Live on the Internet: A Diary (April 9)

Live on the Internet: A Diary (April 8)

Live on the Internet: A Diary (April 7)

(On Naming Names)

Live on the Internet: A Diary (April 6)

Live on the Internet: A Diary (April 5)

Streaming the Final Four; keeping it in the Bloof fam

Live on the Internet: A Diary (April 4)

Live on the Internet: A Diary (April 3)

Live on the Internet: A Diary (April 2)

Live on the Internet: A Diary (April 1)

It's almost April…

 …and that means, NaPoWriMo.*

Once we get underway, we'll be tagging each posts with its author's name so it's easy to sort through the madness. Here's a tag menu:

• NaPoWriMo 2014 (all related posts)
• Shanna Compton
• Natalie Eilbert
• Farrah Field
• Kirsten Kaschock
• Becca Klaver
• Pattie McCarthy
• Amanda Montei
• Catie Rosemurgy
• Kevin Sampsell
• Sandra Simonds
• Dawn Sueoka
• Elisabeth Workman
• Jared White

Some of us will be posting new drafts. Some of us may be writing for a set period of time and posting an excerpt from whatever we get that day. Some of us may be revising previously drafted poems.  Some of us may steal lines from each other and riff on those. Anything goes.

Some of us will be erasing drafts after 24 hours, (they are drafts, after all). So if you want to keep up with everything, check daily. You can also keep up by following the links we'll post at Facebook (click like, then get notifications) and Twitter.

---

* "The NaPoWriMo website is owned and operated by Maureen Thorson, a poet living in Washington, DC. She started writing a poem a day for the month of April back in 2003, posting the poems on her blog. When other people started writing poems for April, and posting them on their own blogs, Maureen linked to them. After a few years, so many people were doing NaPoWriMo that Maureen decided to launch an independent website for the project.  But the site isn’t meant to be “official,” or to indicate ownership or authority over the idea of writing 30 poems in April. There is no corporate sponsorship of this project. No money is intended to change hands anywhere. Maureen just likes poems and wants to encourage people to write them."

5 of Wands

A lot of shuffling
but just one card
today

It’s a jam sesh
or a jubilee
or a war

They might be
bayonets or long
rain sticks

It’s gonna be a
struggle no way
out

LadySphinx
Volcano
Phoenix

riddle
eruption
rebirth

Nobody likes
to see their
own pain

played out on
the flat surface
of myth

Style Power

reading how you only become a body
when the tools of the law begin
to exert themselves over the flesh
that then becomes your body

Cat Power singing
at the same time
never give away
never give away your body

and build your style of being
out of thrifted jean jackets and
duct tape arrows pointing up
busk and bask in the underbelly

clothes might still foil
the strongarm of the law

Synoptic

I float high above
the used car dealership
a giant helium balloon
animal on a rope
batted and blown

I can see for blocks and blocks

But I can't see you

[I blew up a bed]

I blew up a bed
next to the TV
and slept

the afternoon away
not a bomb
an air mattress

I blew up a bed next to the TV
and listened for explosives
I was far from The Danger

I was an official telewitness
On TV no one had slept
no one was an American anymore

what rights did they have
the threat was out there
the threat was in here

the threat was
thumping inside
my chest

stay home vs. shelter in place
show of force vs. tender classmates
thermal camera vs. death wish

the ways these things go
the bloody botch
the half life of the tweet

he was the bomb
vs.
the bomber

I won't divide up the world
into those who want to find the links
and those who want to sever them

because you see how I'd be guilty
but you get my point
we have words

and touch
and what look like
different bodies

no one is knowable
but we've got skin
that scrapes and bleeds

we have no
armor
most of us

it's a miracle
we stay separate
and unscathed

we made all these
things
with sharp edges

shake a hand
say thank you
say happy birthday

it's a miracle these
Saturdays of honey-
light parties

and no one bloody
on the floor

precarious

not like walking
on a tightrope
but like walking

to the mailbox

I was far
from
The Danger

I rarely feel safe
or I almost always
am

Parade in Watertown

Road Closed. Town Diner.
Hair Cuttery. Citizen’s
Bank. Police. Police.

still shopping for images

inside the pharmacy
inside the mall
a girl, my student (?)
paused beside
a hanging plant
in a greenhouse room
but dark
like an aquarium
and reached up
to touch a leaf

   "my grandfather told me this was here
          when he used to come here"

but of course that's wrong
only new dead things
populate the drugstore
and they're supposed to
get out of there
ASAP

the next thing
the costume scholar said--

   "nostalgia as a product
     in global modernity"

there's a place for it
on the shelf (?)

plants might outlive
your grandfather
of course

so might
stuff

maybe the dream
wished to insist
things take root
and keep growing
anyway

what we miss
and how we keep
finding ways
to buy it back

deep inside the
deep inside

Wrong Tone

I wrote a faux-manifesto
poem this morning.

It was pretty clever.

I changed my profile pic
and my cover photo

just before I heard the news.

Somebody probably thought
how gauche.

I didn't know.

People continued to complain
about the new timeline

as the news shuffled in.

How petty
are your grievances?

Mine too.

I "heard" the news
through a shared photo

in my feed.

I clicked through and through
until I knew

or thought I knew.

Every network's put
the word TERROR

in jagged font.

It could have been anywhere.
It is everywhere,

many are quick to admonish.

It's hard to strike the right
tone. I prefer writing

with light.

Mister Lonely

   “You can live forever

     and you can live forever—”

You can say goodbye

to your room

item by item

then put on your hat

and say adiós

     “Sisters, are you ready?”

sound of habits

in a free fall

whipping and torn

a soft landing

in the gully

where they pulled

the ship over

the mountain

Was it the movie

   or the making of—

A life so other

you crave it

wanna lick it down

     “Dear World,

      Dear World and everyone in it,

      from the moment I was born

      I remember feeling different…”

Honest Abe makes a promise

to kill the sheep

          “sheep or shit”

“my life don’t count for nothin’—”

    “to the dreams who make us who we are—”

             “there’s no truer souls

               than those who impersonate”

     “The Greatest Show on Earth!”

Dead Marilyn tells living Michael

to follow his destiny

This was 2007

   “That’s show business, folks”

   “The wonder of it—”

     a love song to the movies

              or vaudeville

in the end

a boyish haircut

a red polo

alone in the middle

of the crowd

and the plane crashes

of course

“we can make it seem better

                for a while”

How a Resurrection Really Feels¹
(a song for girls in their 20s)²

Tundra to the north and west

freshwater sea to the east

the big/second city below

And of all the bad seeds

who never found a way

out of town

the one we loved the best

had been stranded at that party

for years

The Upper Midwest

dulls the nerves

with the dull hums of devotion

glacier-scooped and wooded

and too knowable

for a big fish

with a systems-analysis

kind of mind

The free drinks

keep you

at the corner bar

the easy hookups

keep you in town

The Upper Midwest

soaked

in the stale blood of Catholics

which smells like

the stale beer

of all the college bars you went to

in high school

’cause your friend worked there

and gave you the IDs

people left behind

How many girls were Jill Van Groll?

I was, and Jenny, and Emily, and whoever

was blonde mutt enough

to pass

There is nothing to do but drink

but there are lots of kinds of drinking

there is nothing to do but drugs

but there are plenty of drugs

And of all those guys

those guys with the baggy jeans

and black t-shirts

with the wallet chains

and buzz cuts

of all those guys I couldn’t tell you

for sure

who’s dead and who’s alive

walk on back

walk on back

Dragged to Sunday Mass

I took the chalice from my mother

Eucharistic Minister

grinned and winked as I sipped

before heading back to the pew

       “Becca has a taste for wine”

There is nothing to do but sip

but some drinks are classier

than others

some drinks are Catholicker

than others

he’s been disappeared for years

And when they let him out of prison

this Christmas

and he drove around town

in John’s old truck

we missed them all so bad

all those boys

and his grin was the grin of a kid

or of ass-flat defeat

or of someone who’d felt

the divine softening of blows

We weren’t allowed

to sit and smoke in bars once

And we’re not allowed

to sit and smoke in bars now

But there was a time

            we sat in bar after bar

using one cigarette to light the next

And those were our twenties

The friends he met in the bathroom

the bullet that grazed him

the lakeview condo he rented

in the complex

where all the ballers lived

the topless bar that paid

her tuition

the suitcases full of packages

Hustlers in the land

of no opportunity

If you can’t make it here

you could take it as a sign

it’s time to get out

walk on back

walk on back

Maybe

there is no such thing

as the third coast

After all

the lake freezes over

and

they swing the incensers over the ice

and

there’s a lot to confess

because there are so few ways

to be good

so we got ourselves all gone again

a bar and a steeple

on every corner

the bells ring out

and the changeover

takes no time at all

1.  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PFiiq2sFD7E

2.  http://songsforgirls.blogspot.com