The following is poem number 11 of 2009’s NaPoWriMo – 30 poems in 30 days during the month of April. The original prompt was, “remember that time in Milwaukee…”. I’ll leave it up to the reader to decide how much of what follows comes from memory.

HEAT OF DAY

I soak tomato plants because the heat
melts paint and morning moisture is gone
by noon. The neighbor kid watches,
throws rocks at ants, asks about girls,
being the age where nothing makes sense.
I shrug, tell him to get a book, talk
to his father which scares him to death.
He runs off and I go inside, stare
for a minute at the tenant from upstairs
who likes to prune petunias out front. Not dressed
for garden work, she wears a mini skirt,
wooden clogs, halter top that barely keeps
her skin tucked in. She looks up, says Hi
through the screen, a smudge of dirt
on her cheek, while the neighbor boy
hides behind a tree, peeks
at her bent-over frame for answers.

-

The following is poem number 10 of 2009’s NaPoWriMo – 30 poems in 30 days during the month of April. The original prompt was, “laughing buddha”. Like poem number 9 (CHICAGO), it’s quite a deviation. In the original draft, which took a while to come to light, the little girl was carrying a stone buddha. It made more sense to give her a doll.

ONCE IN A WICHITA HOTEL

I saw a little girl walking along railroad tracks
carrying a baby doll while a three-legged dog
hopped nearby. I wanted to yank the window up,
say something, Good morning, ask how the dog
lost its leg, anything, but figured she’d think
I was crazy. What kind of person yells
to little girls from a hotel window but a madman
running from life? Surely someone has told her
to beware of men like me. And to think
the only reason I was awake was because
a train ran past the hotel on those same tracks
every other hour all night – just when
my rhythms were almost in sync
a new locomotive blew past like a ghost,
until I gave up on sleep all together, made a pot
of coffee from a bag left in the wicker bowl
on the empty dresser and decided to wait
for the next train to go by, so I could yank up
the window and yell at it – but what kind of madman
yells into a wheat-colored sunrise
at a train that can’t hear you and wouldn’t care
if it did? I decided at least I should call out to the girl
to watch for the train which was sure to pass
any moment – that’s when I discovered
the window was painted shut, probably to keep
men like me from doing anything but thinking
about what we’d say if we could.

-

The following is poem number 9 of 2009’s NaPoWriMo – 30 poems in 30 days during the month of April. The original prompt was, “If you send me the right amount of cash, I can help you”. I deviated more with this one than any other so far – the initial writing involved a phone call, which is all that remains in the version below. Somewhere there’s a poem about a telemarketer waiting to happen.

CHICAGO

Remember getting drunk in Chicago after the game
when I called Soriano’s home run in the first?
You bet me a beer I couldn’t do it again. I tried
and bought. Then we got caught between bars

in Wrigleyville while a rain washed down. You told me
Claire was pregnant, you were scared shitless,
couldn’t stop thinking about other women,
not with the milk-fed Midwestern girls
busting out of Cubs shirts.

You bet me I wouldn’t say hello to the two
who smiled behind the next pub’s smoke.
After I did we talked about how easy it would be
to do something and forget, then called our wives
to say we missed them, couldn’t wait to be back.

We finished, caught the long train to where
we were staying, went out for last call
then fell asleep, woke hung over, got our flights
and split the country in half.

I was thinking about you right before you called
to say your girl was born. By now you’ve worked through
thoughts of leaving, the ones we all have,
even our fathers who never said.

Let’s be men like them, do the right thing when
we don’t know what it is, just work off
a list of do’s and don’ts, as easy as calling a shot
like I did that day in Chicago before we got drunk.

-

The following is poem number 8 of 2009’s NaPoWriMo – 30 poems in 30 days during the month of April. The original prompt was, “purple crystal wavy blue”.

BLUE BLUR

My students don’t care about tomorrow’s rain.
When I say it’s a false spring they ask
what’s false, what don’t I see?

They’re off at the door where I watch, sure
one of them will break an arm,
run head long into a pole,

bowl someone over near the slide.
They disperse in packs,
two-by-two into the trees,

teeter-totters, swarm to the merry-go-round,
push out of breath until it and them
are the same thing –

a blue blur that spins clockwise with the earth
until the sky sucks down,
lifts them home.

-

The following is poem number 7 of 2009’s NaPoWriMo – 30 poems in 30 days during the month of April. The original prompt was, “tattoo”.

HEAVENLY BODY

Her first tattoo was a star on her wrist
to hide burn scars –
in a few years she’s inked
a constellation up her arm,
calls it the cosmic tree,

traces dots that make roots, leaves,
limbs bent over her neck
toward a sun that blazes down
the small of her back
where a second cluster

orbits tight around her waste in the shape
of a snake, a moon
in its jaws above her pubis
where she tells me to bite,
feel the world fold back.

-

The following is poem number 6 of 2009’s NaPoWriMo – 30 poems in 30 days during the month of April. The original prompt was, “you were made this way”.

WATER BIRTH

My parents are water, not the way
we picture wide blue seas but creeks,
not poetic like merging in the spot
of me. Just things that flow in their own
slow ways, pick up debris people drop

tires, swing sets, old bike frames
with chipped paint that turns water
orange and gold, not beautiful or sunset
but tarnished deep in the place
where I by accident bubbled up.

-

ReadWritePoem’s prompt #71 asks to dig on a solid first line, either yours or someone else’s, in order to generate some new work. I offer the following, which is courtesy of me whyfe:

“Can you start early? I have to leave for the funeral soon.”

Granted, that’s two lines, but still it leads to one thought. Of course, she’d originally written it as:

“Can you start early, I have to leave for the funeral soon?”

Which is probably closer to how it would read if you could read words in the moment they flung from a mouth.

This all leads to an April project, in honor what some call “National Poetry Month”. Taking lines that Courtney (the whyfe in question) wrote out this morning, starting with the above “Can you start early…”, I’ll be writing and posting a new short piece every day through the month.

The rules:

1. Must have something new every day
2. Pieces must be at least 30 words (but not necessarily 30 lines)
3. I can deviate from the original line itself, as long as it serves as a prompt for what becomes the final piece.

Feel free to play along, offer feedback, and submit your own work. After all – when a month dedicated to poetry begins with a day dedicated to fools, what could be better than a little foolish work?