my first Lexpomo.

thanks for letting me give y’all

a ‘lil smile each day!

          –Mavis Staples to Bob Dylan, NYT, 30 June 2024

Oh, Bobby:
you gotta keep on
singing.

To swim in a big green lake
where the temperature
fluctuations
currents- cool, warm cool again
small fish tickle my toes.

I wonder what’s down there
                   -way down there.
    man size catfish?
    rusty car parts?
    cinder blocks attached to bones?

I wonder how deep it is.

But, it doesn’t matter.
One can drown in 10ft of water
as easy as one can drown in 100.

I told myself to post away, but
should’ve ordered self to write each day.
What happened to the month of June?
It flew, or poofed right by, too soon,
and I, who thought myself a poet, well,
this June I certainly didn’t show it.

1
sometimes you like to
throw your old life on the fire
sit & watch it burn

2
store your bitterness
lay it by for those cold nights
it will keep you warm

3
you can’t be cheerful
every damn day of your life
so go on & cry

4
then the sun comes up
like a giant’s orange eye
peering through the trees

5
how quickly the light
sifts through the cracks in the blinds
& everything’s changed

6
& then suddenly
you can see the world again
just waiting on you

In his first poems, Dustin wrote in a minimalist vibe but was also profane, provocative, on the edge of offensive. Something kicked in about a week into the month-long marathon project. A slight seriousness began to seep into his verse. His words became more descriptive, more probing, occasionally bullseye deep. I know he still wants to shock some folks, make them a little uncomfortable. But Dustin is digging this writing thing more even checking for off-rhyme, texture and metaphor.

Fed up with MAGA
gender roles & politics
he writes hot, cools down.

Shaun started writing this month in an easy-to-understand way. Every year I’ve admired his clarity and intuitive insights which are often nature-based but also connected to emotion. When you least expect a writer can take a quantum leap. Hang-glide off a cliff reaching for a new literary altitude. That’s exactly what Shaun did. “This took my breath away,” Karen said. “It felt like one of the poets we’d been taught in school,” Joseph added.

An abandoned corpse
of a moored-up Ford
takes off as a poem.

* Dear poets,  I really am going to miss reading LexPoMo’s poems even though I’ve burned the candle at both ends this year. I had 12 people to write about but I only managed to write about two because it took longer than I thought it would. There’s always next year!

What like you, dislike fully.
What you dislike, fully like.
Crest
trough.
Placid lake moonlit see.  

What sweet, fully bitter make.
What bitter, make fully sweet.
Skin
slough.
Hole inside from wiggle free.  

I have this recurring dream

I’m in high school                                              horseback at summer camp

the hall is crowded                                            I’m leading a guided ride

bell is about to ring                                           I’ve come this way a hundred times

but I can’t find my locker                                 and the trees look suddenly different

I don’t know where my classroom is             the trail grows unfamiliar

come to think of it                                             this new horse doesn’t know the way to the barn

I haven’t shown up to class all semester      it’s getting late, the sun’s going down

and today is the final exam                             I’ve managed to get us all lost out here

I am such an idiot                                              and everyone is about to find out.

All the cool couples
are playing pickleball
on blue courts
the color of exotic seas
while we grow fat
on doughnuts from
the neighborhood bakery.

Suppose we had the gumption
to try on new lives,
would you love your new husband,
would I my new wife?

Isn’t that the rub of forever vows,
no one should change too much, too fast,
out-pacing the comfortable now?

But the dullard in overalls boasts —

My wife is the same exact girl
as when I married her —

as if she were a marble-eyed baby doll 
trunked in the dank crawlspace
of forever.