NaPoWriMo, Day Thirty Three, Poem Thirty

It took me long enough, but I'm glad I finished.


For The 5-7-5 Purists

So that's your haiku,
all nature and no title.
Good. Can I go now?

NaPoWriMo, Day Thirty Two Poem Twenty Nine

Pretty appropriate, given the lateness of this poem.

On Failing

You remember an old family saying:
"Failing doesn't make you a failure,
but nice fucking job, moron!"

Failing doesn't always make you feel like a moron,
but it does help, especially with people saying
you are both a moron and a failure.

Some people will say that you're not a failure
if you keep trying, but they just want some moron
to keep on racking up failure after failure, saying

"How'm I doin'? They'll answer by saying, you need more failure, moron."

NaPoWriMo, Day Thirty, Poem Twenty Eight

Disclaimer

Every
single poem
is a failure

you
fling like
foreign faded coins

into
the loud
cups of drifters

either
accepting no
thanks as thanks

or
slow death
of trailing curses

that
everyone pretends
you're successfully pretending

to
not hear
until you run.

NaPoWriMo, Day Thirty, Poem Twenty Seven

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

NaPoWriMo, Day Thirty, Poem Twenty Six

Waitress

Appropriate to find her
in a town where directions
are better found on
Battleship game boards
than on maps.

This woman made me
miss the restaurant business,
which I hate.

She's opened resorts,
diners, she'll
close them down
if she can,

hustling with a
soldier's march nobody hears
for the clanking
of wine bottles
she delivers to tables like babies.

Smaller than the coat stand,
she turns tables into trays,
could balance the national budget
on one hand
while the others hand out checks
she makes you think she has
no time to pick up.

NaPoWriMo, Day Twenty Nine, Poem Twenty Five

Phone Poem 5

A month ago, I didn't listen and
let you down when you needed me the most
A week ago, I didn't listen
and you had to take care of me
when you needed me the next most.
Four days ago, I didn't listen
and you reminded me that I
haven't been encouraging
this most recent most as of late.
A day ago, I didn't listen,
and you said you loved me
and that I was always there
to listen/didn't listen when
you needed me themostiguess.
I should ask why, because at least then
you would tell me I didn't listen,
but I'm a coward that lets this cycle
run with a flat tire that will send my
jaw to the pavement to numb it
when I listen to you tell me about
my didn't listening.
I trade welcomes with thankses
because I learned that even futility
has safety nets you can pretend are hammocks.

NaPoWriMo, Day Twenty Nine, Poem Twenty Four

Another travel poem.


Phone Poem 4

I'm heading into Clarksburgh
and I thought of you earlier
and how you quit smoking years ago
when my co-worker bragged this morning
about waiting until he was
out of the airport before lighting up.
Now we're almost at our destination.
My co-worker drives and steers
on my word while the ashes
he fails to flick out almost burn out seats.
The precautionary maps
lay by my side, unused
like jokers in a game of cribbage.
A week ago, I was traveling
in Jersey, where I heard
the worst of your screams
for my poor skills in navigation
and swore I would never visit the state
with you ever again,
nervous to be there then
and to be seeing your friends,
like an graduate returning
to detention hall.
And here I am now with
the maps you taught me how
to find and print online,
and if I even had the balls
to call you now,
I still wouldn't be able to say
whether this calmness was in spite
or because of you.

NaPoWriMo, Day Twenty Nine, Poem Twenty Three

I go the route of the average stand-up commedian, and write about my flight in today.


Flight

See the wing from your window seat.
Watch it quiver like a saw blade in a gale.
Your beads of sweat are offerings
to the God of airplanes, who does not take
your bored glances at the clouds lightly
and could any time remind pilot and passenger
when man and stone were both equal in the sky
and may eye your seat reared so far back
that it skins a woman's knees
or your elbows on both armrests
as deciding factors in the final decision
to send you to hell,
after bringing you back down to earth.

NaPoWriMo, Day Twenty Seven, Poem Twenty Two

Going on.


Phone Poem 3

Stop saying I'm scared
when I've only gotten over
the fear of being afraid
of running my face in a wall.
Stop playing evolutionary hangman
and say that I'm still hiding
from the monolith under it's very shadow.
Your teaching and my training
is complete. I can now
talk to no one but you.
Everyone else is an alphabet soup
being stirred too fast.
I can either talk to one woman
or no other. Ergo,
I'm eithera coward behind your legs.
or your champion in arms
by your making.
But you won't have both anymore.

NaPoWriMo, Day Twenty Seven, Poem Twenty One

I'm typing these a day late, but they were finished yesterday.


Summer Haiku

The manor lord sun
beats us down, lets mother moon
lull us to wet sleep.

NaPoWriMo, Day Twenty Six, Poem Twenty

Edit: The poem here has been published in Issue 4 of U.M.Ph.! Prose. Find it here.

NaPoWriMo, Day Twenty Six, Poem Nineteen

Written on the way home. A tip of the hat to Hans Rickheit, who not only let me stay at his home overnight in Philly but before I split handed to me the inspiration for this piece. I wasn't looking to write a hay(na)ku, but that's what came out.


Tokens

Take
and rub
any two together.

They
scrape like
buttons and zippers

on
any two
traveler's frictional raincoats

giving
the weather
a subway slip

sharing
commuter stories
through involuntary osmosis

later
discarding them
like pocket lint.

NaPoWriMo, Day Twenty Four, Poem Eighteen

It is what it is.


Obnoxious Haiku

Folksinging girl would
have perfect cleavage if not
for guitar in front.

NaPoWriMo, Day Twenty Four, Poem Seventen

I'm looking at this now, after getting back from Philly, and now I'm thinking, "I spent a chunk of that time on the bus up writing this?" I mean, this went on for pages. This may explain why I don't write long poems.


A Parable on Committees

Once there was a serial killer,
who was successful, as he specialized
only in fellow transients in the south.
When heading up north one summer
for slightly cooler weather,
and through a mutual taste
in mutual shadow, he ran into
a fellow professional, a woman.
Both of them witnesses by coincidence,
they went away to talk and, by way
of their idea, headed further up north
and started working together
with their war on bums, staying a duo
until by way of mistaking a victim's size
(those pesky shadows again)
they ran into a bruiser so big
it would have taken both their knives
in the same hand to draw a morsel of blood.
Killer Two had an idea. She suggested
taking on an apprentice
(and walking shield if needed)
He had already taught her so much already,
why not someone else?
Killer One hesitated. They had already
started moving towards Hoity-Toity targets
(or at least people with cars and ID's),
and that felt dangerous enough.
But after much persuasion, he took in another,
and another. And another, again.
Until one day, Killer Two
got tired of even his feeble protests
and held a vote without him in the room.
She and the group decided to move
into something more ambitious.
She called her latest project Killing The Killers
and chose to start with Killer One,
who she was kind enough to call "Our Founder,"
though she neglected to mention any of this
when she left him a note while he slept
saying she was going back to school,
thinking there must be some other line of work
who'd appreciate her talents.

NaPoWriMo, Day Twenty Two, Poem Sixteen

Small haiku.


Tantrum

The wind-flailing rain
thinks stopping is the same as
apologizing.

NaPoWriMo, Day Twenty One, Poem Fifteen

To The Layman,
Anything Is A Scalpel

With the bare essentials
stripped to the bare whatsits
psychology to the non-professional
practitioner, makes everyone
an amateur animal trapper
laying signs out for the bears
that convince them to approach
in order to confront their fears
and overcome their feelings
of inadequacy over sharp steel.

NaPoWriMo, Day Twenty, Poem Fourteen

Phone Poem 2

Russian Roulette is a cliche
except when applied
to giving advice.
Picture the gun
with two extra bullets.
Each empty chamber represents
a correct answer. Whenever
you are told there is
no incorrect answer,
add another bullet.
It'll be better when you realize
that you're not talking
anyone down from any ledge,
but bringing them up
to a higher level
they will shout to you from.

NaPoWriMo, Day Seventeen, Poem Thirteen

Phone Poem

You've asked me enough times about
my inner knowledge of man
that by now I know that any
of it is not instinct
but learned, and badly so.
My credit check before each
of your dates is a poor reference.
I cannot be your Casanova commentator
I have never picked pussies like posies
from my school yearbooks
or a website of the desperate,
and I have the body, hairline,
and bankroll of a poet, not its soul.
I can't pick a bar predator from a
pretzel at first glance.
Your savior will come with or without
my blessing or my sneer
(or, at least, he'd better).

NaPoWriMo, Day Sixteen, Poem Twelve

There's an old notebook that was given to me as a gift and included random word stickers I could use as sort of a mini-magnetic poetry kit. I've used it a little so far this month, including for this one.


Remain

As an inspiration more to her
than you to yourself,
even though your crash course on the Tarot
is painting a magic 8 ball with swords,
wands, clubs, spades, and whatever
else you've found on cards,
then throwing the ball up and
letting it smash on your head.
Wasn't there something you
thought of the last time,
something about symbols and cymbals,
how both crash in your world?
Whatever. She's talking now,
praising your evolution.
You don't talk as wrongly
as you did before.
It's almost wisdom,
you cute, phonetic monkey.
Is it wisdom, or is it
half the vocabulary you used to have
with her taking the hint,
leaving you gasping on the phone
like an asthmatic.

NaPoWriMo, Day Sixteen, Poem Eleven

Reunion

Women from high school
search for me on Facebook to
tell me they're married.