Day 30 Opposite Poem

Ars Poetica

Nothing is so beautiful as spring

When weeds, in wheels, shoot long and lovely and lush

--G.M. Hopkins

Nothing is so terrible as spring

when blooms, in trees, fret sky and psyche and lung

and dirt smells of lemon

when we dig out weeds.

Cut lilacs.     All flowers always dying

sweet and rank.

Poems too. Dying

sweet and rank in spring.

Day 29 Polyglot Poem

Lengua Verde

verde que te quiero verde

cried Lorca

he would have loved our winter wheat, the only green thing in the fields then

          acres, acres, miles of bright stalks sassing back the winterbrown world

Now the trees leaf out more each persistent day, pin oaks, maples, short 

ornamentals

in their tidy yards

fucking spring

mira que lindo los arboles, las floras

   el cielo que es una joya, un zafiro      

verde entre verde,   green between

green, above, below, all places in between between

more green

   pero  pero

a veces prefiero

go ahead, say it       queiro

I want

             verde solo    verde solo      green green green   alone  against

brown

Day 28 Color Poem

Out Back

clouds slug it out with sky, spread

                                   

 their bruised and purpled edges

across the too cold amethyst morning, lilac

light settles

         round the iris bed, violet damp

seeps into the periwinkling crabgrass

while chickweed shimmers forth

from Buddha’s contented 

composting lap

Day 27 Inspired by Flarf But Not Really

All The Pretty Houses

save to your ideabook pretty houses pretty rooms

fukyeahpretty houses victoriana fetish pintrest paintedlady

gingerbreading updates subwaytile bath DIY deck patio

kitchenbath dogdoor mudroom halfbathpowderroom

mancave waterfeature gardentub marblemarblemarble

drawerpulls potfiller details crownmolding tilefloorradiantheat

goodinvestment resaletaxcredit offstreetparking

bonusroom containergarden marketmarketing house

huntinghauntedhomeinterestinterestinterestingstop

Day 26 Erasure

Erasing Emily

I like      lap

And lick

And     feed  

           prodigious

                        

            crawl

                     ing

                             

                   Boanerges

                                     a Star

          docile  and omnipotent

Day 25 Ballad

The Ballad of the Dream

When night came on, the moon rose high
a girl she lay a'sleeping
on quiet breath through silver light
a dream came in  a'creeping

a horse, a bell, a flute, a song
that from the old days echoed
upon the horse she found herself
and riding up a dark road

Along the path black lilies grew
and pale babes stood beside 'em
one reached up to touch her hair
and that one was a cryin'

She put him on the horse's back
so glad to have him with her
upon the horse he changed himself
and then he was a tiger

He purred and licked his long long teeth
his eye all full of hunger
she fed him doves and golden pears
and knew he would not eat her

And when she woke she was amazed
at the mark upon her gown
a feline paw imprinted there
though she was all alone

Day 24 Name Anagram

Each May

The Ace of Lilacs
at her easel
ale, eels, lances, lichen, chilis
scales, seals, a short lease
on healing, one purple brush
clinches it.

Day 23 Triolet

Workshop Poem, Flavor of the Week

He mentioned liminality  

and shadows at the margins

how fruitful the between can be

he mentioned liminality

its great effect artistically

the place a poem begins

so we’re doing liminality

in shadows at the margins

Day 22 Modern Pastoral for Earth Day

Crying Day

Crying day again in the 40-year-old azaleas

robins hatched

pictures of bald robins hatched-hatching beaky begging online, everything open

Crying day

dogwoods     some bloomy-blur trafficking in highway dust

and perfect perfect sky

daytime moon on her white way to full

semi sports-car minivan pick-up roadster semi semi roadwork treeline

moon again

See it? see it?  

                  

                  Won’t you write and say so?

Day 21 Fortune Cookies

Who Thinks These Things Up Anyway?

You will die at 40. Oh, wait; you're 60? Nevermind.

Last week will not be the same as today.

How can you not notice? Take notice. Give notice. Put the world on notice.

Soon you will make a long journey, though you will need to shift 
your perspective to undertand it as such.

Someone kind and good is following you.

No one is following you.

The man at the post office who smiled at you really meant well.

You don't need as much money as you think you do.

No one book has the answer, even in the back.

Write your own damn book.

Think twice about this.

Yes, of course you should.

Your lucky number is your age divided by half your height multiplied
by the number you find most sexy.

Maybe you should eat a little something. Chocolate perhaps?

Day 20 -- Five Words from a List

Did You Smoke?

Did you smoke clove cigarettes then like everyone else,

tuning their ears to dove song mistaken for an owl’s who-

whoo? Candles guttered in punchholed tin; we camped upwind

from death and squandered what we had on fun, Edgar twice-haunted,

Marvin done. Your ghost absconded with the Book of Love.

Did you smoke clove cigarettes then? Did you?

Day 19 -- Want Ad/Personal Ad

What do I want?  Oh, just everything. World Peace and an End To Hunger.  What to I want? Nothing really.  I have everything. Right here.  I can't decide. So I'm posting my indecision a day late. And this is what I came up with...an idea anyway, trying not to be too attached to it though. Ha. Spanish, French, Italian, Welsh, Polish, Irish, Romanian, Dutch.  Oh, and English. All in a big smeary finger-painted mess. I guess the list could go on, but I have gardening to do and groceries to get and papers to grade.  There's a lawn available for mowing with a mechanical mower that goes through the mounting weeds with a soft snip,snip,snip so as not to disturb the birds. And the sun is out today. So, here it is.

Wanted

todo

nada

everything

nothing

tous

rien

everything

alles          niets

nothing

wszytko

nic

                everything everything everything

popeth

nothing

dim

nothing

everything

nothing nothing

nothing

tutti

niente

gac rud

todas  

idiomas

but there are no words for this

aon rud

tot 

nimic

everything/nothing/all tongue/all at once

now. now. now. yes.

Day 18 Same Word

Word

How the dress moves
     kited by breath
     ribbed with ribs

How the breath moves
     freighted by light
     thick with dreams

How the light moves
     tissued by dust
     bright with now

Day 17 A Poem of Greeting

(I had more in mind for this one, but I was distracted by shiny objects.  Also, I want to thank NaPoWriMo (Maureen) for featuring Moon Junkee on the NaPoWriMo site early this week!)

Tube

hello again

 my old

lacuna

    your

rain-blued windows

              frilled

                    

                                city blocks

pollen sickness

and windy

amnesia

I'd forgotten you

  those papers

skittered

        gusts

yes I do

mind the gap

Day 16 - Translitic

So, I chose to "translate" a verse from this Irish poem by Nualla Ni Dhomhnaill called "As For the Quince" which I found here:  http://www.poetryinternationalweb.net/pi/site/poem/item/8175.
Of course, the "translitic" is a faux translation, driven by the way the language looks and how one imagines it might sound if the words were English.  The result always makes an odd sort of surrealist sense.  It has nothing to do with how the poem might actually be translated, but every once in a while, there's a hint of the poem's spirit in the translitic.


An Crann

Do tháinig bean an leasa 
le Black & Decker, 
do ghearr sí anuas mo chrann. 
D’fhanas im óinseach ag féachaint uirthi 
faid a bhearraigh sí na brainsí 
ceann ar cheann. 


A Crank

Do things, be and lean in 
with a Black & Decker.
Do green, yes, and more chiaroscuro.
Diana, I'm in search of faint chants, earth,
fate, a being-hood, not brains, yes, but
can or could.

Day 15 -- One Verse Pantun

Gallery

A lavish tropical turn about the canvas

monkeys, broad leaves, serpent, moustache, jade

in this stuffed and busy world, another day passes

her dream language captions the picture promenade

Day 14 -- Superhero Monologue

I created a superhero for the occasion, but she's not very super.

Insomnia Girl

So if I got it wrong when he said that, I should have said, well, you know, and I really think I was right, but you have to make allowances. Queen Anne’s lace was something we did once or twice, but I always come back to the wild carrot and those August days when we put them in food coloring water to make them blue or pink or this limey green, and so what if you can’t get along some days? You have to make allowances. Palenville water rushing over cliff faces, how did we manage not to die then, drunk and slipping off the edge of the falls? Albert, I didn’t know him well, red hair, sold pot to punks like us, fell and broke his collarbone, and we heard about it after, and that night coming back from The Klondike when Jay hit the guardrail and almost sent a carload of us to our deaths, and how did we not die?  Spread the collarbones. And other work. Other work. You need to work harder.  Your cousins do. Your colleagues do. Stop getting distracted. Make the list of what to do before you leave.  If you can get those things done in time, you’ll be fine, but you’ll never finish the work in time. Never. Can’t be done. Why do you always let yourself get in this position? Learn to say no. Get up early. Get up early. Set the alarm.

Day 13 A Walk Poem

Inglewood

The bridge-
abutment Buddha
stays content
24/7, sitting
day-glo orange
graffiti meditation,
liquor store
just up
the block

Day 12 -- Truth Be Told

tonight we feed the pigs late

then

we negotiate:

you are (never) this and I am  (always) that

is that it? is that it?

once you were, and I was, and you said and I said

now,

I can’t tell you anything,

dread.

Day 11 -- Tanka (For Two Players)

Who knew talk would end

with the thunder's final clout?

Your voice a silent pine,

mine, one lone cherry petal

drifting by in the still wet air

Day 10 -- An Unlove Poem

Dontcha Unlove Me Like You Used to Do

Let me just stew. Let me be gumbo

ya-ya, everybody talking at once.

Enough of this David

Mametesque speechifying one to another splintering everything to bits

of truth.

Enough of things.  And lightning. And applied behavioral modification.

Let’s have a party. Let’s roll

a float full of paper mache nonsense down the avenue

and throw My Little Ponies to the crowd. Let’s give up

love in favor of smoking. Let’s give up death and see what that gets us.

Somedays, I’d pay that man to leave me alone.

I’ve had enough of everything else, but still the mouth wants what it wants

opens and cries

C’mon boy. That all ya got?