NaPoMo

Well it is National Poetry Month and like last year I have pledged to write a poem a day for the 30 days of April.  

I have decided to post them here as well as post them online with the group I'm doing NaPoMo with --- 

They aren't polished and some will be very bad.  The object of the exercise is to write something everyday -- which for many is standard practice but for me -- not.  I write only when the muse strikes and so during April I do everything I can to entice her to me for at least 15 minutes a day.  Sometimes she's a real bitch.  :)

And so .. 

Day 1

An Elegy for Euphorion, Part 1

Helen couldn't keep the boy

from cutting paper wings, taping them--

crooked and tattered to the back of his Superman t-shirt

or from jumping from the highest rung of the metal slide

in their backyard -- though

she never really tried

lacking herself, a decent sense of sin.

And when the boy found Mallarme and Heinlein

and took his guitar

         to the edge of the northern cliff

his nose stuck in pages rattled by grass-spiced wind

his toes dug into the rain softened dirt

pulling the curl drooped on his forehead -- straight to spring --- straight to spring

no one

not even his father

recognized the disease.

note:  Faust 

Day 2

II  that unnamed girl talks about Euphorion

My mother knew his father

I have heard together

they sang the Song of Solomon.

I met Euphorion after humanities

a copy of Steppenwolf tucked

in the back pocked of his knee-patched Levis

he smelled of good weed and a bit of baby shampoo

his face was

his face was

his face was

a Caravaggio angel 

though it is not fashionable

to say that -- here

-- this audience disappointed by cliche

I still have the gold bracelet he took from his jacket

and clasped on my wrist. 

Day 3

"My real name is Mephistopheles, but you can call me baby..."

III. Elegy for Euphorion

His plane touches down

in Manhattan

fresh out of the Amazonian 

jungle -- alpaca jacket

blow gun

poison darts -- soft brown hair

resting on his shoulders

Murphy has run out of cigarettes

stops and empties out his pockets

on the top of a metal trash can outside the men's room

sweeps together the pile of lint

cat hair and what's left

of the Nino Korin tobacco -- a few strands stolen from a shaman's bag in Bolivia

His slender fingers peel a rolling paper out of the pack with a familiar

crinkle -- the Fashionable, the vagabonds 

don't seem to notice

security cops walk right by

He lights up and leans -- one long leg bent

leather booted foot pressed against the white wall

inhales, smiles --and coughs with the harsh first suck.