#poetryfriday: twitku weektu roundup-fu

I had to cry uncle on the Burma Shave poems.  They just aren’t happening.  Perhaps my internal rhythms are off this month, I don’t know.

But the Twitter haiku continue, even if my definition of the blues seems to be shifting and drifting a bit away from what we normally call the blues.  These little snapshots of life are more like bummers.  Yeah, got them old can’t-make-the-subject-match-the-form bummers. That could be a whole new style of music, where instead of singing about the heavy shroud of blues raining down all the time we can celebrate the little bummers of life, get them out of our system, and move on.

Totally without realizing it at first I found myself writing groups of poems around a mini theme. Occupational blues haikus, blues for things that deter birds, food-gone-bad-kus. Plenty of bummers out there to be sung.

8 April 2011
found me a “lost” dog
double agent for the feds
turned in for tax fraud

down to the river
all my pockets full of stones
can’t drown in a drought

the ring of old age
vibrating swan song of ear
follicles dying

9 April 2011
scanning the menu
for fiber in a diner
might as well stay home

bus stop in the rain
no hat, umbrella, shelter
discontinued line

you don’t miss water
‘til your well is high and dry
and you’ve tumbled in

10 April 2011
all the best blues names
have been taken ~ me they call
saturated fats

black cat crossed my path
seven more years bad luck each day
wanted a tabby

when kissing the bride
is it too late to ask her
for a second chance?

11 April 2011
mailbox explodes
literary foliage
rejected again

airline lost my bags
hotel full, rental car dead
longing for next trip

helpful taxicab
takes me from point a to b
via c through z

12 April 2011
(birds and their deterrents)
willowy scarecrow
legs jitterbugging the breeze
amuses the crows

snake in the garden
birds peck furiously at
plastic gemstone eyes

motionless owl
peeling coarse paint chip feathers
among the pigeons

13 April 2011
(occupational blues)
those crimson blues
doing time in cubicles
death by paper cuts

the retail truth:
customers are always wrong
just don’t tell them that

piecemeal seamstress
pushing paychecks by the inch
never fast enough

14 April 2011
(meals gone awry)
toaster set to dark
my last piece of bread charred black
sadness for breakfast

dining al fresco
enjoying a warm spring day
squirrels stole my lunch

at the restaurant
the maitre d’ hotel smirks:
“just you this evening?”

Friday means Poetry Friday, and April means National Poetry Month, and there’s a lot out there, for better or verse.  Check out the roundup this week over at Random Noodling.  Get your poetry on!  And if you’d rather see my twitku fresh out of the oven follow me, @delzey, on Twitter.  I promise, no salesman will come to your door if you follow.

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