that's mrs. mediocrity to you

four miles
of dirty-drunk bottles
discarded on the cold shoulder road
you walk
night after night after night
sipping bitter salt and rubbing open
old wounds

four miles
of hollowed out chest
and improper possibility
leaching into land passed down
for seven generations
of food in the belly
no one wanted to harvest

four miles
of fuel for the red-lipped
rage that lines your palm
and marks your forehead with
furrows deep enough for planting
the seed you cannot reclaim
or purchase

four miles
between you and the house
never built
by too many logs and not enough sky
the stars were your compass
before you chugged them
in a toast to disappointment

four miles
of mud-caked proof
and not enough leaving one
last sip for the lean wasted soul
soon to follow your dedicated footsteps
to the same oblivious
abandoned address

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I’m not big on explaining poems, but this one has a story.
On my block, a four-mile-around country block that circles farmland,
there are dozens of discarded whiskey bottles lining the ditch.
Dozens. This has been going on for years.
A sad mystery with its own story,
begging to be told.

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A poem a day for 30 days, in honor of National Poetry Month.
This post is part of NaPoWriMo.

Also joining in with PAD (poem a day) over at Writer’s Digest.

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whisper what you saw to the wall of painted protest

the white bear standing lost on a landscape gone green

an ocean filled with plastic pours and printed promises

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water everywhere

seeping up through the grip of your lost toes

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your thirst will force you to imbibe

the fish of forgotten

as extinction inches up the corner of your thigh

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cry foul and you’ll be silenced

by the nownownow

of tomorrow’s impossible exigence

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grab a brush dipped in gone and wash away

the last canary

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light a fire in the oil that skims every surface

illuminate destruction with a ring of false keep

raise your hands high and tell your last story

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i can see i can see i can see

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A poem a day for 30 days, in honor of National Poetry Month.
This post is part of NaPoWriMo.

Also joining in with PAD (poem a day) over at Writer’s Digest.

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there’s a place
in my garden

no one ever goes
to sit

broken down
skeleton of glider

left hanging
in the wind

tattered flag
of patience

marking time
with rusty creak

and forgotten
expectation

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A poem a day for 30 days, in honor of National Poetry Month.
This post is part of NaPoWriMo.

Also joining in with PAD (poem a day) over at Writer’s Digest.

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i drove to the mountains once
because i couldn’t leave you from here

i tied asphalt ribbons in my hair
and sang louder than 12-ton thunder

but everywhere i went had already been touched
by the same sky i’d left you holding

in a balloon the color of loneliness
tied to your wrist to mark you

as the strange lost child
i could never reclaim

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A poem a day for 30 days, in honor of National Poetry Month.
This post is part of NaPoWriMo.

Also joining in with PAD (poem a day) over at Writer’s Digest.

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Also linking in over at dVersePoets for Poetics,
with the rhythm of the road.

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there are 51 ways to leave your lover
but only if you’re good at math

a tree learns early on that survival
depends on your ability to bend

the penultimate beat of a dying heart
echoes perpetually through its last

odd numbers belong to odd people
and we’re all stuck at seventeen

being less than whole takes up more space
than the chance of being well rounded

there are zero degrees of separation
between you and your last neighbor

if you look into the eyes of pi
you will meet eternity’s maker

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A poem a day for 30 days, in honor of National Poetry Month.
This post is part of NaPoWriMo.

Also joining in with PAD (poem a day) over at Writer’s Digest.

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beliefs and baubles rain down
from a sky filled with numbers

and i have no cloak to offer

the skin i wear is my reality
broken hands and banged up knees

my gift is the soil scraped from nails

rich with worm and cross-hatched root
held down by your wing driven sky

nothing is wrong in the forest of calm

and i climb into the cave of bear
embrace the bones you’ve buried there

each icon wrapped in fields of feather

loose layers of tender revealed by touch
reflect the season of my eyes

as spring awaits the hunger of your cry

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A poem a day for 30 days, in honor of National Poetry Month.
This post is part of NaPoWriMo.

Also joining in with PAD (poem a day) over at Writer’s Digest.

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you told me once that green was the color of life
and then you left my heart floating in its own red tide

i asked for help and you laughed in ripples of reduction
neon notes of avarice slipping through your yellowed teeth

but you held my hand the day the world turned violet
and didn’t let go until my moss-eyed stare
rose to hold your reflection

i knew right then there was no getting free
of the boundaries we’d blurred between us

you were my cornflower and i was your olive
and everything else was left in the box

two empty spaces perpetually waiting
for someone to turn the lost page

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A poem a day for 30 days, in honor of National Poetry Month.
This post is part of NaPoWriMo.

Also joining in with PAD (poem a day) over at Writer’s Digest.

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my brother taught the old mariner’s warning
to a chubby-cheeked freckled faced girl

i’ve learned since then that storms come in waves
and rose-colored daylight has no way of knowing
how dark the season of night was

fifty years went by before i gave up on midnight
and sat watching the sun creep through the trees
of my creak-boned obvious dreams

but pink isn’t red and the sun never rises
through a crimson ocean of clouds

light and deliverance can always be obscured
by a hand a blanket a curtain
or the cold blue mask of sorrow’s lost moon

the truth of each star is doused only by dawn
and the slow erasure of a secret last dance
from a card filled with yesterday’s dresses

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A poem a day for 30 days, in honor of National Poetry Month.
This post is part of NaPoWriMo.

Also joining in with PAD (poem a day) over at Writer’s Digest.

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i’m not the best singer in the world
(my cats are happy to let me know this)

there are days all i want
is to curl into a ball (feline style)
and wait for tomorrow

or magic or a miracle or even
one tiny moment of escape

but this isn’t fiction
and you aren’t a hero

(things really aren’t that bad and i’m made of iron)

and then i start to wander (wonder)
through characters and words
and parceled-out syllables of time

parsimonious gifts that feed me
for days

(i always have a bruise on my forehead)

my legs keep moving
even in my sleep

i have no destination
and i’ve erased all my maps

(paper disintegrates)

i keep trying to cross the threshold of after

but i’m forced to make do
with this shiny clean
lace-curtained window

(the sky is invisible)

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A poem a day for 30 days, in honor of National Poetry Month.
This post is part of NaPoWriMo.

Also joining in with PAD (poem a day) over at Writer’s Digest.

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Also linking in over at dVersePoets for Meeting the Bar,
with self portraits.

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a tulip
refuses to rage
or go gentle

blown out
blowsed up
blundering on

through
tenacity’s
funeral

no tears
no fear
all clear

silent growth
tender reach
purple hope

eating sunshine
like spun
cotton candy

harnessed
by beauty’s
last song

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A poem a day for 30 days, in honor of National Poetry Month.
This post is part of NaPoWriMo.

Also joining in with PAD (poem a day) over at Writer’s Digest.

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