Where Sorrows Mingle

At the center lives a villain
centered as hero of his odyssey
in the center of a storm
centered upon ages of disaster
taking center stage in succession.

In the center cries a youngin’
centered as debris, liability
shoved from center to the margins
centered upon lies till they ring true
as the center is blazed away.

In the center burns his sorrow
centered as engine of his fury
menacing grin, disarming, off-center,
belying fang as centerpiece,
his sawtooth pierces, center-mass.

At the center lives a villain
centering his assets, he wields cyclones
centerpiece of pending doom
his center, broiled into nothing
at the center, sorrows will mingle.

Written for NaPoWriMo Day 21 Prompt:

“Today, I’d like to challenge you to write a poem that, like this one, uses lines that have a repetitive set-up.”

NaPoWriMo Day 21 Prompt

Done, and done! (See what I did there?) 

Cacophony of Conventional Wisdom

Conventional wisdom
 – my brashest, least-favorite oxymoron –
blares at unseemly decibels
saturating all possible outcomes
with the loudest of laziest hindsights

suggesting through simplistic screeches
that all rules are to be obeyed
and never scrutinized,
“don’t do the crime if
you can’t do the time”
and other nonsensical violations
against critical thought,

since whoever conjured such
banal ideas must have to
cram day and night
studying from rote books of
trite cliches and empty platitudes,
burning both ends of the candle,

giving one-hundred and ten percent
in an all-or-nothing
winner-take-all
nice-guys-finish-last campaign
just to be considered slightly above
average dimwits who think
about the box as an actual box
when thinking outside of said box,

completely oblivious to his
actual boxed-in nature, and no,

I’m not calling those types vapid,
obtuse, or hilariously freed from
reason and accountability – for
I do not enjoy stating that which
can be so easily observed
by anyone familiar with
the scientific method – I’m just

asking those braying hyenas
and jackasses to pipe-down a moment
so the rest of us can
hear ourselves think.

Written for NaPoWriMo Day 19 Prompt:

“Today, I’d like to challenge you to write a humorous rant. In this poem, you may excoriate to your heart’s content all the things that get on your nerves. Perhaps it’s people who tailgate when driving, or don’t put the caps back on pens after they use them. Or the raccoons who get into your garbage cans. For inspiration, perhaps you might look to this list of Shakespearean insults. Or, for all of you who grew up on cartoons from the 1980s, perhaps this compendium of Skeletor’s Best Insults might provide some insight.”

NaPoWriMo Day 19 Prompt

I struggled a bit with this one. I had to keep my thoughts abstract because whenever I leaned into concrete and specific ideas, I found myself writing recklessly about things that could cause me problems if the wrong person read them, and conventional wisdom told me to play it safe, which made me really pissed at conventional wisdom for a few minutes, and I hate it when a poet or artist overexplains their art, especially via long, run-on sentences, don’t you?

Anyway, that’s how this particular sausage was made.

Derivative

New vines of first bloom
give flora budding footholds for fauna,
wrenching the wheel from
man’s myopic grip

as drab warehouses again vanish
behind newly greening thickets,

spring reclaiming west ridge
between the people
and their stockpile of things,

illusion of balance
slowly restored once more,

save for incessant warning chimes
of cargo trucks backing in
to be filled or voided,

a sound mimicked by various birds
to spook predators into fearing man
and his stuff’s imminent, lethal
encroachment, and I am unsure

if nature is adaptive,
derivative, or prophetic,
but acoustically, it sounds better
when the birds drive the trucks.  

Written for NaPoWriMo Day 18 Prompt:

‘This one comes to us from Stephanie Malley, who challenges us to write a poem based on the title of one of the chpaters from Susan G. Wooldridge’s Poemcrazy: Freeing Your Life with Words. The book’s  table of contents can be viewed using Amazon’s “Look inside” feature. Will you choose “the poem squash?” or perhaps “grocery weeping” or “the blue socks”? If none of the 60 rather wonderful chapter titles here inspire you, perhaps a chapter title from a favorite book would do? For example, the photo on my personal twitter account is a shot of a chapter title from a P.G. Wodehouse novel — the chapter title being “Sensational Occurrence at a Poetry Reading.”’

NaPoWriMo Day 18 Prompt

I chose “Derivative” which is the title of the seventh chapter of the novel Free Food for Millionaires, by Min Jin Lee. I chose it because I’m actively reading it and I found the coincidental irony of this choice too kooky to pass up. I mean, that’s literally the chapter where my bookmark now lies.

P.S. – I’m currently still reading it, so don’t tell me what happens next, ok?

Etymology of Red Mud

Gaelic in origin, Barry probably
means good enough, if not boring, dull, or
quick to bail on patriarchal pursuits,
as I gave up on reading the bone-dry
etymology four sentences in.

That’s a half-truth, but even patrons who
came up with it felt it was good enough,
surrendering midway, saying it might mean
“fair-headed, or maybe an Irish spear?
Hell’s bells, I dunno; why ask me? Fuck you.”

Ask momma and she’d tell you that it means
sweetie; ask grandma and she’d reply with
stanka; ask anyone else and you’ll get
other truthy-sounding observations.

The only important part is that I’m
the fourth of my name, third to serve in the
armed forces, second known to wildly wield
sarcasm as a melee weapon, and
first to clearly see the maze as well as
my iron-clad limitations within.

Dawson means son of David, and David
means beloved; loved by God, amen. Therefore,  
biblically-speaking, I guess that makes me
a bit of a legacy kid, amen.

Favor onto me, descendent of slave
and master, origin muddied, traced back to
great divide, to Mississippi riverbed
and no further, no deeper shall we tread.

In truth, all that can be gleaned from the name
means it is unique enough to be known
and when spoken in general earshot,
I will know it is me you are seeking.

I guess that will have to be good enough.

Written for NaPoWriMo Day 14 Prompt:

‘I’d like to challenge you to write a poem that delves into the meaning of your first or last name. Looking for inspiration? Take a look at this poem by Mark Wunderlich, appropriately titled “Wunderlich.”’

NaPoWriMo Day 14 Prompt

While I like this prompt, I feel like I’ve done it many times from the patriarchal angle, only to be frustrated that I can’t (or won’t) really go any deeper …