Today’s challenge: title a poem with “All I Want Is ____” and go from there. So:

All I want is not to want things
that are pointless or painful to want
especially given how much I possess
that I thought I’d wanted, and do, but look
at how little I’ve done with it, and at
the feasts at hand I’ve not yet fully savored
so why my fool heart still covets more crumbs
of unearned idolatry, unsolicited joys,
and unconditional connections — I want
such senseless cravings to cease.
such senseless cravings to cease.And yet
all that I do not want to become
stays my hands from straying toward
the things that are not mine, no matter
the depth of my damnation — these days
through which I dogpaddle past
the siren serenades and the hollow gifts,
‘til my self-churned waves cast me upon
the shore of a story with a happy ending,
one in which I don’t find myself wanting.

– pld

(P.S. I don’t have the chops or know-how to match the html color code to the background within a reasonable space of time, so if you see the spacer-text in front of “And yet,” please just pretend it’s blank.)

The Day 12 (Easter Sunday) prompt for the PAD challenge was to title a poem with “So We Decided To ____” and then elaborate on it.

So We Decided to Walk Down St. Claude

Easter Sunday in New Orleans, we had our choice
of at least five parades: Chris Owens, Arnaud’s,
St. Charles, the gays, and the Goodchildren Carnival Club.
We weren’t in the right mood for Vieux Carre hijinks
so we headed toward the Goodchildren gathering
at the corner of St. Claude and Poland. Along the way,
a half-dozen strangers wished us “Happy Easter,” and
one man cheerfully yelled, “Where’s my candy?” We also
passed a brick building where someone had sprayed
anti-war slogans. Eight blocks east,
a dentist’s window proclaimed, “We Cater to Cowards.”
The police hadn’t arrived at the start of the route
by two-fifteen, so one of the firemen
angled his truck across a lane
as a wall between the restless bunnies
and would-be thru-traffic. A woman in
a hat bedecked with large purple flowers
and an alligator plushie peeking out of her bag
kept trying to reach the cops, while one of the bands
passed the time repeating “Down By the Riverside.”
Finally — one, two, three boys in blue.
The marchers mush into their lines. The sirens toot,
and ten minutes later they’re all past the turn.
If it weren’t for the trinkets cupped in my palms —
a green plastic egg, a xeroxed fleur de lis
inside a metal frame, two strands of beads —
there’d be nothing to show me what I’d just seen.
Ten years ago, I’d have hoarded such relics,
and twenty years ago I’d have gone to Mass
as a voyeuristic indulgence, the way I always order
a wine or whisky I haven’t yet tasted
when we splurge on a dinner out. The older I get,
the less I try to cling to the past, for
the more I realize how much it costs
to clutch at even insubstantial dross. But blessed
are they, I’m told, who see not, yet believe. I see
yet do not believe. I am blessed nonetheless.

– pld

This morning, at my personal blog, I claimed I was about to head to work.

Assorted chores and one shower later, I’m still about to head to work. But first, here’s my response to today’s prompt at Poetic Asides, which was to select a color for a title and then write about it:

Flute White

I am not an artist, so
to suggest a flute, I reach
for a gray or silver crayon

but here at Cafe EnVie
we breakfast below a fine painting
of a jazz musician. The keys

of his flute shine out, bright
in the Monday morning gloom,
white splashes of light

like Cheshire teeth gleaming
from dark green thickets. Like
a trill of sparks within
a moody solo. Like the fall

of water from our showerhead
that, not being an artist, I
would try to depict
as something transparent —

streaks of white in a painting,
or streaks of black in line art — only,
the way it falls reminds me how
notes swarm out of a virtuoso’s flute

like clouds of fireflies. Brightened
by the sunlight pouring through
the bathroom window, the water

strikes the tiles in a cascade
of gold and of tinsel, silvery
as the oil-paint white

keys of the flute above us,
as glittering as the note
that sounds as our glasses meet.

– pld