You Smell Like Bubble Gum - a Poem for Day Twenty-Eight of PAD

Here is the prompt for day twenty-eight of the April PAD Challenge:

For today’s prompt, write a poem about a smell. Similar to Day 6’s prompt about writing a poem about a sound, today’s prompt involves thinking about the various good and bad smells that fill the world. Pick one smell (or a variety, I suppose), and write a poem.

Some Things Remind Me of That Bubble Gum

You Smell Like Bubble Gum

Sometimes
when I try to write,
I smell that bubble gum
I hid in my closet
in the house
where I grew up.
I remember feeling lucky. 
You’d given it to me
for Christmas
when I was sixteen.
I hadn’t seen you in years
when you made
that surprise visit
and handed
me a gift. I carried
that present upstairs
like a newborn, pondering
what lay swaddled
underneath the paper.
I ripped it open
and found gumballs
lined up side by side
like soldiers at rest.
I popped one
into my mouth
and was taken back
to our bowling alley
field trip
where the vending machine
shot out chewing gum
like bullets
from a machine gun.
It took me a year
to chew all that gum.
With each fruity ball I rolled
between my teeth, I wondered
when you’d roll back into my life.
I never got that lucky. 
The next time I saw you,
your casket reminded me
of that bubblegum
box. 

***

Mutual Annihilation (a Poem for Day Twenty-Eight of PAD)

First drafts are hard to post, but I want to finish this challenge. The prompts for day twenty-eight are matter and/or anti-matter.

Bending the World to Our Will

Mutual Annihilation

What matters is what we
are made of: flesh, bones,
blood, love. Our fleshy parts
hold us up when humanity
kicks us down. Our bones
are strong and flexible. Blood
swims through our veins
with the surprising silence of love
lost. Still, we tear down the right
to breathe, and build man-
            ufactured floors to stand upon,
we bleed cold water
to make it hot, ignore whispering
canopies, and raze forests
that had rainscreen technology
built right in. We’ve become
weatherstripped in a frantic race
to fight our nature. When will we
all stop settling for a dollar-
store life? What matters is what
we are made of: flesh, bones,
blood, love.

*****

(Un)Settled (a Poem for Day Twenty-Eight of PAD)

I'm limping along with one poem left to write to complete the challenge. It's appropriate that my poems are out of order since I feel like I'm about "out of order," too. Ha!

Below is my Day Twenty-Eight poem for PAD.

2014 APRIL PAD CHALLENGE: DAY 28

For today’s prompt, write a settled poem. Settled can be a good, relaxing thing; settled can be an accepting something that wasn’t your first choice thing; settled can be coming to a stop; settled can be pioneers in a strange land; and so on. With only three days left, don’t settle for less than your best.

Don't Settle for a Poetry-Free Life

(Un)Settled

Word-tied, hands tired, metaphorical
milk carton nearly empty. Timer’s almost
boiled all the eggs in this poetical
basket, and the delivery man
won’t make trips to simile city
tonight. The sonnets resting on my cranium
can’t withstand the heat, so I’ve settled
for freestyle swimming through alphabet souped-
up poetry not making it from pen to paper.

*****