By Daniel Paiz

Pop culture has this habit of creeping its way into your life, or at least your attention, when it’s least expected. Sometimes a necessary distraction comes along. Sometimes it’s something you’re not sure why you’re wasting your time on it. Either way, it’s there and you have to decide how to interact with it. This happens to be the case here. TV can inspire something you didn’t realize you were brooding on until it comes out in different ways. No Golden Ticket is the March 2021 offering for NaPoWriMo all year long. Enjoy it, as it’s a bit different than other recent work I’ve penned.

No Golden Ticket

I am never watching American Idol again

I’m not searching for Wonka chocolate,

And I no longer will curiously look around

To see what kind of egg a goose

Might’ve laid.

Because that’s how you get goose eggs,

That’s how “It’s a no from me, Dawg,”

That’s how leaving your fate to chance

Leads to lying in a bed of regret.

I roll down covers to brace for morning breeze,

rolling about without navigation on,

my GPS internally searching for validated success, yet

I do not want a Golden Ticket to confirm for others

what I have known.

Writing is my soul’s best feature,

a connection between worlds only viewed

when flipping channels,

attempting to choose the right ambiance

prior to sleeping, chilling or any other nondescript activity.

Vulnerability has secretly been my crutch

hobbled by my own expertness in tripping myself,

feigning better than future league MVP Nikola Jokić

passing his talents to his teammates,

as I see my skills slip through my fingers as assuredly

as his teammates tickle netting doomed to rely on metal cylinders.

Sports like rhyming again reveals masking what’s amiss:

I overthink in verbatim

preventing the Greek Goddess from declaring victory and

Saying this to life without golden parchment scraps: