April 4th, poem number four

Fait accompli

When her hand reached
Across the table and
Ever so quickly touched
My own, darting like
A hummingbird to nectar,
And ventricles jumped as
Grasshoppers do
In the summer crepuscular,
Her skin against the white
Sweater, in the red barroom
light and wash of voices,
It was at this moment,
My friends, when the dread
And horror was apparent
Knowing that the fact
Had been accomplished
And that true doom
Was imminent.

April 3rd, poem number three

Long shadows stretching down the sidewalk at sunset

 

That inexplicable moment
When all the elements
Fit so perfectly
Together

 

The sun reflects in a certain way
Or the breeze blows

Just so

 

Feeling that all things are coming
Together just for this
Small portion of
Minimal bliss

 

It comes at you by surprise usually
When you are not looking
And don’t expect

 

The crazy wild notion that maybe
Just for now at least
It is allowed to
Feel alright

April 2nd, poem number two

In the end what does it matter

 

In the end what does it matter

Whether
John Fahey is my favorite guitar player
Ever
Or that the night can make me crazy
And hazy
Are the early morning sads
Fads
One day I’ll be gone and gone
So long
What I’ll leave behind I don’t know
So
In the end what does it matter

April 1st, poem number one

The Fool and the Sage

They can see one another from across

The gaping unknown ocean between.
The Fool laughs at the Sage, his teeth with moss
While waves crash and rage, washing cliffs clean.

 

The Sage lowers his head, mutters a prayer,
Makes the sign of the Circle, and says

 

“Fool, I was once you as you are me now,
And so forever, the one and the two
Join beginning and end as we allow,
Each fool a sage, each sage a fool.”

 

The Fool cackles and cries and weeps with joy
Before he lets out a sigh, and says to the Sage

 

“My tricks and my jokes, you really must know,
With the their glitz, their flash and their bang
Are only pretty and baubled sideshow,
A second’s distraction, diversionary clang.
The serpent foolish enough to eat his tail
Knows the real gag lies in the wild waves
That lie between us, which despite our travail
Remain a mystery from our cradle to our grave.”

 

The Sage nods his head, strokes his beard
And draws a circle in the sand.  To the Fool he says

 

“Between our respective places there is no distance.
Wisdom and folly collapse so sweetly
Upon that single point where we shed guidance
And with a child’s witlessness begin the Journey”

 

The Fool dances as mad, throws his staff and with
Abandonment and glee, jumps into the sea

 

Where he is born away, and the sage smiles. 

   This is a blog dedicated to particiapting in the NaPoWriMo, a challenge to write 30 poems in the thirty days during the month of April.  Perhaps the most difficult aspect of the challenge is that I will post each poem on the day that it is written.  For me this is difficult for two reasons. First, I've got scads of poems that I have pecked away at through the night which I probably will never show to anyone.  Some things are just better being for me only, I guess.  Sometimes these locked away poems get revised to something else, or bits go in something else.  Which leads to the second difficult part.  Someone told me (not sure who) that it's best to finish writing something, lock it away for a week or two, and come back and look at it again.  Then you have a fresh vision to revised, cut, throw in the rubbish bin or decide that every word is perfect and you have written a gem.  No such luxury here!  So I supposed I can be comforted in the fact that next to no one will read my meager offerings.  Or maybe, just maybe someone will, a stranger, read them and be afforded the smallest quantum of poetic pleasure. 

Into the unknown, brothers and sisters!

- El torote sin capote