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 |  A new book to house this year's (and future years) NationalPoetryMonth's daily poems. |
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I'm writing once again this year. This book is my special event place for thirty special poems. Here for National Poetry Month in 2018, I'm participating but life has not been kind in the last 15 months, so I'm not always in writing mode. |
And The Moon And The Stars And The World by Charles Bukowski Long walks at night-- that's what good for the soul: peeking into windows watching tired housewives trying to fight off their beer-maddened husbands. and (I know) the moon has its secrets, they dont often get farther than a single synapse in my brain, no matter, they are partial and whispery, they are hunger and thirst for the curious, and if you miss the clearly stated epilogue of their cycle of roundness because of cloudy weather for example, its too bad, so bother! lets write about other brighter less weighted things and (I know) the stars shine light upon (such a poetic word upon) nighttimes mysteries, showing the moment tiny buds of happiness begin to pierce through the snow and the moment I drink a bit too much wine before midnights fateful gongs resound and I turn into, no, this is not Cinderella, but a snoring, less-than-ideal bed partner for my stuffed animals who are polite and dont kick me every ten minutes and (I know) the world is a big complicated place, all too often scary and not-so-nice, but a place I like to find filled with poetry, songs and flowers, the hard part is cramming all this loveliness into one place, a tiny one, called a human soul, animals seem to do this more naturally than we do, perhaps their souls are bigger or less hidden or less afraid or less complicated by love poems or anything else we can think of and (I know) the sun keeps life revolving, death at bay (both keep your balance in check) and dreams a path to looking farther than your kitchen window, even when the herbal garden in the window box needs tending, and yes (I know) you might prefer a nice spot in the shade of a tree, a good book and an iPod with songs constantly changing your vision of things, and since I like this place too, will you marry me? homage to Charles Bukowski [2015.2.4…a] Prompt: Use a phrase from an actual letter in title, epigraph, and/or poem |
| Why change songs? Sometimes, there is one per day. Sometimes a tune by the hour. I have favorite tear-jerkers — no disco mania here -- and sure glad I wasn’t born a girl. The whole boys-don’t-cry shit just gets my testosterone levels excitedly high. Why can’t a man be sad? And like it? Do I like Céline just because I’m gay, is that it? Then Mahler Adagios. They all fit the bill, but replaying fifteen minutes of pure romantic ecstasy takes time. So I take it. Better not disturb me then. Doorbell? Telephone? Get lost world, I’ve gotten off. Try listening to The Rite of Spring three times in a row. My list is endless. Like chocolate, or sex. They make you sing. Nobody wants to change a good thing. Nope. not a fool [2015.1.4…a] Prompt: Changing your tune. |
In the tiniest of scribbles, carefully calligraphed for posterity, Harvey Larken begins the sixteen-point outline of his soon-to-be-published seventh novel, "why should I fly to the moon on a kite". In his windowless, corner table, spared from the hustle and bustle of the laminated countertop where too many non-regulars come for a quick, well-cooked meal, Harvey avoids food stains on his precious napkins. Two years ago they housed most of his DIY book on "the prickly pear diet and the need for liposuction after a certain age". His autobiography "geranium weeds and job hunting on a dying planet" took over seven hundred napkins. Harvey drinks only non-staining bottled water but pays for a full meal twice daily. Years ago he bargained with Dave for a better quality of napkin, a non-bleeding ball-point one. After all, the crowds he draws have transformed Dave’s Dinner (a tacky play on words!) into a reputable tourist haunt that never empties. Harvey reserves Friday afternoons for book signings and other days bravest fans pose with him in modern selfies. No one, however, has ever been able to decipher the writing on his napkins captured in these instagrams. Some days it’s a balance between Norwegian nouns and Croatian verbs, other days it is written artfully in ancient Greek prose mixed with Hebrew prayer and still others in his own pseudo Arabic-Chinese calligraphy that no code book has ever mastered. Harvey Larken stopped writing books on linguistics years ago. He tired of talk show hosts manhandling his twistable mind capable of juggling up to thirty-seven different languages in his famous "combo duo writes". Those books had no following. bookworms [2014.29.4…b] Prompt: Whatever you say fits on a napkin in a diner |
A strange humming. Reminiscent of a string orchestra tremolo, pianissimo, barely audible. Mahler. You see the bows moving from the top balcony but sound is only visual. Shadows bend into each other, street lights begin to dim, someone threw the switch six hours too early. Footsteps on the street. The lucky worker returns home early. A doorbell rings wakefulness from dreams. Will he catch his wife in other arms in their wedding bed? No, there is only darkness on the other side of this door. The cat purs, the earlier humming. In the dark of the moon, life loses sharpness, rounded into imaginary, curved into echoes. Is this the aftermath of war? The smoldering of destruction and despair. a humming [2014.29.4…a] Prompt: Dark of the moon |
Pigeons fly one by one from the peaked roof. Thirty ugly black streaks spoiling the view. Dive bombers. Don’t explode anywhere, even if you fed them arsenic laced corn. They don’t crash into each other like bumper cars or very-early-sunday-morning-disco-dancing-returning-home-falling-asleep-at-the-wheel drivers. They should. Pigeons can’t take alcotests. Perhaps they should. Has anyone discovered a utility for these birds outside of a gourmet kitchen? Or drunken drivers? Perhaps for this latter category bumper car therapy needs to be perfected. Rig them with high powered electric jolts every time they crash. The trouble with learning new habits, is the bait. Now, if pigeons flew off the roof chasing bats, for example. Or were capable of pollinating fruit trees in China where the bees have gone extinct. Or could steal cars from disco parking lots. bumper cars, pigeons and bait [2014.28.4…a] Prompt: The trouble with Mondays… |
Hip, hip, hooray for surprise endings. I needed fun. Life has lost its fun. Routine. Boring, steep-inducing routine exterminates humanity. Take Miss K.’s idea of a morgue librarian. Does that make me a morgue musician because I teach dead people’s songs? Or study dead people’s poetry in a wooded society? Everything swaying a la "marche funèbre" until death do us part. Maybe I need a commemoration of six million ghosts. The ceremonies will be moving, tear-jerking. Certainly a sensibly sane way of breaking routine. Perhaps they will play funeral marches. War orphaned kids from Africa and child slaves from Bangladesh with drums in their feeble hands chanting the threads of memory. The tsunami victims, voiceless. Oh, the list of those we mourn can go on and on. Hasn’t this routine become just as commercial as Halloween? All Saints Day has more humility and humanity. Enough to put a guy prematurely in a long metal morgue drawer stamped "inappropriate" just because he outgrew believing the Tooth Fairy. Or took her to court because she didn't pay enough. Not to point fingers, but who invented the law suit? No real reasons for grief. Comparatively speaking. All those baby teeth. What happens to them? Perhaps it’s what makes angel's wings? endings [2014.27.4…a] i will not cry for you after seventy years i have my own sadness and grief to shed and cannot weep on command for homeless, famished uninsured, child slaves extinguishing forest and trophied animals innocent victims of religious warfare and decades of subsequent genocides in countries you never knew it is not right to commemorate a planet of victims when our uniqueness is cause for rejoice no celebration [2014.26.4…a] Prompt: Holocaust Remembrance Day |
You can tell them anything. Garden dwarves are silent, not like photos at Niagra Falls. I never learned sign language, everything gets twisted like dancing with two left feet. Apologies. Why hasn’t anyone written a dictionary of the heart? Even in Braille. Or Esperanto. Someone should benefit. The gala tonight was for his memory. Seventy-nine years and a mentor for all of us. You were late. And high on everything imaginable. And wore that red sequined whore gown he hated. Showing off your last boob job on borrowed money he didn’t leave you without strings. You knotted ‘em good. Five million is worth a year in his Convent of Detox, isn’t it? Back to the statuesque silence in the falls. No. I wasn't a young boy in Father O’Brien’s church before your operation. conditions of life [2014.26.4…a] Prompt: A difficult conversation |
Cloudburst last evening, non-stop until this morning. The sky still resembles a dove-gray duvet. The air is drenched with mist and the fog envelops everything in dullness, rounding out the angles. This cityscape is lovely, but the same steaminess in a tropical canopy bathes in birdsong, musical drips from leaf diversity, and pungent perfumes of flowers opening to drink freshness from its source. In the canopy, there are nests, hamacs and tree houses, shapes and sizes unimagined, invisible, protecting. Harmony reigns above. On the ground is another matter. out of sight [2014.25.4…b] Prompt: Trees |
In starlit haze, the pain of missing you fades slowly. The city lights obscure the meteor showers. I imagine your view from a different, less illuminated corner of the world. And envy your eyes. As they blink, it is almost as if love had vanished and fuzzy comet tails gentled into a sentiment of well-being. I am your friend. We were once lovers. Perhaps we will revolve again and be able to bring together our inner lights, joining our souls with universal spinning. But now, in this darkness, I am content to no longer suffer the too-bright explosion of your absence. ending explosions [2014.23.4…b] After midnight. I stand on my north balcony, a moment the city windows beyond shine dark. There is little hope of catching a star, or a meteor, as fluffy white clouds loosely patch deep royal blue sky. In the cool air, the strength of lilac. Its pungeancy overcomes my senses like love at first sight. I cannot keep myself from thinking of you. At noon its perfume does not inebriate. I know, I have spent time in that same posture, remembering you and smelling the flowers. Now, in the quiet hours of a new day, I breathe perfection rarely known. Perhaps this was the moment I sought. Something unexpected. instead of [2014.24.4…a] Six twenty. The pre-dawn light. The cloud-scape is static, an enormous fresco painted during my dreams. Large bands of pearly gray on faded blue, mottled with daring threats of rain. This peacefulness is struck with molten, lightening-bright-white stripes of sunlight affirming its responsibility for the paler shades of gray, a resonance of intensity seeping through the water-soakedness contained within. Molten light staked in a winning stance against the rain? no rain? questions that sustain life below. first light [2014.24.4…b] Prompt: Look at the sky and get it into the poem, the sky on April 24 wherever you are! |
I built a house of four crossed corridors with polished parquet floors and seventeen doors painted in as many colors. I don't know how I settled on that number. Poetry, perhaps. Or a love of assymetrical things. Yet each door has its own size. Their nobs are all different, some brass, some glass and some are even made of ebony, ivory and other precious essences. I live at the south end garden, sleeping in a hamac under a century old oak tree. Its branches are soothing and cool. These doors are my mysteries waiting for the four winds to bring me seventeen new lives. Doors that do not need to be opened. Their presence in my demure reassures me. They are perhaps books on shelves, perched high and low, within their worlds beyond. When I retire I will build more doors along these four corridors that reach to the horizon of each cardinal corner, buy more cans of paint, one color for each new door, and use starlight for their nobs. corridors [2014.22.4…a] Lead me through hell, or heaven, I don’t care. Remember the endless black nights in a tangled garden of poisonous vines and a gate hovering just out of reach. I have read my dreams outlined in your good book. Salvation? Damnation? All I want is an answer. [2014.22.4…b] Prompt: Put a door in the poem |
I the premise conjures a poem equal to a window, a space looking inwards first mantras and retreats, then enlightenment, but novices often trip into shards the view can be squared triangulated or fractured from a mirror’s accident looking into bubbling layers of elements so precious life is worth stealing but perhaps afterwards through bars reflecting salvation one looks outwards and sees in a rhyme that time is made of moments a million per eternity moments [2014.21.4….a] II Opposing darkness, wall-high panes letting in shine. No undercurrents toil below, reflecting perfection inwards and outwards. Artists have colored simple glass for centuries, first shrines to glorify deities, afterwards realizing the worth of deception. La vie en rose, for example. You cannot hide from glass. [2014.21.4….c] Prompt: Put a window in the poem |
Today was a day to stay in bed. The salmon had bones in it, those little, teeny-tiny slivers of things. The oven overcooked the frozen chocolate dessert which had too much butter and cream and threw my allergies into overload. I never learn, even to spice up a Sunday holiday. Nothing on the television to occupy my solitude. My head and neck have tired of the jigsaw puzzle and tightened up with nasty, conflicting cricks. The pain mocks paracetomol, as well as a long hot shower. The puzzle is a view from one of Gaudi’s landscapes and today I feel as disjointed as the remaining three hundred pieces making little or no sense. Gloomy weather does not encourage leaving my fourth-floor hideout where one pastime is surveying the clouds as they turn grey, black, bruised, clearer, clearest and repeat like a stuck slideshow button. Rain keeps to its clouds. I might have welcomed the oddity of walking under thick cold drops and getting drenched. I’ve two new books but my eyes see triple with my head pressed into a vice, so reading, as well as television, exceed my torture quota. Music today becomes the deranged cries of a lunatic. I hate when Chopin waltzes turn into monstrosities of noise. Perhaps I should accept the defeat of this strange holiday and take a sturdy overdose of sleeping pills to discover how my body deals with overloading its threshold of medication. That would be something unique. But perhaps not a secret I could share anytime soon with anyone happening upon my doorstep like a Jehovah’s witness. I might be pressured into buying a new vacuum cleaner, however. overloads [2014.20.4…a] Prompt: A threshold |
| Perhaps in my sleep I did an eloquent dance responsible for the six or seven drops of rain I felt blowing down from a thick cloud that otherwise didn’t share any more of its wetter particles. I do not think I felt upward flowing droplets resulting from the twisting wind catching water from my brass can while wetting the balcony’s more susceptible plants. Wind dries the more delicate leaves just as burning sun, perhaps more so. There have been clouds for weeks now. And just as much wind, blowing the precious rain to counties that saturate. I have waited for this moment since New Year’s, perhaps, it has been months now, I do know, hoping there would be more climax in it, a storm, a deluge, sheets of invisibility in the form of water falling from the heavens. The earth needs to be cleansed. But I am just a man, with no special connections to the water gods. I dance regularly, but only in my dreams, whenever some part of me conjures those images, do they meet with grace. I was thirsty. Not enough fell to quench my need for purity. Perhaps there are other gods, other offerings than a dance, who would attend to that desire. That need. a need [2014.19.4…a] Prompt: Rain |
I don’t do quick. Running shakes my bones like an overactive cop tasers a would-be perp. I am not Usain Bolt’s mythology and turtles get there eventually. Escape routes don’t exist. I refuse to misa s unset surveying the cracks in the sidewalk. I don't speed along to the next appointment, the next friend, the next Starbucks. Their menus are poetic lava, strangeness incorporated into marketable non-inebriety. I type, spelling aloud as I go, for strange languages strangle themselves under my fingers if I do not. When fired by the speed of anger, my words unstammer and char bridges like a flame-thrower spits curses, and have drowned many more innocent bystanders. Then they need tears like the rain. And soapy water before coming out in the clear rinse cycle. Or being doused in an expialidocious latté, extra large please. Ask me and I'll sing Amazing Grace, my stuttering stopped by the continuity of music. You won't want to hurry me then. And I won't. Following a star’s shadow is an enlightening hobby. They help reinvent what you don't want to know. Destiny in first gear. My most essential mantra is a dictate to take my time. So, I’m old and slowing more and more. Treat me as a member of the walking dead. I’ve eternity to wander. Devil fires will burn regardless of my gait and heaven’s wings will only act as a parachute. Swiftness has never been an option. I don’t do quick. turtles don’t stutter [2014.18.4…a] Prompt: Speed, swiftness, something fast or quick |
drugged on white face paint he mimes doors and topples into wishing wells at the bottom a pine tree grows and partridges nest in its branches he doesn’t steal an egg but like a prayer, adds his plastic flower to the nest hoping one day it will hatch into the perfumed gardens of his lonesome childhood stunned by his own maudlin he pirouettes through the Alice-in-Wonderland trap and greets thousands of happy children he sees in the mirror of his frown rhapsody of a clown [2014.17.4…a] Prompt: A poem with 3 natural objects in it (dead or living, but definitely from nature) |
A bronze statue, The Sons of Cain, centered at the lane’s end. In a vista from the Tuileries’ terrace, it honors the south-west wing of the Louvre. Below, the Seine laps quietly. Our first ancestors, a shepherd, a poet and a blacksmith. The first mourning. The first choice of evil. I am reminded of a certain book. Still hieroglyphic to millions, centuries later. There are unoccupied green painted chairs today. Uncomfortable metal. Yesterday’s perfect blue has paled again. I sit and relax, sock-footed. Contemplate the myriad of tiny pebbles so seldom worthy of meditation. From my satchel, a book of contemporary block poems. I read in the grey-lit afternoon. Rhapsody of a clown. Drugged on white face paint he mimes doors and topples into wishing wells. I am no philosopher. Birds chatter high in the two majestic columns of perfectly manicured linden trees. Were I born of their instinct, I would choose a new partner. Solitude tempts me, for he who has allowed my heart to roost, appreciates airplane flights to exoticism. I am not jealous. I have changing air-pressure issues. Automobiles and trains, which, of course, limit my circumference of destination. I am not a winged creature. Nor was Icarus, who had dreams. We men still struggle with ideas of humility and limits. Like boundaries. And war. The three bronze brothers call to me. What legacy did Cain bring them? legacy [2014.16.4…a] A poem with 3 inanimate objects in it |
We were not two passing ships. One furtive glance and I abandoned myself to this turbulence. His eyes were intensity, seeking truth in my inner core. Then pleasure. Timidity swelled my chest. He, Zeus in mortal disguise. I prayed with smiles. He would answer them all. Perhaps I was drunk the whole time, I remembered too much else. I closed my book, Pensées by Jacques Prévert. Metaphor or seduction? For those eyes I would not strut like a matador in skin-tight suit of light. Offered him the chair next to mine and with a single nod, won his name resounding like the waves from his suave voice. I was to become his prince. With hints of charming. Before he sat down, his first gift. A chaste kiss, à la française, on each cheek. Brush stroke against paper, perfect curves. There was a novel in that contact. His eyes were a journey through a museum. They redefined every one of my thoughts. We spoke, reaching towards love, words black against white. Our tango was calligraphy, poetic, daring, irreplaceable. I was his haiku. I would drown in his life. Two seasons of bliss. I counted every day, missing none. what I never forgot [2014.15.4…c] Prompt: A poem about the beginning of something |
she had no alibi and wouldn't explain a single stiletto heel in her closet the deed occurred at a very precise hour the alleluia moment of last night’s full moon eclipse predictable, thus premeditation and life-long lock-up, jurors love throwing away the keys god syndrome no one notices one person missing from the ogling throng so many dumb blonds run — i.e. hurry along in those damn heels but at six hundred dollars most would repair a fracture just like that injured arm was "just falling down the stairs" you go to a doctor even a shamanic healer or a metal door in a dark mafia-controlled alley deal with the urgency lose those traces, of course you sell your soul, twice dead and buried [2014.15.4...a] Prompt: A pressing deadline and a full moon (get both in the poem) |
In my dream, everything catered to secret wishes: the red-lined cape the dark night with its full moon. He was debonaire, sexy and persuasive when his lips planted the first kiss on the nape of my neck. His two, perfectly white canines, hardly stung. red-lined cape [2014.14.4…a] Prompt: Teeth, dental reference, dream of missing teeth… |
| I do so love "broken" folks. Had much too much to say on the subject for just one little poem. Even last night's moon was broken in two by a passing cloud... But that haiku is in another book item. One: On the oak table, three glass eggs perched on as many ebony saucers the teapot ready and steaming. The eggs, poised as petit fours, were not dessert, that was carrot cake and raspberry ice, for different tastes. In a flash, the cat leaped and glass shattered. tea time [2014.12.4…b] Two: You are dead now, long forgotten by most, your tombstone a moss and marble memory. I cannot describe thirty years of grief, whisper of solitude of declaim about my wrenched heart. You never suspected the depth of my love. deep as life [2014.13.4…a] Three. her room was filled with armless dolls sitting on oversized stuffed chairs in bad need of repair below, the woman screamed yet again at her fifth and clumsiest husband upstairs, the girl fumbled through her closet filled with clothes too small to hide her eating sprees I, in an adjacent room, hid behind drawings of other naked men fearing the rage of truth at the kitchen table, the woman compiled another list of wrongs pressing deeper into three weak souls this husband too would soon leave we children could only attempt exile broken by rules and regulations of perfection early assassination [2014.13.4…b] |
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