Billy Collin's Rowboat

[drumpf]

Thank you Dunc for your words. Bitcoin will not be the death of me!

[drumpf]

The short answer will not depend on the waves of the East River,
because our speed boat speeds through the surface on the throttle.
Yet, a job search is not this drumming heart.

The challenge of a quiet search,
are like clouds by the docks that pass through.

Yet, that loner by the rail can lean over
just a bit, and submit a gaze, like sending an email.

With one click to the Craigslist reply, I can send
a document with a history of jobs,

and two leadership positions like an idle man
who decided to walk is what must be done.

Will employers notice how I have taken in promenades
like a poet takes in their room? We look for the special

or the unusual in the color of walls,
and let it flow into us. Our action, like the stride near the river,

is our typing fingers. Our roles as former leaders,
began with our words...

The long answer is it depends on how we use our words.

[drumpf]

Wrapping Up The Day

I log in to write a poem,
but I take a sip of water and think
what does a poem look like this evening?

I can't imagine it will be great,
but I will try anyway,
because I made a commitment

to write for 30 days straight.

I know this poem is missing that moment
when concrete nouns eject a line
to the frosting on a cupcake

like the rose head my mom made for everybody.

Perhaps the poem desires a sense of garden,
with snails and birds snailing and birding,
and somewhere, a bench, overlooking the wooden railed steps

of Shakespeare's Garden, where rusted plaques have 2 lines of sonnets casted in
under the low stanchions before the foot of tall stem flowers.

I imagine the reader wants to wander...
so here, my last line will not have a period

Yet, meta-poetry is much too obnoxious
and deserves more focus,
for a piece should ask a question
or dwell in the unknown.

Confessional aesthetics may be my weak point,
so with my next poem, I will settle with some dead bones.

[kristalynn]

Wrapping Up the Day-I like the concrete nouns that eject lines and the two stanzas about the "sense of garden." I also like the "dead bones" at the end.

[Sorella]

drumpf,

Done with my fluffing for today, should write my poem, but then my eyes fell on you in my very position -- I totally love meta, and you gave me a boost here.

Perhaps the poem desires a sense of garden,
with snails and birds snailing and birding,
(...)
I imagine the reader wants to wander...
so here, my last line will not have a period

Wonderful (and one in the eye of punctuation freaks... good job Hew isn't around right now, right here, eh?)

Thanks, you made my wrap-up moment.

Sorella

[drumpf]

Thank you krist, I thought you'd like it.
Sorella, I love that you love meta as well. Hew would have blown an artery.

[DeniseD]

Hi Drumpf,

I enjoyed my time here. I love the way you zoom in on things we all experience. Suddenly, I find myself watching comedians like ancient philosophers. love this line from Buy a Tripod. And I really love Wrapping Up The Day. This is a fantastic line.

I imagine the reader wants to wander...
so here, my last line will not have a period

I will be back.

[drumpf]

As corrupt DEA's have taught us about women
on shows like Narcos, they truly love the seductive promise

on both sides of good and evil. She lays there
by the under wears of Medellín's second savior,
the robin hood of a ruined town, before the store bombings that slaughtered children.

She also lays there
by our non-gold Glock which pops at night club pedestrians
because a drug man dead scores home.

No matter where she goes, she loves the way Satan sneaks her to the garden
before a church bell ever rung by the top of the morning.

She lays at the forefront of every war
along the border, because her body feels great on top.

Perhaps we watch and the poet tries his hardest
to compose a night in a hotel with this fruit lover.

Hearing the crisp part
as she turns around,

and sees who you really are behind your glasses,
as you take them off

and you deal your poetic diction:

God is the creator of this Milky Way
and we create our morality with rope
laid between our lands.
And in the end, we say--

"Forgive me,

for I have sinned"--granting us passage
through the pearly hinges.

Therefore, this Netflix series reflects, with heightened drama, what can happen
at the start of our beautiful relationship.

[W.G.McLeod]

The Discovery of Gunpowder - This is a fun visual. Dad must have been a firecracker.

Buy a Tripod – ‘Suddenly, I find myself watching comedians like ancient philosophers’ – aren’t we all. And reading poetry, of course. Where have all the beatniks gone?

Just Something You Should Know – I want to read into this the nudge of a honey-do list but maybe I projecting.

Wall Run – Sounds like a healthy, normal father son relationship/exchange to me. I listened to this kind of stuff all day. It’s always entertaining.

Ah, So This Is How You "Use" Bitcoin – Bitcoin endeavors, I hope, are as likely as people becoming a competitive gamer here at my house. (The lamenting and bemoaning the downfall of Cloud9 is a thing here.) The enthusiasm is about as real, though, as well as the stinging bite of reality. It is, again, entertaining to watch.

Wrapping Up The Day – It is great to end on a note of knowing where you are at and how to get there so deliberately and honestly and we still fall for it fullstop.

[Dunc]

drumpf

Life After Graduation ─ Well, yes. Very good luck with that. The times call for luck, anyway.

Wrapping Up the Day ─ a NaPo doco to be released on Viceland shortly. And meanwhile a short summary of the craft in action.

The Inner Voices and now we're really weaving our movie, spies and chicks and poems and forgiveness of sins and all.

The poet's work is never done.

Regards / Dunc

[drumpf]

Thank you W.G. and Dunc for your candor.

[drumpf]

There is not enough people in my phone I can text
who must respond before tomorrow's breakfast.
I would say it is never enough, as the game
like the bag floating across this plaza,
only stops when it lands on a branch.

I wager the bag will exceed the steel steeples
downtown, and gather more air
through its tiny hole in the bottom,
like emails that offer free accounts
where shadows harvest the content for intel.

For what purpose? I give it 2:1 odds for advertisement.
The tops of taxis no longer show movie posters.
I will give that man in the hazard vest a 90% chance he checks
his news after he throws the neighborhood's cardboard out.
His brain does not peck his sleeping thoughts like pigeons by the tree's shade.

This is by default, as lazy is the man under the banality of recycles.
Consumer confidence will dip as well as his voice, like the pigeon who falls like Icarus.
And until this vaccine is created, storefronts will become mausoleums
for floating dust. Is this not the fate for all our stardust?
It will, if she does not answer my text message.

There is a hedge against rainy days for the following season,
and I breathe everyday under it:

the thoughts that manipulate thoughts--
a political animal in all of us, ready to be harvested,
by the same system I have only just begun learning about
when it comes to our watermarked paper-and-cotton--an IOU
that stacks in its own way, like the stone of that church down the block.

I do not have aura width of The Father
yet, but perhaps this is what the game is for?
A poet to believe in...a text response
that complies with your service
of future tree-line streets

where you and I stroll through the sun-blocking buildings.

I will send the text,
"heyyy stranger, how you doing?"

[Scrow]

Hey Drumpf,

Life after Graduation - there are some great lines and ideas here, and stand-out for me is S6 through S8 - the action like the stride bear the river is a really interesting imagistic way to share the sentiment of the poem and what I read to be its central ambiguities around how the current crisis affects those looking for work (yes) but also a moral reflection around how words can be cheap/action expensive and how this current situation has somehow turned that amphorism around on its head. A good piece of work, this poem, I’d say, with a central concept that is interesting and well-explored.

Wrapping up the day - two stand-outs for me in this, the first:
when concrete nouns eject a line/ to the frosting on a cupcake
And the second:
so with my next poem, I will settle with some dead bones.

It’s a very strong first draft, with lots to work on post napo.


The Inner Voices - I have no real idea what the central narrative/allusions in this are but the poem still works, so kudos due. I particularly like ‘pearly hinges’, the ‘fruit lover’ and ‘morality with rope/laid between our lands’. Another strong first draft.

Little Finger by The Window - there’s a lot going on here, but the looping back of the narrative to the narrator’s preoccupation with the text message works for me, and the images that flit from specific to wide-screen, filmically, seemingly unpatterned, work well to draw a picture of inside/outside for the narrator as they traverse the view from their window, thinking about the communication they wish to make.

Onwards!

Sarah

[drumpf]

North America

The man is told not to touch the bird on the grass,
as the mother junco keeps her one brood
alive...the gray squirrel may randomly find
and decide.

Yet, the bird's wings has not developed to fly.
The mother, however, will return with worms. Until morning,
the man wonders why, when the nest is just above him...

Let the forest decide? The dark-eyed
junco and its brood do not know suicide
like the camera flashers on the convoy.

The man only thinks of teeth made to
chip nuts that fall from the sky.

Nor do the bird know what life
could be like, just like the shooters
and their frozen victims, who also do not have the wings
to fly. But they do have claw-

like instinct, but dormant by their own trail
toward an exit from the wild
for fear that their prey--not their mom--

will kick them so hard from their school's nest,
that everyone will look out the window
and record, and gasp.

The man was told by the wide brim hat
if the baby junco gets slashed,
"That's just nature."

In fact, the driver's baritone voice
only made the man secretly rebel
and write in his yellow notes:

there must be a way for other animals to help.

As the convoy arrives at the lodge,
the hat man lifts his wide brim,
for a second, flashing a small scar
across his forehead.

[GreaterMandalaofUselessness]

Hey drumpf,

I love Wrapping Up The Day! This made me smile:

Perhaps the poem desires a sense of garden,
with snails and birds snailing and birding,
and somewhere, a bench, overlooking the wooden railed steps

and this too, even more:

I imagine the reader wants to wander...
so here, my last line will not have a period

Confessional aesthetics may be your weak point, but you do it very well

Little Finger By The Window has some great lines, this is particularly nice:

There is a hedge against rainy days for the following season,
and I breathe everyday under it:

The use of modern communication methods, text, junk email accounts fits well with pandemic theme and sense of connected disconnection that lockdown has brought. Really like the way the poem wanders and then, how close brings us back to the beginning.

Keep them coming,.

-Matt