Human Condition

NaPoWriMo 2026, Day 29

NaPoWriMo 2026, Day 29 prompt: In a poem, compare your everyday present life with your past self, using specific details to conjure aspects of your past and present in the reader’s mind.

It all started
this morning.

I used to was,
now I’m not;
I could
then I couldn’t;
I used to run,
now I walk;
I used to smoke
now I’d choak.
I used to be,
but now I am;
I used to have,
now I haven’t;
I did,
but now I don’t.

And like Auntie Alice said,
I cannot go today,
my mouth is dry
and I don’t know why,
and my hip hurts
and my lip blurts,
when I look over there;
my neck is sore today,
because of what I did yesterday;
Any kind of hair I’ll take
because mine has gone
and I won’t do fake.
My skin had freckles
that I traded for wrinkles,
and my toe hurts on Tuesdays;
And my eyes are red
and like she said,
“It’s no use going back to yesterday
because
I was a different person then.”

NaPoWriMo 2026, Day 20

NaPoWriMo 2026, Day 20 prompt: Write a poem that uses an animal that shows up in myths and legends as a metaphor for some aspect of a contemporary person’s life. Include one spoken phrase.

The Lone Wolf

I’m not antisocial, I like others.
Not quite Greta Garbo in Grand Hotel,
I don’t “want to be alone,” I just like it.

My family is my tribe, my pack.
We do everything important together.
It’s seven of us this year but a few
older pups will be moving on soon.

Like what humans call introverts,
I find strength and focus from
being alone. It stays with me
and is there when I need it.
But being independent is pleasure too.
It’s not either or, it’s both.

I need others. Hunting alone
requires much more effort for
not much in return. And it is
more dangerous. Humans
seem to want to kill us all.

Alone is when I explore.
I learn things without the fuss
and worry about others.
I am a lone wolf — not a loner.

Humans have lone wolves, too.
It’s interesting when we encounter each other.
It’s like we just know. We can’t communicate.
We each say “howdy” in our own wary way.
But we know and we both just move on
and go down our separate paths.

Look both ways because the leader of the pack may be howling at the moon.
Mind the gaps for hidden snacks.

NaPoWriMo 2026, Day 15

NaPoWriMo 2026, Day 15 prompt: write a poem that muses on love but isn’t a traditional love poem in the sense of expressing love between romantic partners.

So many songs about love of so many flavors,
sames and differences, in this sense or that,
in a dish topped with cost, risk, and crushed regret.
Songs, “I’ll do anything for love” (but I won’t do that),”
Unrequited love Creeps up on Jessie’s Girl,
and Layla has him on his knees. Have we sung and said
everything that can be professed about love?
Where does it come from? Where does it go?
Or does it?
The love of parents, children, art, animals, food, moments
(because of something else), God, self, when a man
loves a woman, a woman loves a man, a fan
loves a celebrity, and the love partners. And what of passion?

I am not sure that love is voluntary or epiphanic.
Will you still love me in the morning?
Is the inevitable pain worth the pleasure?
Do parents love their difficult teens in the same way
if they were wonderful creatures blessed of talent and wisdom?

Can I love everyone and is that a good idea? Certainly,
I can show concern, but I honestly have never wanted to
have sex with everyone. Not even close.

Love is a kaleidoscope of interweaving verbs and nouns,
of feelings and actions, of objects and persons. And every hero
has a few worthy enemies who cannot be loved
if they are to remain enemies.

Look both ways before diving into the deep end of any love pool. But let’s face it.
We cannot always help ourselves as with pleasure, addiction holds the helm.
Mind the gaps for impermanence of emotion.

Mack the Knife – NaPo 2025 Day Thirty

For the final day of April and to close out the 2025 version of how I do National Poetry Month, I was to pen a poem that describes various times in my life when I have heard the same band or music.

Congrats to all participants. This may have been my best NaPoWriMo year because the prompts seemed to be in my poetry writing lane. One a day for 30 days, on prompt.

Thanks to Maureen for another fantastic April.

Composed

Melody and lyrics done separately
twenty years before my birth
in a language I did not speak
never intended for my ears
for the Threepenny I’ve never been

Thirteen-ish me,
a maligned Catholic school kid
discovering hormones;
Friday night dances (nun-chaperoned),
and un-churchly music we loved;
songs like The Battle of New Orleans,
Mack the Knife, Personality, Venus,
Lonely Boy, and a hundred more.

The year another paper boy
and fellow music lover, Don M. said
was when the music died.
But it had not. Not yet. Not ever.
My music may die with me. But not today.

Not until Bobby Darin — did Mack the Knife
find me with five up-key modulations
bring marvelous darkness to musical light
to make us feel a special song
in a special time. Then and since.

Wonderful covers, pre and post, but
back then I didn’t know about
someone and something I liked so much,
music that would change with me,
year after year, never the same old song.

Look both ways
“Now on the sidewalk…lies a body just oozing life, eek!”
Mind the gaps cuz,
“someone’s sneakin’ ‘round the corner—could that someone be Mack the Knife?”

Interested in more? Check THIS out—especially the video of Bobby Darin’s version, if you’re not familiar with the song.

EXTRA – EXTRA – EXTRA —- A friend and classmate of mine just let me know about this new, hot, Broadway production honoring Bobbie Daren.

 

 

 

Write me a Song – NaPo 2025 Day Twenty-Nine

Today I was to compose a poem mused by the life of a musician, poet, or other artist.

Then Sing It

What is it like? I will always wonder,
to know at age fifteen or sixteen
what you will do for the rest of your life.

And five or more decades later,
to not only have made it,
but to be at the top,
to still be doing it—still creating.
And to be
a star, a celeb, a household name.
Can you count the awards?

To have your picture
from the covers of several of your many albums
on Mr. Bill’s wall,
to have fifty-thousand plus strangers pay
to hear you sing, to play, what do you say?
To sing it while making your day and theirs.

For a lover of your talent to think of you immediately
when prompted to write a poem about
an artist, a singer, songwriter, both,
and you knew it before I knew who I was.
How does it feel?

Sure, life was not always wonderful,
not as charmed, perhaps awful at times. I know.
I care. But for me there were days
when your music was everything.
Often, it was all that mattered to me.
Maybe it saved me.

Look both ways. Some of us are still trying to figure out life
and who we are and were we are going.
Mind the gaps, the majors, the minors,
and thank someone who doesn’t know who you are.

I did not use a name in this poem because there are so many.

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.

 

Hear That? – NaPo 2025 Day Twenty-Six

For Saturday’s prompt, I was to write a sonnet with the format of a song. So, not a proper sonnet. I used Edgar Allan Poe’s “Sonnet – Silence” as an inspirational guide or bridge to mine. My problem was that “The Sound of Silence” song by Paul Simon and Art Garfunkel, and the more recent version by the band, Disturbed, would not stop playing in my head.

I used a ten-syllable line structure and the ABBA, CDDC, EFFE, GG rhyme structure that Poe used, and likewise, I did not break out separate stanzas.

Let the Beat Go On

It is at a sound where a life begins
a sound there is but it we do not see.
In death, that silence there can only be.
It is in still silence where all life ends.
We awake to songs that we all can hear,
the smells, the tastes, and the good sights of life,
and thunder unheard marks the life of strife.
Then, this silence must have its place, my dear.
We live in life, until we bow to death.
The sound of silence that no one’s disturbed
the sounds of silence one has never heard,
with one last sound, upon our dying breath.
You hear the clap of echoes in my heart
it is alone we play our final part.

Look both ways because hearing loss in one ear confuses directions.
Mind the gaps and take care of all your senses.

A Toast to the Town – NaPo 2025 Day Twenty-Two

Today I was to write a poem about something I’ve done, presumably as a child or adolescent, that gives me a kind of satisfaction. I think it is supposed to be something for which I am grateful. I had to dig for this one.

Grateful for the Grog

It wasn’t cocaine but some think it’s the same
when the forbidden froth of the fifties,
long before there were Swifties,
beer became the name of the game.

First taste was a sip, likely bogarted from
mother or father, or perhaps from my drunk-ass brother,
to wash down that salty Wise potato chip?
Hometown suds, favored by local buds
and still tastes like bad-beer today.

It was gunna happen anyway.
I learned to like it and how it made me feel.
I would have tasted beer someday,
then acquisition became part of the deal.

Tom T Hall’s song set somewhere aside,
beer became my pleasure and my problem.
I’m shocked that to some
the pleasure is none
and beer is forever denied.

“I like beer, it makes me a jolly good fellow
I like beer, it helps me unwind and sometimes it makes me feel mellow
(makes him feel mellow) … (He likes beer)”

So let me explain
in this little refrain

how grateful I am
to the woman or the man who drew me my first mug
from a spout, a bottle, or a sealed tin can I can chug.

Look both ways for the imperfect pleasures of life.
Mind the gaps and watch the taps, as the kegger is still a rite of passage.

Do It Anyway – NaPo 2025 Day Twenty-One

“Happy Monday,” she said. Today, I was supposed to attempt writing a poem in which something that normally unfolds in a set, well-understood, and organized way goes haywire; yet it is described as if it’s all very normal. Define normal?

Non-Compos Mentis*

Open mic Friday night on sixth street, Austin
and the crowd filed in silence.
First up, Gerty Stein wined if she told him
and Pablo painted her time off stage
when BEVO horns in and sings hooray for our side,
just then, Mathew Mac danced to silence
while imitating elon’s ox and Napoleon sang in locomotion.

The crowd cheered with silent finger snaps and the naked king
unzipped his pants
and played his instrument in tune
with united methodist horses chanting bite songs.

Two chickens fried the mic and mooned bleakly,
while the sober addicts ordered salad,
and the dead-beat dads cheered a silent sum.

The police up next went wet with white while swearing they were not watching her over there, and the crowd did the dead bug dong-dance on their backs.

Intermission brought AFD to wet down the APD who forgot their lines in unpaid fines.

And the crowd silently cheered in oxymoronic fight songs.

It rained in the house and the mic said nothing, time after time, and Bukowski’s ghost got booed and everybody left pitifully happy to never have loved at all.

Look both ways because mentality is a subjective call at poetry slams.
Mind the gaps, stutters, and forgotten lines because, funny or not,
silly is just a warm moist feeling.

*The title means “not of sound mind.”

Austin-Healey Ride – NaPo 2025 Day Eighteen

Today my task was to craft a poem that recounts my experience of driving, and/or riding, and singing. I was to incorporate “a song lyric” into said poem. Just one?

Hit the Road, Jack!

No time for musical analysis
or explanations
for the songs that set my soul on fire.
Didn’t need to know writer inspirations,
didn’t care a dot about lyrical attire,
this meaning or that hard chord.
In desperation on the way there,
melding with music and singing my feelings
for going I didn’t care where. Just riding.

We didn’t start the fire
within the illusion
of what freedom was then.
I’ve been everywhere, man,
sung fast and furious.
Riding like the wind in my hair, I was there.
I was then.
We refused to take it easy.
Look, here comes the sun; on the road, again.
We were runnin’ on empty but full of life.
I was there with the wind in my hair,
without a care. Without one care.

We sang without a cappella—
blasting radio’s tune-after-tune,
not wanting to arrive
any too soon.
We belted songs, unrecorded;
out loud, on the road,
again and again, never stopping,
never knowing when.
Now those tunes
bring memories back,
songs and lyrics
to fire up familiar feelings of our reckless youth.

Look both ways to see back in the days when road trips meant music and friends.
Mind the gaps because we still do it, alone now, with the music turned way up.