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NaPoWriMo 2025, day 30 and last:  Caked on the Icing

April 30, 2025
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It seems like a million years ago that my mom had a crush on Richard Harris

He had just hit the Billboard charts with an out-of nowhere LP called A Tramp Shining

And later he would portray Dumbledore in the first Harry Potter movies

And I’m sure that if there’s a Heaven that Mom started looking for him right after she arrived

But I suspect she would have to wait in line

Because Mr. Harris more than 50 years ago captivated the souls of many midlife American ladies with his unforgettable cover of Jimmy Webb’s surreal tour de force “MacArthur Park”

His tortured voice giving substance to the crazy smile (Pressed in love’s hot fevered iron/Like a striped pair of pants”) and hallucinatory metaphor (“All the sweet green icing/Flowing down…”) of Webb’s web of lost-love insanity

Harris did not sing the lyrics so much as well them with all his actor’s skill

And drove my late, great mother to distraction and album-purchase

My uneducated guess is that Mom and her fellow fangirls loved the thought of a man so romantic he would let a special woman drive to him to Batshit Insanityville and beyond

And speaking of Batshit Insanityville, the sequel to the first Beetlejuice movie features an extended-play version of “MacArthur Park” featuring a gigantic cake

With flowing green icing

And Michael Keaton as Beetlejuice standing on top of the icing’d cake

Himself caked with putrefaction makeup

Standing as groom with his intended bride

And that’s just the tip of the cakeberg

So rest in peace, Mom and Richard Harris

The beetlejuice goes on

NaPoWriMo 2025, day 27: weeper

April 27, 2025
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her face is in pieces/her eyes impossible jumping beans in cups/her suffering hand somehow segmentedly joined to her in-pieces face

but loud and clear what is expressed and communicated is that this woman is in an abyss of pain

and that the utter blackness behind the pieces of her face is the abyss Itself

she is captured in a painting that looks like a stained-glass window depicting an inhabitant of one of the circles of hell

and since suffering is infinite and eternal/it is easy to imagine/that there are many more depictions/of many kinned inhabitants

and if the painter picasso/is still capable of expressing in paint/such grotesques/via sanction via a similar deific authority/to that of the earthy lorenzo “il magnifico” de’ medici

picasso is simultaneously in the Heaven of Visionaries/And the Hell of those who cannot unsee

****

Poem written after a viewing of “The Weeping Woman” by Pablo Picasso

NaPoWriMo 2025, day 26: little song

April 26, 2025
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This cat may be named Petrarch.

little song

to make a little song of fourteen lines

you start unstressed, then stress, and then repeat

the pattern, as pentameter confines

your effort, which at 70’s complete.

the whole, you scheme to rhyme, a b a b

and 5 through 8, c d c d, and then

e f e f to reach a decency

a dozen lines obtain. two left. here’s when

g g appear. it’s clear the last lines punch

the ticket of officialdom, and so

another little song for fans to munch

is in the books, and we have afterglow.

but truest of the poets tend to doubt

that that is what a Sonnet’s all about.

NaPoWriMo 2025, day 25: When Neil Got Real

April 25, 2025
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I saw Neil Young in concert/In the early 70s/With his jeans less jeans than patches/And he played a guitar with a triangular body/And some drunk girl kept yelling for “Down By the River”/And he never played “Down By the River”/But he did play “After the Gold Rush”/And I did crappy sketches of him with a felt-tip pen

I saw him again at the State Fair/When he played with the Blue Notes/And they did “Ten Men Working”/And he did “Married Man”

But Neil got real one year/when he had his head examined/And found an aneurysm/And scheduled an operation/With quite a risk involved/And he performed beforehand/As if for the last time/And sounded like an angel/The one who wrestled Jacob

Neil was real all along/Drew envy from Bob Dylan/For singing “Heart of Gold”/And now he is the husband/Of real Daryl Hannah/And that just goes to show you/That Real goes every whichway

And, Neil, if you read this/Thanks for that “Harvest Moon”/And “Rockin’ In the Free World”/And “Thrashers” and “Some Day”/And “Birds” and many others

You gave a kid some thoughtfood/You give a geezer music/And like your “Old Man” I/Might be a lot like you

npwm 2025 day 24: she on cello he on vibes

April 24, 2025
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he on vibes and she on cello

one was spritely both were mellow

lively lady hopeful fellow

.

she played stones’s she’s a rainbow

he felt groovy played in day-glo

59th street bridge song way low

.

both wove stovetop stuffing steaming

riffs and contrapuntal streaming

simon and mick jagger dreaming

.

one crescendo teased another

hit the heights then let them wuther

done and spent they eyed each other

.

love of sorts was made, and how

but the knitting of her brow

promised more…but not just now

NaPoWriMo 2025, day 23: Racket

April 23, 2025
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The big leafy tree is full of birds

And many of them have something to say.

There are at least a hundred bird-voices.

They are all talking at once, filibustering, advancing arguments, proclaiming availability, squabbling over details, celebrating the rising of the Sun, denouncing Interlopers, and ruffling each other’s feathers.

Suddenly it calms down to a few. And unoccluded birdsong becomes finer than noise, sweet and fluidic.

A bird flies off.

Two birds begin a mating dance. One will later commemorate the occasion with a clutch of eggs.

Answering a summons from afar, many fly around

Then away.

National Poetry Writing Month, day 20: lot

April 20, 2025
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you ripen well, babe/as is your wont

you’ve felt the cool dawn, honey/on the flimsy cloth you flaunt

you stir well, and all’s swell,/and seems less pale and gaunt

and if angels sing, well,/let’s use italic for our font.

.

can’t the cat be so cute now/when we say knock it off

and the indecisive hat-hand/first a don and  then a doff

it needs to hear a few bars/written by rachmaninov

then it will freely gesture/however skeptic posers scoff.

.

seasonal allergies/stopper up the throat and nose

sprung spring stuns, hon/and the tearduct floodgate flows

you be my je ne sais quoi/and i will be your quelque chose

and we’ll dance away the Springtime/wearing fishnet pantyhose.

.

Afterword: the prompt suggested writing new lyrics to an existing melody. I chose Bob Dylan’s tune “It Takes a Lot to Laugh/It Takes a Train to Cry.” When I finished I realized that I hadn’t written the verse that would reference the title. So here is a bonus verse:

you coming bearing gifts, doll:/frankintense and myrrph and gott

for the bananas, thanks a bunch/thanks a mil for the ground-wheat spot

and now i can park my car/dusk to dawn and on the dot

and for that, sweetie darlin/what can i say but thanks! a lot!

NaPoWriMo 2025, day 18: beachin’ daydream

April 18, 2025
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if only the girl in the song were real/and the boy were me

she would be a california girl with a mild southern accent/and i would have surfed from an early age/and met her on a bright summer afternoon on the beach

and i would have a vw bug and legs almost too long for it/and she would say I was lanky

and we ate a lot of ice cream but stayed skinny by burning calories surfing and running miles and miles on the sand and making out after taking showers

and we got picked to be the first shipload of settlers on the first moon colony where there would be no surfing but plenty of flying with strapped-on wings and tail assemblies

and–whoops, the song is over

wow, what a song/really took me places

here I am a seventy-year-old man with stubby legs again

yearning for what can never be

but maybe there’s a woman out there, a woman my age, for whom leg-stubbiness is not a significant factor in the selection of a companion

who wants to be a landlocked surfer girl

with some occasional barefoot-on-the-sand interludes

time and patience will tell

and hearing that song

NaPoWriMo 2025, day 17: Moe’s Ache

April 17, 2025
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Moe missed his or her or their friend.

They had excursed in shared dream bubbles

And danced a labyrinth formed of a snake of near-infinite length

And had their passports stamped in principalities where it was impossible not to belong.

One horrid day though

Moe’s friend asked to express their friendship with a name change

And became Eom,

Thinking they would reflect,

Would harmonize;

But a cruel hit-and-run spirit told the two

That due to Eom standing for End of Month

Their friendship would end at midnight

Three days hence.

Over those days Eom transformed

Into an Aleppo Pine tree,

All but their mouth

Which lamented, “O! I am losing you. I am losing our memories. Where have

Adventures Six and Seventeen Gone??”

And that last day

Eom’s voice became ropy

With emotive sapdrops

And right before the bells of Midnight tolled

She wrestled out “Farewell, beloved…”

And her mouth barked and hardened.

Moe was inconsolable.

Her friend had pined away.