Baptism (Prompt: Life Event)

When you decide
this is what
you want to be

not because
of what it means
in the next world,

but what it means
in this world,

then,
you’re ready.

Thai Peanut Spicy Chicken (Prompt: Regional Cuisine)

I let the wisps of
peanut-scented steam
waft from the Styrofoam
to-go container,
and I inhale it
as though it was
some exotic breathing
treatment.

My heart pounds
in my chest
and the saliva pools
in my mouth
as I carefully
balance the peanut sauce
with the white rice
on my fork.

The Thai spices,
a magical mystery mix,
shoot electricity
from my tongue
through my entire being,
faster than morphine,
as exciting as her touch
the very first time.

The crunch of the peanut
and the tenderness
of the chicken
make every bite
a challenge
to savor
and not devour.

What problems that exist
in this world,
in my world
are for the moment
off somewhere
far, far away.

The memory
of sweet coconut milk
and fiery red chili
stays with me
all afternoon,

reminding of
what is often
the best part of my day.

Unity 3000 (Prompt: Science Fiction)

How many times do you
wake up in the morning,
with a profound sense of
detachment,
insecurity
and ennui
that even your usual
two cups of hyperblend
can’t fix?

Ever wish you could just
get up with
a great attitude,
rested, refreshed and ready
to produce more positive output
for your corporate benefactor?

On days like this
when even your
state-prescribed antidepressants
aren’t doing the trick,
don’t you wish you had
that little something extra,
a secret weapon
to give you that little extra edge,
so you could be Top Bot
for your sector
and win that extra 15 minutes
of Virtual Physical Interaction
with the hologram of
your choice?

Well , wait no more!
New for
[INSERT HOLIDAY FIELD]  [INSERT YEAR FIELD],
the only product
you’ll ever need again,
the Unity 3000!

The Unity 3000 links
to your Personal USB Port
through an attractive dongle
(available in four different
ethnic skin tones),
to help you sleep better,
and while you’re sleeping
you’re also reprogramming
your subconscious,
so that your dreams
are more inspiring,
and your sleep
is more restful.

Let the power of
just lying there unconscious
work for you!

Choose from a variety of
Programming Attitudes:
“Go For Our Dreams!”
“That’s Not a Mountain, It’s Only a Hill!”
“Work Will Make You Free!”
“There is no I in TEAM!”

Just download the program to the dongle,
insert it in your Personal USB Port
and fall asleep!
As you doze
our patented DreamAlign process
will do the rest!

The Unity 3000
also data mines your
dream activity
for negative images
and disturbing content,
quarantining these aberrant
thoughts and feelings
until you can download
and process them properly
at your next
Mental Health Review or
Performance Evaluation.

Call now to see
if you qualify
for a free Unity 3000!

Employers,
ask about the tax credit
for providing
the Unity 3000
for your employees.

Have that peace of mind,
that contentment,
that satisfaction,
that comes from finally feeling
complete.

Just in time for
[INSERT HOLIDAY FIELD]  [INSERT YEAR FIELD],

the Unity 3000,
get yours now!

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[Posted for #OpenLinkNight at dversepoets.com - the best poetry site on the whole damned internet!]

Playlist: Id (Prompt: Mix Poem)

The beach is a place
where a man can feel
he’s the only soul in the world
that’s real,
here’s the thing:
we started off friends,
you say
I only hear what I want to,
how do you cool your lips
after a summer’s kiss?

I was born from love
and my poor mother
worked the mines,
and there’s nothing you can do
to turn me away,
welcome back,
your dreams were your ticket out,
I’ve been searching a long time
for someone exactly like you.

I’ve got to say it
and it’s hard for me,
last night I didn’t get to sleep
at all,
add a little sugar, honeysuckle
and a great big expression of
happiness.

Who’s the black private dick
that’s a sex machine
to all the chicks?
I'm coming straight for your love baby
Like a rocket, girl,
stand!
in the end you’ll still be you.

Superhighways coast to coast
easy to get anywhere,
you just could not know
how long we tried
to see how this building
looks inside,
Late night flight, LAX
limousine and you’re all set.

If there’s a smile on my face
it’s only there trying to fool
the public,
life is a song worth singing,
you can tell the truth,
you can tell a lie,
baby, lift your head up,
they tell me you’re shy, but
I love you just the same,
been around the world
and I can’t find my baby,
I’m writing letters
and your candle’s burning,
my heart starts breaking
when I think of making
a plan to let you go.

I've been walking in
the same way as I did,
when I say I’m in love
you best believe
I’m in love
L-U-V!

As I was lying
in a hospital bed
a rock and roll nurse
going to my head,
forgot my six-string razor
and hit the sky,
he was a boy
she was a girl
can I make it any more
obvious?

It doesn’t matter what I say
as long as I sing with
inflection,
I don’t think I can handle this
another day in Metropolis,
I have had my eyes on you
from the day I learned to laugh at myself,
caught you laughing too.

Hey, don’t worry
I’ve been lied to.

[Note: these are the first lines of the songs in my current Rhapsody playlist. Whoever guesses the most of them correctly, wins a free copy of my latest e-book!  There are 34 songs listed herein!]

The Foreman Speaks (Prompt: slash, button, mask, strap, balloon)

Ok, listen up, you hacks.

I’m sure you’ve all
received the memo from
Research and Marketing,
and the word is
that the big bosses
are behind this
so they’re serious.

The online e-card sites
are kicking our ass,
so if we can’t beat them,
Corporate’s going to slash
the creative division.

Research tells us
the market wants
outrageous
from America’s premier
greeting card company.

No more balloons
or cakes
or cute little
puppy dogs
on birthday cards.

No, they want
S&M masks,
strap-ons
and anything that
titillates.

Moskowitz,
button your lip!

If you want to be
an artist,
get the hell
out of here.

Go back to that
blog of yours,
with its lousy 50
followers,
you loser.

The End of the World (Prompt: Doomsday)

It’s Saturday.

I slept in late,
checked the prompt.

Then life
just buffalo’ed in
like it tends to do
and I realize that
if I don’t write a poem
today
it won’t be
the end of the world,

but
best not to chance it.

EXTRA! EXTRA!

Big shout out to Vince Gotera - he had the good taste to feature this blog on his blog!
Check his cool poetry out too!

http://vincegotera.blogspot.com/2012/04/day-12-napowrimo-poem-day.html

Just In Case (Prompt: Unlucky)

I avoid walking
under ladders
and will skid
out of the path
of a black cat.

I knock on wood
and scratch
the interior ceiling
of any car I'm in
when going through a
yellow light.

If the car radio
is playing “Respect”
by Aretha Franklin
I shut it off
because it was playing
when I was in
that car crash
back in 1985.

I don’t have
lucky lotto numbers,
but I do have
a lucky number -
anything that isn’t
13.

If I spill the salt
I sweep it up and
throw it
over my shoulder

and I always pick
my wife’s handbag
up off the floor,
so she’ll never be poor.

I always take tests
with freshly sharpened pencils
so I am using pencil points
that never made
an error.

And whenever
I have to do a
Power Point presentation
for the
Board of Trustees,

I attach and it send
to 3 different
email accounts

always with the memo line
JIC (Just In Case),

and bring the presentation
on two separate
flash drives.

And every Friday
I wish my wife
“Happy Anniversary”
mostly out of love
but a little bit
out of fear
of what’ll happen if
I forget,

because
you can’t be
too careful.

Sometimes It’s Obvious (Prompt: Sometimes ____ )

They stir something
in us that makes us
admire their nobility,
their unshatterable dignity.

They find ways to walk
without legs,
type without fingers,
trust without seeing,
dance without ever
hearing the music.

Sometimes it’s obvious,
but sometimes it isn’t.

For years
she asked me
for a wheelchair
or leg braces,
because she knew it
would let the world know
there was something
“wrong”
with her.

As she gets older,
and we learn more about
her disability,
I realize it is not
invisible, only hidden

deep inside
her skull,
inside the already
twisted Gordian knot of
synapses, nerve receptors
and other gray matter,
her cerebellum
most likely deprived of oxygen
in utero
is damaged,
and slowly the effects
are manifesting:

balance problems
organizational problems
sequencing problems
emotional problems
algebra word problems
visual-spatial problems
auditory processing problems
problem problems.

The good news is
she’s not so bad off
that the world sees her
as disabled.

The bad news is
she’s not so bad off
that the world sees her
as disabled.

Autumn (for Rachel, who has been in Montana 26 days) (Prompt: Season)

It was still winter
when you left,
and spring doesn’t
hold out much
hope for your return.

I doubt that
you’ll want to come back
to the oppressive heat
and smog of
a Moreno Valley summer,

so perhaps,
I’ll have to wait
until Autumn
for your return.

Autumn has always
been my favorite season
but if you told me
you were
coming home tomorrow,

spring would be my
new favorite season
of the year.

Auto-Pruning the Family Tree (Prompt: Tree)

My family tree
started with Juan and Trini,
my grandparents
who came from
Mexico.

They had ten kids,
who in turn,
added 23 branches
to the family tree,
and many of these
sprouted branches of their own,
beautiful and strong
all through Los Angeles
county.

Except for me
and my brothers:

no kids.

My father used to say
“you can’t miss
what you never had,”

but I think my Mom
probably would have liked
grandchildren,
reaching past
the barrier of the unknown,
outlasting her.

But, Mom,
you showed us
what it took to be good,
self-sacrificing parents,
and it didn’t look
so appealing.

You never bought yourself
anything nice.
You didn’t have
any outside interests
of your own.
You never
went on vacation.

I wish you could’ve
enjoyed raising us
more than you let on.

Perhaps, then
I wouldn’t feel
so perpetually
guilty

about being
being a nuisance
a bother,
a burden
to someone,

and maybe then,

you’d
have grandchildren.

(Submitted for #OpenLinkNight at dversepoets.com  - Come join the fun!)

The Conspiracy Theorist Speaks (with apologies to Robert Lee Brewer) (Prompt: Shady)

How does he do it?
What is the mystery,
that missing piece of logic,
that would provide
the answer?

I check in
everyday in April
to see what
I’m writing about,
and somedays
I look at the prompt,
and think
“This can’t be
a planned-
ahead-of-time
prompt.

Looks like
he just made it
up on the spot.”

He says
he plans all the prompts
for the month
in advance,
yet everyday
he magically
comes up with a
perfect poem
to match
the prompt.

I’ll bet he gathers
his unpublished poetry,
gets 30 of them
together,
writes prompts based
on those existing poems
and then presents
prompt and poem
together,
voila!

Yes,
I bet
there’s something
shady going on
here,

I bet.

I Reject the Prompt (Prompt: Rejection)

I reject the edict
to write today.

I reject the compulsion
to not miss a day
in the April
Poem-a-Day
Challenge.

I reject the prompt.

April Fool!

This Bed (Prompt: Scene of Two People, No Sound)

In the end of all such days
they find themselves
back together in this bed,
exhaling in unison
as they lie down
on their backs.

In retrospect,
the events of the day
seems less insurmountable,
and they close their eyes
delivering these problems
into the arms of
unseen angels in the
darkness.

They clasp hands,
close their eyes
and implicitly trust
that the other
will be there
upon rising.

Dividing Up Stuff (Prompt: Hiding)

It was easy
to cheat on her
because
she trusted me.

I hid in plain sight
because when
someone loves you
they trust you.

She wasn’t
looking for my sin,
my flaw,
and she didn’t find it.

When I eventually
told her
I was leaving,
I made the mistake of
leaving her alone
with my private
things.

She went through
all my private files
and found all
the unsent poems,
hotel room receipts,
stray love notes,
and other convicting detritus
and stacked them
on the filing cabinet
for me to find
upon my return.

This was her proof
of my flagrant disrespect
and lazy contempt.

Still,
I couldn’t help
but feel betrayed
that my secret persona
was outed,
my performance
as dutiful partner
spoiled,
my private world
violated.

When trust ends
all that’s left
is dividing up stuff
and walking away.

Lenny (Prompt: Something Before My Time)

I first met him in his cartoon 

where he plays an emotionally

distant Lone Ranger

who ends up taking Tonto 

away for a consensual 

unnatural act.

I was instantly hooked.

As he mocked 

the pseudosanctimony of

Ike’s America,

I was stuck in 

Reagan’s Movie America

and he sounded prophetic.

He wasn’t just telling jokes,

but trying ideas.

He peeled back the 

hypocritical 

“what should be” 

to reveal the caustic

“what is.”

The popular version is

that he was a dirty mouth comic 

who just said “cocksucker” 

and lowered the bar 

for generations of vulgarians

waiting at the Gate (of Horn). 

To me, he was a poet

with words and sounds 

and bad movie star imitations.

He was desperate 

for the truth

and when he gazed upon it, 

he found it painful 

to the point 

of heroin.

More than a martyr,

he was an artist,

trying to tickle out an honest laugh

and some truth,

the same way that 

Charlie Parker tried to 

coax something hitherto unknown 

out of the trunk of jazz standards.

His was an alto saxophone voice,

alive and demanding,

bending notes with 

Yiddish rhythm,

street profanity 

and the tsuris of 

five millenia and 

six million Jews. 

He never tried to do the

same thing twice

and I understand

he was genuinely kind

and generous to a fault.

Who else but SuperJew

would stand up 

and say 

“Have rachmones 

for Adolph Eichmann?”

Only Jesus Christ

and Lenny Bruce.

100% is the Only True Number (Prompt: 100%)

100% is the only true number.

Everything else
just appears to be
a fraction.

I cannot prove any of this
but I suspect
it is all together
in one living
pulsating
being.

Duality and
non-duality
as one.

There is no there,
just the long,
faraway continuation of
here.

The good news is
there is no God
who is separate
from who we are.

There’s only God
and included in God
are the believers
the unbelievers
the nonbelievers
the abelievers
the logical positivists
the scientists
the materialists
the atheists
the agnostics
the yin and the yang
and the double yang.

Don’t be fooled by this
convenient shared illusion

that there is a you
that is separate from me,
and there is a them
that is separate from us.

There is
no chocolate cake,
no cardinal in the tree,
no breathless orgasm,
no Yogi Berra,

just God
in the guise of
chocolate cake,
a cardinal in the tree,
the breathless orgasm
and Yogi Berra.

There is only one
reality

and this is how you spent
the last two minutes
of it.

Apology Song (Prompt: Apology)

I’m sorry I ate so late last night
I’m sorry I let my alarm wake her up
I’m sorry I didn’t l kiss her goodbye

I’m sorry I didn’t leave five minutes sooner
I’m sorry I let this fool ahead of me on the onramp
I’m sorry I need soy milk in this coffee

I’m sorry I forgot to get that signature
I’m sorry I couldn’t take your call
I’m sorry I can’t keep you, it’s the budget

I’m sorry I ate so much at lunch
I’m sorry I dinged that car next to me
I’m sorry I can’t stay awake for your after-lunch meeting

I’m sorry I will get to it before I leave
I’m sorry I will make it up to you
I’m sorry I thought what’s-his-name has doing it

I’m sorry I forgot to fill up my tank at lunch
I’m sorry I said I’d pick him up on the way home
I’m sorry I kept you waiting

I’m sorry I am late for dinner
I’m sorry I got spaghetti sauce on my good tie
I’m sorry I don’t know if your teacher is right, honey

I’m sorry I just need some quiet time
I’m sorry I had that second helping of dessert
I’m sorry I forgot to call the insurance guy

I’m sorry I’ll check to see if the alarm is set
I’m sorry I can see you’re not in the mood
I’m sorry I didn’t do so well today, Lord

but if you give me another one tomorrow,
I’ll try to do better.

(For #OpenLinkNight at dversepoets.com - come, join the fun!)

Two Visits (Prompt: Visitor)

Sometimes the visitor
is welcome.

When my beloved
little 96 year-old
grandmother from Mexico
was lying in the hospital bed
for a month,
dying from mostly old age,
each day took a little bit more
of my father’s heart,
as he made
the 80 mile round trip
dutifully,
until she finally
stopped fighting
and let the visitor in
that Saturday morning.

By that time,
the visitor was welcome.

Two days later
after Pop mowed the lawn,
complained of a sore shoulder
(which my mother rubbed
with Icy Hot),
and ate a microwave
corn dog,

he laid on the floor,
and as he watched
the 4 o’clock news,
the visitor quietly came again
and took him too.

Two visits
in sixty hours.

This time the visitor
wasn’t welcome.

(Inspired by Becky Sain’s “This isn’t everything you are.”)

Tips for New Writers (Prompt: Communication)

Be honest
and be clear,

there’s no point in doing this
if you’re just going to lie
or write so you
won’t be understood.

If you’re looking for
giant ego strokes
then you
probably want to invest
in liposuction,
breast augmentation,
or hair plugs.

No,
if you're in this
then you either communicate
something of value
or nothing at all.

If you don’t illuminate,
then why are you
trying to shine?

If you don’t know nature
don’t write about it,
and if you don’t know about love
don’t write about it.

Write about what you know
and if you think
you don’t know anything,

then start writing about anything
and fling it onstage
before the masses,

and then you’ll learn
failure and rejection,
and then write about those;

they are subjects
to which we all
can relate.