Thanks to every reader who visited ConnectHookduring April.
It made shut-in spring far more inspiring.
Here are my poems posted for NationalPoetryWriting Month2020:
Huddled in your castles like Prospero’s doomed revelers, sighing in the springtime of contagion, you evade and avoid the obvious. But the Muse has entered, unseen, and stands among you in her mask of elegiac splendor. She smiles as you mock her presence. She laughs quietly to herself as her influence wafts upon the very air, inspiring and infecting all concerned. You try to protect yourselves from the lyric epidemic, nonetheless her viral poetic molecules go forth, regroup, mutate, and attach themselves to the souls of her detractors. Her spores hang upon the very droplets of the mist, a suspended Parnassian miasma. The first tremors of poetic sickness begin to shudder deep within and among the most reluctant revelers. They try to dispel their fears; they brag and congratulate themselves, chattering about the uselessness of poetry, listing all they ways in which they have successfully barricaded themselves from her pestilential presence. But the Muse has entered and none can ensure her departure. Poetry will have her way and resistance is futile. Some will survive, but others will meet her as their avenging angel of the plague, and neither Egyptian magic nor sanitizing legerdemain shall deter the blossoming vector of her influence. Fear, oh unpoetic readers, this sudden lyrical acceleration, this verdant celebration:
Got to sleep in a old holler log With my musket, my pipe and my dog. As you city-folk know, She’s a hard row to hoe; Dang Corona done slaughtered ma hog.
Hey there y’all. Jest thought I would tell you what I been up to during this old LOCKDOWN by the dang federals and globalists and teknocrats. Due to Satan, China, and George Soros inflicting this scourge upon our beloved nation, I done had to stay hunkered down in muh cabin with muh fambly. CHINESE Chest Cold all it is, and I don’t care what the One World Guvermint says, I AINT EATIN’ no BATS. Damn commie Chinese need JESUS I’ll tell you that. Now whar wuz I? Oh yeah:
We pretty much been prayin’ non-stop to the Lord, readin’ our Bibles and listenin’ to daddy Donald on the short-wave television. He shore is smart and we thank God Almighty for him AND his wife what’s-her-name. (She’s real pretty—for a Yuropean that is . . .) And lucky for us he come up with a good plan to help us all overcome this great tribulation of the Last Days, amen. Presidint Trump is going to take that old W.H.O. down a peg or two. And all them thankless adversaries runnin’ their jaws a-complainin’ all day long kin go figger. Anyway, we sit around a lot . . . muh wife bakes some cornpone . . . we fry a little bacon any old time. Muh kids play and squabble and ask to borry muh tablet (y’all know how it is) but I cain’t say it’s been easy. I have touched a drop a half jug some corn likker, and although I am shamed to say, I have done beat muh dear wife somewhat (but never in front of the little ones and only when she sassed me).
Well, the good news from all these trials and tribulations is: National Poetry Writing Month is comin’ along real SOON in April! You might not have thunk a ol’ deeplorable hillbilly like me would appreciate POETRY now would you? I hope the president can git everthang on track for all of us soon and we kin all git back to writin’ POEMS in the springtime.
And after the summer gits over we can drag our ol’ knuckles over to the votin’ station and cast our ballots, yes siree.
So that’s how it been here in Hickry Holler tryin’ (as the city slickers and federal agents like to call it) SOCIALLY DISTANCEing our pore selfs from everthang. I hope you folks is doin’ rightly and see you soon Lord willing.
This year’s National Poetry Writing Month was different from the last five in which I have participated. I followed the prompts for the first time. Some prompts forced me to produce good poetry but others were just headaches. For a few, I simply matched up a draft I had sitting around with the given prompt and it worked. The whole thing felt more futile than ever this year . . . but I am destined and doomed to write POETRY and shall continue to do so.
Thanks to everyone who took time to read my original work here during April. Best lyrical wishes for 2019 !
