3/30 "Runaway Wonderland" by William A. Wood

For Andi,

When my eyelids swan dive into the empty black swimming pool called death,
I will ride the juggernaut railroad unstoppable until I reach that sideshow in the sky.

The place where the righteous ugly go, where mistakes pile up like rejected applications to jobs they never wanted.

Tod Browning wave "hello" from his coffin.
"Buried Alive Boy" again finally, car wreck still kissing his face.

Diane Arbus flash frames me, goofy candid. This is the only time I've ever seen her smile, the bearded lady's tongue dancing around the paradise of where Diane's shoulder shakes hands with her neck.

This ain't your parents' picture book heaven.

This is a feather boa back-yard party.

Vincent Price shakes a martini glass full of virgin blood at me.
His left hand is throwing knives at a starlet on a spinning wheel, a 1940s Aphrodite somebody left alone with a bathroom, bottle of gin and head full of bad decisions.

This sideshow sings to me in a corndog and cotton candy chorus of off-key Hallelujahs.

Lewis Carroll cries into a slice of cake, his opium smoke rings spinning circles into stories into crescent moon mouth alley cat wonders.

The Siamese twins quit tongue kissing long enough to wave "hello." and breathe.

I run into a crowd of poets laughing, talking fast backwards for kicks, every line of every poem ever written still sleeping under their tongues for extra safe keeping.

I drink the scenery in deep with a crazy straw,

Inhale the smoke and perfume of the unwashed...

and feel All Right,
Despite everything.

3.30 gigantic

your leg quakes under the table
impatience, the itch against the slowing time
there were years in between
of calm legs
but now you are older
and then you were younger
and in the middle when you weren't looking
poles shifted.

you look now at that paper flesh
the age spots on the back of the very same hands
---you feared those hands, nosferatu huge
slapped you submissive
became fanged as they belted you
you look now into those rheumy eyes
the ones that froze you into corners
the mouth slack,a tunnel with no light
yawning now for death
how could you have sucked the epithetic word
into your marrow from it?

a question holds in the air as dust
in a ray of light slit through venetian blinds
as tubes and machines wheeze
can you let the past that made you
the blush of slap and stings of disappointments
the salt rejections of tears sucked by pores
can you release it?
let it shush to nurse's shoes
and spin of iv wheel?
make it form the shape of biohazard symbol
handled by latex for discard
would it make you clean as sterile
new?

you pinch yourself to remember
how small you were, a teething thing
and now---now you have grown into your eyes
and yet your leg
shakes with impatience, urge to run
captive
just the same
and they---they were so
gigantic

2/30 "Manual" by William A. Wood

It has been two days since I bought the book.
The book quite literally has a clearly spelled out plan for everything,
Almost.
When breaking down a door the book instructs me to place one or two sharp kicks to the lock area.
Lift dominant foot to a forty-five degree angle, tuck knee until a three sided square of foot, thigh and body is formed.
Inhale.
Snap foot into extension.
Exhale.
Repeat until the obstacle yields.
Problem solved, Almost.

When the door swings open their is no chapter on how to tell your mother everything will be all right. There is no chapter on how to grow up before your time, heal a twenty-five year scar, and apologize for a kicked-down door. There is no chapter on how to put out the fire behind your eyes when the alimony checks bounce and you still miss him. There's no chapter on how to make a bad guy out of either of them.

There is, oddly enough, a chapter on sword-fighting which will go unused.
Save for the eventual mining of its pages for deeper meaning: strike always from the center, forever moving forward to cancel the blow's power. There is truth enough there.

The chapters on defense from shark and snake attacks serve only as defense from metaphorical false friends and poorly picked relationships (Immobilize the effected areas, always keep wounds lower than the heart, stay close to shores and never travel alone.).

The chapter on escaping bears and fathers merely offers the truth every blue bruise has already shouted at us: lie still, stay quiet, if confronted aim for the nose...and eyes.

There is still no chapter to help me defend myself from you, baby. I have read the book from front to back. I can now treat broken limbs, jump from moving cars, take a punch, and cut umbilical cords with my teeth...correctly. I can heal any wound with a belt, treebark, and my new book.

There is never a mention of how to take a hug from you.

There is no chapter on how to properly treat a broken heart.

Day Two

We've suffered the fools of yesterday and now we move on. Already, some great poems and drafts have been posted.Just think of the great reading material we'll have at the finish line! We may make a chapbook from our favorites by the end of the month & possibly have a 30-30 reading at the end.
Keep those pens warm!

The Second Coming of Howard Zinn (Edward's 2/30)

The Second Coming of Howard Zinn (Edward's 2/30)

My Brother is the second coming of Howard Zinn
But he forgot to highlight the ending of a people’s history
He is more focused
On his own Apocalypse
And there’s no divine source of my visions
I know this
Without the prophets and
The royal flush of tarot cards
My Brother only feels Divine Rights
When he boxes with God
There’s no kingdom
For Divinity’s punching bag
No shrine
For knowing the cinematography of pulp fiction
Better than Quentin
Tarantino
No place in the sky
For not getting father
To quit them cigs and
When dad was bare from chemo
I saw in my Brother’s eyes
The world Passover
But no one
Sung Hebrew hymns
So my Brother doesn’t take
Leaps of faith
Faith leaps from him
There is a suicidal congregation
Diving from the skyscrapers
Of his ambition
But they don’t have to fall far
For there’s already been demolition

He found his first wife in the charred piles
Of Salem witch trials
Bathed her in cast iron pots
Made her bed from the straw
Of her broomstick
But she didn’t stay cuz
She preferred the witch’s cottage
Over colleges
Couldn’t sit back and watch as
He pretended to be a Georgetown law student
Masquerading with the mask of the Hoya mascot
Charadin in Armani suits, toying with ascots
But he never wanted to be corporate lawyer
And I won’t ask, “Whatever happen to the store-clerk warrior?”
Cuz if God spoke his reincarnation into existence
He would do so with a speech impediment
Each of God’s children is unique and heaven sent
But my Brother’s potential was returned to sender
And I never seen him address God
Cuz the moon is Jah’s P.O. Box
And every glass ceiling is a lunar eclipse
Allah won’t use the o-zone as a peephole
And see my Brother
See, my Brother
Atlas was also an invisible man
We’ve been brainwashed to believe
The Sun has gravitational pull over the Earth
And my Brother is playin’ temp for Atlas
(Make this world orbit the universe
Don’t just stand there
Letting it break your back )

Just remember
Revelations is only a metaphor for global warming
And my Brother’s untapped potential
Climate change of his second marriage
Is making the architecture of his apartment
Look more like hell every day
The toppling of the 5 pillars of Islam
His dreams get sleep on like pillows and his mom
Pops pills so his song
Is a battle song
Played with a bass line; 7 trumpets
In Babylon
If the lord is our Sheppard
Is he using my Brother’s rejections
As cattle prongs?
Is my Brother’s life the result of
God being passive aggressive
Because he’s mad at genius?
God being too lazy to complete his masterpieces?
My Brother is just one prayer away
From being Nirvana’s magnum opus
From his legacy being found in the pages of old books
Written as the last Viking to reach Valhalla
But I never looked at my Brother
As an unfinished Vincent van Gogh
I want the sun to blemish his skin and
Let the tan show
He pales in comparison to no one
No matter how blotched and flawed
Failing to defeat the 7-headed beast
With only one guillotine
He’s done what he could

They say
“Only God can judge you”
But what happens
When you stop believin in He who is critiquing
And we start seein Buddha as bulimic
And the weight of the creator
Doesn’t outweigh the
Failures and they tell you
Wait
For the Promised Landed
Like it’s 40 acres and a mule that aint comin
And life is empty…death turned inside out
So my Brother lives life waiting for it
To collapse into itself
Waiting to be healed

Between meditation and medic station
Between shaman and “amen”

1/30 "Pin Rhythm" by Gus Wood

"How many Angels can dance on the head of a pin?"
It depends on the tune."

The wives' tale bed sheet question plagued something in me, splinter deep in my mind I clawed at the pain, pulling hard to hold the point.

Is the same true for needles?

Our society, the outlawed souls, has become all too fascinated with the rending of our own skin, speared deep with pointed metal.

It depends on the tune.

As the harpoon, pregnant with roadside ink, hovers above a canvas of flesh begging to express itself in swirls of tribal symbols, words, lovers' names and the shapes of dreams, do the angels mosh to the the thrash metal anointing the parlor with still quivering snare drums and songs about outlaws?

It depends on the tune.

When potassium chloride runs through the veins of the too-many marked to crossover at our hands, do the winged lovers of God find cause to move their feet on that pointed peak as it reduces the condemned to a turned off radio? All is silent, do they still shuffle to praise songs, or the prayers of survivors?

It depends on the tune.

Acupuncture is their promised land, healing and the songs of ancient time. Do the angels undulate as the stress rolls off the body?

Do demons tango to the same songs when the world's forgotten overdose themselves to ascension.

When a soul crosses over at the hands of a needle packed with broken promises, to the angels and demons dance together?

Or is the music drowned out,

by the flapping of wings?

It depends on the tune.

Welcome to April, National Poetry Month & 30/30

Art Amok invites you to place your 30 poems in 30 days here. With luck, each day a main post will be made here.Feel free to leave your poem as a comment for all to read. (For special formats, you can send the poem to me or Gus and we can post it on the main page). You can leave your poem for the day under the day's post or your can leave it under a specific writing prompt post if you've used one of those.Sometimes the daily post will be a poem, just a hello or a poem cross-posting.It's all poems for poetry month! (If you are doing haikus, to count as a full day's poem, there need to be a series of 5, like the first syllables of a haiku).

Here's the first poem of the month from Poets.org Happy Poetry Month!

A Story
by Philip Levine


Everyone loves a story. Let's begin with a house.
We can fill it with careful rooms and fill the rooms
with things—tables, chairs, cupboards, drawers
closed to hide tiny beds where children once slept
or big drawers that yawn open to reveal
precisely folded garments washed half to death,
unsoiled, stale, and waiting to be worn out.
There must be a kitchen, and the kitchen
must have a stove, perhaps a big iron one
with a fat black pipe that vanishes into the ceiling
to reach the sky and exhale its smells and collusions.
This was the center of whatever family life
was here, this and the sink gone yellow
around the drain where the water, dirty or pure,
ran off with no explanation, somehow like the point
of this, the story we promised and may yet deliver.
Make no mistake, a family was here. You see
the path worn into the linoleum where the wood,
gray and certainly pine, shows through.
Father stood there in the middle of his life
to call to the heavens he imagined above the roof
must surely be listening. When no one answered
you can see where his heel came down again
and again, even though he'd been taught
never to demand. Not that life was especially cruel;
they had well water they pumped at first,
a stove that gave heat, a mother who stood
at the sink at all hours and gazed longingly
to where the woods once held the voices
of small bears—themselves a family—and the songs
of birds long fled once the deep woods surrendered
one tree at a time after the workmen arrived
with jugs of hot coffee. The worn spot on the sill
is where Mother rested her head when no one saw,
those two stained ridges were handholds
she relied on; they never let her down.
Where is she now? You think you have a right
to know everything? The children tiny enough
to inhabit cupboards, large enough to have rooms
of their own and to abandon them, the father
with his right hand raised against the sky?
If those questions are too personal, then tell us,
where are the woods? They had to have been
because the continent was clothed in trees.
We all read that in school and knew it to be true.
Yet all we see are houses, rows and rows
of houses as far as sight, and where sight vanishes
into nothing, into the new world no one has seen,
there has to be more than dust, wind-borne particles
of burning earth, the earth we lost, and nothing else.

Now it's your turn---GO!