(NaPoWriMo Challenge: April 20, 2017)

My headquarters are full of tennis *****, basketballs and boxing gloves, figuratively speaking. Literally there are only golf *****
in the bureaus of CEOs. Maybe a horse.

Field offices are loathe to make apologies or analogies
while they’re swinging for the fences. But I had a boss once

who was known for his sucker punch.
I took it on the chin until I threw in the towel.
It was par for the course but he was sidelined for it,

ultimately thrown out of the game. His biggest insult
was asking me if I knew what a football looked like.

At the worst of it, I had a famous football player
in my corner. He literally ran interference during play.
I was dancing in the end zone.

But the sticky wicket was my choice to be an office caddy
in the first place instead of a canto girl.

Where did I drop the ball, not keep my eye on the ball?
Was I lightweight at the turnover?

Grandstand hollers are definitely in my wheelhouse,
my proverbial slam dunk. I can throw my hat in the ring,
square off and go the distance.

I’ve had my years of first down bad plays.
I’ve learned some lessons of the game.

There is no such seventh inning, there is no homestretch.
Everything is under the wire but the wire itself.

You are the only ringer to the winner and the loser.

I keep throwing myself out there like a Hail Mary
which is why I’m evermore a ball in their court.

(NaPoWriMo Challenge: April 19, 2017)

In the beginning of everything a door opened into the Universe.
This was the moment when the Supreme Guy discovered the World.
He sat down on a white throne and made proclamations and prophecies
but there was nobody there to hear them.

So he started to create a plethora of beings—germs, bugs, ants and
    people—
who would be able to listen to him making his gossipy prophecies.
All these new beings crawled up from the underworld,
through a deep sinkhole, emerging into a big white bowl.

Gleaming from birth, they could see their creator.
Floating with joy, they sailed on the seas
and felt the rush of wind from creation’s vents.
Some days there would be a deluge of suffering

and the people learned to ascribe this to the Supreme Guy
who probably had eaten hot lava and fire the day before.
Some days were a peaceful rain. Some days were sun.
Some days the creator would disappear for a long time

and the people would be alone in the Universe
and no one would know what to think or believe.
But the Supreme Guy would always return with new decrees
that would smell of buttermilk and cheese.

(NaPoWriMo Challenge: April 18, 2017)

My tongue is an open field,
A tarryhouse, a dwadlefund.
My brain is a dog house,
A slothfred, an erratictician.
My heart is an inflatable inner tube on the lake,
A treadologist, a swimsucker, an aquadiator.
My feet are divining the amblesphere,
a gist, bearably a drift.

(NaPoWriMo Challenge: April 17, 2017)

The trains come every few hours
bringing layers of night in compartments

of sleepers, processions of dark
to convalesce the whispering

cottonwoods. The station windows
are dark. A rare hotel window

glows yellow from a lamp.
Someone is reading

about Mary Colter.
Her stone property wall

like a bulwark against our passage.
The overnight swooshes of the convoy

fade out into the flat horizon
while stamped sheets of tin nichos

unbent themselves in quiet pops
downstairs, old Harvey keys

snug in drawers. Is this the night
almost one hundred years ago?

Or will we all wake up with the trains,
shuttling into tomorrow?

(NaPoWriMo Challenge: April 16, 2017)

Dear Adult Face,

This letter is to inform you that your employment is no longer needed. I am planning to make some structural changes area-wide and our affiliation will be terminated. During your tenure with me your performance metrics were clearly stated, as were the implications for deficient outcomes. Despite three prior notarized memos you have failed to address lagging issues and for quite some time you have failed to live up to my expectations. And as I feel I must put my best face forward, I will be refilling this position.

Yours in success,
Self-Improvement Initiatives

Dear “Brain,”

I would just like to calmly say to you—in response to your very unsurprising termination letter—you expect too much. Being your face wasn’t ever easy. In fact, you don’t know the crap I’ve had to put up with, every single day, representing you. Never a kind word from the boss. Never a massaging flattery. This face you’re looking at, Buddy—I am part of history. I’m the real deal. So pardon me for living—but you can’t just get rid of a face so easily. I’m not a piece of meat you can toss out with the trash. I’m a survivor. I’m more you than you are, you cavalier bag of bones. This isn’t the end of it. I’ll be seeing you again again someday before we leave this earth. If you’re lucky. You toxic ****.

Wishing you a punch in the new face,
Original Face

(NaPoWriMo Challenge: April 15, 2017)

Like a game of cutthroats
where it’s safe to not win and safe to not lose,
the pillow room of politics, peaceful and nonpartisan,
the middle is not invisible but the only slightly visible,
the waving stalks and straw of the masses, ghostly,
a place where you can pass, where everyone is passing
in order to stay in play.

Like the strong arc of a story
where the middle meanders but the end feels inevitable,
honorable, like a journey among knights, like the harvest,
the long farm days of history, respite before the ******:
the dogs are asleep, children in the fields of alfalfa
and then the trees rustle at the windbreak and you worry
maybe you’re not in the middle anymore.

(NaPoWriMo Challenge: April 14, 2017)

Pablo Picasso—
Everyone would follow.
But no one else made millions,
Not even the Brazilians.

(NaPoWriMo Challenge: April 13, 2017)

Dubious ****** and fallopian slide, the schoolyard for the ovaries
and where the air is full of talk of bees and ovaries.

Where one begins and the other one bends,
this marks the difference between knees and ovaries.

Punctuation is the point of this methodical formula,
plus a plethora of particulars like groceries and ovaries.

Good times go by as years and ages and epochs
and we research our prospects on heart disease and ovaries.

The origin of art, the origin of life, we study and define
the emblems of potency and all the ironies of ovaries.

All the ****** periods is the point of this procedure,
is why we exalt the expertise of the ovaries.

(NaPoWriMo Challenge: April 12, 2017)

Beyond the bounds of the book
lie intangible plots if you’re feeling
frustration with the form: so open, flip
and close. So controlled. So safe.

Flippancy is really explorer’s envy
with all their maps and metal detectors
and technology of the times threatening
our melancholy universe which spins
to the new, dangerous tale, the world wide
web, the wonderful skim, step and sinking in,
piercing and wholly unclosable.

(NaPoWriMo Challenge: April 11, 2017)

It’s a world of too many institutions,
flybynights, everything for a squeeze,
students giving everything to the landlord,
a book, a visit to the doctor—
not everyone will survive it,
your hometown, your alma mater.

We live in interesting times.

The money movers, the bonds,
martyr retirees, the thrifty—
no money, no metaphors,
no synecdoches building up the edifice,
no icons, no engineering,  
no puzzlers or paradox,
just the conundrum of greedy ignorance
claiming an ever higher rent.

We live in interesting times.

Outside, the big mountain lays down his tail
beyond the cottonwood tree, hand to hand
we work this place, unassuming servants
under the sun. What does a simile cost?
A bridge, a salvage, a clarity?
What does deliverance cost?

We live in interesting times.