NaPoWriMo 4/21 Birthday Haibun (first draft)

Under a flag at half mast again, I made a birthday wish that there would be no mass shootings, no bombings, or other acts of public violence today, for just one day. A selfish wish on a day when all I’d like to worry about is the rain. 

It’s warmer today

with the extra breath on Earth,

absence of gunfire. 

4/2 No Title Yet

4/2

Background shading in a big picture, priorities rearrange, 

accommodate a mission statement that makes my hues swell, 

crowd the other shades until I stand out, disrupt harmony, 

drip off the canvas in horrible, gloopy drops that stain, 

burn through the bamboo floors of your expensive North Loop studio,

drip onto the easel in the studio beneath yours, 

turn a tree in Spring into a charred portrait of 

whatever you think Hell looks like,

the re-purposed bricks catch fire around us, 

spreading to every wine bar and bistro and chic salon

until you’re left charred, lidless eyes rolling upward

to watch the smoke form shapes above you, 

still murmuring your fucking mission statement. 

Flex Time

Once again, NaPoWriMo is upon us and, once again, I will sporadically post four first drafts before flaking on the whole thing. 

I had to wake up earlier than usual today and have lost most of my coherence. I call this "Flex Time." 

Lays coiled around a pillar of the community, heart swollen,

Lies dripping off silver tongue sincerity,

sweet somethings whispered and forgotten. 

Lays across your neighbor’s lawn, winking like “come hither”

Lies about you working late, encourages frustration

like neighbors banging through the ceiling

like little specks that float between 

eyelids and waking moments.

Lie with me. 

Overstuffed Egos

Chipotle is run by motherfuckers. I was thinking about that today as I watched my all white office scarf down over-stuffed burritos as we dealt with financial aid at a for-profit school. This poem was going to be about that. It was also going to be way longer and better. It was a long day.

On a side-note, Chipotle "lost" one of our orders. It was giggle-worthy.

4/4/11 No Title Yet

She aced the English class on symbolism,

even though she thought it was a joke--

the concept, not the class so much.

By default the expert on any hyphenated-studies,

head of the class talking head with her mind

on defaulting--she got a part time job,

sacrificing, longing so, suffice it to say,

she was everyone’s Cinderella story fantasy--

mostly for worse.

Dad worked himself to death,

mom as the real racial other, unknown

with influence in two ways on veins;

Dad’s veins swelled from work,

pride swelled for his daughter.

He asked her what she learned at school,

in half truths she told him lots.

She never did a keg stand;

she didn’t have time for that shit.

Backdated 4/3

4/3/11 It Gets Better Bitter

Some time in the near future,

A little Korean-American boy with his Scandinavian-American mom

(either Swedish or Norwegian, depending on the year)

will look in the mirror, both in their new red turtlenecks and say

“We look just the same!”

Later, he might ask her what she said

when other kids on the playground

called her mean names like

chink or slant

she’ll smile sadly, and answer as best she can.

Some time between puberty and

becoming a man,

he’s going to sit in his basement

working up the courage to slice into his

wrists with his dad’s scalpel--

endure the pain like a Samurai

(he doesn’t know what the Korean equivalent is),

let the lowest common denominator color

drain out sorrow he can’t understand.

He’ll never work up the courage.

Some time in college, he’ll tell a pretty German-Irish-French-American girl

“I’m basically white, when it comes down to it”

in a misguided attempt to get in her pants.

This will fail both immediately and

more profoundly, years later, when an Asian-American Studies class

shows him history is more than dates and dead white people.

New friends who look like him will

help him develop a pride of being, hope for a future.

He’ll make friends, influence people,

grasp a new American Dream of achievement,

walk tall until an ignorant old woman asks

loudly and slowly:

“DO YOU SPEAK ENGLISH?”

Backdated 4/2

Fuck You and You Stupid Bangs

There was that day we all died

(no cult bullshit, mind you)

when the make-shift wooden sidewalk

above

the

abyss

above, the pipe construction

that carries our waste into the

Mighty Mississippi

We fell, together,

finally united

a congress with air and impending doom

toward those pipes

carrying our shit and our toilet paper and

our pets we got tired of,

the remnants of the wood walkway falling with us

Above us, pigeons circled,

in our last seconds, we thought they were

startled by our noise but they had seen this coming--

they had sensed it for weeks.

Above us, they circled cooing a

melodic “fuck you” since this was

their sidewalk first.

NaPoWriMo 2011

I'm doing the NaPoWriMo Challenge again. It looks like linebreaks are going to come and go on this site. Maybe this is blogspots way of keeping me from posting poetry at work. I'm kicking it off with a poem about snuggles:

She likes it best when he

holds her tight, sleeping,

holds her to him like

she’s a handle in a storm, a

tree rooted in soil and history.

She likes it best when he

breathes her in, inhales

her scent and murmurs

prayers spoken in tongues of slumber,

holds her close again.

Rain plays rhythmic on the window

pane only sometimes,

she wonders what he dreams about.

He hides it best when he

sleeps, mind at rest, words

form and he smiles, thinking:

“I’ll squeeze the life from you.

I’ll squeeze the life from you and eat it.”

Fall asleep to cop dramas

Here's another unrevised NaPoWriMo poem about trying to get out of bed in the morning.

4/14 Every Other Tuesday

And on those dull days,

those sad days, those days that start too early

with the morning rush toward nothing,

highlighting time spent wasting

time

like playing at poems or soundbites

to reaffirm that now,

that now is the prime of my life

so I should get off my ass and

build something that outlives me.

But maybe, if I lay here long enough,

let myself dissolve, decompose,

just sink away,

maybe then I could just call

this patch of ground

my own.

NaPoWriMo

Ran my mouth and ended up doing this writing challenge for National Poetry Month with one of my writer role models. It's like when you're a kid and you really want to sit at the grown up table for Thanksgiving and then you get there and everything everyone is talking about is beyond you because you're a kid and you're seven and you don't know why everyone looks so unhappy--not to say Christy is unhappy. Actually, she's probably way more upbeat than I am. And more talented.

So I have begun another month of trying to produce something creative on a daily basis but this time it is poetry--something I find way harder to do well--so I'm expecting way more misfires. I invite you all to join me.

4/4

She’s not his real sister

but on bored nights, they pass for twins;

Soft handed, callous kids

whose only steadfast commitment is malice

rooted in love or solidarity

And the love they say they share isn’t

nearly as thick as blood--

metaphorical or otherwise--

because he beats the cock’s crow

by hours when

he’s the first to admit

she’s not his real sister

Just family who doesn’t mind him

starting his dying early--

even joins him when the weather’s right

or threatens to slice him into high gear.

She’s mostly joking, he can see it

in the grin behind her sneer

and these are the times when

she is closest to

being his real sister.