National Poetry Month: Saint Francis and the Sow + I Feel Better - Poetry & Music Mash Up #5

I heard Galway Kinnell read this poem when I was in my early twenties. I remember feeling intoxicated, and that if felt like the top of my head had lifted off, in the same way really good champagne makes me feel. I turn to this poem when I'm feeling low or unlovable, and invariably, I feel better.
Saint Francis and the Sow + I Feel Better - Goyte
5.
Saint Francis and the Sow
Galway Kinnel

The bud
stands for all things,
even for those things that don't flower,
for everything flowers, from within, of self-blessing;
though sometimes it is necessary
to reteach a thing its loveliness,
to put a hand on its brow
of the flower
and retell it in words and in touch
it is lovely
until it flowers again from within, of self-blessing;
as Saint Francis
put his hand on the creased forehead
of the sow, and told her in words and in touch
blessings of earth on the sow, and the sow
began remembering all down her thick length,
from the earthen snout all the way
through the fodder and slops to the spiritual curl of the tail,
from the hard spininess spiked out from the spine
down through the great broken heart
to the sheer blue milken dreaminess spurting and shuddering
from the fourteen teats into the fourteen mouths sucking and blowing beneath them:
the long, perfect loveliness of sow.

National Poetry Month: Being Vona Groarke's Purism

typographics



Obviously, we can't be Vona Groarke today, or any day, unless we want to get all Being John Malekovich, so, let's be her poem.

Purism

Vona Groarke

The wind orchestrates
its theme of loneliness
and the rain
has too much glitter in it, yes.

They are like words, the wrong ones,
insisting I listen to sense.
But I too am obstinate.

I have white walls,
white curtained windows.
What need have I
of the night's jet-black,
outlandish ornament?

What I am after
is silence
in proportion
to desire,

the way music plumbs
its surfaces
as straight words do
the air between them.

I begin to learn
the simple thing

burning through
to an impulse at once lovely
and given to love

that will not be refused.

National Poetry Month: Choke + Heaven Can Wait - Poetry & Music Mash Up #4

guy with head in house and clouds   runamuck

Choke + Heaven Can Wait - Charlotte Gainsbourg

4.
Choke
Eileen Myles

Of all the ways of forgetting
not turning the pilot on is not
                             the worst

The house is intact
you are floating
in time
buckets of it streaming through
                  the windows

youth turned it up I think
or on & fell asleep

Remembering to do.
You are too intact
the dappled sunlight on the lawn
or pots of darkness
like salt instead of depths

Still once I turned it up
the popping commenced
like applause for the present
tense
the site of my sway

Larry's new car is wide & safe
a woman's voice conducts
us left & right
she's crazy he laughs
again & again

my shrink said buy it now
about the car

I told him about my phenomenal streak
of winning & when the stakes 
rose I began to bid low & 
not at all
I could have won; you choked
he said.

Woof. To not choke
is I suppose to experience
to hold it in & go forth
though you need the heat

The sun had not done more
suddenly for a while

it's like we took off our skin
and said it is hot.
It's like we sold our skin
& said where did everyone go?

when the weather's too hot for comfort
& we can't have ice-cream cones
it ain't no sin
to take off your skin
& dance around in your bones

National Poetry Month: Alone + I Found You - Poetry & Music Mash Up #3

trying to fit in sarah ogren

No one can make it in through this life alone.


3.
Alone + I Found You - Alabama Shakes


Alone
Maya Angelou

Lying, thinking
Last night
How to find my soul a home
Where water is not thirsty
And bread loaf is not stone
I came up with one thing
And I don't believe I'm wrong
That nobody,
But nobody
Can make it out here alone.

Alone, all alone
Nobody, but nobody
Can make it out here alone.

There are some millionaires
With money they can't use
Their wives run round like banshees
Their children sing the blues
They've got expensive doctors
To cure their hearts of stone.
But nobody
No, nobody
Can make it out here alone.

Alone, all alone
Nobody, but nobody
Can make it out here alone.

Now if you listen closely
I'll tell you what I know
Storm clouds are gathering
The wind is gonna blow
The race of man is suffering
And I can hear the moan,
'Cause nobody,
But nobody
Can make it out here alone.

Alone, all alone
Nobody, but nobody
Can make it out here alone.

National Poetry Month: Poem in Your Pocket Day

Celebrate national Poem In Your Pocket Day on Thursday, April 26, 2012!
The idea is simple: select a poem you love during National Poetry Month then carry it with you to share with co-workers, family, and friends.

You can also share your poem selection on Twitter by using the hashtag #pocketpoem.

Poems from pockets will be unfolded throughout the day with events in parks, libraries, schools, workplaces, and bookstores.

This is the poem that is in my pocket today:

Some Days
Billy Collins
Some days I put the people in their places at the table,
bend their legs at the knees,
if they come with that feature,
and fix them into the tiny wooden chairs.

All afternoon they face one another,
the man in the brown suit,
the woman in the blue dress,
perfectly motionless, perfectly behaved.

But other days, I am the one
who is lifted up by the ribs,
then lowered into the dining room of a dollhouse
to sit with the others at the long table.

Very funny,
but how would you like it
if you never knew from one day to the next
if you were going to spend it

striding around like a vivid god,
your shoulders in the clouds,
or sitting down there amidst the wallpaper,
staring straight ahead with your little plastic face?

National Poetry Month: View from a Temporary Window + Girl - Poetry & Music Mash Up #2

martha rich

Perception is reality. We see exactly what we want to see.

View from a Temporary Window + Girl - Beck
2.
View from a Temporary Window
Joanie Mackowski

Follow the wrecking ball: in a month, it will smash
into this glass

like that housefly. A blueprint unfolds on a table
beside an orchid doubled-

over with white blooms, and out the window, just half a bridge
dives into the front page

of a newspaper the neighbor lifts from her balcony.
Partial to more, we're beckoned

outward, beyond the foundation: and a new picture
window will jut

over the cliff to frame all the Golden Gate's
red seismograph, which cuts

through the fog to the headlands. In a year, in wingback chairs
we'll sit in the air

high above those tiny people strolling
the crumbling sill

down on Bay Street, out there where the orchid's reflection
hovers with a flock of gulls.

National Poetry Month: Half Mile Down + You Are the Ocean - Poetry & Music Mash Up - #1

When I drive I like to listen to news and music at the same time, a mash up of my own making. I had the idea today to pair poems and music for the remaining days of poetry month. Enjoy.

Half Mile Down  + You Are The Ocean - Phantogram
1.
Half Mile Down
Michael Ryan

My sick heart and my sick soul
I'd gladly fasten in a bag
and drop into an ocean-hole
to float in darkness as a rag.

Would it learn to make its light?
Maybe in a million years.
A million years of constant night
in which it can't stop its fears

flaring their nightmare tentacles
and bioluminescent eyes
as cold and sharp as icicles
under moonless, starless skies:

medusae, spookfish, cephalopods,
jellies with no eyes or brains,
lethal and beautiful as gods,
locked in endless predation chains.

How seamless then the world would seem,
which life on earth never did,
the living water like a dream
crowded with prowling vampire squid

that want only to stay alive
among other monsters innocent
of all but the pure drive to survive
without self-judgment.

National Poetry Month 2012: 30 Days, 30 Poets

Vanessa Place is the featured guest tumbler for April 23
On April 1, the Academy of American Poets will kick off its 2nd annual celebration of "30 Days, 30 Poets" for National Poetry Month. This April, 30 dynamic poets will take over curation of the Academy's Tumblr.. Each featured poet will have 24 hours to post an array of ephemera—in the form of text, images, audio, and video—before passing the baton.

Follow the Academy of American Poets on Tumblr to keep up-to-date on the latest poetry posts: http://poetsorg.tumblr.com/

April 2012 guest tumblers include:

4/1 Anselm Berrigan 4/2 Rachel Levitsky 4/3 Michael Dickman 4/4 Wayne        Koestenbaum 4/5 Bob Holman 4/6 Sandra Doller 4/7 Mathias Svalina 4/8 Brandon Downing 4/9 Zachary        Schomburg 4/10 Dara Wier

4/11 Prageeta Sharma 4/12 Thom Donovan 4/13 Aimee          Nezhukumatathil 4/14 Harmony Holiday 4/15 Hoa Nguyen 4/16 Eleni Sikelianos 4/17 Heather Christle 4/18 Ben Doller 4/19 Christian Bok 4/20 Ariana Reines

4/21 Emily Pettit 4/22 Samuel Amadon 4/23 Vanessa Place 4/24 Lisa Robertson 4/25 Robert Fitterman 4/26 Johannes Goransson 4/27 Julian T. Brolaski 4/28 Brandon Shimoda 4/29 Kate Durbin 4/30 Kenneth Goldsmith

National Poetry Month - The Poetry Project & Favorite Poem Project

Through The Poetry Project's live programming, workshops, publications, website and special events, The Poetry Project promotes, fosters and inspires the reading and writing of contemporary poetry by (a) presenting contemporary poetry to diverse audiences, (b) increasing public recognition, awareness and appreciation of poetry and other arts, (c) providing a community setting in which poets and artists can exchange ideas and information, and (d) encouraging the participation and development of new poets from a broad range of styles.

The Favorite Poem Project is dedicated to celebrating, documenting and encouraging poetry’s role in Americans’ lives.

One of my favorite poems is The Journey  by Mary Oliver. Every time I read it I am reminded that this is my one and only life and it is my responsibility to live it to the very fullest.

What is your favorite poem?

National Poetry Month 2012: National Poetry Map

USA Word Cloud VinylWallAccents

Choose a state to find local poets, poems, events, literary journals, writing programs, poetry organizations, and more on poets.org National Poetry Map

Philip Levine is the U.S. Poet Laureate.

Utah's Poet Laureate is Katharine Coles.

Who is the Poet Laureate of your state or country?

National Laureate
Robert Fitterman

Alabama
Eagle and egret, woodcock and teal, all birds
gathering to affirm the last gasp of sunset.

Alaska
Maybe I should stay in bed
all day long and read a book
or listen to the news on the radio
but truthfully, I am not meant for that.

Arkansas
Then, as we talked, my personage subdued,
And I became, as Petit jean, a ghost,

California
I can stand here all day and tell you how much
I honor, admire, how brave you are.

Connecticut
Dark grays and fainter
Grays of near fields and far hills
Motionless, his mind

Playing silently
Over and over with his
Worry beads of words.

Delaware
On her dresser is one of those old glass bottles
of Jergen's Lotion with the black label, a little round
bottle of Mum deodorant, a white plastic tray
with Avon necklaces and earrings, pennies, paper clips,
and a large black coat button. I appear to be very
interested in these objects.

Florida
We learn from our animals, if we're smart.
They know how to wait. They know how to run
To catch up. Much of their life is spent at windows.

Georgia
Loaded on beer and whiskey, we ride
to the dump in carloads
to turn our headlights across the wasted field,

Idaho
I imagined him wading the shallows of a mountain stream—
the breeze still cold off the higher snow fields,
the fish smell of fresh water, the pitched hum of insects
waking to the sun.

Illinois
Fact is, each breath becomes bone
becomes dust

Indiana
Hill Thoughts,
Midnight Flight

Iowa
The afternoons go by, one by one.
My old friend, who shone like a tropic sun
Amid the poets of our day, too soon
Grown wan and thin as the late May moon,

Kansas
In river country flint nodules rest
among limestone sea bottoms, unexplained,
glassy among the porous tangles of shells

Kentucky
I see her in a photograph I found,
unsmiling in a drop-waist dress. No telling
how the roaring twenties roared through here.

Louisiana
i search but i can not find out
the streets of my ancestors

nor any relative to receive me

Maine
When I was a child and angels argued slamming doors,
I lolled, feet up the couch, head on the floor

Maryland
Before I leave, almost without noticing,
before I cross the road and head toward
what I have intentionally postponed—

Mississippi
Behind the Ridge
The Seeking Spirit
Cry Life

Montana
Gray cloud like a sweater pulled over the heart of the moon.

Nebraska
Windmill. Stretch even the
Fingertips against sand-coated hills.
You can get there from here,
Sir.

Nevada
Treat your Mommy nice
and take her to Las Vegas—
she'll think you're swell.

New Hampshire
The city was brick and stone in the time
before glass and steel. In those days
the city was streets of women.

New York
Long ago you kissed the names of the nine Muses goodbye.

North Carolina
The only clouds
forming are crow clouds,

the only shade, oaks
bound together in a tangle of oak

North Dakota
Most poets are rooted in the natural world,
spokespersons for the inarticulate in nature.

Oklahoma
under her cool skin
the feet dipped in formaldehyde
to prevent sweating
a river runs.

Oregon
And you pretty much gotta trust Her,
even if that means twiddling your thumbs
while she makes Her way through Her medley—

Rhode Island
The dark barge works the length of braziers
humped like monks awaiting sacrifice;

South Carolina
Seeds of hope are waiting
in the sacred soil beneath our feet
and in the light and in the shadows,
spinning below the hemlocks.

Tennessee
for eighty some odd years
He rose with the rising sun
And many mornings got up at dark
For so much work was to be done.

Texas
Her skirt clings to her the way fog clings to a flower.
Her legs are curled up, her sleeping face soft like a saint.
Driving for hours a man thinks about how things are measured,
about how coffee always tastes better in small towns.

Utah
Neither of us can guess if they'll hurry
dusk along, those clouds that have loitered
all afternoon over the rooftops. From our window...

Vermont
When you come back to me
it will be crow time
and flycatcher time,
with rising spirals of gnats
between the apple trees.

Virginia
When the last cloud leaves
nothing behind—no
history, no trace of error, no
basilica to shelter a man—

Washington
oblivious to the fact
that anyone might be watching,
that he might be teaching us all
how to live

West Virginia
Then, that recognition would
reward me for all I'd undergone,
my bravery of thought, my refusal
of dishonest love, and my goodwill

Wisconsin
Although distance does not
matter, it's a long way
into the flat pine forest

Wyoming
the work of hunters is another thing:
I have come after them and made repair

Note: Not every U.S. state has a designated poet laureate

National Poetry Month 2012 - Poems for Sale

STORETRY No. 053 - 'X-RAY VISIONS' YeeHaw

Our poets are the oracles of the times.

Years ago a group of students at a May Day festival on the University of Utah's campus were selling poems for a few dollars each. I remember the young woman who wrote my poem had long blond wavy hair and was dressed like she had spent the summer hitch-hiking across Europe. She hand-printed her poem on unlined paper. The main image centered on the hare trapped on the moon, which is visible from Earth in a clear night sky. I know I still have the poem, probably tucked inside a book upstairs.

Very few poets make a living from their poetry. Poets usually teach at universities or have regular jobs that pay the bills. When I read NPR's article about this street poet, I thought how brave it is to believe your art will sustain you in all the practical matters of this life. I thought of the original street poet, Walt Whitman. And then I began to hope that this courageous soul, armed only with a typewriter and his words, has somehow recorded his work so they can be compiled into a book.

NPR - A Poem Store Open For Business, In The Open Air

4/19/12 Update: Christine PSS of Madison,Wisconsin opened a words for curds custom poetry and short story etsy shop yesterday. Check her out!

National Poetry Month 2012

National Poetry Month

30 Ways to Celebrate

1. Celebrate Poem in Your Pocket Day
The idea is simple: select a poem you love, carry it with you, then share it with co-workers, family, and friends.

2. Read a book of poetry
"Poetry is a response to the daily necessity of getting the world right."

3. Memorize a poem
"Getting a poem or prose passage truly 'by heart' implies getting it by mind and memory and understanding and delight."

4. Revisit a poem
"America is a country of second acts, so today, why not brush the dust off these classics and give them a fresh read?"

5. Put poetry in an unexpected place
"Books should be brought to the doorstep like electricity, or like milk in England: they should be considered utilities."

6. Bring a poem to your place of worship
"We define poetry as the unofficial view of being, and bringing the art of language in contact with your spiritual practices can deepen both."

7. Attend a poetry reading
"Readings have been occurring for decades around the world in universities, bookstores, cafes, corner pubs, and coffeehouses."

8. Play Exquisite Corpse
"Each participant is unaware of what the others have written, thus producing a surprising—sometimes absurd—yet often beautiful poem."

9. Read a poem at an open mic
"It's a great way to meet other writers in your area and find out about your local writing community."

10. Support literary organizations
"Many national and local literary organizations offer programs that reach out to the general public to broaden the recognition of poets and their work."

11. Listen on your commute
"Often, hearing an author read their own work can clarify questions surrounding their work's tone."

12. Subscribe to a literary magazine
"Full of surprising and challenging poetry, short fiction, interviews, and reviews, literary journals are at the forefront of contemporary poetry."

13. Start a notebook on Poets.org
"Poets.org lets users build their own personal portable online commonplace book out of the materials on our site."

14. Put a poem in a letter
"It's always a treat to get a letter, but finding a poem in the envelope makes the experience extra special."

15. Watch a poetry movie
"What better time than National Poetry Month to gather some friends, watch a poetry-related movie, and perhaps discuss some of the poet's work after the film?"

16. Take a poem out to lunch
"Adding a poem to lunch puts some poetry in your day and gives you something great to read while you eat."

17. Put a poem on the pavement
"Go one step beyond hopscotch squares and write a poem in chalk on your sidewalk."

18. Recite a poem to family and friends "You can use holidays or birthdays as an opportunity to celebrate with a poem that is dear to you, or one that reminds you of the season."

19. Organize a poetry reading
"When looking for a venue, consider your local library, coffee shop, bookstore, art gallery, bar or performance space."

20. Promote public support for poetry"Every year, Congress decides how much money will be given to the National Endowment for the Arts to be distributed all across America."

21. Start a poetry reading group
"Select books that would engage discussion and not intimidate the reader new to poetry."

22. Read interviews and literary criticism"Reading reviews can also be a helpful exercise and lend direction to your future reading."

23. Buy a book of poems for your library
"Many libraries have undergone or are facing severe cuts in funding. These cuts are often made manifest on library shelves."

24. Start a commonplace book
"Since the Renaissance, devoted readers have been copying their favorite poems and quotations into notebooks to form their own personal anthologies called commonplace books."

25. Integrate poetry with technology
"Many email programs allow you to create personalized signatures that are automatically added to the end of every email you send."

26. Ask the Post Office for more poet stamps
"To be eligible, suggested poets must have been deceased for at least ten years and must be American or of American descent."

27. Sign up for a poetry class or workshop
"Colleges and arts centers often make individual courses in literature and writing available to the general public."

28. Subscribe to our free newsletter"Short and to the point, the Poets.org Update, our electronic newsletter, will keep you informed on Academy news and events."

29. Write a letter to a poet"Let the poets who you are reading know that you appreciate their work by sending them a letter."

30. Visit a poetry landmark"Visiting physical spaces associated with a favorite writer is a memorable way to pay homage to their life and work."

Nation Poetry Month 2011: Bone & Silence - Gerald Fleming

Bone & Silence Gerald Fleming

A long time passes—long even in the understanding of stone—and at last Bone feels entitled to speak to Silence. There are prerequisites: proper depth, aridity, desiccation, ph balance, density, and a kind of confidence. No loam: say salt, say dust, say southwest Utah. And when the conversation occurs it is understood on Bone's part what to expect from Silence, so one could say that expectations were low, but such is a pattern of our thinking, and in this case the entire dry dialectic is different, and in fact expectations were high. There is a moon shining, unknown to Bone, intimate with Silence. There are mammals overhead, the noise of whose small feet are perceived or unperceived.
And after all this discursive talk, what at last does Bone say to Silence? What would you have Bone say to Silence? We could try Is there anywhere we can go for a beer? and that might get a little laugh, might qualify as ineffably human, almost religious. But we know better about Bone & Silence—need only look inside us, have the bravery to cease this chatter, this scrape of pencil on paper, to leave the rest of the book blank, get out of the way, let the conversation begin.

National Poetry Month 2011: The Prose Poem - Campbell McGrathh

The Prose Poem
Campbell McGrath

On the map it is precise and rectilinear as a chessboard, though driving past you would hardly notice it, this boundary line or ragged margin, a shallow swale that cups a simple trickle of water, less rill than rivulet, more gully than dell, a tangled ditch grown up throughout with a fearsome assortment of wildflowers and bracken. There is no fence, though here and there a weathered post asserts a former claim, strands of fallen wire taken by the dust. To the left a cornfield carries into the distance, dips and rises to the blue sky, a rolling plain of green and healthy plants aligned in close order, row upon row upon row. To the right, a field of wheat, a field of hay, young grasses breaking the soil, filling their allotted land with the rich, slow-waving spectacle of their grain. As for the farmers, they are, for the most part, indistinguishable: here the tractor is red, there yellow; here a pair of dirty hands, there a pair of dirty hands. They are cultivators of the soil. They grow crops by pattern, by acre, by foresight, by habit. What corn is to one, wheat is to the other, and though to some eyes the similarities outweigh the differences it would be as unthinkable for the second to commence planting corn as for the first to switch over to wheat. What happens in the gully between them is no concern of theirs, they say, so long as the plough stays out, the weeds stay in the ditch where they belong, though anyone would notice the wind-sewn cornstalks poking up their shaggy ears like young lovers run off into the bushes, and the kinship of these wild grasses with those the farmer cultivates is too obvious to mention, sage and dun-colored stalks hanging their noble heads, hoarding exotic burrs and seeds, and yet it is neither corn nor wheat that truly flourishes there, nor some jackalopian hybrid of the two. What grows in that place is possessed of a beauty all its own, ramshackle and unexpected, even in winter, when the wind hangs icicles from the skeletons of briars and small tracks cross the snow in search of forgotten grain; in the spring the little trickle of water swells to welcome frogs and minnows, a muskrat, a family of turtles, nesting doves in the verdant grass; in summer it is a thoroughfare for raccoons and opossums, field mice, swallows and black birds, migrating egrets, a passing fox; in autumn the geese avoid its abundance, seeking out windrows of toppled stalks, fatter grain more quickly discerned, more easily digested. Of those that travel the local road, few pay that fertile hollow any mind, even those with an eye for what blossoms, vetch and timothy, early forsythia, the fatted calf in the fallow field, the rabbit running for cover, the hawk's descent from the lightning-struck tree. You've passed this way yourself many times, and can tell me, if you would, do the formal fields end where the valley begins, or does everything that surrounds us emerge from its embrace?

National Poetry Month - 30 Prose Poems in Thirty Days

It's April, the first day of National Poetry Month, despite it being Fool's Day, or perhaps because it is.

Which made me think: The first card in the tarot is the fool, the last is the world. (off to wiki for quick research). There are 22 major arcana, so that covers twenty-two days. I'll just pick eight other cards at random. (dropping by Barnes & Noble to pick up a tarot pack).

The plan: I will begin this month of writing with the fool, ending with the world.

The back story: I really didn't have much of an idea of what I wanted to write about as to theme until a few minutes ago, this is how my brain works. Get an idea, run with it until the car is out of gasoline, so I'll center my prose poems on the major and minor arcana of the tarot. Yesterday I did research on clouds, so I'll incorporate this into the writing as well.

30 Prose Poems in Thirty Days: Tarot, clouds, and whatever else presents itself.

I'll post and edit and re-edit and repost as I work.

Poem Therapy at 7:01 A.M. - John Ashberry

Meaningful Love
John Ashbery

What the bad news was
became apparent too late
for us to do anything good about it.

I was offered no urgent dreaming,
didn't need a name or anything.
Everything was taken care of.

In the medium-size city of my awareness
voles are building colossi.
The blue room is over there.

He put out no feelers.
The day was all as one to him.
Some days he never leaves his room
and those are the best days,
by far.

There were morose gardens farther down the slope,
anthills that looked like they belonged there.
The sausages were undercooked,
the wine too cold, the bread molten.
Who said to bring sweaters?
The climate's not that dependable.

The Atlantic crawled slowly to the left
pinning a message on the unbound golden hair of sleeping maidens,
a ruse for next time,

where fire and water are rampant in the streets,
the gate closed—no visitors today
or any evident heartbeat.

I got rid of the book of fairy tales,
pawned my old car, bought a ticket to the funhouse,
found myself back here at six o'clock,
pondering "possible side effects."

There was no harm in loving then,
no certain good either. But love was loving servants
or bosses. No straight road issuing from it.
Leaves around the door are penciled losses.
Twenty years to fix it.
Asters bloom one way or another.

Love is a incongruous and curious state of being. Who really knows what meaningful love is? Each person has their own template, I suppose. As humans we yearn for it, find it, lose it, find it again, suffer for it, bludgeon ourselves and others over the head with it, nurse our broken hearts, try again, fail, fail, fail, and hate those who have found it. Hate them with a fierce Chuck Norris intensity.

But, what is meaningful love? We think we know what it is. Fairy-tale romance, obsessive love, mother love, religious fervor, self-sacrificing, unconditional, negating, all consuming passion. We read novels, tell ourselves and our kids fairytale stories and pretend they aren't part of our psychic DNA. We watch films that show us what love should be:, sweeping and all encompassing, with a ubiquitous violin score ratcheting up in the background.

Be honest, don't you put your love life on scale and weigh it against some novel, legend, fairytale, or film, or some couple that has "found it"? Of course, we all do, and of course, this ultimately leaves us feeling cheated because our significant other forgot our anniversary, or left the freaking toilet seat up, yet again!

Perhaps, love is like what Ekhart Tolle said in the first few pages of his latest book, something about Jesus commanding us to be as a flower. The natural world blooms and recreates itself regardless of the losses or harm it suffers. A flower blooms and that's enough. I think we'd all be much happier as flowers.

30 Poems in 30 Days - Thirty: Wish You Were Here

Poets & Writers challenge for todays is to transcribe a poem—one of your own from this month’s challenge or a poem that’s spoken to you sometime this month—onto a postcard. By the end of the day, slip that card into the mail to be delivered to a friend.

I think that in addition to transcribing one of my poems for a friend, I'll write a postcard poem.

Wish You Were Here
Danna

Dear Siobhan.,

I wish you were here beside me,
alternating between holding
your breath and screaming curses
into the swirling chaos. The sky
is a threatening lapis blue,
and the trees are bent in a sideways
prayer beneath the wind's finger.
You always loved to be scared,
always loved knowing that the whirlwind
was out on the horizon waiting for you,
sharpening its scythe on its leather strop.

Best,
Danna

30 Poems in 30 Days - Twenty-nine: Driving to Mercury

When I finally looked at the clock last night, it was midnight and too late to get my twenty-ninth poem in on time. If you've been reading this blog, you know I've written a poem every day,(well, except for that Oregon weekend where I posted three poems in advance). It appears I'm the kind of runner that runs strong the entire race until the finish line is in sight, then just peters out. Not that I'm a runner, but an apt analogy. Speaking of running, I used to run everywhere, compete and win races at elementary and middle school. I had dreams of becoming a track star, but my mother told me it wasn't "feminine", which I understand now meant independent, tomboy, perhaps alternative, oh my! Come to think of it, nothing I did was "feminine", even the church patriarch after he gave me a blessing, said it was a "man's blessing", but that's a story for another day. To be fair to all involved, this was right on the cusp of the equal rights movement, and the cultural paradigm shift, I mean, women could be ticketed for wearing slacks in public buildings. No kidding.

I wish I had continued running. I really miss those muscles.

Here's Poets & Writers prompt for yesterday's poetry challenge: Pause today and allow yourself at least fifteen uninterrupted minutes to write freely, using the first word or phrase that comes to mind to guide the entire exercise. If you come to a stopping point in the writing before time is up, revisit the initial word or words as you would a refrain.

Driving to Mercury
Danna

We shred ribbons of highway
stretching across the planet's surface
under the watchful eyes of the stars
the car's headlights illuminating our path

I am strapped into the driver seat
hands holding the steering wheel loosely
heading toward that dark horizon
pulled by its gleaming iron core

My dog is curled in the passenger seat
whimpering in his dreams
He is unaware the smallest planet
of the solar system
is expecting our arrival

I know we must hurry into the distance
to win the race with the swift
footed messenger's flight across the heavens
before he disappears
once again in the morning light

Poem Therapy at 10:54 P.M. - Jack Stewart

Keeping Track of My Genius
Jack Stewart

I sometimes find him in the attic,
lying on his side, contemplating
the insulation. Or just staring at

the beams, trying to get the measure
of force and distribution. He turns up a lot in the garage.

I know he loves me. But if I look
away for an instant, he's off,
and I worry that he won't come back

(or when he does he'll have no taste,
gone in for some fad I'll have to bear,
and every move he makes a test).

But usually he's charming,
following me to the cafe
and lying on the awning so carefully

as not to make it sag, only
casting a slight shadow on my table.
Of course I act as though I

haven't seen a thing. He only wants,
I think, to do what can't be done.
Why just yesterday, for instance,
I found him going through the public trash,
figuring how to fill a bottle
some angry drunk had smashed.

My genius has been wandering lost in the trees for a very long time. If you see her, please drop a few bread crumbs so she can find her way home. I really need her help with my novel.

I spent the last four and one half hours soldering, hammering, sanding, oxidizing, and it was a glorious time! My little finger is protesting right now, though. I've learned I have to be very careful of it when I'm working, since I still can't feel the outer side. The tip still can't bend on its own volition, but it's geting better. I think.

30 Poems in 30 Days - Twenty-eight: What Goes Around

Poets & Writers challenge for today is to choose a clichéd phrase ("fit as a fiddle," "think out of the box," "running on empty," etc.) and turn it around. Use the new meaning created by this reversal to fuel a poetic meditation.

I'll be working with either "have your cake and eat it too" or "what goes around comes around", but much later today.

What Goes Around
Danna

the burdens of the dead
float inside him
like a boat made of sharp bones

his own death is coming
a shadow out on the dark water