April 12

You were quiet
as a church mouse
yeah I like to slip by
unnoticed, she said.

April 11

Rob's job.
rawwwbz
jawwwb
rAAWwbzjAAWwb
And then he realized
I wasn't sober. Not like I had been
just a few minutes ago before
Richard perched behind the couch
and his head floated there
like a more lovable Cheshire Cat,
and then the ooga boogas came in waves
and my heart wanted to stop, but
I made my way to the carpet
where the room came alive and danced
real tiny like and that's when
the illumination held me captive.

April 8

Sometimes I'm too tired to do
much of anything after dark
when the day turns quiet
and my mind turns on a dime
to follow the day down country
roads that lead to a nearby farm
town not too near but not too far
where so many other lives happened
are happening
will happen
or maybe I will fall asleep
and forget
to remember.

April 7

That's not beatboxing
What the heck
I'm not a stuffed animal
Can I sleep in your oven
I wish ham grew out of my ears
I would pull it out and eat it.
But nothing warms this heart
quite as much nor makes me want
to freeze time for awhile as when
he asks me to read to him
the introduction to Star Wars IV, V and VI
as the words scroll into outer space,
because soon he'll be able to read.

Moments with my nephew Justin

April 6

Everything seemed to exist
within a cycle of falling
asleep and waking up.

Superman curtains in the front window
and a small dirt bike resting
upside down on its handlebars
on the wood plank porch.

Isn't that how it looked back then?
Have they continued breeding
in perpetuity? Does another family live
there now and just never bothered
to redecorate?

It all seemed so possible
here.

April 5

Ginsberg's glasses
can you even fathom
what the world looked like
drawn on the loose
leaf side of a notebook
his thumb fanned
the lines flying away
from form,
from nickel-plated minds
resisting corrosion,
from his center
of gravity.

April 4

whisper
dry
like voice actors
sneaking up
alongside desert ants
with crinkly cellophane
soundtrack
skipping across the grain
as the sun glints
to signal a change of scene
and a pause for breath...

the writers reconvene
reviving wit from the wreckage
of the cutting room floor,
but salacious is too wet a word.

Für Elise

Just had a random thought that made me laugh. I haven't heard Für Elise in a couple months since returning from China, and I'm kind of missing it. It seems to be the go-to song for everything in China...restaurant music, alarms, alerts...even my Chinese washing machine played Für Elise when the cycle was complete. How weird.

Not Really A Sonnet

Second contribution to Tom’s Photo Tales project.

Not Really A Sonnet.

April 3

Today you were mostly outside yourself.

You found a journal from nineteen fifty nine.

I got my hair done.
     Today I was too tired for church.
          A little girl died.

But not in that order.

Things aren't
always so logical.

April 2

It civilizes me
to live in a furnished apartment, to exist
with lace curtains
as a proper backdrop to scattered movements
through carved out spaces.
I think I will plan to stub my toe
today, a sudden work of art appears
from nowhere the colors swirl
into vivid focus the day takes me
face to face with adoration
of speaking plainly through the weeds.
I think it takes a long time to appreciate
boundaries.

NaPoWriMo prompt. First line borrowed from Arda Collins' poem Over No Hills.

April 1

I love the smell of gunpowder on Easter like the way two things shouldn't go together and I don't think I'll ever understand how one month ends and another begins and we say their names in order as if it can never be another way like when early Spring smells of late Autumn and your memories get all confused but today I followed the light from east to west and orange to blue and orange to purple and that piece that stirred three quarters way through doesn't seem to do that anymore.

Happy National Poetry Month