May Day Photo Posting

It's that time of the year:  May.   Our local puppet theater hosts their annual May Day Puppet Parade.  Hands down, this provides for the best people watching in the Twin Cities, and some pretty awesome photo ops.   Below are some of the images I captured  today at the Parade.  Enjoy and viva la May Day,

Cliffs Notes: Peter Pan

These lost boys leap
so cheerfully from their windows
only because
they never learned
to let the fog steep
into their lungs
and pull them
through the muck.


For my final Poems in April prompt, I challenged the Real Toads to take their favorite stories and condense them into a poem no longer than ten lines, a Cliffs Note edition, so to speak.  The poem doesn't have to be a strict summary of their favorite story, but it should highlight their favorite elements.  I have chosen one of my favorite stories:  Peter Pan.  I can't really explain why, but I fucking love Peter Pan.  As a girl who usually has a group of close male friends, I've always related to poor Wendy, having to be the voice of reason and caution amongst a rowdy, carefree group of lost boys.

you gotta help me out...

lockstepped
and uniformed
in lipstick

my knees sway
with theirs
for a moment
before
I recall
I am a terrible
dancer.


Written for my own prompt at Real toads, where I asked the toads to draw inspiration from the clip above.   It's one of my favorite film scenes for many reasons that I did not share with the toads.  The scene is a dream sequence for the character, who is the prophet of the film and spends most of his time reading made up bible verses and selling weird drugs he found at the bottom of the ocean.  This scene is his moment of clarity.  If you look closely it is full of symbolism of a decaying authoritarian america, from the silly flags plastered everywhere to the soldiers playing skeeball, to the cans of budweiser, to the blood caked t-shirt and dancing girls who could be pulled from a 1950's musical.   Or, it's Justin Timberlake lip synching and being sexy.  Either way, this is my poem, which can be read on any level you want (but mostly it reflects how I feel about George Bushes America) :) .

One more night with Sylvia

We are gonna ride bikes

at midnight

and eat tomatoes

stolen fresh 

from their vines.

We are gonna melt your lipstick

into waxy ink and write all

your favorite words

on the white walls

of Ted’s study.

We are gonna sell your fridge

your children

your oven 

to the traveling

salesman staying

at the motor lodge.

And we are never gonna

crack open that

journal and read

your ramblings out loud

unless of course

you want to.

For Fireblossom's prompt she asked us what we would do if we could travel back to 9/9/1958.  I took my inspiration from an episode of Dr. Who, wherein he spends some time with Vincent Van Gogh before he began to sell his paintings.  I would choose to spend a night with Sylvia Plath in 1958, the year when she was writing many of the poems which would appear in her first book of poetry.  

Happy NaPoWritMo...or Nanopopo as Fireblossom says!

Utterance, or something.

April lands hard, 

frosting sidewalk puddles

with skin so thin

you slip twice forward

before you realize

you are falling. 

Everyone dies of the plague at the end.

She wants to paint

the story of escrow

on the the front lobby walls

between her morning

cigarette

and her afternoon

meeting with

Venus Xtraganza.

And she wants

to spend dinner

in her rented bed,

clipping out magazine

photos of:

smiling brides

puppy dogs

designer faucets

and North Korean guards.

But there are talking points,

stuttering and bulleted

in table text format.

The baron needs 

his mustache stroked.

The cosmonaut needs

his dinner freeze dried.

And there are places

where she can have coffee

and forget

that she has fallen in love

with the grey of spring.

 For my last Out of Standard prompt, I challenged Real toads to make a list of words or phrases related to the worst job they have ever had and then write a poem which has nothing to do with that job.  I have long used work phrases in my poems.  Out of Standard is a phrase used at my job to describe work processes which have taken to long to complete.  I use this as the title of my Real Toads challenge.  Document of Discussion is another work phrase which I have adapted, writing several poems under that title.  Here I have incorporated three more work words:  escrow, talking points, and meeting .  These come from my current job as an implementation consultant for the largest mortgage servicer in America.  It is not the worst job I ever had, but it is the worst job for the writer in me.  

Girl Anachronism

Because
cherry blossoms
appear more pink on the
bottom of my boot, I will yearn
for spring.


Written for the The Real Toads Mini-Challenge which asks us to use the form of the Cinquain....I am not one for form poems, but this one seemed worthy of a go.  It has a 4,2,6,8,2 syllable structure and requires a strong title, natural imagery, and a clever turn.  My attempt was written from a mind space where I had been revisiting the music of the Dresden Dolls and was inspired by one of their songs, Girl Anachronism.  The video and song are posted below.