Human Condition

Dream On – NaPo 2025 Day Seventeen

Today I was challenged to write a poem themed around friendship, with imagery or other ideas taken from two paintings (my choice from many). One by Leonora Carrington, and another by Remedios Varo, two surrealistic artists and friends. A surrealistically inspired, friendly poem?

The irony of this day is this prompt juxtaposed with the definition of surrealism: “the principles, ideals, or practice of producing fantastic or incongruous imagery or effects in art, literature (poetry), film, or theater by means of unnatural or irrational juxtapositions and combinations.” (Webster, on line) Where does one draw the line?

“One good friendship will outlive forty average loves.”

Faces

On purpose.
Told no one. Told everyone and nobody.
Formless as seen on tv ritual
ceremoniously entwined
with green crabapple branches.
Cuts. Touch. Mix blood brothers.
That smell. You! What? Stink-love.

Feel that? Smell. Yell. Scream.
Lie. Beatings from bullies.
Shinny-up. Run. Escape. Drown. Cross.
Crimeless criminality.

Friends first. Not. But.
Family was a lie.
Roy Rogers was naked.
All naked. Sing. Pray. Sting like a bee.

Share hair. Cardboard shoe soles
over shew holes and altar boys.
Smoke sticks. Tangents. Guilt.

Together every day. Share loot.
Flat nose. Black eye. Blood everywhere.
Swing. Fall. Break things.
Climb. Cry. Evil father.
Saintly mother. Naked sister.

Uncle Joe. G. I. what da ya know?
Cold is not coal, or pea.
Melds wrapped in love and shame.
Masturbating demons defiled hosts.
Do it. Now dare to do-do, pee higher.
Lie to be loved. Play all day.

Ugly beauty deep forever.
Melting madness of happiness.
Wanting what color of love?
Damn.
Help.
Hurry.
Hide.
It’ll never die.

Then it died.
Then you died.
Then I cried.

Back.
Then.
When.
Me.
We.

Look both ways or every way at the same time
because art is in what part of a dream when nothing is real and there is no god?
Imagine. Mind the gaps and slaps in genital naps.
If it makes sense, it cannot be art.

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.

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.