Emotion

The Aggie Band – NaPo 2025 Day Twenty-Eight

Today I was to author a poem that involves music at a ceremony or event.

Moved

The big deal yells when yesterday ends and today begins—
at midnight.
Some folks think it’s a myth,
but for most Texas Aggies, when the band plays
at a football game halftime, at the game or on TV,
it is a major emotional experience.
An impressive spectacle. Feelings
well up inside, a spirit rises and is felt for miles.
That lasts a lifetime,
not just for students and former students,
but for friends and family, as well.

While the music matters and memories play;
the sights, the marching, the yelling fans
participating with the school and the band.
It is magical. The drum majors.
Game scores are briefly forgotten
when the uniformed cadets rush out onto the north end,
and for ten to twenty minutes the crowd participates
with yells and singing to the marching musical repertoire.

Many fine schools have great bands
providing entertainment, excellent music,
and a unique perspective important to those schools.
But there is exactly one Fightin’ Texas Aggie Band.

Look both ways, especially into the past.
It is possible to feel those emotions again.
To be part of something not you, bigger than self,
but also part of who and what you are.
Mind the gaps and let the yell leaders lead. Stand up and yell!

Happy Birthday to a big Texas Aggie Band fan, Yolonda.

Justice Struck Me – NaPo 2025 Day Twenty-Seven

And so, today I was challenged to write a poem that describes a detail in a painting. My poem was to begin with a grand, declarative statement.

Who Was She?

It is never just the painting and the world, I know.
Each painting unites with each eye, each mind,
to make the art meaningful. Neither stands without the other.

I recall the overall picture vaguely, but it’s the setting
I remember well. An empty courtroom
except for a little girl standing with her back to me,

and a judge looking down from his bench. Authority!
I cannot see her face, but I know it is the face
of every child confronted with

the reality of the state, power, autocratic justice.
Fear. Helplessness. Hopelessness.
I felt all of that. Overpowering feelings.

A Miami artist opened emotions
hidden so deep that I denied them.
I almost cried. I moved on, hiding the real me.

Look both ways as you play the great pretender who will live forever.
Mind the gaps because somewhere out there,
an artist knows your truth and may tell you.

 

Lay Down, Lady – NaPo 2025 Day Nineteen

Today I was to write a poem that tells a story in the style of a blues song or ballad.

Green Eyed Blues

Loved you as they taught me to do.
Loved it all, as they taught me to do.
Duty, honor, country; I was there — to die for you.

Then, on that day came the blues, as it all withered and died.
One day what I loved just rolled over and dammed-well died.
Shit! Face down in my pillow I lay there and I cried.

I was the fool whose faith and flag I saw with pride.
I was the fool whose heart broke with a deathblow to pride.
No, I am no longer in love with you, such loss I cannot abide.

Good morning, America, how are you?
I’m true to the blue, mornin’ Murica, how are you?
Ima eating my shit sandwich with a hateful red-piss stew.

I’ve lost my world to white-hot green-eyed blues.
Nothing to die or to live for, I got me some green-eyed blues.
Sing me a song of freedom; I can’t eat, sleep, or find love in the news.

Look both ways to face the hopeless world we live in.
Mind the gaps but face the reality of nightmares on the day democracy died.

 

Music Cities – NaPo 2025 Day Sixteen

For today, I was to write a poem that imposes a particular song on a place along the lines of a soundtrack laid on top of the location. The poem should describe the interaction between the place (Las Angeles) and the music (“Hotel California” by the Eagles) using references to a plant (avocado tree). I also should incorporate a quotation. Extra credit if I used some every day, overheard language.

72 Suburbs in Search of a City

Hotels it’s got, but New York, it’s not.
Any time of the year, right here
on the way to El Aye with
arpeggio wind twisting your hair with
music meaning heaven or hell.

We hear harmonizing guitars
introducing savored troubadour’s forbiddingness
when she lit a candle and showed us the way,
because nobody was from the beaches in Cee Aee
where voices wake you up in the middle of the night.

Where innocence ends with Tinseltown experience
and songs sung in sad cafés,
they play
the finest guitar semi-solos ever made
and we mirror allegories
of high life’s metaphysical characters,
but you must be there or bring your own alibis.

South of the Sierra Madre, along the coastal
micro climes they fly like Hass Autano, Reed Pinkerton,
Gwen Fuerte, and Lamb Bacon sing and play after Linda.
Fine for nut wrapped avocado testicles,
we cut the skin and suck the flesh before it rots.

Will we ever leave and not go back again?
To face the music and the steely knives killing the beast.
We are all just prisoners in our own tree of device
where we can jump out any time we like,
but we can never leave without a guitar coda.

Look both ways at night on dark desert highways.
Mind the gaps when the fake is real,
and the music makes the passage to the place you were before.

Git ‘er Done – NaPo 2025 Day Fifteen

My halftime (mid-month) NaPo challenge was to write a six-line poem that is informed by repetition, has simple language, and expresses enthusiasm like “The Shirt,” a poem by Jane Kenyon and the introduction of the band MC5 by Jesse Crawford. I never…

Stand Up and Holler

I tell you what. Let’s do it!
I can’t tell you
cuz awkward embarrassment
about what’s what
her, us, and back then, when
I’m telling you, it was against the law.

Look both ways when crossing aisles in the big box stores.
Miles of Aisles and Joni.
Mind the gaps between the stacks when you try to explain, but you dunna wanna.

Interwoven – NaPo 2025 Day Fourteen

My second Monday poem was to describe a place in terms of its flora, fauna, and other natural (and semi-natural in this case) phenomena. I was to sink into the sound of the location using poetic conversational tone. I was also invited to include near or slant rhymes in the poem. Confession: I enjoyed writing this.

There are Drums

Two bits and a dime east of the Sound water
that holds the Emerald Rain City at bay,
up towards twin peaks country,
three nickels past the Snoqualmie sign,
playing in the Issaquah Alps,
at the western shades of the Cascades,
rain drums play taps, slaps, and raps all day long.

Before the rains play their beats upon
the Douglas fir and bigleaf maple,
when western hemlock and coral root catch
drops before simple ferns silently call
some sagebrush, deer, elk, coyotes,
and wildcats toward the music,
Rattlesnake Ridge plays a glacier crescendo.

The verdant green on green on green screams its song,
as the drums beat the trails along,
and we love the sound as the lower down
trailhead city
plays us a ditty
in a rain drum courtyard,
haunting and inviting
us in time to make the climb
to the height
up nature carved rock to an overlook, above the lake.

It’s almost too much as a pleasing sound
brings us to a threshold of happy sensory overload.
Smiling at the ironic name since there are no rattlesnakes,
we do more than hear the music and see the rain.
We feel the wet, the wind, and cool breeze;
we smell the fresh everything, even dirt,
in the air we taste the kiss of nature.
We vow to return to the music
and to save the wonders for our children.

Look all the ways with awakened senses
of more than five as you find a love of nature that is new to you.
Mind the gaps especially if you venture to the top and do the overlook, too.

This place:

Say It and Play It, Billy – NaPo 2025 Day Eleven

Today I was to write a poem that incorporates song lyrics – ideally, incorporating them as opposing phrases or refrains (I didn’t). Though not specifically prompted, I felt like the poem should be a “loose” villanelle which, like the example, doesn’t rhyme (much).

Just to Feel Good for a While

To forget about life for a while
We hear the songs and drink the wine
and you got us feeling alright

Everyday life is one more trial
We feel abused by the tyranny of time
To forget about life for a while

We sit and we cry when we sing
Sadness and resistance break down
And you get us to feeling alright

We laugh until it hurts in a good way
Looking forward to this now all week
To forget about reality for a while

It seemed so much like just yesterday
When love, I thought, was here to stay
And your song and the grog got us to feeling alright

With midnight closing in
As we feel it and see it all in the air tonight
To forget, for now, about life’s pain for a while
And your song got us feeling alright

Look both ways on the hardest of days to find a break in the clouds.
Mind the gaps and learn the words of all the songs and poems you love.

Why Not Art? – NaPo 2025 Day Seven

Today I am prompted to write “kind of” a self-portrait poem wherein I explain why I am not an object of art. Additionally; I should include a fake fact and a highly unlikely comparison.

objet d’art

A can of soup was not art.
Wait now, the can may be but not the soup.
Tell the chief her food is not art
and you may invoke a visceral emotional response
from them (pronoun problems today)
about his grossly gristly
chicken fried steak found at some greasy spoon
somewhere in the middle of Texas or Montana.

Intent counts in sin and art. Fuck for effect.
I am the conscious effort, like the fork, push pin,
or skin covered hairless fat over brittle bone and
Weird Andy Dubya paints me as a Brillo box
for which some fool pops millions. I’m not that.

But is it art? Am I?
Am I that posed and canned portraiture photo of me
p-shopped to make me artfully handsome and young
soliciting a salacious feeling from someone
who practices the high art of pornography?
I am not that kind of art, thank you, Reverend.

We all love being objectified, of evoking
an aesthetic or emotional response
from the neighbor’s horny wiener dog down the road which
is not art. The road I mean, not the cat. I mean dog.
But maybe, could be, should be transformed
into a painting of an old hammer, which I am also not, but
a can of soup is. Art’s weird if you ask me,
which you were not and I’m not saying.

Look both ways and up at a ceiling full of shit-filled condoms and call it art
because it evokes within you an emotional response.
Mind the gaps where function follows form, and a poem is a form of expression
but isn’t art.

NaPoWriMo 2024, Day 14, When You Know

The NaPoWriMo, Day 14 task is to write a poem of at least ten lines in which each line begins with the same word: an anaphora.

When You Know

You know when you’ve had enough
When hopes and dreams are done and gone,
When your dog might outlive you,
When you can’t pass a bathroom,
When your hair is a memory,
When all your friends seem new,
When you wonder if you still can,
When someone says you’re harmless and they’re right,
When pain, not darkness, is your old friend,
When all your plans have come and gone,
When regrets and memories are the same
— if you have either at all,
When walking is workout,
When a game of pool is high impact for you,
When your favorite song is sung and gone,
When cooking and cleaning
— are aerobic exercises,
When grumpy, old, or sweet apply
— like names to all the people you meet,
When “I don’t care” answers every question.

Some of us have more past than future, but we look both ways.
Mind the gaps, ignore the aches.

NaPoWriMo 2024 Day 2, Hello, Jimmy

Day two of the NaPoWriMo dot net prompts has me writing a platonic love poem. In other words, a poem that is not about a romantic partner, but some other kind of love. In my case, the plutonic love of a friend.

My poem was to be written directly to the object of my affections and should describe at least three memories.

Hello, Jimmy!

I don’t remember
where or when we first met,
nor when we were not friends,
Jimmy (later Jim),
never James to me;
although, I left first
for Basic Training,
before you went later
to Navy Boot Camp.

We grew up through times
of learning to swim together,
our first diving board jumps,
walking the mile and stopping
on the way home
to pick and eat wild berries
on the spot, while “dying” of thirst.

To our family’s first televisions
and Roy Rogers, and more
black and white pretend life.

You from a large and growing
family, me essentially
an only child,
fishing in pristine
Pocono streams or
in the smelly Susquehanna,
where we also swam
and somehow survived.

We shared the instinct to
climb every wall or cliff,
getting stuck because up
was easier than down.
We shinnied up and jumped off
almost everything,
often landing wounded.

We stumbled into rocky,
hormone laden, teenage
years when you had sisters
who I noticed more and liked.

We envied each other’s worlds.
Our last visit was, what we felt,
a final embrace;
only this time—
you were the first to leave
and left me forever behind.

Look both ways to discover the many forms of love,
what it is and what it is not.
Mind the dark, silent gaps in time
when the love of a friend outlives many longer romances.