Welcome to the Aftermath

It is now the month of May, which means that the Thirty Day Writing Challenge is over. I was successfully able to write a prose poem every day (30 poems!) and they are all compiled in their final form here. It is one of the most intimate and touching projects I have ever done, and I would put it on par with any stage role I have ever performed or any musical number I've ever presented. It was fun, difficult, and very revealing, occasionally bordering on self therapy without going too far. Meaning, that I'd like these poems to have something for everyone to relate to and claim as their own, finding not the truth as I think I know it but create an artistic representation of the truth as it actually exists in all of our lives. There were ultimately a lot of unintentionally constant themes throughout my work that I tried to tie up by the end and I think that the cohesiveness of the poems as a whole adds to the value of the entire product. There are reasons to laugh, cry, and there are always opportunities to think creatively about the way we perceive and address the events in our lives through language, which is the telos of all literary artwork.

I would like to address one minor flaw in this blog that is no fault of mine but merely a technical error. For Day 21, I needed to publish it early in the day as opposed to later because I knew I would have no time to write it otherwise, so I published it a little after midnight. The poem is listed as being published on the 20th, however, sometime BEFORE midnight. The reason is that Blogger's internal clock operates on Pacific Standard Time and I operate on Central, which means that Blogger recognizes my blog as being posted 2 hours earlier than when I actually did the job. It's a small discrepancy (kind of a downer, actually) but there it is.

If you click the April (30) link to your left you will find a complete list of the poems in reverse chronological order. I would recommend starting at the bottom and don't try to finish it all in one sitting. If there's one thing I've learned it is that poetry takes time to prepare and to digest, so please give my poems some time to sit and simmer before moving on to the next one. Thank you for reading, God bless you and yours.

P.S. Ms. Sue Walker, if you are reading this, thank you for giving me this challenge, I would love to talk shop with you sometime soon. pa1adinsane.hj@gmail.com

Day 30 - April is the Cruelest Month

            We are all fools, every one, dancing in a dead zone and prancing with the variant passengers of our past. The ship needs some maintenance done if she's gonna sail to Dauphin Island, but what doesn't sink you makes you stronger, I suppose, it's not a big deal...unless you see the kelpie and her cowboy, riding through the storm on a whitecap of foam, all manner of snakes on his shoulders. He's coming for the Bishop and the Jew so he can match beards with them. As we wait for the rain to fall, a green flame blazes in our eyes and Alastor Zane stands up and declares "              " and the people scream back at him with intertwining cords of cacophony. Peace is brought by a young boy in suspenders and a fedora and his jokes please the major-general, who has been politely waiting for his letter to arrive from across the sea. The quasimoral Pharisaic parasites retreat to their holes as the feast begins, but a young man and woman are too busy looking through each other to see the Warsaw workfellow drive his rusty train and the rain then fell on the plain and we all hunkered down, a million golden threads tied up in our fingers.

Truly, April is the cruelest month.

But, the flowers are blooming!

Day 29 - Dying Fall (Finale pt.2)

This is where it ends. Alone, drowning in black rain, bleeding from my chest, is that God I hear laughing at me? No, he’s not laughing, He’s weeping, but why? I tried to think, explain what I’ve learned but was stopped by a single thought, perhaps the last words I’ll ever hear: “No reason” – the single memoriam on my absent headstone, on all our tombstones. Every grave, every urn, every treason, every heartbreak -no reason. No savior in the valley, no balm in Gilead. I couldn’t think of an encouraging lesson or moral, so I tried memory instead. My grandmother’s wake. Victim of Alzheimer’s: no memory, no peace. I wept in my mother’s arms and wondered why she had to go, how she’ll never smile at me, never see me graduate, never scratch my back or kiss my cheek, so I returned to the place where my life began to try to understand. I found nothing in my mother’s lap or any fairy story, but something from her voice. She sang to me, to ease my tears, to help me enter rest like when I was an infant, and then, then, she gave me a small, wooden cross. It was then that I subpoenaed God for the very first time, brought Him to trial, an ancient rite of passage. Why did she ever live if she was meant to die and what reason was there for us at all? I was a simple child, who needed simple answers, and I as lay dying in my blood and filth what more can I ask for? What else has ever mattered? She showed me the cross and a whisper shattered the silence, sublime, complete: “You and I”.

hhhhhhuuuuuuuUUUUMMMMMMMMMMNNNNNNNNnnnnnnnnnnnn

A hum, a thin string of light, slipped through the fabric of endless space and time above me, across the blood red sky and black quagmire, and that plain cross hung from it. With my rotting flesh and mottled bones, my last gasp of air, I grasped that thin thread and watched the black turn blue and the sky fade white. The thread disappeared, and in my hands I held two chess pieces, one black and one pearl, a pawn and a king, and heard God laugh. He laughed like my mother and held me like my gram, and I was loved like a son.

Day 28 - Counting Book (Finale pt.1)

            Death finally came to me, and I never saw him coming. I was watching the Bishop and Jew play chess, wondering who was winning and if it ever really mattered, when a white man in a black suit tapped on my shoulder and I knew that he had been too long delayed, showing me a train ticket with my name on it. I asked him how time matters to a repo man but he glared at me and I saw I was mistaken. Then the players turned to me and bade me farewell, the Bishop his blessing and the Jew his good luck, and then they returned to their game, for they had cleared their accounts with Death long ago. We slowly walked on, passing by the old landmarks of Dickenson’s lore when I turned back to the pale rider of endless space and asked him if my ledger was clear, if I was truly ready to go or if there were still some discrepancies to resolve. As we stood before the train he took another look at my ticket and grimaced, or as close to a grimace as he could manage, and motioned me to stand aside while he went inside the cabin. I always loved trains as a child, but when I turned to look the train was gone and I sought it in vain. Then I saw him, a haggard relic of a man in a conductor’s uniform, holding a faceless pocketwatch in one hand and a pistol in the other. I begged him to explain why he had to do it, pleaded with him to help me understand before he silences me, but with deadpan chaff he responded, “No reason”…

KRACKOW

I tasted my blood and clutched my chest, where my heart once was, and fell to the dust on my back, watching the clouds turn red and break above me, black knives fall around me, crushing me beneath the weight of it all, hollow dissonant laughter filling my ears.

Day 27 - Alpha Zuz

            Alpha, amoeba agenda, Beezlebub boob bomb, cannibalistic charismatic cynic, dazed doomed druid encode erode explode fireproof flyleaf fluff groping, gasping, gaming, hahahahahahaHAH hollah howdah Israeli incbui ignesfatui jajaj je'rooj je'sechkj kick kiosk kinfolk, legal liturgical lowball mercantilism = maximum mayhem + nocturn nobleman narration, Orlando oleo oratorio plumb pawnshop professorship: quacq quq Quzezacotq, regular regulator remainder scabrous solicitous Spoonsworth's tacit trebuchet target, ubuntu Urdu utu vav vavav vavavoomavav; Warsaw workfellow workflow, Xerox Xylanthrax Xanax yearly yesterday yolky zaz zyzz ZUZ?!

Day 26 - Seeking Safety

             When we sat at the table that fresh fall's night and opened our cages, I knew I loved you then and you the same, but oh how quickly do captive animals find new pens, new backyards to build a nest in. How quickly is a greyhound caught by the pound and locked down of her own volition, a hellbound hound that flees town and steals my crown, but don't think that I'm bitter. I saw you see through me, I saw you see past me, seeing my loves instead of my love and now you stack your stones around the gifts and pleasure of pleasures, seeking the produce instead of the planter, but I know my fault: I gave you too many herbs and not enough seeds, drenching my fields instead of running the water slowly into the soil, sparing the sun to spin its spell. All our summer's dreams lay incomplete, but new ones rise withal, and if you've left them behind then so have I. I'm sick of my old comely regret, sick of longing for what is and what should never be. Quite frankly, I am sick of seeing through you and smelling the scent of your trail, so let someone else woo you, let them find you amid the ruins of your next failure and become a new casement for whatever it is you're looking for. I'll look elsewhere.

Day 25 - Constabit

            They brought together their collected harvest, some with grain, some with fruits, some with meat, some with herbs, and some with curds and cream. They gathered together in the springtime on a cool April's night after the winter had passed as opposed to the fall when farmers normally gather their reapings. What they understood that most do not is that winter is all around us and does not wait for the Earth to spin, and these farmers sow in the snow when hearts are cold and times are rough, when the people fear that the sun has forsaken them and the Fisher King sets about writing his memoirs as is his custom. They set their reapings and gleanings on an open table and found that, despite the differences of their trades, they all had brought nourishments and knew that the time was right to feed the hungry, for would they would now be waking from their slumber and needed strength to face the day and a reminder of life before the fall. Cooking and chopping, slicing and dicing, a feast was prepared and all were invited. It was no meager dinner, yet the leftovers were far greater than the original offering, and the chefs could not help but notice that some unleavened loaves and luscious wine had gotten mixed in with their banquet. Their most esteemed patron proved pleased not by the feast itself but the hearts of the servants, and danced with the guests long into the night.