Day 7 (my NaPoWriMo blog still held hostage)

In Your Head

Allowed into your imagination
I wandered, surveying foreign landscape
It was one of your shadow boxed thought
That informed my view of how you saw me.

There was a frightening simplicity to your organization.
Everyone you had ever met or hopped to catalogued
Into the Dewey Decimal System.
There I found your own self image scantily riveting.

Poetry News

Few news items:

• Book Slut interviews Galway Kinnell
• Poets Jayne Jaudon Ferrer and Terri McCord talk about the value and image of poetry today
• Raymond Danowski donated his poetry collection (what many scholars believe to be the most important collection of English-language poetry in the world) to Emory University

And this interesting quote from Wallace Stevens:

Most people read poetry listening for echoes because the echoes are familiar to them. They wade through it the way a boy wades through water, feeling with his toes for the bottom: The echoes are the bottom.

Primitive Instincts

Poetry is not a civilizer, rather the reverse, for great poetry appeals to the most primitive instincts. ~Robinson Jeffers

Day 6 - Split

Split

Blue eyeliner
Lowered in sadness
Told just enough
To know he left
Again
The details
Were insignificant

Day 5 - My Death

My Death

My death was timeless.
It also was not anticipated
In the way one expects high humidity
On a hot summer afternoon
After a thunderstorm passed through.

Oh, I am sure some predicted it
Would come sooner later.
There are after all, those who believe
The Cubs will win the World Series this year.
Such people may be discounted
Either for their connection with the occult
Or because they have suffered concussions at some point.
Betting people would do well to stay clear of them.

The newspaper back in my little pea pod home town
Called my demise unfortunate
Due to the loss suffered by my insurance company.

Folks mostly went about their routine the day of my funeral
And the general store ran a special
On cigarettes and beer.
There are those who called me a good man
When they checked out.

Poetry Month Broadside

My second annual limited poetry broadside has arrived today and is available (as mentioned earlier) as long as they last. To request one, email me with name and address.

Happy Poetry Month!

Day 4 (my NaPoWriMo blog still held hostage)

The Act

A sacrificial smile
A few seconds worth
Of monitored misconception

I can be convincingly contrived
To the point of melodrama
Candy red and sugar dripping

My baseline convalescing
Beneath ornamentation
Awaiting the moment you leave

This two-faced act steps out on a tight rope
Several times a day it will balance and defy gravity
For your benefit alone
Without applause