Note: While authors are asked to place warnings on their stories for some moderated content, everyone has different thresholds, and it is your responsibility as a reader to avoid stories or stop reading if something bothers you.
Thirty Daze in April - 4. April 22 through April 31
April 22
Not silence
is not a commotion
nor is not quietude restlessness;
it isn’t either all or none of these I feel,
not measured words and cold argument,
nor reverberations
of the heart.
April 23
The hill is colored in uncertainty;
every tree blushes in spring fashions,
and shy woodland flowers
are coaxed from cold ground
onto the forest floor to dance;
yet every pink bud and each new green leaf
looks over its shoulder, wavering,
mindful of disapproving north winds.
April 24
I think it is beyond a doubt
that Heisenberg knew more about
the dance of particles so small
the laws of Newton they might flout.
Uncertain was the name to call
the principle now thought banal
that placement and velocity
could not be known at once to all.
Herr Heisenberg’s verbosity
led to this curiosity
that if position you observe
your speed has much nervosity.
Now quantum physics will not swerve
from qualms, which takes a lot of nerve;
but I don’t need to figure out
how fast I would approach your curve.
April 25
It isn’t a spring peeper
nor distant robin’s cry
and not the shy brown creeper
ascending toward the sky;
it cannot be the cardinal,
exulting in Wet Year!
I simply can’t identify
that birdsong sounding near.
I know not if the redwing
upon its swaying reed
is seriously meddling
with how he says his creed;
this is not now the chickadee
romancing skittish mates,
still less the dapper mockingbird,
who every call translates.
The call is faint but certain,
I think I know it now;
I listen at the curtain
and thus will I avow:
the voice that I hear calling me,
if I am not misled,
is not a bird, but you, my love,
and urging me to bed.
April 26
Loneliness,
emptiness echoing
my own footsteps sounding in my mind’s
bare, tiled corridors lit by decayed flourescents
buzzing meaninglessly, endlessly,
drowning out all friendship
and all love.
~~~
I live inside a dark and lonely house
constructed out of solid granite blocks
with mighty oaken doors and iron locks
as proof against the vandal, thief or chouse.
No lighted candles burn that I must douse,
nor silent sniff or ticking of the clocks,
or yet the padded footfall of one’s socks
disturbs the hush more quiet than a mouse.
Outside the walls exists a different world,
of sun and scent and birdsong on the breeze
and roaring storms against the stout stones hurled,
where silver moonlight shines through whis’pring trees
all held extended in your palm unfurled
if only I could listen to your pleas.
April 27
My plaid coat
which belonged to my Dad
still has his matches in the pocket
and the last few nickels and pennies he carried;
the cuffs and elbows are wearing thin,
a dwindling legacy,
like his son.
April 28
We might have walked together hand in hand
discussing puzzles, politics and play
or news that made the headlines of the day,
the grains that fill life’s hourglass full of sand.
It could have been we’d join that growing band
of young men learning how to make their way
within a world that would not see us gay,
preferring to refer to us as damned.
We might have made a witty, clever pair,
yet something in me made you turn aside;
and though it now seems mightily unfair,
your icy cold hurt something deep inside
so never would I leave my sheltered lair,
persuaded by the pain to stay inside.
April 29
The house is cold and yet the bed is warm
a comfort to the body as we age,
for thus we find a shelter from the storm
of expectations shouting we conform
and lock ourselves within a common cage
a house so cold where yet the bed is warm;
But we are made for love that’s not the norm,
despite advice dispensed by preachers sage
and yet we find a shelter from the storm
Where safe beneath a blanket we may dorm,
and every icy memory assuage
the house is cold and yet the bed is warm
Enough to soothe vain secrets so enorme
all nature swirls in potent, passioned rage,
so thus we find a shelter from the storm.
No longer must I hasten to perform
my hackneyed role upon the creaking Stage
the house is cold and yet the bed is warm
for thus we find a shelter from the storm.
April 30
The notes I write myself this day
are snatches stolen from Fauré
or dusty tunes Respighi found
and rearranged to modern sound.
Although my colleagues smirk or scoff,
I’ll stickynote Rachmaninoff
by whistling variations three
before the school bell tolls for me.
Far later, when the sun goes west,
I’ll scrawl Vaughn Williams as I rest,
and sing myself a line sublime
immortalized till end of time.
But how ironically it seems
that I restore lush-written themes
back to their simpler, sparer past
as notes like these are ones that last.
April 31
You’ll tell me
I’ve miscounted the days,
and I’ll respond that one more won’t hurt,
for in this month when winter releases our hands
and lets us run free in warm green days,
I’d catch hold of life and
write it down.
type it out and then hit 'save;'
I will sure appreciate
that you didn't hesitate.
My enduring gratitude to @AC Benus for his reawakening my love of poetry. My deep appreciation to @Valkyrie for sending me prompts this month. And my thanks to you, everyone who took the time to read these this month.
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Note: While authors are asked to place warnings on their stories for some moderated content, everyone has different thresholds, and it is your responsibility as a reader to avoid stories or stop reading if something bothers you.
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