April 30th - Foot Massages (Five of Hearts)

Googling "Foot Massages"

She'll be yours forever
- The internet swears to me -
When you master these
Nine toe curling steps!

To think that all this time
All I needed was my thumbs
Two sliced limes and
A bucket of warm water






-

Thanks for reading this year's project all!

April 29th - A Girl Walks Home Alone At Night (Queen of Hearts)

Footsteps

You hear his footsteps
Following behind you
At first you doubt yourself
Maybe he isn't
You speed up
And he speeds up
You hear everything about him
How big he is
How low
His center of gravity
You keep walking and you listen
To his restless, breathless following
You turn down an alley
In Bad City
He turns down the same alley
And then you know
"Hey", he says
Your teeth come out
In this bad city
"Hey beautiful"
He keeps coming
"Hey"
And you know it will be
The last thing he ever says






https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WuN4wcDGlIc

April 28th - Hot Dog Eating Contests (Nine of Spades)

Bad Ideas, Stillwell Avenue

Defeat by inexorable throes
You scurry away from your foes
Off the stage like a comet
You buckle and vomit
And hot dog comes out of your nose

April 27th - Generic Trademarks (Five of Spades)

Generic Trademarks

She Rollerbladed to class
Walkman turned up all the way
Wearing Super Hero Band-Aids
On perpetually Neosporined knees

You played together in a Frisbee game then
Started to see each other everywhere
Coincidentally: in the Laundromat where
You shared midnight Cokes and Twinkies

Soon you were alone experimenting
With every drug short of Heroin
Fucking without protection
Eating Popsicles afterward

She left Post-its in your textbooks
You dreamed about the smell of her Cloroxed hair
On weekends you would drive her Jeep
Her filthy Jeep up into the mountains

You would make love there
Pressed against the Plexiglass
Among the crushed Kleenex boxes,
And Cellophane wrapping, half empty

Aspirin bottles, uncapped Sharpies, dusty
Hacky Sacks, the mildewed Thermoses,
Broken Hula Hoop, and Freon fumes of
Her Jeep where you came together

In the soundfulness of the deep woods
Frogs and cicadas singing at the night
Tangled together on the hood of her car
"When I'm anywhere but here

I feel I'm being crushed to death"
She would say in an alien voice
And you would point to the stars
Wanting to speak constellations, but

Having forgotten the names of all things

April 26th - Queen Elvis (King of Spades)

Not to be confused with this Queen Elvis

Character Sketch of a Starbucks Regular 3

Her hair was perfect even at 5AM
While the mist of sleep still clung to my limbs
She would burst through the doors
Struting tall
One carefully molded strand of hair hanging
Apart from her tight pompadour
Cigarettes rolled in her sleeve
Large fingers brushing mine
As she grabbed her small coffee
Just black
And until I wore her down
And we became friends
She would look at me with an an upturned lip
And all she would say was
Thank you
Thank you very much

April 25th - Grand Place (Eight of Hearts)

Love From Brussels

Long after you are all gone
Not just your bodies
Every trace of you
When every person who
Knew every person who
Knew you is dead
The square will still be there
Facades the same as
They have been for centuries
Open for anyone and everyone to enjoy
While everything you believe
Every edict and condemnation
Every violent act
Ultimately impotent
Will be but footnotes
Harmless curiosities
In the textbooks
Of the young women and men
From every place imaginable
Who sit on the cobblestones
Of Grand Place
Together playing music
And singing in different languages
Kissing or holding hands
Welcoming the summer wind
On thier naked shoulders
Through their hair
I hope you will
Be forced to watch them
Wherever you are
Light years away
From your imagined heaven

April 24th - Savings and Loans (Seven of Spades)

"It Was Not Supposed To Be Like This"

You wonder if your father thought the same thing
As he - bent-backed - opened the lock to the store
Everyday but Sunday

Regardless you think it
As you shave for the second time this morning
A do-over
All you think you want sometimes
As you stand in the mirror
Watching your hairline's retreat
And in the corner of the glass
A picture of your father
Hangs above your cluttered desk
Your sketchbooks out but unopened
Slowly but surely
Yellowing in the sun

And it's all you can do not to
Smash your watch
Climb back in bed with your wife
And sleep long enough
Not to think about savings
Not to think about loans

April 23rd - Dahomey Amazons (Queen of Clubs)

Early Skirmish, Franco-Dahomean War

Down the hill they run
All muscle and sinew
Yet with enough remaining girlishness
To hesitate the Frenchmen
A slack-mouthed flag-bearer
Unable to take his eyes off the women
Their bare breasts swinging
Dappled with blood
While the other men load their rifles
The flag-bearer still stares
Mindlessly inching his horse closer
Despite calls from his comrades
When he looks back at them
He suddenly sees
His nation's flag fall to the dirt
Unaware that he has been
Cleaved in two

April 22nd - Hedy Lamarr (Queen of Diamonds)

Hedy Lamaarr 1

A face is only a face
When captured on screen
But if instead it casts a shadow
On drafting pencils, graph paper
Crumpled tissues and sore hands
If it twists and furrows in the rising dawn
Dawn after dawn of
Pursed lips, strained eyes
The wild contortion of almost knowing
Of edging towards a Truth
And then losing it completely
Until one dawn when that Truth is suddenly before you
And you can finally collapse in sweet
Release
In that precise rapturous moment
Of understanding
You forget you have a face

April 21st - Baby Groupies (Three of Spades)

Cognitive Dissonance

Forty years later
We cannot come to terms with it
Who has the right define a victim?
When does a childhood end?
And how can we still so love a man
Who would fuck a fourteen year-old
Over a table?
But we do
I do

April 20th - Stage Kisses (Jack of Hearts)

Dress Rehearsal

Between rapid breaths
Muslin tunics pressed up close
Electricity
Under blazing lights we shared
A kiss both real and unreal

April 19th - T.T. The Bear's Place (Jack of Clubs)

:(

The thing you remember most is the smell: it always hits you before you get inside. You practice your stony gaze, sill not yet nineteen, inching closer to the aging punker bouncer when the door opens and the smell hits you square in the face, as if you were already in the pit. It is able to hit you for it is a palpable thing, alive. You almost drop your fake ID and give yourself away, but in truth it wouldn't matter - this bouncer doesn't give a shit anyway. As you are ushered in, avoiding the underage X's, the smell overpowers you. It opens your nostrils and pushes its way into you with all its living pieces:  endorphins, dirt-cheap whiskey, floor wax, generic cola syrup, dried beer, vomit, cleaning solution, pickle brine, hormones, spilled vodka tonics, myriad body odors, flannel, denim, leather, youth!

You remember that smell and the rush of cool, Cambridge breeze. Stepping outside is like emerging from under water. You breathe your first breath. As the air chemically reacts with the sweat on your skin you can almost see the steam rise off your body and you feel the sudden urge to roar with victory - a barbaric yawp. You lift your voice out to Brookline street onto Massachusetts Avenue, yelling like you are finally, truly awake. This is the best part of your life. And while you are screaming in the middle of the street, the bouncer will only give you a passing glance before going back to bemoaning the state of the scene and waxing nostalgic about The Rat.




Haaah!

April 18th - Island Nations - Who They Fakin'? (Ace of Diamonds)

No Man

I made the man I am today
He tells the world
He tells himself
Never questioning how
His suits are always pressed
His glass is always filled
With water

April 17th - The Stranger (King of Diamonds)

The Stranger

Standing on the edge of the circle
The man with the book speaks
A language no one understands

The fire in his eyes could burn
A clearing through the forest
Could light up the night sky

Children run to touch his clothes
Orange hairs on his strange skin
The old woman watches his mouth

Disconcerted by the shape of his lips
She keeps one foot inside her grass hut
Which too could catch fire from his eyes

She is shrewd this woman but
She cannot tell if he is smiling
Or if the stranger bears his teeth

April 16th - Making America Great Again (Ace of Spades)

Making America Great Again

We don't need a wall
Or to break up the banks
Or whatever
The others are running on
We don't need anything
Because America will always be great
And always terrible
We have nothing to control
Except for when we can
To smile at a passerby
As if we have known them forever

April 15th - Christian Scientists (Three of Clubs)

God's Swill

To let a child die
When all she neeed
Was a clear airway
And amoxicillin

To tell her mother
It was preventable:
Next time she should
Pray harder




A harrowing read:
http://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2016/apr/13/followers-of-christ-idaho-religious-sect-child-mortality-refusing-medical-help

April 14th - Downers (Six of Spades)

Getting Out Of Bed Everyday

The revolution may not happen in our lifetime
Nor the Revelation - it's uncertain
If they'll ever happen really
We likely will not make it
To Jerusalem next year
And won't ever know lasting contentment
Or when to leave
Or when it's too late
No way we look this good at 45
We may not outlive our friends
We may outlive our friends
Or our children

But it's not such thoughts
That leaden my feet
Make burden of my head
Keep me
Long after I should
Glued to this bed
It is your body
Contoured against me
Rising and falling in sleep
And when I turn to rise
Your semi-conscious smile
Your cool arms reach to me
"Not yet"
So I will always stay for
One more moment
Forever if I can

April 13th - Mayflies (Eight of Clubs)

Ephemera

Alive for a day!
We molt and burst forth
We flit and we fritter
Tying to fly
Twisting in and around each other
Dancing on the water
Just for one day!

April 12th - Uppers (Six of Hearts)

Turning

Yes everything
Is slowly
Not so slowly turning
Into nothing
But once this poem's done
Though lacking and malformed
It will be
Something - where there was
Nothing before

April 11th - Mutually Assured Destruction (Seven of Clubs)

Mutually Assured Destruction

There are some buttons
That when pressed cannot be
Unpressed
Depressed?

We need to prepare for the worst
So gather all my old skin
Mags and terrible schoolboy poetry
Ready an envelope for
The Press
And I'll take all the nasty things
You've said and write them down and
Put them in a bottle
Filled with petrol
Match in hand

April 10th - Tofu Cream Cheese (Two of Spades)

Character Sketch of an ERC Regular 1

I used to scoop bagels
Every Thursday I 'd pick one and
Pull its insides out
While the small, sweaty man would stand
On his toes so he could watch over
The counter to inspect me
Restuff his bagel with four scoops of
Chicken salad, honey mustard, extra bacon
The same way I had done it for months and months
And though I knew what was coming
I still couldn't help but bristle when
Sipping from his diet soda
He looked through me and he barked
A terrier's bark
"I asked for Tofu Cream Cheese"

April 9th - Time Traveling Romance Novels (Nine of Hearts)

You'll read any manner of schlock
In which you can turn back The Clock
And coquette a lord
With an oversized sword
Who lives to get under your frock

April 8th - Deer: Dead on the Side of the Road (Four of Spades)

Listening to "People Who Died" 

I saw Jim Carroll speak once. It was at the Annual Poetry Marathon on New Year's Day - one of the first of the new millennium. It was cold gray afternoon; the cobblestones outside of St. Mark's Church were covered in blackened snow and the crust punks huddled together on the benches.

Inside held a different extreme: dry heat from church radiators mixed with the moist warmth of bodies packed together. It wasn't great for a mild hangover and the poets varied in quality, but we couldn't bring ourselves to leave. We were in the presence of greatness that day. Patti Smith, Lou Reed, Laurie Anderson, Tom Verlaine, Yoko Ono were all there. Some were waiting to speak, some just watching. And there were more in attendance we couldn't see: Fred Smith and John Lennon, Joe Strummer, Joey Ramone, Allen Ginsberg - all were in the walls and the floorboards and the sweltering air of St. Marks Church, bits of them still lingering. Or at least that's the sort of thing I thought when I was nineteen.

I watched as Tuli Kupferberg of The Fugs condemned the fascist machine, and thought about how my father watched the same man condemn the same machine 35 years earlier.

And then Jim Carroll took the stage: a rail-thin redhead who moved with hyperactive grace. His face was warped and wrinkled but he overflowed with a youthful energy. He commanded the room better than anyone else that day and Jim Carroll was the only speaker at St. Mark's Church who did not read a poem. Instead, in a tense soft voice, he told the story of the first time he shot a deer:

How he awoke to find a doe that had been impaled by a picket in his fence. How the deer was still alive, but slowly bleeding out. How he and his wife, eyes red from lack of sleep and from crying, had tried everything they could to save it and had failed. How he finally took their shotgun that had never before been handled and after a moment of spiritual connection with the animal, shot it dead.

It was a near-perfect short story - at least that is what I thought at the time, and how I remember it now. It moved all of us: me, my friends, the poets of varying quality, Tuli Kupferberg, Patti Smith, the lingering bits of Joe Strummer and Joey Ramone, and on, and on, we - the congregation - were moved together.

Soon afterwards, my friends and I got bored and we left.

Out from the church and back into brisk winter reality, I went home and slept off my hangover. The next day I walked to Borders and purchased a collection of Jim Carroll poems. It still lies, mostly unread, on a bookshelf in my parents' house.

Fifteen years later Jim Carroll has died, and Lou Reed, and Tuli Kupferberg. Patti Smith has denounced the whole city as dead:  “New York has been taken away from you...it is not a place for young artists anymore." And she is probably right. And I am not so young anymore. But if I'm sitting in a hallway bar in the East Village and someone uses their dollar to play "People Who Died", I can feel the energy in the walls and in the floorboards and in the stale air and I think, maybe we can reclaim what is ours.

The St. Marks Annual Poetry Marathon still happens every year. It's as good a place as any to start.

April 7th - Guns For The Good Guys (Two of Diamonds)

Guns For The Good Guys

When the bans are lifted
When we return the people's power
Restore our rights to protect
Our families with no one
Daring to stand in our way
Finally then will we ensure
That the wise and the righteous
The rational and the kind
Are the ones who have guns
    Pressed against their backs

April 6th - White Person Cornrows (Two of Hearts)

Blonde Cornrows

Though mostly applauded at school
Your haircut might not be so cool
The attempt to "look ghetto"
Just like Jared Leto
Makes your parents embarrassed in Shul


With that doggerel out of the way, check out some earnest perspectives on this quasi-controversy:

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/11/05/fashion/does-anyone-own-the-cornrow.html
http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2015/11/05/style/readers-respond-cornrows.html

April 5th - Ergot (Four of Clubs)

(Witch) Trials

You cough yourself

Out of bed

Head spinning

Guts on fire

Swaying on senseless feet

You raise your hand

You point your peeling finger

To the corner of your cottage

To the baker woman there

Not more than a girl really

Strange and shy

Now terrified

And as she's pulled and pushed

And ripped away

Lying down again
Suddenly under covers
You stir and

Have a sip of water

Have a crust of bread

Floating in a sea

Of tainted crumbs

You fever-dream

The end of the world

April 4th - Idylls and Epics (Ten of Diamonds)

Four Lines

One moment can be drawn into an epic

While one man’s life condensed to just four lines:

                He made friends and lovers

                Who would all die

                Some before him

                Some after

April 3rd - Donald Trump's Baby Hands (Two of Clubs)

Hands Don't Make a Man

Trump has a micopenis
Or maybe a Monster-cock
But it won't matter
If we put ourselves in
His hands
His ugly little hands
We will either way be
Rolling over always
Lying awake
Raw used
Never satisfied

April 2nd - Netflix and Chill (Three of Hearts)

Let's Binge

Three hours in when
We're asked if we want to
Continue Playing
We could simply play
Or browse for something more:
You could show me Jane the Virgin
And get to know Frank Underwood

April 1st - Dry Dreams (Six of Diamonds)

Dry Dreams

Cotton-mouthed and all corkscrewed

Up in stale sheets – sweat-stained

Bile-stained, wine-stained sheets –

Never quite sleeping

Suffering dreams

In which I drink

Only water

National Poetry Month 2016

Hey, Dear Readers!

It's been awhile. Luckily, it's April again, so we'll get to hang out for a month.

The rules of this year's project:

- There are 52 prompts each assigned to a different playing card as detailed below.
- In the morning I will draw a card and using the randomly selected prompt, write and post by the end of the day.
- This will continue every day for the entire month.
- No dice this year. I don't have time to write a Sestina or a Hip-Hopera. One of many disappointing things about adulthood.

This year's prompts:

2	c	Donald Trump's Baby Hands
2	d	Guns For the Good Guys
2	h	White Person Cornrows
2	s	Tofu Cream Cheese
3	c	Christian Scientists
3	d	Indentured Servitude
3	h	Netflix and Chill
3	s	Baby Groupies
4	c	Ergot
4	d	Gaslighting
4	h	Running into the Little Brother of an Ex-Lover
4	s	Deer: Dead on the Side of the Road
5	c	Late Arrivals
5	d	Early Departures
5	h	Foot Massages
5	s	Generic Trademarks
6	c	Wet Dreams
6	d	Dry Dreams
6	h	Uppers
6	s	Downers
7	c	Mutually Assured Destruction
7	d	Civil War Reenactors
7	h	Spinsters and Bachelors
7	s	Savings and Loans
8	c	Mayflies
8	d	Helium
8	h	Grand Place
8	s	Memorial Drive
9	c	Prison Systems
9	d	Three Buck Chuck
9	h	Time Traveling Romance Novels
9	s	Hot Dog Eating Contests
10	c	Ebbs and Flows
10	d	Idylls and Epics
10	h	Orpheus and Eurydice
10	s	Scylla and Charybdis
J	c	TT the Bear's Place
J	d	Underage 'X's
J	h	Stage Kisses
J	s	Chuken Hachiko
Q	c	Dahomey Amazons
Q	d	Hedy Lamarr
Q	h	A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night
Q	s	Queen Elvis
K	c	The Darkness
K	d	The Stranger
K	h	The Starman
K	s	The Damned
A	c	Unspoken History of Family Names
A	d	Island Nations - Who They Fakin'
A	h	The Myth of Sisyphus
A	s	Making America Great Again

A lot has changed since this weird, impromptu project started seven years ago in 2009. 

Enjoy this year's!