Human Condition

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.

Silly Street Songs – NaPo 2025 Day Ten

Day dix found a napowrimo dot net challenge for me to write a poem that uses alliteration and punning. That’s what she said. I could include words I find troublesome to spell (there are many) and one where the meaning is wonky for me.

 A man walks down the street

Steven strongly strides seven steps
neither up nor down, never noticing
how Candice curves create cardio calls from cool cats
among and amid amusing amassing amateurs.

Tourists to me.

I shoot six street shots, some suggestive, startling strangers,
but buskers buttress bongs and banjoes.

Suddenly, Steven stops and stares at Simone Sunlight Someone
shooting several subtle series of snaps.
Suddenly, some sucker sees and shoots.
I surrender to staring strangers strongly suggesting something serious.

Like this poem.

Look both ways at amusing language and funny faces that look and sound similar.
Mind the gaps and please chew with your mouth closed but your eyes open.

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.

Hot Chow – NaPo 2025 Day Six

To determine today’s NaPo prompt, I randomly selected a number from 1 to 10. I picked ten. Then I scrolled down to find a table of 10 rows and 4 columns. At the row corresponding to 10, the first cell to the right gave me the name of an edible item: cilantro. That was what my poem was to be about. The next two cells had words that were to be used in the flavor-descriptive poem. To see the entire prompt click here.

Cilantro

I don’t know when it came into my life.
Probably after I met my wife because
if it wasn’t meat with mashed potatoes
and some form of bean,
I had never tasted it.

Two things provided for expansion
of my sense of taste and flavor,
including smell. Marriage
and my military life. Chow halls
didn’t care, but they also did.
I actually like liver and spinach
(sorry Mom).

It goes in with other stuff,
Where would salsa, soups, guacamole,
and other dishes be without it? Sure,
there is parsley, dill, and basil,
but they are not the same.

Where would be the fresh citrusy
and floral flavor? That peppery tang
we find in and among the Mexican gang.

If it tastes like soap, there is no hope.
Genetics rule. Thanks to a gene
called OR6A2 for that
and eat something else.

For the rest of us, we enjoy the
gentle chip drip into the culinary saucy sink.
Good food is more than you think.

Look both ways and learn to love the food.
Mind the gaps and pity the picky eaters.

Dishonest Poetry

Tell Me Lies

Who tells lies?
According to
fictional Gregory House, M.D.,
“Everybody lies.”

Certainly,
some among us lie
more than others. Perhaps called
pathological as in diseased,
uncontrollable, or obsessive
(no names please).
Sometimes it’s necessary.

But we are not born fibbers.
Lying is learned behavior
to equivocate or prevaricate,
but why? When and how
does the lying begin?
Intent matters. It’s a crime
when you swear you won’t
and then you do.

I still recall what I believe
was my first lie, but probably was not.
Self-protection
was why. I lied (long story) to my mother.
She often accused me of telling
a fib, or a “story;” inferring
dishonesty of the whiter degree.
Usually, I was telling the truth
(yet another story).

Almost expected in politicians,
I’ve seen it everyday, lying everywhere
by everybody: parents to children,
Supreme Cout Jurists (under oath),
police officers, teachers, married couples,
religious leaders and disciples to those leaders.
Pick a government agency
or automobile manufacturer—used car guys?
I even suspect that George Washington
engaged in the occasional untruth.

I am no wiser than the fictional Doctor House,
but I am older. I have more experience living.
I must agree—everybody lies. Deception
is not a skill unique to magicians. Liar!

Look both ways with discerning eyes at everything.
Mind the gaps and realize that a smile is a thin disguise—
“There ain’t no way to hide [those]… lyin’ eyes.”

***

The title is from lines in the Fleetwood Mac song, “Little Lies.” Gaps quote is from “Lyin’ Eyes,” a song by Eagles. How many songs (poems?) are about lies and deception? Hundreds?

Sammi’s Weekender #367 – Party

What Matters?

I envied parties.
Younger me wanted something,
or was it concern about missing out?

My last party,
a high school graduation overdone deal
for a grandson, with whom,

I exchanged five words.
People I didn’t know,
went mostly unnoticed by me.

Many lacking in the social graces
except for some like me
so many names with unfamiliar faces.

I talked to his other grandfather,
and to my twin step-granddaughters
who seemed to like me better,
after thousands of words, I felt likewise.

Small intimates are for me now.

Look both ways because the life of the party is not who it once was.
Mind the gaps when you soberly tell me about your life and what really matters.

Sammi’s Weekender #362 (classic)

Click the graphic for Sammi’s page and more classic writing.

Classical Folk

Telling me about herself,
her childhood, family struggles
made her who and what she is today:
a wonderful classic of musical charm.

The point is telling
the story only she can.

She remembers.
She wants me to know.
It’s all important.

Another girl on my mind
made me wonder.
What was it like
to have been her?

Look both ways when looking into the lives of others.
Mind the gaps and do the research.

NaPoWriMo 2024, Day 28, a sijo

Today, I am to “try” writing a poem using the traditional Korean verse form called sijo (in English, of course).

It’s raining but there is sun, so flowers grow, and life goes on.
I love rain. It loves me back. Happy are these days of wonder.
Without rain there would be no life. Let it rain down, not every day.

Look both ways walking in the rain.
Mind the gaps between the lightning strikes.

Happy Birthday, Yolonda.

NaPoWriMo 2024, Day 25, Beaucoup de Sade

I made it to Day 25, only to find this prompt prodding me to write a poem based on the “Proust Questionnaire.” WTF is that? We were given a wiki link and 35 questions, then set loose to sow whatever poetic damage we could. Proust? Really?

Beaucoup de Sade

What do you consider the perfect murder?
Do you want to kill anyone?
Or some group; like atheists,
gymnasts, or Sociologists? If so—
who, which, when, how, and why?
And where do you live?

Do you like to scare the shit out of people?
Do you point and laugh after they
wet themselves or die of a heart attack?
What is your favorite form of torture?
Do you reminisce about the Spanish Inquisition?

Of all the people you know, what proportion
do you hate the most and wish they were dead?
(Former spouses, Mormons, and JWs don’t count.)
And why? It’s always why, right? I wonder too.

Do you hate any professional or amateur
sports teams, clubs, individuals, musicians, or poets?

Do you consider prohibition of libel and slander
an impingement on your freedom of speech?
Did you make crank calls as a child?
How many times a week do you defecate?
Masturbate?

What smells get you sexually excited?
Do you fantasize doing naughty things
with people you know, like your best friend’s
current or previous spouse or partner?

Who are your favorite villains? Are you
ever good on the bad guys and gals?
What are you addicted to?
Do you think pizza is overrated?
Do you hang out at cemeteries
just to find peeps with shared
hopes and dreams?

Did you enjoy this prompt
as much as I did?

Look both ways and only read Proust if your name is Duane (Moore)
and doing your psychiatrist is your lifelong fantasy.
Mind the gaps for punji traps because some wars never end.

NaPoWriMo 2024, Day 24, Baby Bomber

To meet today’s prompt; after much wondering, looking, rabbit-hole tripping-into, and unsuccessful Google hunts, I landed on a line (two, actually) to bogart from the poem “Weatherman” by Emily XYZ (from the book, Verses That Hurt: Pleasure and Pain from the Poemfone Poets, (eds.: Jordan and Amy Trachtenberg).

The prompt was to write a poem that begins with a line from another (person’s) poem. The line(s) I chose begin Emily’s poem and mine: “Had I been a bomb builder then instead of a baby // boomer which I was which I am still”….

Baby Bomber

Had I been a bomb builder then instead of a baby
boomer which I was and which I am still,
I could have been either famously infamous,
or just plain old famous.
For my cause I could have maimed and murdered
my way into a second life as a Jeff Dunham puppet.

Born after, I missed the big WW-two, was virtually clueless
about a Korean War which ended on my 7th birthday,
but the big boom-boom, GI-numbah ten, at 17,
that dirty old Southeast Asian War for which I was almost eligible for the draft,
so I joined up. Git ‘er done, ya know?

But ten years later, as that buff bomber guy, I learned how nukes were made (Top Secret with critical nuclear weapon design information/CNWDI).
I coulda kilt many a monkey (literally) in Nam, disabled shit factories and fried females that the Chinese didn’t kill for crowd control, or pounded the Rooskys so hard I might have sterilized Putin’s daddy. Coulda but didn’t.

Never built a bomb or John Wayned
some commie pinko fascist and there are days when my ambivalence
flips my lifeless wig. Today, I wonder.
Left, right, left, and now your right;
what side am I on? And who cares?

If I’d been born a bomber instead of a boomer; things would be
exactly as they are. Except for this poem. And except for the spelling of this cause or that; how much difference is there between them and me?

Look both ways down the tunnel searching for which religion or cause is worth dying for.
Mind the gaps that may suck you in, or pay you well, because killing for a cause is killing still.

Emily XYZ