Triolet #1

I was not ready to be bored.
To think. To look and see.
To Austin we went toward but
I was not ready to be bored.
Forward and forward
Lone star sky called me.
I was not ready to be bored.
To think. To look and see.

What is a triolet?

According to poets.org

The triolet is a short poem of eight lines with only two rhymes used throughout. The requirements of this fixed form are straightforward: the first line is repeated in the fourth and seventh lines; the second line is repeated in the final line; and only the first two end-words are used to complete the tight rhyme scheme. Thus, the poet writes only five original lines, giving the triolet a deceptively simple appearance: ABaAabAB, where capital letters indicate repeated lines.

This will be my first try!

NaPoWriMo Day 6

We dare to carve
land into patchwork
and mountains with our
image all ebb and flow
is arbitrary to us and we
do not wait for the rising
of the sun we do not
listen to sounds
of exhaustion nor to those
who cannot sound at all.

willow street

I envy these trees
on my block they reach
veins open to the cloudy
night sky unmoved
by the ill-lit street light
garish porch lamp
remorseless dog
who yaps or the
silence of a car
yet to pass a record
spinning unturned
static ice cubes melting
and a fan slowing
they are undressed
and still

I have not thought of
the future of each
seedling that may wander
astray onto out unkempt
lawn, next to the brush
and where the sidewalk
ends at their feet.

I have not thought
of their slow breathes
on days when the air
is thick to breathe.

What I can think of
is this and that
money and necessity
all the while
underneath the shade
of a deciduous tree.

After the holidays

leaky creativity orifices
stopped up by turkey fat
and deep fried learning by
rote. fractured brain cells
halfway across a country
and then the other halfway
across too. split to dream
about digging a hole to China
and in the backyard to spill
some sunflower seeds
who would bend and sway
at the sun’s friendly gaze
longingly they sigh, that
every day might be a day
such as this, with the sun
and the center of the universe
all in one place. eyelids shudder
open to rain drenched moss
and the din of electrical
appliances, paved streets
lined with death: pine, fir
and spruce. in the puddles.
they lay.

Public Service

Before work I inhale,
inflate myself with hot
caffeine, swollen with the
infectious implication that

each word that insidiously
slips out of my flap-flap-
flapping lips is precariously
close to being important.

and as I exhale I conjure
inspirational messages and
questions that ignite something
that is so far in the future

I can only hope that it will
still exist. I stand up straight,
unafraid of the scrutiny of
little eyes, making me regret

that damned scientific inquiry
and I brush off the attitude
and insult, the “but, but, but”
and “I’m no good”s and the
failing grades and the demands
for a quality, quality, quality
education, as I inhale

again

I say good morning

Corpus

Somewhere between
Corpus and halfway to nowhere
I saw an oil drill
I saw cornfield after cornfield
clouds slow
road signs are lost but we are moving past
on and back
destination on a map
halfway between
here and the middle of somewhere