Cruel April

I wrote this a couple of weeks ago and then got too busy to post it, but the sentiment still applies.

April, you're fucking terrifying.
Last week it was snowing.
How can I trust my bare skin to this air?
Do you even remember February?
How this landscape was a frozen cemetery?
How these trees were tombstones?
Now crocuses erupt from open graves
Past clumps of rotting leaves.
Too soon, April, and yet too late!

My mom bought a house when I was grown.
After years of apartments, trailers, basements,
Moving, always moving, she has settled down.
April, I walk through you like that house.
Nature has no memory,
Or these buds wouldn't be so bold, so tender.
When God sent a flood to cover the Earth
And destroy every living thing,
When the waters finally rolled back
And the land appeared, God sent a rainbow
As a promise.
No one thought to hold Him to this.

Once I went away all summer
And when I came home, my baby sister
Took one look at me and burst into tears.
I dropped onto one knee and held her
As she sobbed wordlessly in my arms,
Like, April, you hold me now.

What to do if you fall through

I don't actually like laws, since they are applied inconsistently, usually in order to control and disenfranchise communities of color and poor people and queers. But if I thought laws were more useful than violent, I would be tempted to say things like, "Can we outlaw February already?"

Seriously, why do I live in New England right now? I feel overwhelmed by my everyday responsibilities, I'm questioning all my life choices, I can't handle being around people. All because the world is buried in snow and I forgot what green looks like.

17 Words About Crossing a (Metaphorical) Frozen Pond

listening for the moment the ice starts to crack
send word of what's on the other side

This video is the very literal response when I tell a friend of the metaphorical frozen pond. Except, to my delight, it beautifully extends my metaphor:

1. Get your breath back. Seriously, just breathe for a couple of minutes.
2. Go back out the way you came in. The last ice you stood on can hold you.
3. Kick like hell and pull yourself out.
4. Roll away from the hole, then crawl. Stand only when you're sure it's solid.
5. If you see someone else fall through, stay back. Talk them through it. Throw them something to grab onto.

Burning Down the Sky

The last couple of days have been full of tough feelings of the heart kind and the body kind, and I don't even have the words. But I will say this about my drive home from some work meetings at sunset yesterday.

I Said "17 a Day" But I Didn't Say 17 of What 

Damn this sky tonight making 
Me want to open up my veins 
And bleed neon orange pink

Robert Frost, Re-revisited Again Some More

This year, I attended the Royal Frog Ballet's annual Surrealist Cabaret and Pumpkin Walk. I went for the first time last year, and I thought it was lovely, but I also had a bad attitude that evening and tried to blame the event. Like, I decided it was ableist that attendees had to walk all over the farm from one performance space to the next, and all the performers appeared to be able bodied, young, and attractive, and that gave me some kind of self-righteous angst about the whole thing. Still, it was beautiful, and I appreciated how it ritualized and made meaning out of the season changing, the darkness growing, the earth shutting down.

So, I went again this year because some friends had an extra ticket. Actually, because I had previously ranted about my discomfort with last year's experience, the invitation was, "I think we have an extra ticket for the inaccessible white supremacy performance tomorrow night if you wanna come." Winky face totally implied. Maybe knowing I was in company that could hear and tolerate--if not share--my cynicism allowed me to relax a little, and I had a decent time, even though tall people in audiences need to be more aware of when they're blocking folks, I'm just saying.

Anyway, each year's performance has a theme, and this year's was "crossroads," which felt meaningful to me personally, and they printed Frost's "The Road Not Taken" in the program. This is a poem that has inspired plenty of rants from me, too, since people seem to remember only the last three lines and miss every shred of its irony by a mile. The same friend who sent me the snarky invitation to the Surrealist Cabaret distilled Frost's poem as follows, and I approve 100% of this interpretation and hope to live my life every day according to its wisdom.

two roads diverge in the woods.
wah wah wah. just fucking pick one.
it's gonna keep happening.

(Readers will remember from this instructive post that authentic haiku don't need to have 17 syllables and honestly I have not been writing authentic haiku at all this whole time, so don't worry about counting anything up there.)

Crossroads is also a 1986 film in which Ralph Macchio sells his soul to the devil to learn
blues guitar from an old black man so he can shred better than this other white boy.

Cold-Cocked by the Galaxy

I've had a shitty week. Car broke down, laptop broke down, I dropped my phone and shattered the screen, on-and-off migraines, and some super-stressful work situations.

I like when I can identify some external cause for my woes, especially when it's something over which I have no control. It allows  me to shake my tiny fist and just ride it out. Enter astrology.

So I started asking around, hoping to confirm my suspicions that the sky was to blame for my difficulties. Reports started coming in that I'm not the only one who's had a week from hell. And someone showed me this: the Grand Cross.

Basically, four planets are forming 90-degree angles in four cardinal zodiac signs, and the result is a cosmic shit-show. This has been going on since January and will continue into June, and we're coming up on the peak, where the cross is its squarest.

Oh, also a little thing called a blood moon eclipse. Apocalypse, anyone?

Haiku for the Solar System Being a Dick

Why is life a mess?
Stars and planets all aligned
Flipping me the bird

This is how planets say "Fuck you."

NaPoWriMo

Seems like, for a blog that claims to produce a haiku a day (at least in theory), national poetry writing month (NaPoWriMo) would be no problem.

Seems like.

Except that shit's just been kind of all over the place lately. March went out like a fire-breathing, kickboxing, face-eating lion. A beautiful boy went away forever. I worked two jobs, was in a play, practiced with my mystery band, and had a bunch of doctor's appointments for chronic pain (yeah, that's still happening).

April and poetry always make me think of T.S. Eliot's "The Wasteland." Looking at it now, I think that he is calling April cruel because it is so full of renewal and reawakening and hope, and yet all this life springs from death: "breeding / Lilacs out of the dead land, mixing / Memory and desire."

I don't know. I'm so tired.

Haiku for Cruel April

So many undone.
Those are pearls that were his eyes.
Broken images.

Earth, Wind, and Fire (and Ice)

Last night, a friend was talking about winter and how it's been so freaking hard. They were explaining how it's particularly bleak for certain signs, like fire signs ("Help, it's cold!") and even water signs ("Help, I'm stuck!").

Leaving on foot, I was struck by the feeling of my relatively thin-soled motorcycle boots (compared to my snow boots, which I've lived in for months) on bare pavement. I thought about my own earth sign and how I might be adapted or not to moving on frozen ground buried beneath ice and snow. I'm looking forward to connecting to my source again.

Haiku for an Earth Sign

Walking on water
'Til the ice melts, now I feel
Ground under my feet.

Climb Every Mountain (Even If You Hate It)

My grandpa had a saying: "I like banging my head against the wall because it feels so good when I stop." I always took it as a joke. Because you know what feels better than that? Not hitting your head in the first place.

Last weekend, some friends were climbing a mountain under the "full moon"* following several successive snowstorms. It's considered a relatively easy hike without snow, maybe 2 miles of switchbacks and nothing really steep. So I went along (I really like the moon).

But it was late, and overcast, and my companions' legs were about twice as long as mine, and the dog kept stepping on my snowshoes and knocking me over. Overall, it was kind of an ordeal.

At the top, someone shared their beverage with the rest of us, who had not thought to bring anything to drink. I was sweaty and out of breath, and that first sip tasted like sweet, delicious heaven.

That seemed to be the general reaction to this quenching of thirst, and a conversation arose about the merits of deprivation. Someone told a story about some guy who had been without food in the wilderness for days and when he arrived at his food supply, a chocolate bar made him weep with joy.

In the days that followed, I saw that mountain in the distance and thought about how nice it was to be doing whatever I was doing then instead of stumbling uphill in snow, silently cursing my fate. I still have not decided whether I'm glad I went, or whether I believe that hardship can be gratifying enough to seek it out on purpose. Life is hard enough. Or is it that, for some, it's not hard enough?

Haiku for a Difficult Climb

Sure, this sucks now, but
What is the point of comfort
If that's all you've known?

*It was two days after the full moon, but don't tell that to a certain hike organizer who didn't believe me.

Chip off the old block?

Rock/Stars

Last night I slept on the day bed (in case my mattress is what makes my shoulders hurt all the time), which is near a large window with a view of the town I live in, and the mountain that stands above it, and the sky above that. And in those long, lonely minutes before falling asleep, I had the following thought.

Haiku for February 3, 2014

Someday I will stop
Thinking about my damn self
And dream about stars.

Jumping the Shark

Today's haiku by request from a loyal 17aDay fan, MM:

About a decade ago, in a Midwest Denny's, I watched a kid* draw on his place mat. There were planes flying over hapless stick figures, dropping bombs on them. The bombs were made of knives. The knives were maybe made of something else, like fire. Or tarantulas. I can't be bothered to remember exactly.

For all I know, that kid moved to Hollywood and made Sharknado.

Haiku for an Improbable-Weather-Related Disaster Flick

A child's crayon sketch
Of flying, exploding sharks
In theaters near you

*"Kid" is what I call anyone in their 20s.

Hallelujah, it's raining marine carnivorous fish.

Hitch yer wagon to a dyin' star

Haiku for Freezing Temperatures in This Week's Forecast

Only trouble is,
When your soul's like autumn leaves,
Be prepared to die.

Oh, the humanity.

We interrupt this haiku blog...

It's been so long since I've written a poem that is not a half-assed haiku that I thought I'd share it here. Don't worry, it's mostly about the neuropathological effects of psychiatric medications, and only a little bit about fall leaves.

My brain shudders.
It is autumn, and the colors
Tap into receptors, unstrung,
Frayed, heads waving like snakes
Held by their tails.
Eyes shift, zap, the briefest
Static snap between film frames
(where the ghosts live). 

Falling on my head like a new emotion

Because it seems I can't stop thinking and writing about how mind-blowingly sexy and tender autumn is:

Haiku for October 16, 2013

Sleeping in the breeze
Last night the leaves fell so hard
I thought it was rain

You had me at "subsolar equinoctial point."

Haiku for Autumn Equinox

Shadows get longer,
The moon starts to speak to me.
Fall is my lover.

www.themoonclock.com

Nature an' shit

This might be the most "haiku" haiku on this blog yet. It comes from trying to explain, yesterday, what's so calming about a mountain creek.

Haiku for June 12, 2013

Running water, fire
Night traffic from the high rise
White noise, steady flow

Blissed out by a waterfall (photo by bzzzzgrrrl)

I can make even spring sound depressing.

I think this is the seed (see what I did there?) of what will be a longer poem about how growth is also loss, how there is a grieving that comes with any change, a moment of giving up the potential for the actualization of the thing. But because I am afraid of writing nature poetry, I will have to badass it up with swears. Because, as we have shown, that is how that is done.

Mourning the tight seed
What is this tender chaos
Sprung from a dark bed?