April XX:

Another National Poetry Month, another exercise in forcing words

I feel like a school principal at an assembly: first, we’ll have a few announcements before we begin today’s presentation. For my paid subscribers, thank you for your patronage and encouragement. I paused the subscription payments at the start of the year as I’ve changed my approach to this newsletter, so you won’t be charged for anything going forward. Experiment over—onward to the next!

April has waned and drooped like so many water-starved California poppies, and so has another National Poetry Month here in the US. My ambivalent participation in this observance took the form of some light cajoling and prompt sharing with Alex, who graciously came to the month wanting to try again something we had tried last year. More or less, each day we would send each other a prompt to instigate some poetry writing. Words happened. Hilarity ensued. Confusion reigned. Spontaneity and impulse co-ruled the day.

I have struggled with reading and writing this year. I just don’t do it like I used to, almost like I’ve forgotten how, and this kind of obligatory exercise has been the only way I have done anything with words. It comes and goes. I like that this year’s observance of Poetry Month depended on a mutual agreement to try, on an experiment wrapped within a social compact about maybe and perhaps. I heard a comedian once admit that, “It can’t all be not shit”, and I tend to agree. Ultimately, I am left feeling grateful for the chance to just play without editorializing and relentless revision. Just do the words.

What follows are a just few highlights from this latest version of on-demand poetry in no particular order.

April 2: 1 hour of silently sitting

There are
no words.


April 3: visiting a city or country you've never been to before

The flight: lugubrious.
The light was nameless.
I schlep myself;
My self goes with me.
But the people—O!
The people there
Were something else!
Every polite smile,
Every cocked brow,
Every outraged scream,
Every impassioned chase,
Every near-death escape
Was what I was hoping for.
And monolingual me,
I enraged their sensibilities,
I stoked resentment
When refusing a lingua franca.
I invented new thresholds
Of an awful reputation
As I returned dish upon dish,
Talked louder,
Ate faster,
Spent less,
Made a mess,
Caused a scene,
Acted mean,
Upset the order,
Ignored borders,
And generally acted the maggot.
I can't recommend it enough—
You'll love it.


April 4: yo mama

I grew in you,
my first home.
You'd talk to me;
I'd knock your bones.

I grew with you,
We fumbled for a living.
We made messes and
Ate what the day would bring.

I grew from you
Exactly as you'd planned.
You, waiting to get back to when;
Me, waiting to get back to where.


April 8: a fondly-remembered bicycle ride

I began to feel unwell,
So I rested for a spell.
Bit it just got worse:
The lab began to lurch.
Two hundred and fifty micrograms
For as many macro-damns
And that was it:
My head roasted on a spit.
I made it to my bicycle
Just as color drained and trickled.
The world became convex—
And you won't believe what happened next:
My feet pedaled themselves
And books flew from their shelves.
The universal mind lattice
Kaleidoscoped and shattered.
Spirals opened and circles closed,
And all I wanted was to be at home!
Colors erupted in variegated fountains
While my mind ascended the terrible mountain.


April 10: the question you've always wanted to ask but haven't

Well, since we're here,
And we have time,
And since we've known
One another this long,
I really feel I
Can ask—because we
Trust each other, don't
We? — It's just this thing
That only people who
Are as close as
Us can really ask
Knowing there is love,
Loyalty, openness, honesty, and
Like I said, trust — 
Don't you agree, love?
That's us? — here it
Is: (love ya) Why
Are you this way?


April 14: I don't remember how life was before you

Before you, there wasn’t a life.
Life was a thought for the future.
You came into being
and said, “Let there be
now and now and now.”

Thirty thousand possibilities began
to be, all in your mercy.
Thirty thousand chances for chance
to work its impossible magic:
the robin woke and sang us awake

with a lilt, a whistle-call
while red oaks unfurled their fists of leaves
and shaded acres for us to bed in
and the west-slope snowmelt
dropped us into a well to be drawn later.

I don’t remember 
how life was before you,
you were always,
you were unbornness,
you created us all,

and, as with all Creators,
your creatures marveled you in love,
loved you in honor,
honored you in fear,
feared you in awe.


April 20: create a bad metaphor

What new rebirth looms
Waiting to be woven anew?