Un(t)raveled - a Poem for Day Ten of PAD

Here is the prompt for day ten of the April PAD Challenge:

For today’s prompt, write a travel poem. Your poem can be about the process of traveling, planning to travel, vicariously traveling through television programs, or however else you’d like to take this prompt.

I Wear Color Now

Un(t)raveled

I store you in a canvas shopping bag
on my bedroom floor. You, cut
and scattered—I tried to piece you
back together—stitch you,
fold you, situate you gently
inside my travel case,
but your odds
and ends
I could not
prefabricate.

You’re a pattern
with lost pieces,
a garment
that’s become
quite a bore.
So, I leave you there
on my bedroom floor
to remember
who I don’t want
to wear anymore.

***

So, Break the Four-Stroke Cycle - a Poem for Day Nine of PAD

Yes, I'm posting a day late. (Busy weekend!) 

Here is the prompt for day nine of PAD:

For today’s prompt, take the phrase “So (blank),” replace the blank with a word or phrase, make the new phrase the title of your poem, and then, write your poem. Possible titles could include: “So Cool,” “So Stupid,” “So Not What I Would’ve Done,” “So Sweet,” or so many other possibilities.

So, Whatever Gets You down the Road

So, Break the Four-Stroke Cycle

So, you say you can’t speak
so good about
so many things but automobiles because
so many subjects escape you. You suck and have
so little education, you say, and you
so want to blame your clunker of a life upon
so many others—when you know that
so many times you could have squeezed
so many opportunities, popped your four-stroke engine
so far-off from where it started.

So, I tell you to look outside yourself,
so be it, out of the windows of your gas-guzzling heap of a life, not
so far you forget where you came from, just
so far that you operate more than for
sowing disrepair. Just keep in mind not to blow it and that
so
     me
          times, one of the alternatives—stop-start systems—are not
so efficient. It’s better to keep chugging along with the old tried and true.


***

The Panic of Non-Action - a Poem for Day Eight of PAD

It’s been a busy day and here I am, trying not to panic that I have only a little over an hour to write my poem. Ah, well, fun with the family was worth it!

Here is the prompt for day eight:

For today’s prompt, write a panic poem. There are any number of things a person can panic about, including severe weather, military invasions, or what to wear to an event. And while some may be more life or death than others, that feeling of panic is just as real for a person who has to get up and speak in front of a crowd of smiling strangers as it is for a person hiding in the basement of their house as a tornado approaches.

If You Look Carefully, You Can See Him Smile

The Panic of Non-Action

Perhaps you’ll plant
something lovely
in your life today
instead of going about
useless routines
like tracing Orion’s Belt
in those dot-to-dot
age spots
on the back of your hand.

Perhaps instead of wondering
what life had been like
if you’d been born
someone else,
you’ll trundle out your door,
say hello to a stranger,
pluck a leaf from desert
scrub oak, be amazed
how anything
can stay alive in Death
Valley.

Perhaps instead of scratching out
each day you have left,
you’ll spend tomorrow
in awe, marveling
at things like the forked tail
and the rapid wing
beats of Lucifer’s
Hummingbird, decide
if this is your end,
it isn’t so bad.

Still, perhaps you’ll stay grafted
to your seat, rock your life
using only those two
dog-eared feet, panic
at all the things
you didn’t have the nerve
to get up and do. 

***