Musing about NaPoWriMo 15

Hump day! Only fifteen more daily poems after this one. Oh oh, that was a scary utterance. The weight of 15, beware the Ides! Reading the Academy of American Poets' journal this morning, speaking of weighty, "inadequate in the face of meaning" spoke to me from Sven Birkett's piece which was I think talking about why people are afraid of and don't read poetry. The other day, reading about something not poetry, oh it was opals, I read about "defraction," which I think is something like what my poems want to accomplish.

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.

13 Bonus couplet

Never think I am stupid or wrong.
Please praise me I am stupid and wrong.

NaPoWriMo 13

My father wouldn't
give anything back,
like trying to see my reflection
in a planked-up door.
Home from college,
I pelted him with silverware.
He didn't flinch.
He just looked at me.

When I asked my mother,
what does dad say
about moving
to the retirement community?
She said,
"He just looked at me."

NaPoWriMo 12

as sea opens to prow
mollusks mar the hull in drab
clusters that won't be coming off
in the hold are sandals from Lima
flipbooks, fishhooks, walls eely
dank, a hundred cases filled with roe
rocked beneath surface billows
tuna herds turn as if on cue
south polar skua cut shearwaters path
humans have little history here
a gray whale won't revere an earl
turtle hatchlings disoriented by magnet
manta ray bookmark, its silver tassel
marking oyster bisque or adage
strings burned away before capping the bottle
your boat may be a joke for a whale to ram
sea lions lumber unto bellbuoy like a sofa
we want these far off things to make us wise.

NaPoWriMo 11, really

Re-engineering the Foundation


garage plan splays across kitchen table
blueprint measurements marked with slashes
insipid piano crescendoes. Tape measure
retracts with a slashing snap.

Ivory prince lenten rose swells, its bells bow
barebranch dogwood feathers with tiny buds
garage, storage, workroom uproot them
from my window, another but.

My father says he is not mature enough
to trust his decisions. He won't decide.
He follows grumbling behind. I know this.
Tape measure slaps entry floor.

NaPoWriMo 11

oh jezuz gawd I threw out my words this morning, came home from the coffee shop with the exterior of the Life and Arts section without my completed Shefer Crossword, just the husk of the thing with the "Love me, legal tender" article on the front with its great graphic, knowing what we know about Benjamin Franklin.

Last night my friend said she is practicing compassionate something. Distance? Dispassion? Disinterest? Disappointment? Detachment. I know it's detachment because I wrote it down.

The last couple of days I've had the sentence, "everybody is fragile but me" playing in my head, and I have a strong negative response to that, so this is not about what I think or want, but brought up by the coming/looming/dreaded helping the parents get their act together, which is to say helping them make their transition from their enormous five bedroom house to a smaller place, probably the retirement community with the care continuoum, which may be spelled that way. But, you are wondering about today's poem.

NaPoWriMo 10

shimmy baby it's all sham
maypole dancers flat against hub
what you love abandoned for bile
breezes and blizzards got to go
lights and darks added to our era
around we go again, amen.
As bluebirds wove sit-upons
mothers mopped about all
those unmade beds, time sped,
bad choices made bigger
trashroom panicked lair,
might have beens, rodeo clown
cpa, shimmer in your olden
tragic mirror. Move ere
we come unrolling rainout tarps
forgive me on your radiophone
each thing becomes a shadow self
be a pussycat, befriend an owl
slap yourself my dear for this is true
if you don't tip the teapot nothing pours
tackle box wigglers and dried up roe
basement bifolds open to rile
frizzled prom night posy
all you've sidestepped our onus.

what the hecky hell is wrong with my blog setup situation? suddenly not only is this frackin thing far over to the left with big old white to the right but the top has no room to breathe. This thing looks like crap and I don't know how to fix it.

NaPoWriMo 9

To My Father at 84


You held your breath it all erodes
you've got tastebuds better savor
smartest in your class
poet at four and twenty
regrets die with you too and when
you do not choose your life depends
you splat like robin egg on deck
cherry blossom carpet outside Sears
knife scrapes plate your fingers bony
why not gobble Good and Plenty
abandon all that crap and nuance
rip her fingers from your roses
yell "they're mine!"

NaPoWriMo 8

NaPoWriMo 8: After Hearing Lucille Clifton At Intiman


windows and mirrors she says still an elf
for a milkshake you have to eat your peas
he used a potato in a sock she used to hide
living is ridiculous no matter how we rant
wear a full face helmet in this area
even as we watch the Dead Sea
to be a human person is an asset
her mother burned her own poems, our
faces feel the heat, she has brooded
how naming unmakes history. "My husband
was a yogi my niece says walk a pig
by her see what she'll do." Repetition makes
it true. Alexie arrested for fighting a guy
who dissed her poems. "My hero."

NaPoWriMo 7

NaPoWriMo PoemDraft 7

all that glitters is not your guru
ask your mother or your sib
eat your lobster not the bibs
heart and mind wide open
close neatly with twist ties
Don't try to be favored, even Esau
loses as did Marty's dad to Biff
my sister says "You have to be right"
takes the early flight and I intuit
whatever it is I want to fly away
give me words what do I think?
five year old huffing gas from Jim's bike
could've been me if I couldn't read.

NaPoWriMo 6

The mama dropped the baby and its head popped off
my daughters sang and sproing the yellow flowers leapt
sprung off of their knotted stems by chubby hands.

My sister and I round each other warily, wanting
we're both wanting what sisters give each other --
we're knotted in our need and quick to pounce away.


--

My friend has a slit across the base of her throat
sutured mouth that held a gob around her thyroid
she'll be quarantined in June with a great view -
bereft of comb and rings, given pill from lead box,
recover all most certainly to tell the tale.

She and Jim talk about taste buds and salivary mist
what he misses that is never coming back --
red wine tastes worse than mud. "Like yeast?"
she asks. "Like mold." Her spouse and I
drink wine. "Another?" I offer. He says, "Yes."

NPWM 5

I Google "furor", am shown a photo of art
made of feathers and a pickled fetus head
that image in my head forever after
this an age of disconnect and shocks
blue TV haze, a pistol in each clutch
reptile brain screaming run or crouch.

---
Triolet

In April, Flickers descend upon the building
openings the size of soup cans in the wall
they've got the nesting instinct it is spring
In April, Flickers descend upon the building
Picture birds in flight and how they sing
These peck fist sized holes, we hope for fall
hang faux owls in hopes of stopping
openings the size of soup cans in the wall.

FINANCIAL NEWS

The Forbes Fictional Fifteen

NaPoWriMo April Poetry Challenge Day 4 (NPWM 4)

NaPoWriMo April Poetry Challenge Day 4

Snivel on the sidelines, someone acts
what you are wanes daily just a tad
wait a day to harvest lose the crop
moon rides our blood like sire
axe swing splits another rail
string ladderwork lifts sweetpea
angleworm eats through April soil
as was foretold by savant DNA
pale November threatens sloe
from underground the gusher tolls and Jed
there are so many panties yet to raid
another splinter slides into a paw
lines across your TV aren't even static
circumstances change so shrinks the sourball
so stack your comments in another pile
verve or no we swerve along this oval.

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.

My mother takes me on tour, saleswoman in tow
my father calls it "the mausoleum," mugs as for FBI
my mouth is shut as though threatened with soap.
The sky above Cougar Mountain glows dull opal.
I remember the winter fort my father and I dug
snow for by the swingset miles west of here. Halo
clouds memory. They're eighty, too late to redo -
downsize first before this move that makes it all
real. Downpayment's next, they've given oral
nods. Its all decisive. I am used to muddles.
Soon we'll Goodwill garage and basement scrap.
My father calls it "the prison" but he's exerted
words as she's made plans. He'll sign the check.
He's lodged his protest, will move and lapse
to late night solitare computer glow. Each atom
wound around its axle spins. This place
a lovely isle "hermetically sealed" he says, etc.
this heaven they have saved so hard to earn
Upscale ski lodge, hospital tucked upstairs it's got
fine dining, health club, library, trendy art glass,
bathroom emergency pull cords shown with tact
its somewhat act this active living while they bide
awee towards death, and yet.