NaPoWriMo, Day Thirty, Poem Thirty

Done done done. Tad late on this last poem, and I've edited it a few times since midnight. I won't tell if you won't.

Taunt

She
keeps wearing
the same clothes

every
single time
our paths cross,

as
if reenacting
over and over

the
last time
we were alone,

my
encore of
that blown moment

flawless,
especially since
we've stopped talking.

I
sit, note
folds of cloth

I
might have
pulled harder on

if
hindsight came
seconds after choice.

NaPoWriMo, Day Thirty, Poem Twenty Nine

My grandfather, as my mother put it last week, came home. He recovered from his pneumonia finally, and he might be over his cancer too. He'll be in rehab for a couple of months. I've been evoking him the past month he's been in the hospital under sedation. This is one more time.


Villanelle

The great triumphs happen while you're away.
You grandfather now makes fists he plans to use,
the poet only getting in the way.

Last week there was a quarantine the day
you tried to visit, still afraid of what you could lose,
but the triumph happened while you were away.

You came by over weeks, volunteered to stay,
though Meme chastised you when you'd choose
to carry your poet's notebook, getting in the way

of half-filled coffee and cell phones put away
while even Pepe, worlds away, listened for good news.
It came at last, sometime after you went away

to Boston, more your home away from home these days
than home, waiting for calls, cursing our lack of use,
the poet in you only getting in the way,

writing half-brave verse to help you pray
for victory for your grandfather choose
to come back, and he did while you were away
and writing, hoping your words might show him the way.

NaPoWriMo, Day Twenty Nine, Poem Twenty Eight

Depressing Advice to Myself
As I Grow Older

Celebrate survival carefully.
Even invitation to friends
can bring gangs of tumors
to your door, bearing kegs.

A man's life expectancy decreases
when someone's listening.

Grey hairs attract trouble like gang colors.
Shave yourself. Be like the monks
that are overlooked by fate,
mistken for babes, passed over for later.

NaPoWriMo, Day Twenty Nine, Poem Twenty Seven

With My Hand

I
watch her
trace and retrace

the
uncertainty of
my palm's lifelines.

Finally,
with fingernail,
she etches alphabets,

makeshift
school notes
in lieu of

paper
or cover
of a desk,

with
no authority
to report us.


Update: Yeah, I went back and edited this since last night. Sue me.

NaPoWriMo, Day Twenty Seven, Poem Twenty Six

Tip of the hat to Marc Goldfinger for helping to inspire this one.


Hail
(for my Mother)

Saturday,
Sunday masses
are easily skipped.

Praying
becomes much
easier to forget

when
even the
dying know more

than
whoever now
receives our prayer.

Sleeping,
she clenches
each rosary bead

each
one equaling
a family member,

as
if it's
her hand alone,

her
nighttime grip,
keeping us together.

NaPoWriMo, Day Twenty Seven, Poem Twenty Five

Another Spring Haiku

Smell of burning leaves,
even though fire's lacking.
Rebirth's slow-going.

Updates Coming Soon

Back in Bellingham for the weekend. Will add more poems when I can.

NaPoWriMo, Day Twenty Three, Poem Twenty Four

Procrastinated To-Do List

Finally accept weekly poet laureate nomination
from the boss and co-workers

Try to return the kissing knives bought for
prospective girlfriend (package opened)

Fill nightclub quota of wallet lifting hugs

Set up annual kick in the nuts from my doctor

Follow-up stamp down by med student
street gang called the Second Opinions

(ask why they're the called the Second Opinions
if there's twenty of them)

Stand up against the wall outside my apartment,
meet up with the smiling bullets

NaPoWriMo, Day Twenty Three, Poem Twenty Three

"Sarcastic Haiku" reject. This one more work-related than political.


National Conference Call

Today's call topic:
Long distance relationships,
do they really work?

NaPoWriMo, Day Twenty Three, Poem Twenty Two

Rollin' on...


Poem

One
grey hair
amidst a sideburn

long
enough to
belong in beards

lying
with the
so-far brown,

an
exiled roommate
in your bed

('the
fuck are
YOU doing here?)

will
return
as sure as

your
other memories
of past intrusion.

NaPoWriMo, Day Twenty Two, Poem Twenty One

Didn't think I'd still be behind this late in the day, but...

Poem

It becomes a chore to use the phone
to call you. Calls alone have become like bullets
boring bad news into us. When I call you, it's about Iraq.

You tell me that in two weeks you return to Iraq
Soon, no more worries about sex (except by phone),
booz, long commutes. Nothing to plan for but the bullets.

Basically, it's like a Buddhist temple with missiles,
I hear your wife as you joke about Iraq,
where the only thing more valuable than petrol is a phone.

For the next year, on the phone, we'll listen for echoes of bullets in Iraq.

NaPoWriMo, Day Twenty, Poem Twenty

This poem is for one day only. Not in the vein of what I've written this past month, but it stuck in my head since I wrote the initial lines on Saturday. Had to get it out so I could focus back on other topics. Read it while you can.


Edit: Snooze ya lose, suckas!!! Hopefully, it will appear elsewhere.

NaPoWriMo, Day Nineteen, Poem Nineteen

Sorry I'm late. Completed the poem yesterday (a haiku), went to three different poetry readings, including the 24 poetry reading marathon as done by Adam Stone. Got home late.

Things have not been looking good for my Pepe. I wrote a bit yesterday, but this is the only thing that was in any way a complete poem.


Stilted Spring Haiku for My Grandfather

Hypothetical
rebirth weekend. Sudden frost
takes us all aback.

NaPoWriMo, Day Eighteen, Poem Eighteen

After a couple of days of cold feet, I finally got the courage to try a sonnet.


Work Poem by Location Only

There's nothing left to write on a Friday.
Everyone gone, in your office under pretense
of getting ahead; but sitting back, you delay
all calls for another week. Your self-induced trance
causes you to read all the old emails
she sent you in a haze of idealization.
You thought you learned to discard the praise of females,
but here's the folder set aside for rationalization.
She said you work too much. Not true. Sometimes at work,
you stare, not sure of what your next move
should be: Making your first attempt at a poem that rhymes
in over a year, or working yourself to death ot survive
the coming year. In an hour from now, you'll reattempt to live.
For now, you scour old notes for coded messages that forgive.

NaPoWriMo, Day Seventeen, Poem Seventeen

Trying the tretina again.

Thanks for your comments. More please. I'm insecure and needy like that.


On Obsession

On my bed is a week's worth of clothes and work.
None of it substitutes your absent body.
I think about writing a third poem,

about you, except I already wrote that poem
and forgot about it, felt it didn't work
when truthfully, none of them may, their bodies

of words insufficient to lure anybody,
let alone y0u, who told me you were the poem
e.e. cummings didn't write. I said I'd put in more work.

Time slowly tells my body of work: silence is the best poem.

NaPoWriMo, Day Sixteen, Poem Sixteen

Something in the tretina form. Weird one tonight. Hopefully, I'll hit a better streak by the end of this week.


Poem

You go to the other side of your bed,
make sheet angels to represent old girlfriends.
Tonight, though, they're all there at once. They talk,

but not with you. The way they talk
as if you were never even in the bed,
forgetting it was you who evoked your friends

in the first place. They make new friends
with each other. This is a fantasy you never talked
yourself into, your exes sharing secrets in your bed.

Even your bed makes friends with the ghosts you're afraid to talk with.

NaPoWriMo, Day Fifteen, Poem Fifteen

Late again putting this in. Sorry.


Dad

I'm sick of haiku.
Memory of last gasped words--
brevity is overrated.

NaPoWriMo, Day Fourteen, Poem Fourteen

I'm late. Sue me.


For The Poet Lee Litif, Replying to
A Line From Walter Howard

"The orgasm that never quite made it,"
it would be as if you yourself
took a date rape drug to bring
the entire audience into catharsis,
if it weren't for your own screams
into the mike while at the center of our
jeering, a circle of broken pop culture items
your ceremonial circle of protection,
the podium like a bucking bronco
in your shaking hands.
You've become one of the unnamed,
extra end-days horseman, uncommitted
to the cause of the main four,
who were long ago let loose on the earth
and now sadly ignore you, seeing
your musical chaos as superfluous,
becoming as predictably nonchalant
about the arts as any boring human.

NaPoWriMo, Day Thirteen, Poem Thirteen

Ego-Trimming Haiku

How do poets flee
pressures of celebrity?
By crossing the street.

NaPoWriMo, Day Twelve, Poem Twelve

Edit: You can now find the poem that was here in the newest issue of The Endicott Review.