Before I Was A Sergeant

I loved to dance, I recalled today
From my cave of shame
I veiled the mirrors,
Skirting my own gaze

A rotten twirl ballooned in my gut
The terrible spin inside me reigned
Nomadic like the wind

This stumbling, lilting feeling
Took bolt cutters to my shackles
That the soldier chained me with

Of course, guilt rose in my chest
Of stupidity, of ugliness
So I puked it up and shuffled
Shimmied on that shit

Flossing for the Future

I meditate molar to canine

On fascism and roadkill

Cirrhosis and my lost wallet

I cried while brushing tonight

Minty-fresh and grief-stricken

Like my dentist's wet dream

I have faith to floss, for

Perhaps there will be a world

With enough time and sugar

For rotting teeth to concern me

Dishes

I knew this bristly professor
Mean and alien, obsessed

Told me I needed to be

What he called "autotelic"

Told me I needed to love

Everything, even the dishes

I wised up a little late

Nearly nineteen, washing

Dirty anger off my hands

I want to apologize

To everything I didn't love

To my dad, who was dying

By the time I came around

Ready to be his kid

There's no going back

But I would do anything

For some hot water

And the blue Dawn

To do his dishes

Cheap Thrills: Day 30

It was summer and I was 17
Everyone said he was Bad News
But I sat his Ford, sunshine-yellow
Crown Royal bags on his visors
Dash littered with Reds

He was taking turns too quick
Like he wanted to play with our lives
And I sat politely, ankles crossed
Concealing my thrill, trying not to say
This trip to Wendy's felt like a jailbreak

I ignored the hair tie under the seat,
The one that didn't belong to me.
I ignored the smell of perfume,
Fragrance I wasn't wearing, because

It's easy to give sin a nicer name

He said let me play you a song:
Take Me Out, by Franz Ferdinand

A year later, it played
Behind some US Army propaganda
Some mothers' babies crawling through mud
Jumping from planes and calling it character

This time I'd abstain from vice

Under the dodgy guise of thrill

I wised up, and I won't fall

Not for some Scottish rock song

Not for some military doctrine
Not for some spineless boy

Prompt: "In his meandering poem, “Grateful Dead Tapes,” poet Ed Skoog riffs on the eponymous tapes that he’s found in a secondhand store, remembering various instances of hearing the band, both live and in recording. Today, we’d like to challenge you to write a poem that also describes different times in which you’ve heard the same band or piece of music across your lifetime."

Ode to Angst (For Fall Out Boy): Day 29

Take This to Your Grave

Never kept to its name

As secretive as a flag at full mast

In a basement in Chicago

In the eternal night of 2001

Losers in eyeliner fought

For whose angsty poetry

Captures cutting cynicism

And every song (I'm sorry, 

every song is about you)

Is an invitation

A welcoming

To wallow in misery
To savor angst

It hit #5 on Rolling Stone

Because that record is the kindest thing

She says bring your hurt

She says let's whine

Prompt: "Today, we’d like to challenge you to write a poem that takes its inspiration from the life of a musician, poet, or other artist."

Ed's Funeral: Day 28

Her stepdad passed and Mom,

She took her violin, she took

It from the highest shelf,

Where it had gained a dusty idleness

She asked a favor from

Her youngest offspring, for

My prodigal recorder skills

My guess is death

It changes all the roles

And at the service, played

The Scottish Anthem's pride

Mom's strings, they sang with grief

My pitchy plastic didn't know

How mourning ought to sound.

We did the job

'Cause who plays bagpipes? Drones

Are futile noise, when pain sighs on

On end, the chant of universal ache

My mom was shy, I'd never heard her play before

'Til Flower of Scotland, the march

That lifts your soldier feet

I hope that when I go

That someone stands and tries

Prompt: "Music features heavily in human rituals and celebrations. We play music at parties; we play it in parades, and at weddings. In her poem, OBIT [Music], Victoria Chang describes the role that music played in her mother’s funeral. Today, we challenge you to write a poem that involves music at a ceremony or event of some kind."

Love Embrace: Day 27

The monists were right

Humanity shines one light

Some one huge hand
Has tilled our land

Like sun and moon hold Mexico
Earth holds Frida, then Diego

The love embrace holds the cruel

It hugs the dirty, carries the fool

So I'll wipe their tears; it isn't grace

It's our shared water, wetting one face

My crooked neighbor weakens

Cruel folk light the aid beacons

My heart burns sustenance each beat

Sister, I tell you, this is why I eat

Prompt: "W.H. Auden’s “Musée des Beaux Arts” takes its inspiration from a very particular painting: Breughel’s “Landscape with the Fall of Icarus.” Today we’d like to challenge you to write your own poem that describes a detail in a painting, and that begins, like Auden’s poem, with a grand, declarative statement."