[Bill Murray voice] Well, it’s NaPo time… again…
I think this might have happened last time too, but I am getting off to an inauspicious start, posting this just after midnight on day one. I finished this poem before the day ticked over by the skin of my teeth. I meant to give myself plenty of time, but things got away from me (my nap turned into more of a sleep), so this ended up being kind of rushed. I don’t hate it, but I was definitely intending to aim for something more polished. Whatever! Anyway, I realised that I never posted a couple of poems I wrote earlier in the year, so I’ve included them below too.
The Fool’s Journey
The Fool stands poised to leap, like every year,
No wiser now than ever,
Treading where angels fear,
Living on the never never—
One step forward, never one step back.
The Fool is full of courage that I lack.
Take me with you when you fly, oh Fool.
It’s not so wise to always fear to tread.
Cover my eyes and help me leap instead,
To not count every step into a jar,
To run and never know how far,
To let go of metre, to let go of schema,
Take hold of my hand and make me a dreamer,
Let me get lost or let me get found,
Let us fly at least until we hit the ground.
How I’m doing, Elmo
Elmo I’ll be straight with you,
Each day I metabolise a new horror.
I look at a bloody pillow where they shot a boy in his bed,
Basel, a paralysed boy.
An ambulance crew went missing trying to reach
Six-year-old Hind, trapped in a car,
Surrounded by the bodies of her family.
I run the mental calculus:
Will this be the one that shakes you loose,
That startles you out of silence, makes you turn your head
Towards and not away from me?
The path of the witness is a lonely one, Elmo.
The people I have loved and wished to trust
Have chosen ignorance, and I know why:
They have seen so much, changed so little,
Some have marched and chanted just like me
And only seen the world descend
Until they could not feel the numbers anymore,
The spiralling numbers of the dying and the dead.
I, too, know what it is to turn my face away from suffering,
Harden myself against a pain too great
For any heart to carry on its own,
But this time my heart chose to witness it,
And bear the scars.
If I change nothing, yet I will have changed,
And Elmo, unlike you, I cannot always be the same.
My wish for you
My wish for you is that you fall in love with growth.
Once I saw a tree which oozed over a gravestone
The way your body heals over
A splinter of shrapnel.
We grow in spite of so much,
Make room for so much.
Let your supple skin crack and break into rough bark.
Let the world in.
Let it break your heart.
Panicky in the UK 