National Poetry Month Favorites

To save you some scrolling and sorting, I've picked out my favorite poems from April's 30/30 poem-a-day challenge. The series are also put together. :)

The Contemplative Poems:

(10) Windshield Wipers

Maybe I am a broken poet
because I am not inspired
by windshield wipers
the pleasure of their gentle swish
evokes no deeper metaphors
rain is brushed aside
but not like I am brushed aside
or problems are brushed aside
or distractions
I do not trace the path of the rains
from condensation back into evaporation
off of lakes and sweating joggers
I do not write poems to the thump-screech heartbeat
or ponder the plight of drivers
who grow stiff in the precipitation
I only think of getting out
not dancing, or frolicking
just walking
watching dark spots on my shoes
head growing heavier with each drop

 

 

(27) The Holy Spirit Plays Acoustic

you
are not
a loud
speaker
you do not
surround
with sound
you do not
buzz or whir
or glow faint green
upon your activation
you do not apply your
post-effects or compressions
to equalize unsought uniqueness
you do not amplify yourself across a crowd
you are a set of strings that's stretched along the solid frame
to lend reverberation to the emptiness
you listen to the warnings
that you may yet be
drowned out
and you
play
softer

 

The Broken Poems

(7) You are loud and angry
How sweet it seems to curse the sky
hard fists like flags of no surrender
Clawing at infected roots
clearing forests to make way for tanks
and, when pushing buttons doesn't cure the need to level justice,
to use the trees as battering rams
against the doors of those that keep the weak as hostages
Snarling at the darkness that surrounds you
you will prevail--
you scream so to the thunderclouds
begging them to grace your face with bullet-rain
you invite everything which might provide a pressure
against which you can feel the thrill of resistance
It is always loney
It is always fighting against
and never
fighting
for
The only thing
you whisper is
I love you.

(9)The world is too much with us.

 

The world inside your pocket,
pain flits through your fingertips
in electric agony
images and voices screaming
Nobody cares?!
Nobody cares?
Nobody... cares...?
And lamentations fade into the hum of tragedy
and all emotion is white noise
and the poems grow shorter
the arguments longer
the jokes more pervasive/persistent/perverse
the people sleepier
fitful-sleep-ier
eyelids closing tight against the onslaught
blinders to block out a memory of a time
when it was only
Wednesday
in our city
that hurt us

(15) How We Fell

It was not
the seasoned ballerina's
delicate and choreographed
conversation with gravity

It was not

the head-high knee-drop
of the soldier who keeps
walking toward the bullets

It was not

the thrill-seeker's
rapturous rendevoux
with empty air

It was
the sudden clawing
wide-eyed slipping
of the child who knew
the branches were too thin
who heard father calling
saw how small he'd grown below
and just
kept
climbing.

(22) Apocalypse II

the world
has fallen
apart
and you are laying in the wreckage
you are gazing up past
broken teeth and jutting bones
of bashed-in homes
that don't remember
whose they were


you are breathless on your back
as cracks of fragment sky
decline your definitions
technicolor clouds are sprouting
flaming
aging gray
threatening to wash your dusted face
in blister-and-mutation rain
yet your mind has settled silent
in the dust of every thought
except
they are
so beautiful

The Playful Poems

(5) Apocalypse

Somewhere East of Chicago
in a badly back-lit basement laboratory,
A silver-haired scientist
wearing a long white coat and several significant initials
tells his bespectacled fledgeling assistant,

“Careful with that--"

 

 

(18) A Poem in the Oven

Somewhere in the back of the house

a frail voice calls,

“Careful, dear,

the last one was undercooked!”

(12) A Haiku for Sunday at 1:44am

Everybody knows
haikus are for the lazy.
Some care more than me.


Quitting Poetry:

(4) I quit poetry

There is too much immediacy
in cultivating experience
always living now, and now, and now...
my rose-colored/sky-colored/techni-colored glasses
make me cross-eyed
and I'll leave them by my bedside
to see my dreams in
but the morning is unmetered
and frequently means
nothing more than
electromagnetic frequencies

(6) I quit poetry again today

There is no relief
from the nausea of words
except for silence

(8) I tried to quit poetry again today.

There is no relief
for the nausea of words,
not even silence.

(23) I Quit Poetry for Good Today

I burned the notebooks and the fancy pens

and took down all the cyber-posts
I resigned from all the social groups,
and unsubscribed from daily readings,
canceled my subscription to three magazines,
and filled the feedback field with rants against their efficacy.
I did a small self-inventory
and found the places in the corners of my brain
where poetry was hiding,
pulled it from its niches,
gave it over to the fire.
The poems did not scream,
but sighed
as they became gray ghosts of memories.
But some sat quiet, resolute, inside the red skin of my heart
and though it hurt, I had no choice--
I left the wreck-rod in the flames,
then pressed it to my flesh
til each tattoo was cauterized.
And the silence that arose to fill the space the words had left
began to beat against the rhythm of
my steaming, scarring-over heart
and declared itself
poetic.

(The final installment, Giving Up On Quitting Poetry, came later. It's a Spoken Word, and there'll be a video up soon.)