storms' brusque

intrusion to the Sound. I have stood atop,

reckless pugilist against prevailing wind.