NaPoWriMo -- April 14, 15, 16

This week-end, I shared my "Friday the 13th poem" -- and enjoyed the fact that someone else used the fact that Palm Sunday AND April Fools' Day fell on the same day. With a bit of feedback, I thought on my poem, so April 15, the mid-month poem is a revision of it. The poem doesn't really address superstition...so change of title.. a little paring...

Spring Busting Out

Purple Henbit, all lavender bloom,
sunbathes in the soft grass,
not to tan, nor to preen
nor to relax after a hard bit
of birthing for such a short-lived
existence.

In suburban life, someone will
shortchange such plants,
pieces of silver traded
for an American Tru-green lawn
doctored with poisons.

A little surgery by mower-blade
will chop the purple nicely,
fine as ashes without a tell-tale
streak. No monument, entombment,
no grave-- such require real
estate, this idea of permanence,
claim, control.
**
and what is luck? and what is "control" all about. Sunday's poem was a meditation on the arbitrariness of weeding... why


Luck of the Draw

Borders are borders, I tell them.
You are not supposed to be here.
We have strict orders: dandelions
may under no circumstance appear
in the flower bed. Granted, yellow
starred heads are as pretty as a jonquil
with edible leaves, but you fellows
are seedy, go to pot, make for ill-will
dot by bright dot in a country made
for common uniform! Out you go!
You are not invited, we'll have you know!


I'm glad you like borders, they tell us.
But we are supposed to be where we land
and who decides who lives where? What fuss
have you made about eliminating our band
of merry yellow? Our star-globes bear no ill
seed by seed, pot or no pot in the tranquil
web that weaves us all. On we go!

Not all survive.
First to go: the ones near the borders
next the thick-necked, so large and loud
next, the multiple-headed,
and yet, even if diminished, they still thrive.

And then for a minute, imagine the world
if they really disappeared.
No, bring on those lions
I'd have them rule any day in the course
of empires!*


*Painter Thomas Cole had an idea of "the course of empires" and painted five paintings which show:
1) savage (wild) state (no trace of man)
2) pastoral
3) Empire
4) Destruction
5) Desolation


** I had thought of using this idea for today:

Why is it that we document what it is we are about to destroy? Thomas Cole was asked to sketch Letchworth park in 1839, before they blasted parts of it to make way for a Canal extension.


My writing group is undergoing some changes. One of which is a new name, and this one was suggested:
C L A N J A M P H R Y
clanjamphry (plural clanjamphries)Mob, rabble, crowd. I'm afraid I don't consider myself as writer as being part of a mob. Our job is to interpret the world, make it accessible.

Clanjamphry or gone awry?

The clan will jam and fry the mob
who will poke and try to kill the king.
The crowd will start to cry
give us music, and we will sing
of the sweet berries of days gone by
but alas, alack Milady, Milord, so high
on their horses, they have lost sight of things.