Regular Poem: I’ve never lived alone

I’ve never lived
alone.
I imagine
it would be
something to write home about.

Dear Me,
all the notes would start.
Just writing to say
hello and thank you
for buying gummy bears.

Dear Me,
the note would say an hour later.
How dare you buy gummy bears.
We ate them all,
and now we feel sick.

But of course,
as important as gummy bears are,
there are other issues
my letters to myself might address.

To whom it may concern,
one would indubitably read.
Why haven’t you been
out of the house this weekend?
Why do you eat pizza every day?
Why are you
the way you
are
and not some other way
that might attract friends
and better jobs
and paramours
and good poetry
and efficient life habits?

The reply letter
might be scribbled hastily
in tears and red wine
and gummy bear residue.

That’s how it goes
when you live alone.
Probably.

Regular Poem: The Biggest Mystery

She’s from Florida,
and her perpetual refrain goes

Is it like this all the time?

Well, yes and no,
we all say–
we’re all so wise and old
about the weather here.

We give her facts and anecdotes
and tell her things that start with
Typically…
and end with
…but you never know.

It’s not
Sunny California or
Rainy Seattle or
anything else that’s ever on tv, so
she’s perennially flabbergasted
at the vagaries
of the wind and rain and heat.

And she always asks
as though
Kansas weather
is the biggest mystery of all.

Found Poem: Oh, this poem

So, as it turns out, my payday loan spambot has its own spambot fanboy. This number showed up as a comment on Payday Loans 4.

Oh, this poem
is awesome!
It is
really
timely and relevant.
I suppose,

it’s a very creative approach to
money borrowing options.

And who knows,
maybe
it was not an advertisement
or spam at all!

We expect
to see
usual
ordinary
ad, but

find a masterpiece.

Maybe
it was a kind of
experiment
on our reaction?
Or a kind of checking
people attitude

to spam and loans?

Anyway,
the person who created it
must be rewarded!

Regular Poem: The Downside to Faking Your Own Death

But really,
how much work does it take to
fake one’s own
death?

Like what kind
of connections do you need,
and how
do you start planning it?

And, most importantly,
how long into it
before you go mad
quoting Emily Dickinson poetry
to yourself
as an inside joke
you can share with
only yourself
about
the fly buzzing when you
died
in the house
where you
died–
the carriage ride you took
with Death
to get there?

And then when
you have your new identity,
every new person you meet
is like, “Who are you?”
And you’re like,
“I’m nobody! Who are you?”
And they’re like,
“Wow. Nerd alert.”
And you’re like–
internally, of course–
“Lol. No, but really, I’m dead
in real life.”

How much of this
could you stand?
Would it be worth it
to live
in your own death
with Emily Dickinson
and all your
guilt and paranoia?
Looking over your shoulder
for cops and ex-flames,
always half an ear hearing
the dialogue between
the spirit and the dust?

Like sometimes
I think I could do it,
and sometimes
the nights in my brain would just be
too wild.

Found Poem: Payday Loans (VI)

For all you romantics out there, our sixth edition is our sexiest yet.

Three thousand years
payday loans online
payday loans payday loans online
is
intense, difficult orstrenuous.

Barnstaple’s position no credit check loans
short term loans short term loans
and a sudden tenderness
dawnedin
her eyes.

The frantic, terror-driven intensity, of
thelovely canada payday loans
thelovely payday loans online
thelovely payday loans canada
kilometre of it.

Then
the night-wind said,
I
payday loans online
loan loans
in the plump folks
than in the rest
of us.

 

Regular Poem: Sing to Me, O Muse, of a Sad and Beautiful Drunk Man

“You know
I have a problem:
I talk to people,
and I don’t care what
I say,”
he says.
It may be the actual
truest statement of all.

I wish
I could translate
all my dad’s stories
that all begin and end
in medias res
and that all
may or may not be
mostly lies
into an accurate picture
of who he is.

If poetry were efficient
or my brain were sufficient
to provide
words to describe
the surreal quality all of our
interactions share,
when he’s three whiskeys in
and becoming increasingly
philosophical and sentimental,
and I can feel my mind
start to wander into
his fantastical world,
and part of me is
watching myself talk to him
from some ethereal television set
in another realm–

if I could just quote him enough
and explain the quotations,
their thematic relevance
and their fallacies,
their role in a larger whole
of that strange person
who raised me–

if I could sift through
the stories and the stories
and find the pretty pyrite
aged in a stream of bourbon that
comprises most of him,

I would write
a poem so long and lovely and weird
that students several generations
from now
would study it and think
dancing with transsexuals
and buying cocaine undercover as an Oklahoma truck driver
and ingesting nothing but whiskey for a week straight
were part of the
heroic cycle.

Regular Poem: The Clothes May or May Not Make the Person

Different clothes
make a person feel
different. Of course,

I can’t wear clothes that
make me feel
different from
the core person I am–

my clothes always
make me feel like some
version of myself.
I have everyone

I know trained
to recognize which
version of me
he’s dealing with
based on my attire–
including hairdo.

Like today
I’m dressed like
a ’50s bad girl:
pedal pushers, saddle shoes,
black turtleneck, leather jacket,
ponytail with pompadour bangs.

I feel like
putting on red lipstick
and getting in a cat fight,
listening to Elvis in my convertible,
sassing folks at the malt shop.

I might light
my cigarette on your
gas stove and blow
sassy, lipstick-printed

smoke rings at you
and call you a square,
hot-wire a Chevelle

and get sent to a
women’s prison run by
some Ida Lupino knockoff–

start an uprising
and call her a
square, and some
Vincent Price knockoff

evil doctor might
shock treatment me.
But I’m resilient.

I’ll have him seduced
and be back in my
saddle shoes
in a jiff.

And oh don’t worry–
I’ve got mights and coulds and maybes
for every habillement.
Except the boring ones.
Except wait–
I don’t have any boring ones.

Regular Poem: We expect commitment from our fog

The cloud
vying for the coveted position of
fog
must be hearty,
must bring salty spring smells,
must be able to withstand severe wind.

We expect
commitment
from our fog
here in Kansas.

If you want to just linger in a ditch on cool mornings
and laze around until noon,
move on out.
We’ll wait

for some cloud
who will bring its own sandbags
and hunker down
to blur all the streetlights
and roll up its sleeves
to endure 50 mph wind.

 

Found Poem: I don’t know if it’s the cheatin’ I like or just the melody

I knew you’d
love me
as long as you wanted.

I can turn it on–
be a good machine–
let you put your hands on me
in my skin-tight jeans.

I’ve got to admit
I do some looking, too:

If I meet another girl
like you, I’ll tell her
never want another girl
like you.

***

I was going to do Napowrimo’s Day 9 prompt, which incorporates five random song titles, but then I decided I wanted to use lyrics from them instead.  I heard these five songs on the radio this afternoon and created this accordingly.

Crazy–Patsy Cline
Human–Christina Perri
Teenage Dream–Katy Perry
She Just Started Likin’ Cheatin’ Songs–John Anderson
Break My Stride–Matthew Wilder

Regular Poem: Let’s talk together

Let’s talk together
and count how many words
it takes us to start
picking up phrases
from each other

until we speak the same
dialect
and people recognize it as
ours.

Let’s talk together
and incrementally
become one
in language,
assimilate interjections
and idioms

until our vernacular
matches
and we giggle as we
realize it.

Let’s talk together.