Fishing – #PoetryMonth 2018 – April 14

Fishing
I caught a perch once,
when I was eight or nine,
in Roaring Brook
near the stone bridge

If you ask me
what bait I used,
I couldn’t tell you,
maybe a pinch of
Wonder Bread
or maybe
one of the endless hordes of
nightcrawlers marooned
on our driveway
each morning

In any case it was a perch,
at least some kid told me
it was a perch,
but I’ve never
caught another perch
in Roaring Brook
or anywhere else

and I’m beginning to wonder
whether there are
any more fish
at all
and
yet
I keep
dropping
my line
in the
water

Poetry Month 2018
I’ve resolved a few times to write a poem a day during the month of April, and I actually succeeded once. I’m again trying it out. No idea what each day will bring. Some light verse, some politics, some “oh shit I didn’t write anything today” haikus. If you read one and feel moved to comment, please do. If you want to share your poetry, please share!
PS: Today’s poem prompt was provided by Annie, the stupidest and most annoying cat EVER IN THE ENTIRE WORLD
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Most Days – #PoetryMonth 2018 – April Friday the 13

Most Days
I don’t fear
Missiles fired from distant warships
Child-stealing militant revolutionaries
Tyrants filling their secret prisons
Ravenous wild animals
Dreadful plagues

Most days.

Poetry Month 2018
I’ve resolved a few times to write a poem a day during the month of April, and I actually succeeded once. I’m again trying it out. No idea what each day will bring. Some light verse, some politics, some “oh shit I didn’t write anything today” haikus. If you read one and feel moved to comment, please do. If you want to share your poetry, please share!
PS: Today’s poem prompt was the date
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Slow Pitch – #PoetryMonth 2018 – April 12

Slow Pitch
In the late afternoon sun
I sip my pilsener and
contemplate the weeds
I meant to pull yesterday.
Some are going to seed already.
across the yard, the
dwarf lemon tree
droops to rest one fat fruit
on the concrete patio.

I don’t have much experience
with fruit trees.

I remember when I was very little,
climbing into the branches
of peach trees with the other
hooligans of the outfield
while we ignored our fathers playing
corporate softball nearby,
only glancing up at the sharp clink
of cowhide on aluminum
to see if a homer might bounce
all the way
into our forbidden orchard,
so we could scramble down
and throw it back to the lumbering
outfielder puffing with futility
while the batter rounded third.

I don’t think we ate any of the peaches.
I would remember the guilt of it.

And I may be over-remembering
the lofty heights we could climb to
at just six years old.

I should pick that lemon
before it rots on the ground.

Poetry Month 2018
I’ve resolved a few times to write a poem a day during the month of April, and I actually succeeded once. I’m again trying it out. No idea what each day will bring. Some light verse, some politics, some “oh shit I didn’t write anything today” haikus. If you read one and feel moved to comment, please do. If you want to share your poetry, please share!
PS: Today’s poem prompt was the photographed lemon tree
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Finding The Rain – #PoetryMonth 2018 – April 11

Finding The Rain
When I took the form of a horse,
You chose the shape of a plank of ice,
And together we bridged the chasm
To bring enlightenment to the people.

When I took the form of an otter,
You chose the shape of a river
And together we wound through the country
And solved its many mysteries.

When I took the form of a sheep,
You chose the shape of a snowdrift
And together we existed in silence
As danger passed us by.

When I took the form of a lion,
You chose the shape of a mist
And disappeared on the bitter wind.

Now I prowl the parched savannah
And at last I am beginning to remember
How to hunt on my own.

Poetry Month 2018
I’ve resolved a few times to write a poem a day during the month of April, and I actually succeeded once. I’m again trying it out. No idea what each day will bring. Some light verse, some politics, some “oh shit I didn’t write anything today” haikus. If you read one and feel moved to comment, please do. If you want to share your poetry, please share!
PS: Today’s poem prompt just happened by chance
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Erigenia’s Dance – #PoetryMonth 2018 – April 10

Erigenia’s Dance
One hand grasping the daffodil stem,
she leans out over the thirsty dirt
like a sailor leans out from a mast,
feeling spring’s warm breeze
painting her winter-white hair
with rainbow streaks.

Erigenia reaches out, palm down,
and spreads her slender fingers.
“Drink,” she whispers as
sparkling dew drops fall from her fingertips
to skitter across the dusty brown
like scattered diamonds.

She waits.

“Wake!”
With the suddenness of lightning,
Erigenia leaps from her perch
to land with an alarming jolt
among slumbering seeds.

She smiles and twirls, as all around her
the dirt rumbles and crumbles,
pushed up by tiny needles of bright green
reaching, striving toward the noon sun.

“Dance,” Erigenia urges.
“Dance with me.”

She twirls and pirouettes
around and between
slender spears of new grass
which sway in shimmering waves
to the rhythms coaxed from
ancient stone and dirt
by spring’s brilliance
and Erigenia’s joy.

Poetry Month 2018
I’ve resolved a few times to write a poem a day during the month of April, and I actually succeeded once. I’m again trying it out. No idea what each day will bring. Some light verse, some politics, some “oh shit I didn’t write anything today” haikus. If you read one and feel moved to comment, please do. If you want to share your poetry, please share!
PS: Today’s poem prompt was provided by Kymberlie
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Ghosted – #PoetryMonth 2018 – April 9

Ghosted
The cat meows again
as if she’s forgotten that
she had her breakfast
a half hour ago
but she hasn’t forgotten
and again I won’t respond
because I’m busy checking my inbox
for your reply to the message
I sent yesterday morning.

There was a time
you answered
my messages
within the hour.

I haven’t heard from you in ages.

The stupid cat meows again.
How stupid is the cat,
to return again and again to her empty bowl?
How sad that she is so driven by futile hope
of a new morsel’s impossible appearance.

Poetry Month 2018
I’ve resolved a few times to write a poem a day during the month of April, and I actually succeeded once. I’m again trying it out. No idea what each day will bring. Some light verse, some politics, some “oh shit I didn’t write anything today” haikus. If you read one and feel moved to comment, please do. If you want to share your poetry, please share!
PS: Today’s poem prompt was provided by
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College Tour – #PoetryMonth 2018 – April 8

OK this is not a zucchini, yes I know the difference

College Tour
The college tour guide explained
you could work on an organic farm,
right there on campus,
and I kept my mouth shut because
who the hell wants to play Mr. Green Jeans
with so much literature, knowledge, and beer
to consume, and only four years
in which to consume it?

To me, “organic farm” sounds like
a lot of bullshit shoveling, literally,
which I suppose isn’t that different from
a lot of bullshit shoveling, literarily.
Ultimately, both can put food on the table.

I learned to shovel bullshit
as a five year old, or rather
chickenshit I think it was,
which my dad piled into
the back seat of the Peugeot
to spread on his garden.
That’s how I remember it,
piles of stinky dirt called “manure”
which was also something
dogs rolled in, particularly dogs
with long hair like our husky.

My dad would spread manure
on his garden, then spend
sixty hours a day weeding, watering,
and fussing over that
sacred patch of dirt
until it was zucchini season.

It seemed to me that zucchini season
lasted ten months a year.
Stuffed zucchini, baked zucchini,
pasta with zucchini, zucchini with rice.
Zucchinis bigger than my thighs,
piled like firewood ten feet high,
all made possible by manure.

I went to college when it was cheap,
so I could learn a trade and escape
all that manure and zucchini.

Poetry Month 2018
I’ve resolved a few times to write a poem a day during the month of April, and I actually succeeded once. I’m again trying it out. No idea what each day will bring. Some light verse, some politics, some “oh shit I didn’t write anything today” haikus. If you read one and feel moved to comment, please do. If you want to share your poetry, please share!
PS: Today’s poem prompt was… there was no prompt.
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Depth Perception – #PoetryMonth 2018 – April 7

Depth Perception
You touch pencil to paper
like Yo-Yo Ma touches bow to cello,
a sudden confident stroke
against a vast emptiness of time
and blank space

One arcing scratch,
a mysterious curve carving
your unspoken vision onto the page.

I still remember the moment
of the doctor’s verdict,
that your eyes betrayed you
and destroyed your dream of flying
because one was lazier than the other,
and together they failed to give you
depth perception.

That doctor was short-sighted.

As I study your art, I realize
your eyes see depths within depths,
your heart feels the bottom of the abyss,
your imagination probes chasms that are
feared by those without sufficient vision.

And I hope one day you realize
with your feet on the ground
that you fly higher
with a pencil in your hand
than ever you could
holding the stick of a helicopter.

Poetry Month 2018
I’ve resolved a few times to write a poem a day during the month of April, and I actually succeeded once. I’m again trying it out. No idea what each day will bring. Some light verse, some politics, some “oh shit I didn’t write anything today” haikus. If you read one and feel moved to comment, please do. If you want to share your poetry, please share!
PS: Today’s poem prompt was… there was no prompt.
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Your Melody – #PoetryMonth 2018 – April 6

Your Melody

When the barista asked
would I like a little room
I wanted to say that’s why I’m here
I wanted to tell her that space
was all I needed
just a little space
away from the legos and Blues Clues
and Teletubbies and
dirty socks
that never matched,
just like the two of us,
we never matched,
not really,
like the two sofas,
one dark green and one decaf-beige
neither one able to anchor the room
in the way a relationship needs an anchor
okay not an anchor like the kind that
drags you down to drown in frigid blackness
but
a center of gravity
to keep in balance the daily tumult
of squishy cheerios and squishy diapers
but instead I said
“thank you”
as Crystal,
that’s what the plastic rectangle on her lapel said,
etched in a skinny sans-serif
like her smile and her cheeks and her earlobes
smooth and rounded and glowing with
the caffeine of youth,
and her eye glinted as our fingers brushed
on my paper cup
just like your fingers brushed mine this morning
when you handed me that goofy pink mug
as I was still rubbing sleep from my puffy eyes
and you sang the “good morning” song
from that Gene Kelly movie,
the one we rented on VHS
twenty years ago
that same night we first met
in the coffee shop on 56th Avenue.

Poetry Month 2018
I’ve resolved a few times to write a poem a day during the month of April, and I actually succeeded once. I’m again trying it out. No idea what each day will bring. Some light verse, some politics, some “oh shit I didn’t write anything today” haikus. If you read one and feel moved to comment, please do. If you want to share your poetry, please share!
PS: Today’s poem prompt was provided by Kymberlie.
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The Nerdiest Poem Ever – #PoetryMonth 2018 – April 5

The Nerdiest Poem Ever

“I need a word!” I cried.
My cramped office replied with
nothing but the gathering chill
of a dusky rain
outside my triple-paned windows.

The internet tried its best to help.
“Cry wolf!”
“The jig is up!”
“Keep your eyes peeled!”
These, as any sixth grade boy forced to miss recess knows,
are not sufficient to summon Euterpe to anything more
than a dismissive eye roll.

Any random word would do.

Bottle! Inspired by the half-empty short-necked IPA next to my keyboard.
Chord! Taken from a slender reference book designed to nestle in the tall neck of a guitar case.
Guillotine! I had apparently had enough of necks.

Any random word—not chosen by me—would do.

Fate would decide.
By dice I’d have my prompt.
In seconds, hastily excavated relics littered my desk:
A dog-eared Monster Manual. A faded Dungeon Master’s Guide.
A crisp, bright dictionary… the paper kind.
And the treasure I sought: a musty leather bag filled with precious jewels.
By which of course I mean dice.

D10: Four!
D10: Zero!
D10: Five!
Yanking the dictionary open, I flipped to page 405.
D6: Five! The far right column.
D10: Six.

My word, the sixth down the column.
Finally, I would have my prompt to inspire a poem on the fifth day of
Poetry Month.
The rain’s chill vanished, the internet’s babble silenced,
my finger traced word after word until…

Dismiss.

I could feel Euterpe rolling her eyes and
popping open her umbrella
for the long walk back to the bus stop
where the number six bus would take her home.

Poetry Month 2018
I’ve resolved a few times to write a poem a day during the month of April, and I actually succeeded once. I’m again trying it out. No idea what each day will bring. Some light verse, some politics, some “oh shit I didn’t write anything today” haikus. If you read one and feel moved to comment, please do. If you want to share your poetry, please share!
PS: Today’s poem prompt was provided by random chance, as described in the poem.
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