Official DUP NaPo/GloPoWrimo 2020 Competition

# 27 of 30

War

Don’t ever fall upon your head,
Did all of you hear what I said?
Just one half? Oh that’s terrific,
Do I need to be specific?
It means that this includes your face,
Anywhere, hey there, any place!

I’ll talk till I’m blue if I do,
And that is the color you’ll be
If you fall on your head.
Green, purple and red,
I’ll throw in the black for a clue.
I’m saying you’re gonna be screwed.

There’s parts of you you never knew,
Which is bad when that’s where you land.

But if you faint from standing still
You can’t recall and never will.
Not how, or when, or why, until
A place called Hell becomes roadkill.

By then it’s the throw of the dice
For everything that happens twice.

Here comes a guy I’ve seen before,
He looks like he’s been through the WAR.

I pop my eyes, he’s filled with dread.
I frown, “You plum fell on your head!!”

He buckles from under his fear,
I swear to God, and then I hear:

“Don’t YELL at me, ‘twas long ago.
I fell from grace but I was pushed!
While all He says ‘I told you so!’,
Now here I am a burning bush.”

My friends, have I made myself clear?
We’ll talk again some other year.

27/30

The Every Day: Reminiscent

My grandma and I used
to wear the same size clothes
and shoes. It was difficult
to put her off when she was
determined that you
weren’t leaving the visit
empty handed. I have a pile
of clothing that I will never
wear, but can’t bring myself
to get rid of.

She always had pots of food
on her stove. Mostly
sausages, sauerkraut and
potatoes. She always sent food
home and I ate it even
though it tasted like cigarette
smoke, because my grandpa was
a freight train. We didn’t have
cookies and junk food
at home so funky taste or not,
I was eating it.

Once, when grandpa was
watching me, he let me lick the
creme off of every Oreo in the
package and put the cookie back.
When questioned about this
(I thought) stellar move he replied,
“Leave her alone, she was being good”.
Come to think of it, that was his
reply most of the times he was
letting me do something
absolutely ridiculous.

I remember his sleek black
car with the red interior. He would
take me to this truck stop
diner where all of his buddies
hung out. All of the booths had
nickel jukeboxes and his
friends would feed me nickels
to watch me do silly dances.
The Hasty Tasty. What better
name could there have been for
a dive roadside diner?

I don’t know why I’ve decided
to tell these stories today, other
than I was looking at a picture of
you together, when you were young
and full of love and excitement.
Before five children and poverty
snuck in to steal a little of
that joy away.
I was little enough
to not understand your struggles
but old enough to form
these cherished memories.


*NaPoWriMo2020*
145 unique words
293 total words

NaPo 2020, April 27th

27/30


INVOLUNTARY LACERATION

The bat avoids the light
preferring to stay in a cave
until night, when he ventures out
welcoming darkness as a better backdrop
in search of a pitch of food,
sonar marked, honed and snitched.
This routine suits its evolutionary hue
like mesmerised humans
hallucinating, pinged and flicked
this way and that by flat screens
with moving pictures and mad-hatter voices
scaring the living daylight to hide deeply
until the panic passes into pretentious history
and the learned lies plays its part
in the next tragic repetition:
World War One —> Two —> Three …
all stirred by the furry little creatures —
a dark god’s chosen uglies
with surveillance ears, invisible sounds and a nasty bite.

27/30

[ NaPo 2020 ] In So Many Words

XXVII.

Today, I put the hammer down
and left working on my new house
in the dust for a while

It's one of those days when everything
is sliding sideways, spinning out of control
and drinking early seems a sensible
remedy

Sometimes, I will—
anything to slam the brakes on
retreading the past now
rear view mirrored

Alcohol ( in moderation )
either helps me stay focused
between lines, kept to script

or puts me to sleep at the wheel—
preventing the grinding of my gears
over yesteryear's roadblocks

and that's always good thing

because I know addiction;

once you cruise down unpleasant
avenues — it's difficult to find reverse

Having burned my fair sharecropper's
worth of dollar bills in puffed Winston,
Marlboro and home-rolled Dresden
tobacco from age sixteen to forty

it took me at least a year
the old fashioned route
to quit not quitting

The more time lapsed between
cigarettes — the easier it got
until I completely forgot
I was a smoker

And I have one every now
and then, but for the most part?

Repulsive

no different than the mouthful
of beer I spit out at a picnic
when I was five years old

or its odor lingering in aluminum
cans ditched along the roadside
collecting rain and beetles

How wretched!

And that's what stubborn realities
you want to leave behind are like—
awful poems penning you
( as much as you pen them )
into cells with sentences for life
leaving a bad taste in your mouth
while you continue reciting them
because it seems justified

If you are to become hooked on
anything, revisiting it daily
please let it be a wonderful
thought

In so many words

pardon me
for choosing to think
I'm in a happier place

27/30

Intersections

Flow stunning / Is equal parts growth of cunning / Linguistic hungering / Intersections of impact principles / Off disparate fundaments / Summed, stripped to its application / Extemporaneously tongued / What waxes also wanes some / Everything under the sun / Something, something, something / The one scheming demon/angel midform youngun / Just prior to the insurrection / Who cried out at the last second / “Satan! Stop the rebellion! They know we’re coming!” / Whoa, fucking jump in / “Heavenly Palace Caste is broken / Heresy has spoken / Fix it now, bitch later / Fait Accompli / Or fated to zombies / Which is greater? / Of course overlayers expect / To get checked, flip the picture.” / Configured end-to-end / Truculent pendulum / No nectar is stickier / Subversive elixir does make you quicker / My saliva is composed of cursed liquor / So word pictures are only coherent / To those aware of what’s rarely apparent

#27 of 30

Please Don’t Stop

BUCKLE YOURSELVES IN
the descent has begun

Recalling a nickname
(unsure who started it)

for our savage, ragtag
maverick lunatic
isolated
burned up
burn-out
black-list-buddies

Remembering how
we joked we were
“Fight Club”

Here’s the bottom line
...near home base
You are someone
feeling
....because you
are very real

..and someone needs
to listen

Discounted value
Creates blind indifference
the pernicious bedfellow
of apathy

Those two are
the Bonnie and Clyde
Monsters of reality

So please listen
and write
reverently
respecting
your heart

Here
@
deepundergroundpoetry

and wherever else
your social self
wants to be

Unique Word count - 80

27 of 30

I Feel the Weight of Air
(sonnet)

I feel the weight of air, the stir of light,
The fragile turn of leaves in summer trees.
The asphalt’s warm embrace in closing night,
The taste of laughter’s grey uncertainties.

In cotton checkered stain of passing faith,
The quell of passions’ flame in smiling glass,
The sense in every thought of word’s restraint,
I seek in every strength of strangers’ pass.

Her presence glows in every streetlight’s flare,
In every swell of every restaurant’s thrall,
Her absence notes in every emptied chair,
Her wanting sought in every hand’s withdrawal.

The avenue convulsed in supple cheer,
My heart existing far away from here.

70 unique words

27/30
la vie de bohéme ~ {xxii}

deliver me unto evil,
to the perfect dread
with which i might
dance, forget i am
chain'd by
twilit promises
hempen whispers
to the throne ov decadence
from which i
have ruin'd___
{&} she died
there where i climb'd
up my own spine
on shaking legs
as tho it
bridg'd the divide
twixt two halves
ov an imperfect whole

27 of 30

Your voice..

I like the way the air break's
How it sounds when you speak
How it echos, how it hounds,
How it gives rise to unfiltered waves
of unearthed thoughts
Endless delights surfacing, rolling forth
To wash upon the air as you bare your flare
A flaming torch throwing it's light
Set loose from your cord too ignite
Its gilded flight to settle on the ear
Feeding the mind the crop of your words
Spoken without fear..

#27 of 30

table teak

I've seen you jittering,
lithe as light slicing up the butter,

a mice intestine rivers
in the lather in the swallow.
fingering it all out.
untangling it in the fat ibid
for the  throat.

in the margin, the sicknote
comb binded with the  brindle,
flaked in milked snow,
in pots of milk left
for uninvited guests
fresh unsour at the table

a sidenote offering
something some sense lucky,
cornered with the un-sure
 response curlicued

into an envelope placed under  a poacher's door.

58 unique words of 83 total

27/30

Silent Cries

I walk among you
Cloaked in shadows
A predatory moon
With eyes of sparrows

Perched upon Gargoyles
Inhaling fragrances of night
Probing potential paranoia
To quench my insatiable appetite

Picky as it may seem
My palate once was vegan
This was many a dream
The first witching season

Back when I was loved
A family of three my own
Young was my life lost
A new tormented soul was sewn

I taste their death
Bittersweet heartbeats
Unaware their last breath
Corpses walking the streets

My hunger growls more
But patient I must be
The blood must be pure
Lest it poisons me

It must not be infected
With seeds of men they know
And must be the first drop
Waterfalls must flow

This is the first step
To building my immunity
Once I find that virgin blood
It shall rain on their community

I will torment and slaughter
Until darkness births red
I will feed upon her daughter
Until my spawns are bred

My immortal wife she'll be
A sacrifice that never dies
A mother of the night
As we feed on silent cries.......

#28 Of 30


Love Seeps


There are kisses
That becomes perceived infinity
Love seeps into soul
Kindred spirits feeding on passion
Their fires burning forever

With the right ingredient
Everything is magic
Lovers finding emotional connection
Through sensual touch
Cherishing soft beating hearts

Intoxicated by moonlight
Drenched in existence
Chills running down spines
A new universe
Where skin finally merges


Total Words: 55
Unique Words: 55

27/30

Manor On A Hill (IV)

How bat-infested were your gables,
your eves, how dried your shingles
brushed by trees in storms, the trees
your companions.  How many wondered
what lie within your walls, what sorrows,
what joys, what seasons, what relics;
whom and was this logged in your fading
clapboards, your creaking porch.

Did your weary hillside remember to
recall your tales, would a handful of dust
tell of your fears, would your shadow at
dusk shelter those years.

Oh, preservation - a monument
yet I walk beneath where
the children laugh and play.
It is you I want to reach.
To bring myself home to the antiquities
of warm fires, soft breezes, cloaked hands
in brisk salt air.          

               83 uw

xvii of xxx

GOOD NEIGHBORS TRIM THEIR HEDGES

I’m getting furry
again, you see-
it’s always a battle
with me. Contrast
typically not
this clear... so I
prepare to trim the
face, my fear
of getting/spreading
handled,
hand-led,
hand-fed
belief that a tight
fit can make the diff-
erence, deference
to mask our differential
elements- like filters
keeping bad things/
ailments out,
loose(hair)ends no long-
er withstanding;
wall built after all-
compassion forced
it to be.

   +    +    +

65 unique words
of 71 total
NaPoWriMo 2020