Poetry for April 2, 2023

National Poetry Writing Month (also known as NaPoWriMo) is a creative writing project held annually in April in which participants attempt to write a poem each day for one month. NaPoWriMo coincides with National Poetry Month in the United States of America and Canada.

This website is owned and operated by Maureen Thorson, a poet living in Washington, DC. Inspired by NaNoWriMo, National Novel Writing Month), she started writing a poem a day for the month of April back in 2003, posting the poems on her blog. When other people started writing poems for April and posting them on their own blogs, Maureen linked to them. After a few years, so many people were doing NaPoWriMo that Maureen decided to launch an independent website for the project.

I started writing poetry in 1988 after I had been exposed to T.S. Elliot in my honors English class in high school. In 1992 I started reading my poetry publicly at Espresso Europia Coffee Shop in Abilene Tx while I was in the United States Air Force. While living in Rockford Illinois I published my first book of poetry Throwing Yourself at the Ground and Missing in 2007 followed by Postcards From Someone You Don't Know in 2008 Wisdom From the Sack in 2010 and Shaving Crop Circles In My Chest Hair in 2017. You can get copies of all of these books in my merch section. In 2020 I started publishing my podcast version of the challenge and those can be viewed here for 2020 and here for 2021.

For 2023 I am not going to be just writing poems in April, I will be writing poems all year round. Also, since I will be writing all year round, I am using a different source for my prompts. There is a blog called Think Written and you can find it here. I will also be performing these works at Katora Coffee House here in Fredericksburg Virginia on their Friday Night Snaps Open Mic Poetry reading. Some of the podcast episodes you will hear will be a live recording of me reading the poem to a live audience, other times I will be reading it in the comfort of my home studio. I do plan on posting my work to the NaPoWriMo site and interacting with the poets there and see if they want to read their work on this podcast.

Misfits: How it feels when you don’t belong in a group of others  

The Wind Gets Cold Out Here 

11 Jan 2023 

Mancave 

It was a few years back during a thanksgiving meal 

Seated with over 100 folks in uniform 

Many of them my clients 

It was a work function, attendance was strongly recommended 

So, walking through the food line they set up 

Making nice with everyone  

Sat with a group of clients 

And just like that, as happens in dinner tables all across America 

Someone was making cracks at Michelle Obama 

Saying how they shouldn’t let moneys wear such nice clothes 

And no, it wasn’t the drunk racist uncle that no one listens to 

It was a white college educated professional woman 

Who happened to be in uniform 

Who happened to be my client 

Who happened to be looking for work with the Feds 

Excusing myself 

Wasn’t going to try and bash my head against the wall 

As others in the group laughed along 

Guess who she doesn’t work for 

And the next line I was going to write 

Was going to have been 

Guess who got blackballed 

But then I thought 

Am I that far removed from them 

I took the next job 

After I lost three clients in 6 months 

One to cancer, who wouldn’t admit defeat 

One to a hold-up gone wrong on his last day of duty in front of his daughter 

One who decided to take a long walk into a lake 

I took that job to get away  

To work with those that were told 

To put kids in cages 

And now their conscious got them better of them 

And they were offing themselves in droves 

The job was to make them feel better  

And I get how they got into this mess 

They had no future 

No hope to achieve anything better 

So, they signed themselves over 

To uphold the law 

And there I am, giving aid and comfort 

To someone’s enemy 

To someone’s nightmare 

Will I be tried for war crimes 

When it is my turn to cross over 

Comforting those who do the things  

That we won’t do 

Who we rage against 

Who are following orders 

I have empathy for them 

But I’ll never be in their club 

To reach out to me, email timothy@createartpodcast.com I would love to hear about your journey and what you are working on. If you would like to be on the show or have me discuss a topic that is giving you trouble write in and let's start that conversation.

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