(NaPoWriMo Challenge: April 9, 2014)


I.
Who is this who holds the pen?
Who feels the hurt as I scratch the wood?
What is my tale but society’s tale?
What is my ego but the eye of the universe?
Fractured, unglued, a skin made of sponge,
I am not who I think I am and so I evaporate
into the infinite me, some which are you.
This may be true, but it’s better the devil
you know than the devils you don’t.

II.
Self-portrait of my DNA, fluted nameplate,
a word that means me swirling in another language.
Who tells the reader about the bloodless me?
Who tells the reader my soul is meshed into their soul?
Who receives the feeling? Who tells the reader in me?
Who did not decide to write this?
Dear my different me-s, my lovely, distracted plural,
this is how they come to power, they who are not you,
this is how they divide (the me) and conquer.

(NaPoWriMo Challenge: April 8, 2014)


ppp> Practice makes perfect
br> ad news travels fast
br / Give the devil his due
br / Every man has his faults href="http://www.man-faults.com"

p> Give him an inch and he'll take a mile
br / The best go first
br / Seeing is believing
br / Silence is golden

p>  Ignorance is bliss
br / Patience is a (span style="font-size:inline-is-no") virtue(/span>
br / “Nobody comes here anymore
br / It's too crowded” (Yogi Berra said that)

p> All good things must come to an end
br / Thank the World Wide Web
br / First things (form)
It only exists if you (html)

(NaPoWriMo Challenge: April 7, 2014)


What a rolling stone gathers
you don’t want—mold and must.
So you stay out in the ether,
saying but not staying,
smoothed-over in your always moving.
You don’t stick around. Never complain;
never explain; never define.
Clauses are dependencies.
Flourishes are trimmings
for the house proud.
You are eternally new,
flexible in obtuseness
and obscurities. Far from the sink-
hole of being obliged.

Those who stick around a movement,
those who pledge a bit of future
to another know the sticky intimacy.
Skin to skin, they commit to paper
what they are saying,
stand on the square, stay to debate.
Committed to all ears,
eyes, hands, and souls—
as comes rolling by,
having gathered nothing,
the bad penny that inevitably turns up.

(NaPoWriMo Challenge: April 6, 2014)


Brevity, loose, Hemingway, Proust
All roads lead to Rome
Except those roads leading out of Rome

Frosted chamisa, Mother Teresa
All that glitters is not gold
Except gold can usually buy most of what glitters

Tenured by kings, a sailing ember
When you’re hot you’re hot
When you’re not—you rot.

(NaPoWriMo Challenge: April 5, 2014)

There are theories about skin cells and exfoliation.
There are theories about heart veins and salt.
There are theories about caffeine and butter and nightshades.
There are theories about wine, an apple a day.
There are theories about the brain and biofeedback.
There are theories about feet and reflexology.
There are theories about the alignment of the skeleton.
There are theories about massage, God, and voodoo.
There are theories about how to raise children and cats.
There are theories about pantsuits.
There are theories about autism and the stock market.
There are theories about the metabolism and gain without pain.
There are theories about bathing and the Brussels sprout.
There are theories about jazz.
There are theories about the method.
There are theories about biographies and metaphor.
There are theories about the histories of history.
There are theories about watercolors.
There are theories about poetry
and there are poetry theories.
And then there’s Chinese medicine.

(NaPoWriMo Challenge: April 4, 2014)


Intellect before beauty.
Business before pleasure,
unless intellect is beauty.
Who is to say
in the business of pleasure?
To say what a cottonwood stands for.
It stands to reason.
It stands to shade.
It stands to hold the opportunity
of end tables and envelopes.
Even a tree is a recycled tree
made to hang recycled wind and snow.
Progress always involves retrograde.
Garbage in, shiny new plastic item out.

(NaPoWriMo Challenge: April 3, 2014)


The journey of a thousand miles begins
with one small word,
a word that is not une pipe,
a word that it takes more than effort—
mere focus—to incorporate back into the journey,
a word that requires exercise, sweating
over the assembly of combinations and clues,
yoga stretching over accidental and malicious gaps,
a word strung into licorice, chopped, blocked
and set into rows,

the journey of a thousand letters
carved and installed like a Michelangelo
in front of your neighbor’s house,
the doorbell rung, tie straightened,
hat in hand:

“Can I help you?”
“A poem in time saves nine.”
“Sorry but I gave at the office.”

It’s a long haul, this journey.
Everything’s a commodity or a charity
these days, even for you, Truthie Ruthie,
who will write 3 lines to change the world
or the art—as soon as you can find your pens.