National Poetry Month Kickoff

Last year, I had a lot of fun completing the April poem-a-day challenge and posting the results here. This year, I'll be doing things a little differently.

Goal #15 on my 30 Before 30 is to submit poems to 6 different publications (one down, five to go), and since last year I've learned that many publications consider posting a draft of a poem to a blog to be "previously published" and therefore unacceptable for future publication.

So, as I write, I'll try to share each day the prompt or theme I had in mind (either the theme I started with, or the theme I ended with, since they're often different).

Day One: On the way to work

Here's wishing you a happy April!

National Poetry Month 30 Poems in 30 Days Challenge, Poem #30

We Play the Desert Island Game on the Way Home from Her Mother's House, Christmas 2008

1. The Album
London Calling or Sgt. Pepper?
  with sanity's fine threads drawn tight
  beneath her answer.

2. The Game
Legend of Zelda, the first one
  looped by world shuffling rabbit holes
  fall in and forget
  the heat.
She contributes nothing, deferential.

3. The Book
Moby Dick? Really?
  Condom jokes. What better way
  to fight the loneliness of this interminable stretch
  the asphalt sea, rising in gray-white waves
  beneath the yellow sear of the high beams.
Before unassailable Proust, glibly dancing
  before intricate, weighted Joyce
  before Hemingway's sparse daring?
  Little things we learn.

4. The Friend
And whose hand will hold yours
  in salt stained sunsets
  cradle you fallen from palm trees in search of coconuts
  crouch together over ragged whifts of fire
  wake you as the storm blows in
  with rough persistent liquid pressure against your sun cracked spine?

National Poetry Month 30 Poems in 30 Days Challenge, Poem #29

Perfect Day, Part 2
for my wife on a lazy Sunday in the backyard 

A sunsoaked day
with a thousand sturdy limbs of words and
  your deep, peaceful laughter
stretching like spokes,
A scent of skin over grass
  rolled against ourselves
  shoulders shining joyfully pink,
And you, the axis around which I resolve
  the sunstung expanse of my afternoon.

National Poetry Month 30 Poems in 30 Days Challenge, Poem #28

I live amid a confluence of right angles-
the monitor rises from my desk
and I hold rigid in this hardbacked chair,
sheer as first love.

I flatten my palms against the counter top
barely aware of elbows, knuckles or wrists
for all the use I have for them,
all the limbs I do not wrap around
run trembling over no curves
softly study no stretch of self that bends when pressed against.

I stand my ground,
square over my shoes with laces tied impeccably together,
and I stare down the hands of the clock
as they measure quarter hours,
the firm limits of my life.

National Poetry Month 30 Poems in 30 Days Challenge, Poem #27

Abnominal

The poem must use only words that contain letters found in the name of the dedicatee. 
The poem should be 20 lines long.
It should be arranged in two-line stanzas, although other arrangements are permissible. 
Each stanza — or every two lines, if another arrangement is used — should contain each individual letter of the dedicatee’s name at least once. 
The opening and closing line should address or refer to the dedicatee in some form, with a strong preference for not using the name. 
However, the address in line 20 must not be a simple repetition of that in line 1; there must be some difference/transformation. 
There are no stipulations for line length or other metrical constraints. 
The title must be an anagaram of the dedicatee’s name.

Home Starts a Lion's Set

You did dare, wrestling with the big guns and the fog
willfully obstinate obtuse, I shall not demonstrate you find it yourself, you said.

We scoured the sour text, drove nails through its palms,
bled it for your bias and hate and genius.

Most of all for brilliance, honed ourselves on it,
come and go come and go, talking of you.

Blighted knight, arrange your merits.
Are they a consolation for your cigarette shortened dotage?

Because I do not understand, how such gifts and expansive scope infirm the glory of an hour,
because I find your air fetid, because I find myself whirling against the Word,

I strain to hear your mermaids singing lullabies,
drown myself, breathe in green sea and foam, exhale modernity.

Did you know the hates we'd glean pressed inside the ink
Did you believe you marred the verse?

Or did you know, taunt us dare us to find lies embedded within lines,
cast your long striding shadow across lands rimmed by disorder?

I've seen you running, long lengths of ankle joined to tibia and femur,
trailing streams of smoke and dissonance, grinding meaning to sparkling dust.

Now never grow old, minor prophet with your hair parted behind
little stuffed man of death's dream kingdom.

National Poetry Month 30 Poems in 30 Days Challenge, Poem #26

Cento of James Joyce

Monsieur de la Palisse, Stephen sneered, was alive fifteen minutes before his death
pious because no man would look twice.
Laughter leaped from his throat dragging after it a rattling chain of phlegm,
bearing a bowl of lather on which a mirror and a razor lay.

It wounded him to think that he would never be but a shy guest at the feast-
Melancholy, the dominant note of his temperament
tempered by recurrences of faith and resignation,
as mistakes are the portals of discovery.
 
Whatever else is unsure in this stinking dunghill of a world a mother's love is not.
His heart was going like mad,
that queer thing genius is the standard of all experience:
a nightmare from which I am trying to awake.

National Poetry Month 30 Poems in 30 Days Challenge, Poem #25

Nocturne for My Pillow

When I fall, at last
drained of all my hopes for the day,
I drop my heart like ink
into a wicker basket beside the bed,
splattering oxygenated blood in long streaks.

When I crawl home, at last
stinking of half finished hopes
clinging to my hair like smoke,
I find my callouses cut by the whittling work,
dreams corked and stored,
the never finished always waiting
promise of tomorrow.

National Poetry Month 30 Poems in 30 Days Challenge, Poem #24

from here

Autopsy or Exploratory Surgery

Dissect the moment of breaking
  weigh its parts like organs
  the tumbling lungs pushed against contrite kidneys
  your anger engorged with blood like a liver.
Run the marathon of the moment
  until you feel them churning inside you.
Count the beats of blood in your temple
  debate the location of the soul, of holy vows
  wrap my faults in gauze despite the mess
  aim your fingers anywhere but my taken rib
  then scrub until your cuticles crack.  
Hold the scalpel against the last five years,
  then decide.

National Poetry Month 30 Poems in 30 Days Challenge, Poem #23

from here

We Candles

We stuck eight candles in a cake, we three
carried melting wax and wick burning down.
And we split our faces smiling, singing
to avoid seeing how our shadows danced.

We carried candles in cake burning down,
eyes on each other, staring too long
to avoid seeing how our shadows danced
for us: cast thin limbed and flint skinned, fading.

Eyes bent on each other we staggered down
grasped hands out for the others, measuring
our thin limbs for weakness, checking flint faces
to make our celebrating seem earnest.

We measured our reach in slices, in candles
we three stuck, my saccharine friends
celebrating being seen, burning earnest.
We split our faces smiling, shouting.

National Poetry Month 30 Poems in 30 Days Challenge, Poem #22

For Gracie, long since crossed the blue-white horizon

There was a view of Toledo
  which hung over your bed when we,
  on the first night- once we burrowed
  into that sweet lazy content,
  white cloud drift only allowed on
  nights of first kisses, legs tangled
  beneath blankets like gunpowder,
  arms curled soft at the tender crux
  of a neck, each settled like stones-

on the first night we lay and looked
  finding the angles of Toledo
  as new as us, its horizon
  as limitless, as beckoning.

National Poetry Month 30 Poems in 30 Days Challenge, Poem #21

for Jane


 1.
We've heard so many of your stories, Scheherazade
  -sliced thin from your tongue to mine
  sweet rich, eye-collapsingly bitter, tangy spiced-
so many tales I remember as music
  -the late night music of folding chairs,
  played to an intent table filled with faces in your ally paneled room-
so many songs weaving one into the other
  -orchestral jazz, building motifs out of stray chords
   stretching chords like sinew, testing the limits of strength-
stories more tightly woven than tapestry.

2.
I've spent so many night running my hands over your stories
  grabbing you characters by the shoulders
  shake them
  beg them to leave me to silence
Still they sing-
  filament eyed boys and the bird muses warbling
  the clove-breathed photo negatives kissing the housewives of the revolution
  the giddy soft and the defiant broken hearted writing home late at night, drunk
  all in a windows-down muppet-dancing singalong
  the same soulful symphony.

3.
This is just to say
  let's peel our plum bruised skin back together
  examine the bones and ligaments.
Let me crack open my knuckle for you, look.
Now a femur, see there?
In the marrow, see your face?
  Not an image, not a Madonna formed on a window
  made of grease and Windex and slanted light.
See your face there, breathing?
See your stories, buried in my bones?
  I know I'm not the only one.

National Poetry Month 30 Poems in 30 Days Challenge, Poem #20

from here

Breathing

Let's meet before sunset, when wind and night bite and streak orange. We'll watch fireflies flash over the sluggish length of the river, dying soundlessly in the swooping mouths of bats, and we'll both smell the coolness of water, notice how the half light hides our graying aging, remember other mouths at other rivers. We must not speak of this.

You may choose to lean against my shivering shoulder, inviting me to press my nose or my lips into your hard parted hair. I might toy absentmindedly with your braid, drawn too tight down the back of your neck and lying atop the bony ridge of vertebrae between your shoulder blades. I might count your bones through the cotton of your shirt, through your pale goose-pimpled skin, as I run one restless knuckle down and up your spine. I might lose count, because counting has never interested me at all.

National Poetry Month 30 Poems in 30 Days Challenge, Poem #19

Timing

There was a girl named Marianne,
  built like a coffee cup
  stained by too many fill-ups and chipped like a heart
and we slumped together on swiveling bar stools
  atop plastic cushions that gave no comfort
  bolted to the floor by the weight of our soles.

We would laugh, until I left her,
  those high long trills meant to push at the night
  at the neon lights and the small city noise
and we washed the fear back down our throats
  with flavorless meals fried and black burnt coffee
  salted waiting with wishes and swallowed.
 

National Poetry Month 30 Poems in 30 Days Challenge, Poem #18

Work has swallowed me
writhing whole. Deep ached, tired I
weigh my unbowed strength.

National Poetry Month 30 Poems in 30 Days Challenge, Poem #17

from here

I love to ride the world against your hip
  snug against your stride and folded
  into a half forgotten weight-
  ready to face the expansive days no longer limitless.

I empty myself
  allow myself to spill across
  counter tops and coffee tables, counted
  hoping never to be found empty
  rendered useless after the wear.
I've begun to tear
  a light thing, where my edges meet
  as friction and falling sands
  press me pale.
Still I pour myself against the warmest parts of you
  to hold heat and hope,
  the place you fold scraps you must not forget,
  but will not remember now.
  

5 Poetry Writing Prompts That Have Helped Me Get Through the National Poetry Month Challenge

"Make the reader believe one impossible thing" produced this poem.

These pictures as prompts led to this.

This poem came from the suggestion:

when I’m on the prowl for inspiration, I visit the Missed Connections section on Craigslist. Posts usually range from idiotic to desperate to hopelessly treacle, but every once in a while, there’s a gem to be found: a sweet, self-effacing recounting of a single moment, a simple memory of days long past, or a single sentence loaded with mystery and intrigue.

"Write a poem with an invented biography for yourself" gave me this.

"A poem about the weather" turned into this.

Hope these help spark a few ideas for you, too.

National Poetry Month 30 Poems in 30 Days Challenge, Poem #16

The moon is twice itself tonight
  its hanging craggy face
  potmarked with the insistence of everyday
  stormed by age with nothing to stir the dust.
Also it's glint reflection
  wavering in water, younger
  stirred by our toes and the soft breathed breeze
  born in the lack of space between
  your face, my fingertips.
Two moons, too, my sagging face
  furrowed and lined and deep bagged under my eyes
  where the chill run rough through my legs from the cool deep lake
  and reflected in your
  tender pupilled ponds
  I see me as always then
  thinner, firmer, strong.

NB: Thanks to Hazel and Wren for running a blog with writing prompts to help me on the tough days.

National Poetry Month 30 Poems in 30 Days Challenge, Poem #15

On the day I came home the sky split

It was not a Jesus on the cross split
  no glory strew thunderheads peeled back to
  reveal a blood red sun hung in the sky
  like the bloodshot eye of God.

For me, the sky quietly pulled away from itself
  the way the once wet pages of a book curl
  apart as they dry. The split seam rippled
  rainbowed absence overhead, breathed the quick
  deep breath of a toddler asleep.

I was too fragile to bear the horizon
  refracted, folded back against itself
  the cardinal limits of my life multiplied.

National Poetry Month 30 Poems in 30 Days Challenge, Poem #14

Riverside Park, You Were Babysitting

The city receded at last
  its electric hum, that city
  of a thousand cliches and
  the million empty faced power
  walkers, vibrating with missed, wanting
  connections, city charged even
  as a backdrop- where I claimed
  a park bench for my paperback
  for my sweet, quick cooling coffee
  a place to steal stray rays of sunshine
  in April while trees sprout a summer
  of syrup, cloying white-blue buds
when she crashed into me, a blur
  of pink and tricycle pedals
  I scooched and she squealed the joyful
  little girl giggle of the world
  spontaneous surprising new
and you appeared sundressed and sandled
  your face close and bright-flushed red-gold
  like sunrise against skyscapers
  tomorrow endlessly reflected,
  smiled your sincerely happy tired
  youth at me that city morning
  when all my words bubbled and caught,
  you turned away before I could say
  I'd like to learn to trail goodness,
  teach me how legs chase joy across
  electrified sidewalks and these
  narrow stripes of spring growing green.

National Poetry Month 30 Poems in 30 Days Challenge, Poem #13

Praying for Rain

Beaded heat layered against her upper lip
  blanketed late afternoon sun
  the clouds cry the long low rumble of rain not falling
  and the river echoes back in thirsty barely lapping waves
  the miserable gods of June.
She has a spot beneath the shady arm of the church
  a wide brimmed hat and an iced drink exhaling hope
  she folds damp hands across the exhausted length of her stomach
  interlocks her fingers, grimacing unhappy clammy
The steeple watches the clouds advance
  a broad chested phalanx of thunderheads
  the street dust dances, she rises supplicant
  as she mops her forehead, then tugs her sweat-damp dress
  from her waist, one shoulder and then the other.