Insert Snappy Title Here

[Blythe]

I missed 2015, sadly. At the end of April 2015 I was suddenly like "NAPO!!"

1. Background #1
2. Water Resistance/ The Floating Brain / Learning to Swim
3. The Marvelous Orange Tree
4. To the Disembodied Head at Houdini's Broken Wand Ceremony
5. It's Everything
6. Restoration
7. Three Ways to Play Ghost in the Graveyard
8. Slippery House
10. Reasons I Shouldn't Be Allowed on Balconies
11. Looks Simple
12. Theft Cult
13. Partially-seen (Background #2)
14. Magic Words
15. Daniel Trump
16. Time to go back through the day
17. Kissing Kings
18. Levitation
19. Magic Words
21. For Bucky
23. World-Around
24. Leaping Priests
25. Latinus
26. SalvAl
27. Yellow Always
28. What to Write on the 28th Day of NaPoWriMo
29. Bewildered

[Featherless Biped]

Happy NaPo! Welcome back.

[Angela]

Happy NaPo!

[Dani B]

I have done that too! Glad we both made it this year

[merelynn]

Happy NaPoMo!

[Blythe]

Background #1

The mouse curls in his bed, handkerchief for his blanket,
wooden spools for his bedside tables. He fashioned a chair
and a frame to hold his mirror out of matchsticks bound
with thread. All pilfered, no doubt, from the tomcat’s human family.
He dreams of his next treasure.

The cat paces the perimeter against these little thefts.
In the living room, lush window treatments guard
from fading light. Blinds are shut tight. A sound spooks tom
whose hair bristles and eyes pop, but the kitchen is empty and clean.
A blue stool buttresses the corner, the ceramic teapot gleams
and the metal tea kettle holds its own place of importance –
perhaps not fancy enough for guests, but an essential.

A pitcher of some ruby cocktail – gin daisies, maybe – sports
the glass stirrer. A party of up glasses crowds around.
These play no part but to shatter. Let the chase begin.

[kristalynn]

The last line makes me smile. Flashbacks to Tom and Jerry.

[5th column]

That's exactly it, Tom and Jerry. Great opening line.

[Blythe]

Thanks 5th column and kristalynn.

[Blythe]

Water Resistance/The Floating Brain/Learning to Swim

Water Resistance	The Floating Brain	Learning to Swim
You’re always moving	through a substance	that could kill you
the world	Breath overlays	the anxiety of daily motion
and breath reduces stress	Fear draws heavy curtains	liquid heaviness
around you	The water-fear	invades every hole
in your face	your eyes, nostrils, your mouth	even your ears
You can’t avoid every accident	submersion waits for you	like the tide pulls toward the moon

[Blythe]

The Marvelous Orange Tree

The illusion requires a precision that turns the magician
into an automaton. Fingers twist and unwind. Again. Again.
The mouthpiece says, marvel. Repeat. Repeat. And
again the same motion at the same breath: clockwork.
We’ve been wound up around the key of magic, the image
of setting in motion the fantasies that will save us from the ruined
and disappeared baubles of our jeweled youth, watchworks smashed
but still ticking. That’s the heart of us, sold wholly to trickery.
And with pleasure. Again. And again. But misdirection is a thrill
that requires more than precision. Speak to us as real people
that hold our childhoods within our skins – take our hands. Be kind and funny.
Those child-selves spook at the barest threat, but hook us, oh. We’re yours.
You’ve taken our prized goods and crushed them to powder.
We sweat the loss while you loft it up for the crowd to marvel
at – her beautiful ring, how much did you say it was worth? – the owner’s face
a sinking and rising buoy, the entertainment unwinding like gears
in the automaton tree. We watch the orange blossoms flower;
will the ring bloom out in this odd tempo? Oranges emerge from between
the dark leaves. It’s gloriously weird. The gloved hand slices one open: real juice spills.
Pass these around, look at the realness! And finally the orange at the top of the tree
caves in, releasing two butterflies that lift the missing bauble – how real that loss –
how fun that it is over, even though we know it will happen again.

[Arlene]

I must have accidentally erased comment about enjoying cat and mouse chase. Definitely, as noted below or above, reminds me of Tom and Jerry too, not that it's cartoonish, but the bright background, the gleaming colors throughout, more like animè.

The next, wow, wasn't sure how to read, if it's meant to work both ways, but reading across scary, felt the drowning sensation maybe because of the lay-out as well as the words themselves?

The Marvelous Orange Tree -- I am at an amusement park? Reminded me of Ray Bradbury, 'Something Wicked This Way Comes,' not 'The Halloween Tree' (because I don't remember reading that). Anyway, fascinating and beautiful. I want to quote something, but would end up quoting the whole thing.

[Andrea345]

Interesting piece on 4/2. This piece is interesting to really explore.

[Blythe]

Thanks Arlene and Andrea! I appreciate your comments very much. Trying to channel some childhood experiences, and you're making me realize I've gone a bit dark. Ah well, today's is no better, but I'll try for some light tomorrow, maybe.

[Blythe]

To the Disembodied Head at Houdini’s Broken Wand Ceremony

Halloween is a day to dress as the dead.
There’s no escaping that. Sorry. But the way your head floats
sporting that bulbous cap, your lips set in the jelly of pudgy jowls,
the gravestone adding gravity (sorry, again – is it just gravel? or granite? grayness?)
bullies one’s sense of humor. We know you’re real. Your eyes shift back and forth, tracking ghouls
(those are dignified ghosts, which only disembodied heads can identify.)
Why frown and bob, compeer? It’s 1:26 on October 31st, 1985, and your name reads Eric Weiss.
Your name is synonymous with magic. Your clean shave over a bowl to catch the oracular whiskers
forecasts the divine pyramid of your goatee’d compeer.
All befouled water divulges lies. You float above them, un-goateed and gloating,
which makes us laugh, which angers you. The water laps a sibylline lyric as it spills
that only the disembodied can hear, prophesying each death of the crowd that gathers
to watch the annual breaking of the most famous magician’s wand. Each drop bells one death.
A bully-magician, Houdini never bargained that there was no word for divine
that started with ‘b’. Arcane or conjure, decode or envisage, forebode, guess, hunch or judge, interpret, judge, know, learn, mantic, note or obscure or portend or query, read or sage or tell or unravel, visualize, warn, expose, yield, zymurgy. Only the disembodied say, “bully.” Only the disembodied feel, bullied. So, bully to you, disembodied head. Your roundness knows all.