that's mrs. mediocrity to you

you think this means in the country
(where i live)
there is no garbage

you think a centipede is the monster
and the suit is a shield

you think cement is a bed
and people are stairs
and the sky is a mean green blanket

oh, i don’t mean you you
i mean them you

of course

i’ve no idea what you think

tell me

i’ll build a tower filled with wheels
and act the cog

i’ll ask everything you hold
in the talon of answer

i’ll tie ribbons in your wind
and watch the hair

we’re both after flight

we’re both

after flight

electricity

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A poem a day for 30 days, in honor of National Poetry Month. Day 7
I’m participating in NaPoWriMo, and Writer’s Digest Poem a Day Challenge

Today’s theme is a PAD’s: Write a poem titled Urban ________.

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remember the marriage of pronouns?
i held you tight and we both wish-kissed
and the river ran silent beneath loose boards
and scattered petal

that bridge is still standing
but years ago one side sank deep
into the mud of bottled anger

you can still get across
but you must walk crooked
and the path to the sky
has filled in with unspoken apology

all bridges are metaphors and ours
was no different

any day now the stream banks will sing
with a riot of daffodil trumpet
and we’ll hold hands in the rain
because we have two chairs

and this garden became us
or them or in the evenings at least
you and me

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A poem a day for 30 days, in honor of National Poetry Month. Day 6
I’m participating in NaPoWriMo, and Writer’s Digest Poem a Day Challenge

Today’s theme is a PAD’s write an ekphrastic poem—a poem inspired by art

devotion is a curious spring
rippling up through time and history

a veil

of interlaced attempt and failure
stubborn reveal
bruised experience

hope

at the bottom of a well named fortitude

drawn up
in a broken-rope bucket
swinging and splashing

despair

on walls built of mud and stone

there is always growth

there is always frustration

there is always

beginning

born

of defeat

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A poem a day for 30 days, in honor of National Poetry Month. Day 5
I’m participating in NaPoWriMo, and Writer’s Digest Poem a Day Challenge.

Today’s theme is a combination:
Experience from PAD and Heirloom Seed Names from NaPo

Now that March
has put some distance between us
February

I can see you didn’t mean
to be cruel, exactly
and April still holds sway

after all
you managed to hand us
an extra twenty-four hours
pretending it was gift
and not correction

but it was another terse-curt day
just like all your bitter
Napoleonic efforts

and don’t think
this means your dark laughter
has suddenly become okay

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A poem a day for 30 days, in honor of National Poetry Month. Day 4
I’m participating in NaPoWriMo, and Writer’s Digest Poem a Day Challenge.

Today’s theme is a combination:
Distance from PAD and Is April the cruelest month? from NaPo

talisman of time
unbreakable memory
society’s weapon

you can always
refuse to choose but
you will be followed

return to the mountain
live with rubble
carve your freedom

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A poem a day for 30 days, in honor of National Poetry Month. Day 3
I’m participating in NaPoWriMo, and Writer’s Digest Poem a Day Challenge.

Today’s theme from PAD is three (fill in the blank)

sitting shoulder to shoulder on on earth’s last boulder
remembering things we thought she said and forgetting
the way it rained on the night we learned

forgiveness.

in a drawer upstairs lies a box full of words
mine, not yours, his, not hers, lined with the echo
of unspoken progress. we never stopped moving

and thought shelter

was hidden in a shadow somewhere deep
beneath the ocean of your bed. i never asked to be held
and the waves kept breaking, even after the whisper:

you won’t drown.

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A poem a day for 30 days, in honor of National Poetry Month. Day 2
I’m participating in NaPoWriMo, and Writer’s Digest Poem a Day Challenge.

Today’s theme from PAD is he said, she said.

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we all play the fool

for a sky

fixed with one blue chance

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A poem a day for 30 days, in honor of National Poetry Month. Day 1
I’m participating in NaPoWriMo, and Writer’s Digest Poem a Day Challenge.

Today’s theme is a combination: fools and lunes.

and so began
the year of words
scattering themselves
like autumn leaves
on every page she
turned and all the
commas periods and
semi colons
were left holding tight
to white space and
ideology and she
couldn’t hear herself
think
for all the echoes
but those words they
crawled on her skin
like ants of fire
burning itching demanding
to be set free
til she screamed and ran
for cover finally jumping
into the pool despite
her inability to swim
and those words
well
they joined hands to form
a raft that pulled her
back to the surface
floated her home
laughed at her a little and
whispered secrets
behind flat palmed hands
passing her story around
and around until it
evolved into
an entirely different
poem

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I did it! A poem a day for 30 days.
In honor of National Poetry Month,
this post is part of NaPoWriMo. see more here.

i am always alone always together
always held in the grip of this life
this amalgam of a long line of
choices i thought i never made
a tea brewed from fifty years
of love tears existence and
breathing in letting go holding
simple tools and learning how to
forge my way down this path
filled with weeds vines growth
finding my way sending out feelers
but i have always been blind and
those tiny bits of light that make
their way through guide me closer
to home deliver me from evil a
periphery of vision i have simply
discarded i can’t see i can’t
see i am lost always lost but
if you stand before me and ask
for directions i can tell you
the best way to get there

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A poem a day for 30 days.
In honor of National Poetry Month,
this post is part of NaPoWriMo. see more here.

she lived in
a small house
in a small town
in a very small
postage stamp
version
of reality

at night
stars crept
under doors
and into cracks
to make certain
she was not
expanding

.

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A poem a day for 30 days.
In honor of National Poetry Month,
this post is part of NaPoWriMo. see more here.