National Poetry Month 2018

Dear Readers,

It's that time of year again.

For the ninth year running I will be writing a poem a day for April - as it has been arbitrarily designated "National Poetry Month". I stole the idea for this project from Jon Berger, whose prolific output is always an inspiration.

The first incarnation was in 2010, so if the apocryphal idea about our cells regenerating every seven years is to be believed, I am an entirely different person than I was when I started this project. I'll leave it up to you to decide if that's a good thing.

All poems this April will be tweet-length, because even if time is an illusion it is a rare commodity these days.

The rules:

- I have compiled a list of 54 prompts, each assigned to a different playing card

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

- I write a poem on that prompt that contains 280 or less characters

- By the end of the day I post it here (but not on Twitter because fuck those guys)

The complete list is below:

2	C	The Big Bang Theory
2	D	Sandy Hook Truthers
2	H	Rick Santorum's Nonsense
2	S	The Secret Diary of Desmond Pfeiffer
3	C	Apocalyptic Visions
3	D	The XFL
3	H	Desnudas
3	S	Republicans in Name Only
4	C	Dead Leaves
4	D	Dead Dogs
4	H	Dead Friends
4	S	All Dead, All Dead
5	C	Coded Language
5	D	Statue at Lee Circle
5	H	Orbits
5	S	Obits
6	C	Fyre Festival
6	D	Woodstock '99
6	H	Ben & Jerry's Free Cone Day
6	S	The Hindenburg
7	C	Lucky Numbers
7	D	Wild Cards
7	H	Parabolas
7	S	Rafts
8	C	Chain Smokers
8	D	One Republic
8	H	Imagine Dragons
8	S	Twenty-One Pilots
9	C	Over The Garden Wall
9	D	Steven Universe
9	H	Helium
9	S	Steamed Hams
10	C	Overload Cookies
10	D	Magic Cards
10	H	The Cube
10	S	Yellow Rat Bastard
J	C	Black Holes
J	D	Twin Theory
J	H	The Hubble Telescope
J	S	The Space Force
Q	C	The Lemon Ice King of Corona
Q	D	The Noguchi Museum
Q	H	Sunnyside
Q	S	Shea Stadium
K	C	Innana
K	D	Ba'al
K	H	Orpheus and Eurydice
K	S	Scylla and Charybdis
A	C	Points
A	D	Lines
A	H	Circles
A	S	Spirals
Joker	Black	Space
Joker	Red	Time

Thanks for reading friends, acquaintances, secret admirers, secret scorners, lost loves, bored hackers, lonely bots, and people who opened this link by mistake.

Poem #1 will be posted here sometime tomorrow. In the meantime, happy National Clam on the Half Shell Day!

- Z