(NaPoWriMo Challenge: April 26, 2019)

There can only be so many recipes for success.
There can only be so many recipes for meatloaf.
There can only be so many recipes for a hit single.
There can only be so many poems about dogs, breakups and trips to Italy.
There can only be so many biographies about Marilyn Monroe.
There can only be so many blues riffs, jazz interludes, and country songs invoking old cars.
There can only be so many widgets and thingamajigs.
There can only be so many eye creams, lipsticks and color-sensitive shampoos.
There can only be so many plastic bags, trampolines and podcasts.
There can only be so many versions.
I can only tell so many new bosses the ropes.
There can only be so many children’s books.
There can only be so many best-selling mystery authors.
There can only be so many brands of soft drink.
There can only be so many brands of liquor.
There can only be so many brands of water.
There can only be so many window frames, iframes and frames of reference.
There can only be so many fireplace repairmen.
There can only be so many times I redo this correction in this spreadsheet.
There can only be so many creation theories with their evangelists on street corners.
There can only be so many arguments I have with my terrier.
There can only be so many poems.
But no, spreadsheets and billboards proliferate like clover
and hypocrites are as bottomless as all the leaves of forever
and poems and recipes and pop songs are the infinite hives of a trillion bees.

(NaPoWriMo Challenge: April 25, 2019)

What does it mean to be wise?
What does it mean to mentor?
In a world for the young,
does it mean anything?

Old trees in our autumnal springs,
we’ve been through all the weathers,
wind blowing off our bark skins,
the hot sun burning our green.
into a fragile brown crisp.

Among the hustle and bustle of the leaves
and in the hallways of the woods,
we see you repeating all our mistakes:
little seedlings spreading roots
too fast through the loam
for the feel of the cold earth
on your stringy new toes.

Can you smell the honeysuckle
growing like a blanket around you
and enjoy the buddings
of your first springs?

Your leaves are thirsty and proud,
but consider the perils of social climbing.
You hear frenetic twitters on the roof,
but once you climb you will see
only tar and gravel and broken shingles.

Listen to the clouds instead.
Work hard just to stand tall.

(NaPoWriMo Challenge: April 24, 2019)

ad·min·is·triv·i·a  (ăd-mĭn′ĭ-strĭv′ē-ə) pl. n.

1. “A term that encompasses all the trivial tasks that management is far too qualified to suffer through.”

2. Why companies should hire up and not out.

3. A practice that smells bad to worker bees.

4. A malady of misunderstanding how trivia can bring down an empire.

syn. A cop out.

origin. middle business-speak from the Marketing era.

(NaPoWriMo Challenge: April 23, 2019)

I bought an eighty dollar dog bed
trying to get my dog to stay in my office.

She lays in the bed like Elizabeth Taylor
reclining in Cat on a Hot Tin Roof.

She, too, is a **** and she snores
loudly during my phone meetings.

The small couch bed is tan and svelte.
She is camouflaged while sleeping,

her head resting over the arm,
stretching into a sigh,

gazing across the room indifferently
as if to say, “jobs are for suckers.”