"A Long Time Coming"

In honor of National Poetry Month, I have shared examples of my work on Fridays in April.
For our final day of National Poetry Month 2021, I share with you a new poem, "A Long Time Coming."

A Long Time Coming

I see her as I drive by, headlights saturating a woman
by the side of the freeway, on the grassy triangle
surrounded by trees between the on and off ramps, her arms
outstretched as though basking in an invisible sun, palms open
and up as if weighing her options, eyes closed, face to the sky.
Despite the snow and dark, she wears an ankle length summer dress,
her bare brown arms and shoulders glowing in the beams from my grill.
I may see all this in a second, but she has been standing here a long time.

I have passed no car that could belong to her, and wonder where she came from, how she got here,
but a police cruiser has already slowed, parked, the blue red hiccupping in the black.
The officer walks toward her and I see in my rear view mirror how he simply stops,
falls forward in the snow, without any attempt to break his fall, settling face down,
neither of them moving as they grow smaller, fade into the night.

©JEF 2021

Poem In Your Pocket Day 2021: "Ode to Sitting in a Booth" by Aimee Nezhukumatathil

This year for National Poetry Month, Poem In Your Pocket Day is almost the last day of the month...this is a day when people take a poem with them through their day to share with the world. If you are unbale to go to school or workplace becasue of the virus, consider digitally sharing your poem.

So let's look at a poem that is itself a delightful celebration of going out to a favorite dark spot for a drink and a good time. It's a reminder that we will all be able to go out and have a good time again, once it's safe to do so...

Ode to Sitting in a Booth
by Aimee Nezhukumatathil

It’s the closest thing to a cave. I have to resist
this wild urge to carve a name or word in it.

My favorite way to sit here is with cold vodka
& grapefruit juice & whatever bitter concoction

you’re sipping. Under the table I’ll nudge you
with my heels—a sign no stalactite or dripstone

will stop us. Bats do not require any energy
to claw-dangle upside down. All they need

is to relax & gravity & there’s plenty of both
swirling to go around. No matter how loud

this bar, within these three walls we can drop
straight into a very electric flight. We can

pretend we don’t answer to anyone–including
the waitress–& no one even knows where we are.

https://aimeenez.net/

"Abecedarian 'G'” by Daniel Schonning

For National Poetry Month 2021, I have presented special poems by special poets each Wednesday. And for our final installation of poets for this year, let's meditate on this incredibly atmospheric, profound poem by the talented Daniel Schonning. He has miraculously managed to examine all the "big" life issues in a small space--life, death, religion, love, and the existential question of being. 

Abecedarian “G”

by Daniel Schonning

God says to the meek one, “On Sunday mornings, have them say ‘Yes’—say ‘Yes,’ brightly.

Have them nestle dollar bills in the knots of elm trees; use three times the zest in their lemon curds.

If it’s snowing, open the flue and start up the fire. Tell them there’s a double-dutch

jumprope with their name on it. Paint the windows violet, paint the lattice pink. Tell them every

knock-kneed great blue heron is just like me: long legs, quick eyes, and chock-full of

longing. Tell them I’ve got a real doozy of a crossword clue that I just can’t get—eight letters, ends with an x.” So the

meek one says, “All right”—goes to the window, sets his yellow workgloves on the sill. He could

not be more tired. His fingers have that tingling feeling, like they’re boiling—it must be below zero

    outside, he thinks, too cold for walking. But it’s plenty warm in here. If he’s honest, the meek one’s had

one hell of a day. His mother’s dying—can only eat bananas, milk, and bits of uncooked dough. He just can’t

put it out of his mind. Her voice is thinning out a little more each morning: when she wakes up crying, it sounds like a kestrel

    singing from far off. Sounds like she’s got a

question stuck in her throat. What that means to the meek one, he doesn’t know—for now, he’s waiting for the snow to fall a little

    softer, for the

room to darken, so he can set out—keep x-ing the boxes on his to-do list. At least it’s warm here, he thinks. God says to the

    meek one, “On

Sunday evenings, have them bundle their children in blankets made of pansies—yellow over blue—then hunker down for the

    night. And if they have to leave, remind them

to zip up their coats—it’s cold, ice cold, out there. In the crawl space

under that double-wide, there’s a nest of jaybirds—tell them not to look, or the birds are prone to

vanish. Ask if, sometimes, everyone would just keep quiet.

When a foghorn lows at night, pours itself out on the salt reeds and beaches, rattles the pier’s

x-shaped pilons and sets the gulls flying, ask if they’ll just listen.” So the meek one says, “All right”—keeps looking through the

    window. There’s a grove of

young aspen trees—“daughters,” they’re called—laid bare by the cold. The meek one is not sure they’ll make it. As a gray

    snowbird

zips from one naked branch to the next, the meek one thinks

about his mother. She’ll be getting hungry soon. She mostly stays in bed, but yesterday the meek one found her crumpled on the

bathroom floor. Her long hair—always in a neat, high bun—was spread wide on the slate, bright as zinc. One summer, when the

    roads were dirt and the roof was tin, a thunderhead

crawled through town like a freight train—no rain, no hail, just hot wind and lightning. At the time, the meek one’s mother said

    the storm could take the house right off its feet; would

draw the meek one clear up to heaven if he didn’t just stay put in that bathroom, hold tight to the hot water valve, and hope—said

    she’d be right back. But the meek one couldn’t help it. When the storm shook the house, he ran to the main room and peered

    out the window.

Even in the half-light, the meek one saw his mother at once. She was lying on the knoll outside,

    holding quick to two fistfuls of grass—watching the black cloud fill and empty with long threads

    of light. She was speaking into the wind. The warm air surged against her upturned face, must

    have filled her lungs—drew skyward a havoc of her black hair. At the time, the meek one

    thought she might have been saying, “Please.”

From the other room, the meek one hears his mother wake, try to rise. The light dims. He slips his

    gloves into his back pocket, takes up his list and marks one box with an x. Turning from the

    window, the meek one says, “All right.”

The Poetry of Rock n' Roll: "Single" by Everything But The Girl

To observe National Poetry Month, once a week I am posting song lyrics from different genres that double as exquisite poetry.

This melancholy mediation on a dissolved relationship in "Single" by Everything But The Girl (Ben Watt and singer Tracey Thorn, previously here--with lyrics by Thorn) is a much more introspective affair than the usual break-up song. It has a world-weary, gentle quality, steeped in a hard-earned wisdom.

Single 

by Everything But The Girl

   
I called you from the hotel phone
I haven't dialed this code before
I'm sleeping later and waking later
I'm eating less and thinking more
And how am I without you?
Am I more myself or less myself?
I feel younger, louder
Like I don't always connect
Like I don't ever connect

And do you like being single?
Do you want me back?
Do you want me back?
And do I like being single?
Am I coming back?
Am I coming back?

I'll put my suitcase here for now
I'll turn the TV to the bed
But if no one calls and I don't speak all-day
Do I disappear?
And look at me without you
I'm quite proud of myself
I feel reckless, clumsy
Like I'm making a bad mistake
A really big mistake

And do you like being single?
Do you want me back?
Do you want me back?
And do I like being single?
Am I coming back?
Am I coming back?
Do you want me back?

And now I know
Each time I go
I don't really know

What I'm thinking
And now I know
Each time I go
I don't really know
What I'm thinking of

Do you want me back?

http://ebtg.com/

"fighting for two worlds"

In honor of National Poetry Month, I am posting some examples of my work on Fridays in April.
Here is "fighting for two worlds."

fighting for two worlds

She believes there’s
an opening, an
aperture in the
evening shadows
where everything happens.
She says there’s
no word for it
but I know there is
and that word is
tenebre.
Not quite a place,
not quite a thing,
not a time or a state,
it’s none of these, yet all.
It’s the hinge between
day and night,
the safe place
you’ve searched for,
the eye of the storm.
It’s a chance to
catch your breath
and hide from the
screaming, clawing
day and the
novocaine night.
Don’t look at it,
try to look at
the space between
what you know and
what you don’t.
I know it’s there—
I can’t be the only one
who hears the voices
telling me to hurry,
who feels a veiled force
pushing my pen, my brush,
the paint, my mind,
carrying me along
on unseen rapids.
There must be others
who feel this
drive, this swell
from the middle.
You must be out there—
let me hear from you,
you who work this
foundry with me,
you who hear
the instructions to
give shape and form
to these sacred shadows
and follow them as I do.
We are building
a link through our
exquisite twilight, a link
between here and there.
We are learning
to tie knots,
to join planks,
to cut stone. We are
fighting for two worlds,
stretching them toward
the deepest part,
the heart of it all.
And to those of you
who only see your
flat world, resist the
Nightshade, the Belladonna,
and don’t despair;
we are working hard
here in this place
where it’s always bedtime.
Soon, we will all travel
through impossibility
and still remain alive.

©JEF 1998

"One Season" by Tony Hoagland

In honor of National Poetry Month, I am posting exquisite poems by talented poets.

I love this special, memoir-style piece from Tony Hoagland.

One Season
by Tony Hoagland

That was the summer my best friend
called me a faggot on the telephone,
hung up, and vanished from the earth,

a normal occurrence in this country
where we change our lives
with the swiftness of hysterical finality

of dividing cells. That month
the rain refused to fall,
and fire engines streaked back and forth crosstown

towards smoke-filled residential zones
where people stood around outside, drank beer
and watched their neighbors houses burn.

It was a bad time to be affected
by nearly anything,
especially anything as dangerous

as loving a man, if you happened to be
a man yourself, ashamed and unable to explain
how your feelings could be torn apart

by something ritual and understated
as friendship between males.
Probably I talked too loud that year

and thought an extra minute
before I crossed my legs; probably
I chose a girl I didn't care about

and took her everywhere,
knowing I would dump her in the fall
as part of evening the score,

part of practicing the scorn
it was clear I was going to need
to get across this planet

of violent emotional addition
and subtraction. Looking back, I can see
that I came through

in the spastic, furtive, half-alive manner
of accident survivors. F**k anyone
who says I could have done it

differently. Though now I find myself
returning to the scene
as if the pain I fled

were the only place that I had left to go;
as if my love, whatever kind it was, or is,
were still trapped beneath the wreckage

of that year,
and I was one of those angry firemen
having to go back into the burning house;
climbing a ladder

through the heavy smoke and acrid smell
of my own feelings,
as if they were the only
goddamn thing worth living for.

The Poetry of Rock n' Roll: "Brushed With Oil, Dusted With Powder"

To observe National Poetry Month, once a week I am featuring lyrics of rock n' roll or pop songs that also double as exquisite poetry. 

I am a huge fan of the 70's/80s/still-recording (and touring!) band Scritti Politti--and I can't believe I have yet to post their lyrics during National Poetry Month. Formed in 1977 in Leeds by singer-songwriter Green Gartside, the band first operated as a sort of post-punk vehicle for Green's societal and political views. I found them in the 80s when they released their second album domestically, a thrilling, dizzying miracle of synthesizers called "Cupid & Psyche 85." But more than anything, Green loved to play with language and words. After an 11 year hiatus, he came back with a fascinating hybrid of an album called "Anomie & Bonhomie" which mixed his signature Scritti sound with hip hop artists. But this song, "Brushed With Oil, Dusted With Powder" is a slower, more acoustic affair. Its enigmatic, atmospheric sense reads like a Sam Spade short story. Take a read and see what narrative unfolds for you.

Brushed With Oil, Dusted With Powder
by Green Gartside

Brushed with oil, dusted with powder

The day began to decline
A broken door, a hotel bedroom
The sun cut in through the blind (oh but I tell you)
The officer asked "How did it start?"
Oh sh*t, "You know, I wish I knew," I said
"On Highbury Fields, the Westside Highway
Or here in the Hollywood hills"

In a black and white, to Orange County
The sky was a beautiful blue
A pack of lights, some keys they found there
They wondered how much I knew (oh but I tell you)
The officer asked "How did it start?"
Oh sh*t, "You know, I wish I knew," I said
"On Highbury Fields, the Westside Highway
Or here in the Hollywood hills"

And yes, it's over
And yes, now the powerful have found me
It was beautiful to see
It was how we're meant to be
It was love, no matter what they say

It's wonderful to be here

Abraham, my father, had a girl he called his angel
I made my excuses and I like the way it feels

The officer asked "How did it start?"
Oh sh*t, "You know, I wish I knew," I said
"On Highbury Fields, the Westside Highway
Or here in the Hollywood hills"

And yes, it's over
Oh yes, now the powerful have found me
It was beautiful to see
It was how I'm meant to be
It was love, no matter what they say

It's wonderful to be here

https://www.scritti.net/

"Travel Restrictions"

In honor of National Poetry Month, I am posting some examples of my work on Fridays in April.

Here is "Travel Restrictions."

Travel Restrictions

You act as if
flights can only arrive.
You seem to forget
flights can depart as well.
Stay or go, I don't care but
I don’t want to
see you at the airport
anymore.

© JEF 2020

"A New National Anthem" by Ada Limón

In honor of National Poetry Month, I am posting exquisite poems by talented poets. This beautiful piece, " A New National Anthem" by Ada Limón, at once obliquely scathing and tender, is about the reality of what being part of a nation really means...not the hyperbole and posturing, but the actual living which extends beyond where borders are currently drawn.

A New National Anthem
by Ada Limón

The truth is, I’ve never cared for the National
Anthem. If you think about it, it’s not a good
song. Too high for most of us with “the rockets
red glare” and then there are the bombs.
(Always, always, there is war and bombs.)
Once, I sang it at homecoming and threw
even the tenacious high school band off key.
But the song didn’t mean anything, just a call
to the field, something to get through before
the pummeling of youth. And what of the stanzas
we never sing, the third that mentions “no refuge
could save the hireling and the slave”? Perhaps,
the truth is, every song of this country
has an unsung third stanza, something brutal
snaking underneath us as we blindly sing
the high notes with a beer sloshing in the stands
hoping our team wins. Don’t get me wrong, I do
like the flag, how it undulates in the wind
like water, elemental, and best when it’s humbled,
brought to its knees, clung to by someone who
has lost everything, when it’s not a weapon,
when it flickers, when it folds up so perfectly
you can keep it until it’s needed, until you can
love it again, until the song in your mouth feels
like sustenance, a song where the notes are sung
by even the ageless woods, the short-grass plains,
the Red River Gorge, the fistful of land left
unpoisoned, that song that’s our birthright,
that’s sung in silence when it’s too hard to go on,
that sounds like someone’s rough fingers weaving
into another’s, that sounds like a match being lit
in an endless cave, the song that says my bones
are your bones, and your bones are my bones,
and isn’t that enough?

https://adalimon.com/

The Poetry of Rock n' Roll: "Burning Down The House"

To observe National Poetry Month, once a week I am posting song lyrics from different genres that double as interesting poetry.

This post features a song from Talking Heads. "Burning Down The House" was originally a 1983 studio jam without words. After just filling in the rhythm with random syllables, lead singer/songwriter David Byrne says he turned to a list of "loads and loads of phrases collected that I thought thematically had something to do with one another," and the song was born. These phrases all have roots in platitudes and old sayings but used in this post-modern context, they take on a strange, new resonance. The fact that these worn out banalities are strung together in such a relentless way, gives this found-object song a sinister twist.

Burning Down The House

by Talking Heads (words by David Byrne)

Watch out, you might get what you're after
Cool babies, strange but not a stranger
I'm an ordinary guy
Burning down the house

Hold tight, wait 'til the party's over
Hold tight, we're in for nasty weather
There has got to be a way
Burning down the house

 
Here's your ticket, pack your bags
Time for jumping overboard
The transportation is here
Close enough but not too far
Baby, you know where you are
Fighting fire with fire

 
All wet! Here, you might need a raincoat
Shakedown, dreams walking in broad daylight
Three hundred sixty five degrees
Burning down the house

It was once upon a place, sometimes I listen to myself
Gonna come in first place
People on their way to work and baby what did you expect?
Gonna burst into flame
Burning down the house

 
My house is out of the ordinary
That's right, don't wanna hurt nobody
Some things sure can sweep me off my feet
Burning down the house

 
No visible means of support and you have not seen nothin' yet
Everything's stuck together
And I don't know what you expect staring into the TV set
Fighting fire with fire

https://talking-heads.nl/

"Riding With Maria" by Judy Nilsen

My dear friend of twenty-five years or so, Judy Nilsen is not a professional poet but she has the mind of one. She does not write poetry often so when she shared this one with me a few years back, I felt it was something very special.

For National Poetry Month, here is my friend Judy's moving, bittersweet, elegiacal poem "Riding With Maria."

Riding With Maria
by Judy Nilsen

According to the moderator,
Maria Callas is not in possession
of one of the world's angelic voices,
which are a dime a dozen,
but is, rather,
"a dramatic conveyance of female passion".

The aria is surging now,
moving with unstoppable energy to a climactic close.
The harmonic tension is pulled tight,
the orchestra climbing an uphill crescendo,
the violins on their tiptoes reaching for the heavens.
Finally it happens:
Callas hits the most amazing high E flat,
pulling the cork right out of my soul.

So I take a deep breath
and with full-throated abandon
join her on an Italian word I don't understand
but can feel in every bone of my body,
resonating with the force of life.

While Maria and I hold our high note together
in breath-defying exultation,
I look up at the sky,
clear blue and cloudless.
A dark black hawk is soaring with us,
as graceful and buoyant in its own flight
as Callas on her soaring E flat.

At this very moment,
when Callas and I and the hawk
share a few precious beats
in the rhythm of the Universe,
I let go of the steering wheel.

At 75 miles an hour,
I throw both arms open wide to all of life:

to the hot crisp hillsides
    dotted with masses of dark green trees
to the hawk dipping its wings
    in air pungent with the smell of summer
to my sore hands steering the way
    as my hair blows around my face
to my father's painful steps
    and the twinkle still in his eyes
to my mother's spotted arm reaching for pills
    as loganberry pie bakes in the oven

to love
to joy
to sorrow
to soft pink roses gracing the dining room table
to crisp brown leaves on the ground outside
to things growing
to things dying

Here in the opera,
here in life,
I know the final cadence is upon us.

Taking hold of the wheel again in tears,
I descend with Maria to the last note of our song,
give up my breath as she gives up hers,
continue driving my car toward home
through a moment of pure and total beauty,
wanting so much to hold onto everything.

© Judy Nilsen 2001

"People: I Love Your"

In honor of National Poetry Month, I am posting some examples of my work on Fridays in April.

Here is "People: I Love Your."

People: I Love Your

People:
I love your television
I love your disease
I love your ambition
I love your costumes and shoes
I love your freeways
I love your money
I love your blood
I love your home, your floor, your door
I love your computer, your screen saver
I love your outgoing message
I love your book
I love your turn of phrase
I love your mess you leave
I love your animals
I love your snacks
I love your summer blockbuster hits
I love your breathing
I love your bucking
I love your crazy mixed up ways
I love your houses of holy
I love your estimations and invoices
I love your speed
I love your skid marks and screaming
I love your biological creations
I love your scattered precision
I love the way you don’t skip to the end of the book to read the last chapter, the last line, the hurricane come to erase it all, cleanse it all away

© JEF 2020

"The Laughing Heart" by Charles Bukowski

In honor of National Poetry Month, I am featuring special poems by special poets each Wednesday. Here is a buoyant, defiant piece, "The Laughing Heart" by the inimitable Charles Bukowski.

The Laughing Heart
by Charles Bukowski

your life is your life
don’t let it be clubbed into dank submission.
be on the watch.
there are ways out.
there is light somewhere.
it may not be much light but
it beats the darkness.
be on the watch.
the gods will offer you chances.
know them.
take them.
you can’t beat death but
you can beat death in life, sometimes.
and the more often you learn to do it,
the more light there will be.
your life is your life.
know it while you have it.
you are marvelous
the gods wait to delight
in you.

https://bukowski.net/

Lord Byron's "She Walks in Beauty" by Marianne Faithfull with Warren Ellis

For National Poetry Month:

The legendary and unstoppable Marianne Faithfull, still recovering from near-death from COVID, recites George Gordon, Lord Byron's "She Walks In Beauty" to Warren Ellis' music...

She walks in beauty, like the night
Of cloudless climes and starry skies;
And all that’s best of dark and bright
Meet in her aspect and her eyes;
Thus mellowed to that tender light
Which heaven to gaudy day denies.

One shade the more, one ray the less,
Had half impaired the nameless grace
Which waves in every raven tress,
Or softly lightens o’er her face;
Where thoughts serenely sweet express,
How pure, how dear their dwelling-place.

And on that cheek, and o’er that brow,
So soft, so calm, yet eloquent,
The smiles that win, the tints that glow,
But tell of days in goodness spent,
A mind at peace with all below,
A heart whose love is innocent!

http://www.mariannefaithfull.org.uk/

The Poetry of Rock n' Roll: "Pilgrims"

To observe National Poetry Month, once a week I am featuring lyrics of rock n' roll or pop songs that also double as exquisite poetry.

For our first installment of The Poetry of Rock n' Roll 2021, let's examine a song by folk singer-songwriter Eliza Gilkyson. This song, "Pilgrims" was released on her 1987 album of the same name and features a tense, compact study of one's place (and inner psychological topography) in the world as compared with those who came before.

Pilgrims
by Eliza Gilkyson

Pilgrims for freedom and liberty
These days you look so clumsy to me
Primitive sailors, quenching your thirst on the brine

Risking your reckless lives on the sea
Crossing the ocean to the land of the free
Oceans could never quench such a thirst as mine

What were you looking for out on the sea
A constant source of mystery
It was a pretty good way to steal your heart from your misery

These days it's harder to stay on the line
It could all be conquered, it could all be mine
It makes me hungry, boys, for a world I've never known

Oceans are easy, so is the land
It's me I just don't understand
Call for the captain, this time I really wanna go home

I know what I long to see:
A constant source of mystery
Some perfect way to steal my heart from misery

http://elizagilkyson.com/

Happy Easter 2021!

Easter developed from the Old English word Ēastre or Ēostre, derived from the Anglo-Saxon Pagan month of Eostur-monath (which roughly corresponds to our month of April). This month was named after the goddess Ēostre or Ostara who symbolized the dawn, spring, renewal, and rebirth of the earth after the long winter.

Now we celebrate by decorating eggs, a symbol of birth and fertility and new growth, and with chocolate rabbits, since bunnies are also a symbol of spring.

When I was little, I always loved Easter time because my grandmother displayed vases of daffodils and lilies, and panoramic sugar eggs around the house. And my aunt hollowed out eggs, cut a window in the side of the shell, and painstakingly assembled pastoral scenes inside using miniature trees and flowers, and tiny ceramic rabbits to make literal panoramic eggs. But the best part was the Easter Bunny who came to deliver beautifully dyed and decorated eggs in a basket full of chocolate and treats; my mom and dad would guide me through the house with clues as to where the Easter Bunny hid my basket (thanks Mom and Dad--I miss you)!

I hope the Easter Bunny brought you some treats! Happy Easter!

Truth, Again

"I maintain that Truth is a pathless land, and you cannot approach it by any path whatsoever, by any religion, by any sect. That is my point of view, and I adhere to that absolutely and unconditionally. Truth, being limitless, unconditioned, unapproachable by any path whatsoever, cannot be organised; nor should any organisation be formed to lead or to coerce people along any particular path. If you first understand that, then you will see how impossible it is to organise a belief. A belief is purely an individual matter, and you cannot and must not organise it. If you do, it becomes dead, crystallised; it becomes a creed, a sect, a religion, to be imposed on others."
--Jiddu Krishnamurti

"The constant assertion of belief is an indication of fear."

--Jiddu Krishnamurti

Bunnies To The Rescue

I always say: if you want to see a grown man turn into a five-year old boy, just show me bunnies.

BEAUTY: Art for Easter--Amy Hamilton

https://amyhamilton.ca/

Happy National Poetry Month 2021!

April is National Poetry Month, sponsored by the Academy of American Poets since 1996. And this year marks the celebration's 25th anniversary! Over the years, it has become the largest literary celebration in the world with schools, publishers, libraries, booksellers, and poets celebrating poetry’s vital place in our culture.

"Only truthful hands write true poems. I cannot see any basic difference between a handshake and a poem."

--Paul Celan

How to celebrate?

Read your favorite poet again.
Read some new poetry.
Find a new favorite poet.
Write some poetry.
Leave poems for people to find in public places.
Read poetry out loud to family and friends.
Dream a poem.

Throughout April, I'll be posting poems, some by me, some by others, as well as a series of lyrics to popular songs that double as exquisite poetry.

And this year, Poem in Your Pocket Day is April 29th! Every April, on Poem in Your Pocket Day, people celebrate by selecting a poem, carrying it with them, and sharing it with others throughout the day at schools, bookstores, libraries, parks, workplaces, and on Twitter using the hashtag #pocketpoem. Considering the virus event, no one is sure if we will be able to go to schools, libraries, parks, or workplaces. If you are on a lockdown in your state or country, consider digitally sharing your poem.

Poem in Your Pocket Day was originally initiated in 2002 by the Office of the Mayor, in partnership with the New York City Departments of Cultural Affairs and Education, as part of the city’s National Poetry Month celebration. In 2008, the Academy of American Poets took the initiative to all fifty United States, encouraging individuals around the country to join in and channel their inner bard. In 2016, the League of Canadian Poets extended Poem in Your Pocket Day to Canada.

Happy National Poetry Month!

How To Eat a Poem
by Eve Merriam

Don't be polite.
Bite in.
Pick it up with your fingers and lick the juice that
may run down your chin.
It is ready and ripe now, whenever you are.
You do not need a knife or fork or spoon
or plate or napkin or tablecloth.

For there is no core
or stem
or rind
or pit
or seed
or skin
to throw away.

https://poets.org/