#NationalPoetryMonth Prompt: Danger cafe Eating out of the palm of my hand you had no idea you were in danger. Soaking me in and sopping me up like a honey butter chicken biscuit you weren't aware that you should have been running in the opposite direction. Laying the breadcrumbs. Setting the traps. And now you're in love. Eat your heart out. All of you. It's tacky to name names.

#NationalPoetryMonth Prompt: Carnival of jesters The folks at 1600 Pennsylvania Ave have had the longest running show. Considering. I'd call it a circus except animals fare far better at juggling bullshit and there are no animals there. Actually, just one. And this animal has no training no talent no reason for being part of the show. Alas. Some of the same advocates for the disbanding of circuses have yet to put this show out of its misery. Go figure. We care about animals m

#NationalPoetryMonth Prompt: Where I'm from There was a shoot out one summer day when I was a kid. I was outside with my cousin between my family's building and my grandmother's building. I probably could have been shot deciding to walk through where the action was to the safest place I knew. Gamey's house. I'd never seen my mother so worried and so mystified that my first response wasn't to just come home. There was another one a Sunday morning years later. I was with my dad

#NationalPoetryMonth Prompt: Ekphrasis [/for this ekphrasis I chose recent favorite images of my husband, a true work of art] Of course you're the work of art I default to. Your color alone, like no other shade or interpretation or rendering of royalty. Eyes as rich as earth and much to my delight brightly light only for me. My favorite thing to do-- treating your face as scratching post and place of rest. Moving nails through unruly curls on your chin and cheek. The same scr

#NationalPoetryMonth Prompt: Repast aghast at last "Shit. That was my last?" - Me, watching myself eat the last thing I'll ever enjoy. God chuckles.

#NationalPoetryMonth Prompt: Night vision TW: Domestic Abuse You're a monster. Proverbial hell on wheels. In front of witnesses there's kisses and smiles mixed with humor wit and genuine care. In darkness you're a monster. Nosferatu. Soul sucked with every blow struck to the face mere hours ago was kissed. Krueger. Nightmare and day terror sans REM. Voorhees every day of the week and worse on the weekends. Both Bates and Bateman-- pretending to be all Norman on the outside wh

#NationalPoetryMonth Prompt: Objection of broken boxes But, I can still be used. Yet, I'm being broken down. Irony? My composition, most likely, other broken down vessels before me could have also been used, yet, there they are destroyed and here I am being broken down. Irony? And for what? Space? If that were the case you wouldn't have gotten that non-necessity on the first place but I'll be back. They always bring us back. They always come back.

#NationalPoetryMonth Prompt: Secret recipe Preheat oven 365* degrees Heaping cupfuls of grit and resilience A pinch worth of foolishness 1/2 gallon of determination 4 small unpeeled onions Several tablespoons of trailblazing Prep with at least 5 others Grease pan with compassion Lightly flour with budding potential and endless creativity Sprinkle entitled unspoken secrets Bake for generations or until whole *366 if crisp around the edges desired.

#NationalPoetryMonth Prompt: Abandoned puppet Sick smile still plastered between neck and nose. It extends upward, twisting cheek, and reaching toward the windows of the soul. Abandoned it lies. Hardly anything to smile about, but conditioned by habit. And paint. Once animated limbs now eerily splayed like an unexamined unidentified, undiscovered corpse. The only well intended gesture has been keeping the dust at bay, and the weeds away from master's final performance.

#NationalPoetryMonth Prompt: Sundry fragments TW: Mortality themes #1 My apartment is a large storage closet, filled with the remnants of my old life. The castle of deciding what accompanies me in this next best adventure has me wondering if I can burn it all down to the ground and pray there is no exodus from the current. #2 The open tabs of my computer are representative of my brain. Unorganized. Repeats of the same tabs, scrolled to different parts of the page, processed a

#NationalPoetryMonth Prompt: Write with a partner TW: Suicidal themes Life. That's the one I was given. God willing it won't be the one that I take. I will be the one that I make. That's right, you're supposed to make. Make as in create. DO I create a life?... Sure, let's do that... Make a life so I don't need to fake a life. But going through its almost like I have to fake a life because its not as simple as I want it to be. Take a life. Make a life. Fake a life. What's the

#NationalPoetryMonth Prompt: Confession dare I've killed a man. Told him, "I'll take you out right where you stand" and then I did it. I gripped his heart and wrote my name in it. I reaped his soul for this existence and the next, and I dared him to make a sound. I slit his neck 'round from ear to ear in the sickest smile. He was asking for it. Begging praying for it. So I put him out of his misery. God'll forgive me, it was He who made me do it. Right down to the year month

#NationalPoetryMonth Prompt: Pocket full of artifice Clawing and scratching. Licking at it. Playing with it. Chasing it. Now coyly flaunting it up in the air. Looking back at it. Resolutely. With expectation. Here comes the hand. Fingers from top to bottom with intentional R I G O R. Returning to the middle. Rubs in pattern. Purs of approval reverb throughout the palm. Petting the kitten on summer nights. A hot tail.

April 1st marks the first day of #NationalPoetryMonth. We are super excited around these parts and can't wait to dive in head first. I'll be bringing the words and stuff, quite possibly on multiple platforms. Until next time babies, Stay [/safe] creative & weird VMrn

#NationalPoetryMonth Prompt: Waiting They're all here. The usual crowd. The should haves the must dos, the can dos the have tos, they're here. Stuck in limbo. Shrouded in doubt, wondering if they can go if they can be if they can do. A holding pattern in God's literal unchanging hand, wondering can they go there can they be where can they have that. "Can" "Will" "If"-- the shortest forms of "uncertainty" with fewer opportunities to, to do. Here they all are. The standing room