Bonus Poem!

Seven of Diamonds - Blue Monday
2 - Roll
4 - Tanka


Goodbye, Blue Monday

The blossoms are dead
Frozen underground waiting
Roots bracing to rise

Far above I watch behind glass
And fluorescents still waiting



Till next year, my friends. Keep your heads up in these strange times - and happy "Loyalty Day"!

April 30th - When The Dead Don’t Die

Ten of Spades – When The Dead Don’t Die

3 – Haiku

Soil is frozen, yet –

Buds push through to taste the sky

Also, zombie hands

April 29th - The Yoke of Fame

Seven of Spades - The Yoke of Fame
2 - Roll
13 - Limerick

Yoke of Fame III (Wayne Brady)

You rarely go out for a meal

It no longer has any appeal

You order a bagel

Someone sits at your table

Opining on "Let's Make a Deal"

April 28th - Subway Alliances

Three of Hearts - Subway Alliance

5 - Iambic Pentameter

1 - One line

Subway Alliances I

We both look down avoiding ranting man

April 27th - Patti Smith and Robert Mapplethorpe

Queen of Hearts - Patti Smith and Robert Mapplethorpe
1 - Tweet Length

Patti Smith and Robert Mapplethorpe, One Full Paycheck

Sucking lobster shells at El Quixote

Tequila breath and dirty fingernails

We will never be this young again

We will be this young forever

April 26th - Late Arrivals

Eight of Diamonds - Late Arrivals
5 - Iambic Pentameter 
5 - Five Lines

Circling

Remaining stranded miles above the ground
As once again we circle toward the earth
I contemplate the mysteries of time
As once again we climb away from earth
Remaining stranded miles above the ground

April 25th - Small Victories

Ace of Hearts - Small Victories
2 - Roll
11 - Villanelle

I take another on the chin

And try to calm my panicked brain
To understand the way to win 

While cowhide fists abrade my skin
Unable to outpace my bane
I take another on the chin

Back to the ropes I slip within
Retreating back against the strain
To understand the way to win

Abruptly roused to my chagrin

I pivot into certain pain

I take another on the chin

Among the ever-present din
I excavate my battered brain
To understand the way to win

Enlightenment evokes a grin
There's grace in learning to abstain
I take another on the chin
Find comfort in no way to win

April 24th - Making America Great Again

Two of Diamonds - Making America Great Again
4 - Iambic Tetrameter
3 - Three Lines


Make America

America was left behind.

The surest way to get aligned:

Stay critical. Be kind, be kind.

April 23rd - Bay State Road

Seven of Clubs - Bay State Road
2 - Roll
4 - Tanka


Sun-soaked campus days!
It felt like we caused the spring
Smells: mulch and flowers
But plum blossoms still open
Though we are long departed

April 22nd - Palate Cleansers

Two of Spades - Palate Cleansers
1- Tweet Length


Palate Cleansers

A tart tongue zing
Effervescent advance
A kiss
The heavy taste of you
Gone for now

April 21st - Chosen People

Ace of Spades - Chosen People
4 - Iambic Tetrameter
8 - Eight Lines


Richard Spencer Can Go Cuck Himself

Behind your weak and pasty sneer
You vomit self-styled purity
Repulsive bids at stoking fear
Belie an insecurity:
Unlike the monsters you revere
You're destined for obscurity

Suppositize your "master race"
I hope to one day punch your face

April 20th - Mint Juleps

Nine of Spades - Mint Juleps
6 - Roll
19 - Craigslist Missed Connection

https://newyork.craigslist.org/brk/mis/6097380078.html

More Sugar In Your Julep? w4m (Brooklyn)

Next to me at the bar
You ordered the same drink
You smelled amazing
I made a joke about Southern Gentlemen
You smiled and left
I caught you looking at me
From your table drinking alone
We didn't say anything
I loved the way you looked at me

April 19th - White Christmas

Ten of Hearts - White Christmas
3 - Haiku

River frozen still
Only sounds: distant music and
Crunching from small boots

April 18th - The Moana Surfrider Hotel

Queen of Spades - The Moana Surfrider Hotel
4 - Iambic Tetrameter
2 - Two Lines


Sitting at the Surfrider Beach Bar at Dusk

The ultimate Elysium
For sun stroked drunk oblivion

April 17th - Running into the Little Brother of an Ex-Lover

Four of Diamonds - Running into the Little Brother of an Ex-Lover
1 - Tweet Length


Today I saw the shadows of your face
Cast upon a passing young man's face
Once more somehow
I was looking in your eyes
We didn't recognize each other

April 16th - An Unspoken History of Family Names

Jack of Clubs - An Unspoken History of Family Names
3 - Haiku


Matriname

This is not my name:
My father's - - my true name is
Lost in autumn wind

April 15th - Divine Right

King of Clubs - Divine Right
3 - Haiku

En Français!

Le Roi de la Terre

Le monde vert de qui
J'exige la fidélité
Pousse sur moi encore

April 14th - Idylls and Epics

Five of Hearts - Idylls and Epics

6 - Roll

16 - Prose

Idylls and Epics (One Sentence)

You dream of ships when the sun is at its peak and with your chapped hands you help raise the stench of manure: a smell so wistful that it wets your face every time it hits you as you come ashore from the disconsolate sea.

April 13th - Three Buck Chuck

Three of Diamonds - Three Buck Chuck
1 - Tweet Length


Six Dollars

By night invincible!
Then suddenly hollow
In the morning sadder still
Wincing in the mirror
At purple teeth

April 12th - Apocalyptic Realities

Ace of Diamonds - Apocalyptic Realities
2 - Roll
4 - Tanka

I Dream of Winter

Tracts of scorched earth

Soot falling from the heavens

Blind and burned children

We dream of these sometimes still

But wake to scarier things

April 11th - Resident Ghosts

Jack of Hearts - Resident Ghosts
5 - Iambic Pentameter
14 - Fourteen

Sonnet unlocked!

-

(or, Sneaking into Photonics 206, Years Later)

Now I ascend this long-deserted stage

Reflecting on the future I once wanted

The place where years ago I came of age

Transformed into an empty playhouse haunted

Proscenium beset by bosom ghosts

I nearly can behold your noble visage

I deftly counter-strike my friends’ ripostes

But really it is just an afterimage

I clear my throat and hold my head on high

The audience would hear a penny drop

I think of all the friends I loved and I

Vociferate my deep Barbaric Yawp

How many other places truth be told

Still clutch so many pieces of my soul?

April 10th - Catharism

Six of Clubs - Catharism

5 - Iambic Pentameter

7 - Seven Lines

A Good Woman Address The Crowd At Carcassonne

We must reject the realm of the unreal!

We can escape the prison of our skin!

Rebel against fat men's dishonest zeal

The bloated priests who mire themsleves in sin

Together we can halt this spinning wheel

Oh yes - Good Men, Good Women even when

They burn our holy books, we die by steel

April 9th - Thanks, Obama

King of Hearts - Thanks, Obama
3 - Haiku

(Apologies to Basho)

Ancient sleepy pool
A quick unexpected frog
Splash! Thanks, Obama

April 8th - Foreplay

Eight of Spades - Foreplay
4 - Iambic Tetrameter
14 - Fourteen Lines

Foreplay (Attempted)

An invitation to your home
Is loaded with insinuation
Yet when we find ourselves alone
It seems I'm destined for frustration

I draw you to my low-cut dress
By tracing fingers down my chest
But through my futile self-caress
Your appetites stay unexpressed

I flash you a rapacious eye
And vocalize a tiny moan
I graze against your inner thigh
You check your Facebook on your phone

Should my approach be more profuse?
Can anyone be this obtuse?

April 7th - Fat Elvis

King of Spades - Fat Elvis
5 - Iambic Pentameter
6 - Six Lines

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OmLOt9mRD18&sns=em

Unchained 

Tequila blended with prescription drugs
Bizarre behavior and asthmatic breaths
He strains beneath the scarf around his neck
Tremoring body and torrents of sweat
But lo! The King bestows on us a smile
Then cracks so we may revel in his light

April 6th - Noble Lies

Three of Clubs - Noble Lies
6 - Roll
19 - Craigslist Missed Connection

https://newyork.craigslist.org/mnh/mis/6077664119.html

m4w - Four Arms, Four Legs, and a Head with Two Faces - 27 (Downtown)

I split in three when I saw you

Reading Plato in the basement of The Strand

Pursed face

Perfect face

Shooting me bit-lip indirect looks

Making me want

To speak to you from my head

To promise

It only gets better from here

All the work will be worth it

We will laugh about everything – eventually

Our friends will get along

We’ll make each other better people

No jealously or resentment

Won’t get too sick or too sad

Or too bored

That when we have it

Love will never die

It will be decades before we bury our parents

Decades more before our children bury us

And wherever we go next will be

Warm and familiar where

The perfect Face of the World

Will be conclusively reveled

But I didn’t say any of that

So…

Without putting too much on it

Want to grab coffee sometime?

Tell me what books I bought

And the color of my eyes

April 5th - John Mayer Starts Over

JOKER - John Mayer Starts Over

1 - Tweet Length

Heavier Things

How many chances left

To finally sing

The dark hard blues

When I’m buying watches

Pushing forty

Getting softer everyday?

April 4th - Scratch Tickets

Three of Spades - Scratch Tickets
1 - Tweet Length

Win For Life

Inky fingernails reveal
Another fortune
Out of reach

April 3rd - Furries

Four of Hearts - Furries
2 - Roll
10 - Rondeau

Fursonality Crisis

Inside my suit I disappear
Beneath a head with cotton ears
And antlers made from cherry trees
All hand-stitched and hand-carved by me
I climb inside and lose all fear
Although my parents think it queer
When I transform into a deer
I am happy just to be
Inside my suit

Investing almost twenty years
I’ve built a laudable career
But now I feel I’m undersea
Miles from my apogee
Sitting at my desk right here
I dream of grazing by the trees
“Without the thing that makes me free
Am I still me?”
I disappear
Inside my suit

April 2nd - Sean Spicer

JOKER - Sean Spicer
1 - Tweet Length

A tweet is insufficient

To compare you to a swine

A just lambasting of your artifice
Would take 140 lines

-

Who am I kidding? Spice-Man, how can I stay mad at you? #daftfunk

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/sean-spicer-easter-bunny-white-house_us_58b8521be4b01fc1bde69c50

https://www.buzzfeed.com/bobmarshall/whats-up-with-sean-and-dippin-dots?utm_term=.kw2eAZnywO#.vrmQG4AexY

April 1st - William Blake References

Ten of Hearts - William Blake References
5 - Iambic Pentameter
5 - Five Lines

A William Blake Paperback, Unacted Desires: Years Ago

"Sooner murder an infant in its cradle than nurse unacted desires."

Your trembling finger traced along that line

And laid a swaddled baby at my feet

Half-maddened within your electric eyes

My breathless bloodlust wouldn't let me speak

So tongueless, scared, I left the child - alive

National Poetry Month 2017

Dear Readers,

It’s April again, which means this project is back in its eighth (!) annual incarnation.

The rules are simple:

- In the morning I will draw a card to select a prompt

- I will then roll the dice to select a poetic form (system detailed below)

- Whatever prompt and form I land on, I have to write and post by the end of the day - whether it be a Limerick about Hillary Clinton or a Haiku about Charles Shaw Wine

- I will write and post every day in April

This year's prompts are a selection from the last seven years of projects:

  

2	c	Silver Alerts
2	d	Making America Great Again
2	s	Palate Cleansers
2	h	Potential Energy
3	c	Noble Lies
3	d	Three Buck Chuck
3	s	Scratch Tickets
3	h	Subway Alliances
4	c	Female Pattern Baldness
4	d	Running into the Little Brother of an Ex-Lover
4	s	Furies
4	h	Furries
5	c	Sleeper Cells
5	d	Invisible People
5	s	Triremes
5	h	Idylls and Epics
6	c	Ebbs and Flows
6	d	Cicadas
6	s	Catharism
6	h	Constellations
7	c	Bay State Road
7	d	Blue Monday
7	s	The Yoke of Fame
7	h	The Crescent Express
8	c	Early Departures
8	d	Late Arrivals
8	s	Foreplay
8	h	Afterglow
9	c	Bonfires
9	d	Stage Kisses
9	s	Mint Juleps
9	h	Melanin
10	c	Water Towers
10	d	White Christmas
10	s	When the Dead Don’t Die
10	h	William Blake References
J	c	An Unspoken History of Family Names
J	d	Angulimala
J	s	Errant Knights
J	h	Resident Ghosts
Q	c	Mitochondrial DNA
Q	d	Hillary Clinton
Q	s	The Moana Surfrider Hotel
Q	h	Patti Smith and Robert Mapplethorpe
K	c	Divine Right
K	d	The Starman
K	s	Fat Elvis
K	h	Thanks, Obama
A	c	Apocalyptic Dreams
A	d	Apocalyptic Realities
A	s	Chosen People
A	h	Small Victories
JOKER		Sean Spicer
JOKER		John Mayer Starts Over
JOKER		Wild Card

I will then roll a six-sided die to determine form:

1	Tweet Length
2	Roll
3	Haiku
4	Iambic Tetrameter
5	Iambic Pentameter
6	Roll

On a 1 or 3: I'm set with what I need - I write and post

On a 4 or 5: I roll a twenty-sided die to determine the number of lines

On a 2 or 6: I roll a twenty-sided die to select from a grab bag of poetic forms:

1	Sestina
2	Free Verse
3	Ruba'i
4	Tanka
5	Folk Song
6	Alexandrine Couplets
7	Beat Poem
8	Prose
9	Free Verse
10	Rondeau
11	Villanelle
12	Triolet
13	Limerick
14	Free Verse
15	Acrostic
16	Prose
17	Hip-Hopera (detail)
18	Bruce Springsteen Song
19	Craigslist Missed Collection
20	Writer's Choice

That's it!

Expect a poem - or a "poem" - here tomorrow.

Thanks for reading, friends (and bots)!

Z