By Daniel Paiz

April is National Poetry Writing Month, also known as NaPoWriMo. If you’ve visited this site before you know 30 poems will arrive in the next 30 days. There are some folks who follow prompts throughout the month, some have a theme throughout, and others try different poetic forms as well.

Ironically, just a little bit, there isn’t a whole lot of poetic formatting to follow here. There will be words crafted, butchered, sown, and grown together to paint pictures of varying moods and stories. If you’d like an idea of how this has gone in the past, check out the NaPoWriMo category as this is one of our older traditions. If you feel inspired to try your hand and writing some poems, this writer humbly suggests you try writing a haiku; they are concise and yet massive in what they do to you.

In other news, the poem below is entry number one of 30 for this month of poetry. Enjoy!

Fickle

At 12:38am I glance over at the protruding and hardy greens,

carefully growing resiliently

in the store chosen planter of a Christmas poinsettia.

Most people have thrown out their holiday choices,

giving up on fickle leaves,

not realizing their fickle watering has either

drowned or dehydrated this colorful holiday character.

Seems like some foolish reflection on a season long removed,

to be replaced by the cracking of more than eggs as

the conclusion to the beginning of that wintery season,

approaches less than three weeks from a day before yesterday.

Ramblings of a later night writer,

transpire surrounded by falsified fire,

Dim it seems for both those candelabras and readers too wired,

caffeine rushing quicker than a spoon burned via lighter.

Hey, you crashed into MY therapeutic space,

that can easily be fixed though, without a trace,

…because I could just remove any mean comments or,

something internet-related, calm down there, Cold Case aficionado.

There’s a real fickleness in the air,

right up there with anyone trying to hold onto cares,

because it seems like fickle is the wave of the future.

It’s how we’re sutured,

how we’re politically neutered,

wake up calls no longer possible even with countless roosters.

Volatile is one way to put it,

at this point just release the unicorns,

the hobgoblins, and any other beings between the sky and seas,

time travel via magical horns is more likely

than fixing how the US dies by “laws” and “decency”.