Yesterbed (NaPoWriMo 2020, day 28)

April 28, 2020
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Today’s challenge: Write a poem about a bedroom.

Yesterbed

The boy swims up from slumber and is awake. In this huge strange bedroom of his rich aunt, beneath a densely-woven top sheet and a quilt kaleidoscopably checkerboarded, with a few

Disattaching squares flapped open, there is extra heat across the boy’s legs

And he sees it is brought by bright sunshine, its bedfoot dazzle aswarm

With dust motes, and the boy in a flash realizes that he has been breathing this fine dust, and it is either this

Or the engulfing eiderdown pillow that gives him his one-nostril allergic shutdown. His nose will clear up if he gets up and walks around some. The old bed

Is with its high frame and thicker mattress and springs a sort

Of parachute-jumping-place for the boy, for his stubby boylegs dangle well above the floor, so that when he pushes off

He lands with a jolt. His feet feel the tight tiny curlicues of the weave of the Persian rug. His bare feet rather enjoy the breaking-through-mudcrust sensation

As he walks to the bookshelf. Aunt had told him “Some of your father’s books are here.” CAPTAIN OF THE ELEVEN

Must be one of them. It is probably about football rather than war. But there is DAVE DAWSON AT DUNKIRK as well so who knows. A quick peek confirms

Football. Wow, what thick pages! What weird, laughy dialogue! He puts the book back

And pulls out a pink one: THE PRIMROSE PATH by Ogden Nash. Nash was the “Candy is dandy,

But liquor is quicker” guy. The page he opens it to has a caricature of Adolf Hitler on it, who must have still been alive, because underneath the four lines are “Some day some talented belittler/Will pen a Valentine to Hitler./That gory bigot pedagogical,/Adolf, the Primrose Pathological.” The boy, twelve but fairly bright, sees that this IS that Valentine, or anyway an instrument of belittlement,

And context clues hint that a “pedagogical” person must be a dictator, and a “Primrose Path” must be a bad choice someone is lulled into taking. He checks the copyright date–1935–before he puts the book back. So the Holocaust had already begun…

The boy notices that the bedframe is carved wood, and that in addition to the elaborate, bird-crowded carving at the headboard, the very legs and feet of the bed

Are intricately carved as well. The feet have feline pawish claws. The bedposts–so that’s what a bedpost looks like!–have a swirl to them a bit like the torch

Of the Statue of Liberty. As the boy heads out the door to the preparing-breakfast rattle of the kitchen downstairs, he finds a ditty he never knew he had in his head, asking

If the bubblegum had lost its flavor/On the bedpost/Overnight.

contradictory crown (NaPoWriMo 2020, day 27)

April 27, 2020
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Today’s challenge: write a poem-form review of something that ordinarily does not get reviewed.

contradictory crown

burger king to their discredit offers to children

a piece of cut card stock purported to be a crown

and it looks like factory seconds at a party store whose factory firsts are pathetic

but tackiness of the merchandiseaside this crown respresents a perpetuation

of all that is wrongheaded and atavistic about values and priorities

 

it maybe argued that a company called “burger king” is stuck with certain baggage

but imagine if they took the card stock and made of it an education opportunity

then changed the name and direction in one fell swoop with “burger origami”

can still be the home

of the Whopper Crane

Witch. You Were Here! (NaPoWriMo 2020, day 26)

April 25, 2020
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For today’s prompt we first fill in an Almanac Questionaire and then write a poem with the answers as the foundation.

Almanac Questionnaire

Weather: Breezy
Flora: Beach palms and succulents
Architecture: Bungaloid
Customs: Surfer casual
Mammals/reptiles/fish: Dogs, sea lions, a camel, three prancing iguanas, a bluefish
Childhood dream: Chased by a witch
Found on the Street: Skee-Ball token
Export: Coconuts
Graffiti: WHY, MOMMY, WHY
Lover: A second cousin to the Welsh Witch
Conspiracy: Fezzed Disrupticons
Dress: chiffon and swimsuits
Hometown memory: Scary skateboarding
Notable person: Sidney Greenstreep
Outside your window, you find: A note from a witch
Today’s news headline: GUN FIRES MAN INTO CROWD
Scrap from a letter: “…Darling, do let’s give Andalucia a pass this year. I hear…”
Animal from a myth: Stripey-assed ape
Story read to children at night: Goodnight Keith Moon
You walk three minutes down an alley and you find: A fez that fits perfectly
You walk to the border and hear: “They haven’t found the testicles yet…”
What you fear: The Fez may unattract the witch
Picture on your city’s postcard: Mai Tais frosty and alfresco

Witch. You Were Here!

The ideal spy is a burnt surfer dude
Unlike a Keanu but as not not as rude
On a double-up shift in a line cookie’s snood
Doing stewy Crab Louie per Newbie’s new mood.

And that’s me, and you see that I want me a witch
So unlike the spiked dream of the son of a bitch
That I was as a kid ere the Steve y Nicks niche
Roped me well with a spell that compelled me to switch.

Had my eye for a guy in a velvety Fez
With a touch of Farouk and a dash of the Rez
And a Greenstreep bum sneer and a note from the Prez
Who’d embezzled the topazzed disheveled-head Pez.

With my shift done and Dino the Boss’s “Bye, Pallie”
I disposed of my apron and Snood O’ the Valley
And was out on a stroll when I spied down an alley
A betasseled Wine-Castled bright Fez fit for Sally.

And that’s short for Salvador. That would be me.
I put on the fez and Praise Perfect-Fit Be
But it summoned Disrupticons, fezzed and aspree
With impressionist surge. My discretion said “Flee.”

And yet just like the dream of the Witch long ago
Though I struggled, my feet wouldn’t go with the flow
And in fact seemed cemented. Demented thugs so
Rage-encurdled wished murdle of me. Voice: “What Ho!”

And I looked high above to a fire escape’s angle
And the Ho was my Witch with a Save-Rope a-dangle
Which I eagerly grabbed, and she yanked, to untangle
My peril. “Sweet Cheryl! So Feral! –New Fangle??”

We made our escape up the wrought-iron stairs
Past the WHY, MOMMY, WHY? and half-eaten eclairs
And her gold-tipped left canine, brand new, drew my swears
But she blissed me with kisses I’d missed wellawares.

We floated a boat-loan and left our career
As a couple of spies out of Cape Have No Fear
And we’re Cheryl and Sally, and Mai Tais and beer
Are this Sally’s Salvation–with Witch. You were Here!!

unground endpaper glass (NaPoWriMo 2020, day 25)

April 25, 2020
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Today’s prompt (“as always optional”) required both listening to and reading James Schuyler’s “Hymn to Life” and then doing a minimum 20 minutes of free-write, following certain checklist criteria outlined by Hoa Nguyen. Nguyen says to select and use “those that further your present tense engagement.” Two items from the checklist are “Include at least four colours” and “Introduce the occasional 3- and 4-word sentence.” There are 17 items on the checklist.

unground endpaper glass

this is an old book and the cover is buckram. it smells
like the old library it comes from. it is resting
on a round card table by a window where there are
raindrops sliding down the glass–just a few–in
no hurry, and the bright light from the overcast
sky puts a light shadow of a few of the drops
on the opened pages of the book. page 128
has a trickle painting the word “filigree” on one
line and then the phrase “traipse to” on the next.
the girl sitting at the table
closes the book. opens just the cover.
she sees a wild color-chaos inside–she
doesn’t know what endpapers are. “oh!”
comes with her startlement. she then remembers
being in a sweets-shop
and seeing a pattern
on what her mum called “napoleons.”
mum explained that a knife is drawn
through the still-warm icing
and that makes the pattern.
this pattern must have been made
similarly, but it is much wilder–violet
violent, orange oreganoing at the redder chimes beneath,
a jagjagjag as if static were choreographed
by a balletmaster. ballet. apices of pirouettes
framing a cathedrally jukebox shape.

the girl wonders why on Earth such a riot
occurs just inside the front cover. what does it
have to do with the story? is it
sideshow? is it the cleansing
of the mind’s palate? is contrast
deliberate, to give the reader relief
from this howling cacophony, when the page is
turned and the quiet, stately title arrives?

she does not know, but she does know
she is done with the book
and is now ready to paint,
or color,
or draw.

she looks out the window,
then at it. its smooth
soothing glass
is her title page,
the endpaper riot
of green and greenblue, orange and burnt sienna,
violet and VIOLET
quieted just enough.

she closes the book and goes to her room.