National Poetry Writing Month 2023
Every year in April I accept the challenge to write 30 poems in 30 days for National Poetry Month. I may not write a poem every single day, but I have a goal to get to 30 by April 30th.
Below are the poems I have written for NaPoWriMo 2023. If you want to read these and other poems of mine, please feel free to check out my poetry blog here. For writing prompts and other information about how you can get involved, please check out NaPoWriMo.net.
Into the night (30/30)
I am in your city alone for the first time and
the leaves have all hit the ground.
Shortest season of the year here and
everything is falling down
I tried to make this my home and when
my high plains roots refused to hold
I tried to make a home in you, shelter in your
warmth to bear the cold
It wasn’t lack of Love I fear, or even
lack of willingness to fight
it was the way the silence calls me inward
and noise pulls you out into the night
-
A. Wylde
April 30th, 2023
NaPoWriMo 30/30
the question you didn’t ask (29/30)
I’m still learning how to answer the question you didn’t ask
and when the truth might hurt
though I’m slowly improving,
the rules are confusing
and sometimes it feels like I’m the only one
framing with no blueprints
I feel sheepish when my confusion makes a mess again
shattered when you seek a villain in your grief
with all my effort and practice
I still feel so tactless
I can’t explain my fluster any further
we speak and don’t feel heard
I’m always trying always trying, always hoping you’ll remember
I’m always trying my best
and even when I’m off track
I’d ask to be brought back
not pushed out, ignored or blamed
not quiet, not ashamed
I imagine there must be other ways that all of this can go
other tongues, fresher words,
or will it always feel desperate
no matter how we express it
and the best we can do is speak aloud
how none of our pieces will fit
-
A. Wylde
April 30th, 2023
NaPoWriMo 29/30
A good kid always sits still (28/30)
A good kid always takes it laying down,
or on the chin
thick skin
A good kid always knows when to be silent
A good kid always sits still, perfectly still
through the violence
A good kid never speaks ill of anyone,
or asks for help
or lets on
A good kid never spills the secrets they keep
A good kid never makes a problem, stokes the beast
never makes a peep
A good kid grows up into a fractured husk,
a nervous wreck,
or worse;
finds that anger gives them power nothing else could
and teaches one so soft, small and innocent,
that they better be good
-
A. Wylde
April 29th, 2023
NaPoWriMo 28/30
A nothing becomes a poem (27/30)
There are rules
(I make the rules up)
and I follow them
(and I break them)
and I follow them again
(until I am bored of them, or change my mind)
and there are themes
(I make those up too, or I catch them tender
whispered on winds over the quiet plains)
and I explore them
(inspect them, scalpel them open across my bed)
and add a commentary
(I make up the commentary)
and when I have finished
(and sometimes when I start
or even sometimes when I haven’t started yet)
I double check my work
(to see if my musings make a mess together)
and that is how
(quiet, small, solemn, sometimes lonely, always entirely mad)
a nothing becomes a poem
-
A. Wylde
April 29th, 2023
NaPoWriMo 27/30
Coming home (26/30)
The settling in is slow, tempted to keep
roving, seeking, looking
keep trying to find my place to be
I am home now, it is catching up with me
Slow like the instants turned hours of
chatter, laughter, brain-tickling exchange
while you permanently changed me, one
little dot at a time; the image, home
Slow like the years that have dissolved now
waves, tears, onslaught, downpour
watching water shape me, renew me,
clear my mind and send me home clean
And home is here now, and it is also
the lake, the future, my mom’s place, you
swirling in dazzling hazy Love born of
strength and fight, safety, coming home
-
A. Wylde
April 19th, 2023
NaPoWriMo 26/30
grief study (25/30)
Tail lights through raindrops on the window, like an oil painting
and all the plants are thriving here
I run my palms along the live-edge table in my kitchen,
fingers tracing tiny termite trails like
so many mazes
it’s slow, slow, but the house
grows to know me
and like any relationships it is in moments where
all our layers are blistered open, all our
wounds left wide for viewing
that we deepen our bond
so the stucco weeps at it’s cracks after a rain storm,
the bedrooms stay ever so slightly too cold, and I stay
so I howl and contort my face, writhe and I whimper
then snivel and wet my cheeks in smaller streams
until it’s all finally run dry inside and
outside and
the house,
it can contain all my grief,
so I press my palms to the walls and thank my home
for being strong enough to hold all of me
-
A. Wylde
April 26th, 2023
NaPoWriMo 25/30
a bump, or a bruise (24/30)
I have not often been Loved softly,
every Lover a bump, or a bruise
Ever a survivor, I learned to become a fighter
so many hearts wear
my autograph too
-
A. Wylde
April 25th, 2023
NaPoWriMo 24/30
Some days (23/30)
Some days are for poems
Twinkling, glittering wonder
some days are just... days
-
A. Wylde
April 25th, 2023
NaPoWriMo 21/30
little music-box (22/30)
Odd, angular, novel
little music-box fashioned from aromatic woods, reclaimed
bright sun, strange little lane, winding and roundabout
what a curious little place...
tiny, extraordinary creatures in the pond, the trees, in the mud
tiny, extraordinary bare feet
and whispers of lore riding in on the breeze
it was the poet, with the fountain pen, in the library
and the age-stained floors are shining proof
dark, not somber; full, not cluttered
except the trail of open books, broken pencil-tips, sketch paper torn out,
ceramic dusts and brush-kissed murky mixtures
it’s so remarkably quiet; hums of nature abound
and no one,
no one else is around
-
A. Wylde
April 23rd, 2023
NaPoWriMo 22/30
if nothing changes (21/30)
Burned down my own home
being that nothing changes
if nothing changes
-
A. Wylde
April 23rd, 2023
NaPoWriMo 21/30
grenades in my garden (20/30)
I’m knocking over glasses of wine again
kicking the corner of the bed on my way in to sleep
sleeping troubled instead of deep
I’m locking myself out again,
locked inside my wreck
I feel it coming on and I can’t
make it feel any less
The temptation is to move, to do, to act
but I’m learning not to bury live grenades in my garden
not to stir up chaos, not to harden
not to run from what is mine
not to carry what is not
I feel it coming on and I’m just
glad I can still feel
-
A. Wylde
April 22nd, 2023
NaPoWriMo 20/30
damn machine (19/30)
I’m longing for nostalgia like early 2000s tv creates
to love a hometown I have never known
and ache and hurt over the not having known it
to wonder whether I ought to move to Connecticut
because it all seems so quaint and charming and plain
and in somewhere deep I do desire to be so
simple and quiet and slow
but that’s what I am meant to feel
it is, so literally, a show
I’m restless and looking for solace, and I find it
cleverly woven into the media I am meant to
endlessly consume, but it’s the rapid-act kind
quick to kick in and fades just as soon
and once the room is dark again I’m
left alone with still just me
and all the restlessness
has grown in my inattention
and that, too, is what I am meant to feel
my despondency turns expenditure and fuels
the whole damn machine
-
A. Wylde
April 20th, 2023
NaPoWriMo 19/30
The limitations of language (18/30)
hours into a days long conversation, adrift in your eyes and
wandering in sweet distinctions
carving a path, artfully
both engaged and indignant
enraptured and unsated
by the limitations of language
the string of lights reflects in your eyes and it is in the shape
of the number seven
isn’t it such a pretty reminder of past things to come
don’t we fail to hold dear what we fail to fear losing
isn’t tightening of the grip such a reflex,
an enemy
isn’t it?
you swirl through space light-footed, travel through time afloat
we both know about places we haven’t been yet,
about places non-existent where we often go
and isn’t it such a pressure to hold in one’s chest
don’t we fail to maintain what we shape with our fears
and sometimes you’re so afraid of losing me
you leave me in us, to watch you
losing you
and tempt fate
-
A. Wylde
Finalized April 19th, 2023
NaPoWriMo 18/30
tomorrows (17/30)
It’s one of those morbid days where
just the wind blowing is too much and I’d
have my palms pressed to my ears, clutching for
something softer
The first set of ear plugs I ever got were a gift
one of those moments you realize you never knew
what it was like to be seen
and I was so confused
No idea what I needed until I was told that
when something hurts, it is okay to
repose
I know about relief now, and days when the
wind disturbs me, I press gauze into my ears and
cocoon myself in a soft blanket and I
graze only on what my body cries for and I
raise only for the things for which I thirst and
I don’t answer the phone
merciless, wearisome obligations be gone I
don’t event think about
answering the phone
My little tool belt has broadened and while the rain ricochets
off the too-tin gutters and the winds rustles all the
too-dry leaves, and my too-cold hands
are too-tired to write I simply
lump up under my covers and I cease to exist
(like I always dreamed)
and I put my phone on silent
and I release the contempt I have long held
for my limitations and I
suspend, adjourn, intermit
and I let the rest live in
tomorrows
-
A. Wylde
April 19th, 2023
NaPoWriMo 17/30
without a map, counting snakes (16/30)
Counting snakes in the drainage ditch along the road
I walked perfectly in the center
I have figures and spreadsheets I can present,
preparing for some test, prioritized this preoccupation
I know more about danger than I know about care
and you
have only ever cared
these aren’t your wounds to dress
it’s not your fault I’ve been scared
I know how many two pronged poisons I escaped
I can tell you all about how I protected myself,
kept myself safe
but with all my preparation I am wildly unprepared
because now
I realize I have been standing at a crossroads
without a map, counting snakes
And lost is just a bigger kind of afraid
I see the two paths diverge, the only ones I can take now
I see them even as rattles are still taunting my ears
I could have been charting a course
while I was busy enumerating idle threat
And lost time I can’t solve for,
there are only two ways forward:
Either I heal now, or I run
and baby there are snakes in either one
-
A. Wylde
Finalized April 19th, 2023
NaPoWriMo 16/30
It does not (15/30)
It does not comfort you in your screaming
it does not hold you through the night
it does not even wrap you in warm embrace when you wake
shaking, afraid to even stand, to even try
it does not dampen the darkness,
or brighten the sky,
or make you pretty, or bring you Love
or fill your head with marbles and sunshine
when you close your tired eyes
it does not heal you,
the healing,
it does not hold your hand
and yet
-
A. Wylde
April 17th, 2023
NaPoWriMo 15/30
I forged something new (14/30)
I forged something new in some faraway town
on the outskirts of everything,
hours from anything,
a little place for me to just be
little old me
and the thing is you always smell the poem on the wind
before the dust settled, something eerily familiar settled in
A stone’s throw is almost on the nose
I didn’t know my neighbors when I moved in down the road
and up the street, or up the river so to speak
is a past I wordlessly approached
a thunderous silence I never meant to unleash but
I don’t need to know you to know that you
are a reflection of all the things
I am still scared to see
in me
-
A. Wylde
April 17th, 2023
NaPoWriMo 14/30
On lost Love (13/30)
A Lover lost is a but Lover still
and even by another name’s divine
for only can that Lover yet fulfill
the yearning produced by a heart entwined
We know but shirk the truth when confronted
that gone is just a theory, much like time
and truer is that what we once wanted
cements in us without reason or rhyme
If I let a Lover go, I kiss them
On the forehead each night before I sleep
from far or wide, Love blossoms from the stem
and all my Love was big enough to keep
And in my dying days I will Love you
and not just “still” but “now” and “real” and “true”
-
A. Wylde
April 17th, 2023
NaPoWriMo 13/30
work / life / balance (12/30)
How misled we are,
spotlight on work / life / balance
and work, too, is life
-
A. Wylde
April 14th, 2023
NaPoWriMo 12/30
Luminescent scars (11/30)
The one where I lose you looms brightly
in my collection of luminescent scars
I’ve forgotten the details, the carelessness and fear
I’ve forgotten the path, but remember the pain
The one where I get so close but pull back rattles it’s cage
nestled in among the lifetimes of grief and of chase
Tell me why we both know the colors of the room around us
In an instant, even from so many thousands of lifetimes away
The one where I hurt you is jumping, shaking
the one where I die before I get there sits still
the many still stained the color of my doubts are easy to pick out
and in all my wisdom, I can’t yet see which one I have here
-
A. Wylde
Finalized April 14th, 2023
NaPoWriMo 11/30
you know? (10/30)
Once I said a sentence that threw everything into a frenzy,
went down in infamy, I write different to how I speak really
the sentence was this:
“that’s the point of a highway,
there are no turns you can’t make with one hand,”
to which she replied,
What are you even saying? I don’t understand you half the time
& she also told me, I speak Spanish, but like, in English
you know?
I didn’t know I knew Spanish until I heard that but that’s true
My English sounds like it went in and came
back out an online translator a couple times
but also I just don’t like rules
like how definitely is ugly but definately is prettier and
only one of them is “right”
Sometimes I just gotta do as nothing as possible
I never met anyone who thinks like I think really
and I feel like if you know me you can hear this like I’m
saying it out of my own mouth and if you
don’t know me you’re prolly like what the fuck even
But what the fuck, even
you know?
I been pretty down and dark and pretty messed up a lot
and I’m still kinda all that stuff now but the thing is
I never wanted to be anyone but me yet
and I didn’t even get weird with it before
so I’m just kind of excited for the weird with it part
-
A. Wylde
April 14th, 2023
NaPoWriMo 10/30
otherside (9/30)
I have honed in on the sensation of being viewed by a future me
I will be sitting quite still, and I’ll have a thought and
I can tell that I am presently in a moment past
being viewed from the otherside of failures
and celebrations I am just now only
wondering at
So I am sitting quite still, on a cloud, with a soulmate, and I look
at them and I say, “can you even believe we are young
and hot and we have no kids?” and they can feel it
too, how we are both there in the
future present, older (and hot)
each with our kids
“Remember when we could sit on the cloud couch all day and
watch Elementary and you’d draw and I’d play my little
games, and there were no tiny tugs on our sleeves or
demands for our attention and we were so young
then, so unaware of just how fucking beautiful
our lives could be
And so I’ve been there inside of the looking glass and I’ve
given and received the reminder of my youth, and I
get to carry on in any manner I choose until one
day that moment finally comes and I am on
the otherside, with a soulmate, looking
back at all we made true
-
A. Wylde
April 13th, 2023
NaPoWriMo 9/30
Our whole life (8/30)
As you open the gorgeous dark wood front door my mother installed,
picture window with cut stained glass refracts the
stunning Colorado sun
you’ll see the staircase hugging two story walls,
chase them down the hall to my one time safe haven
vivid crimson embrace, you’ll notice
the poems carved into the paint, faint but
detectable still
To your right are the grand sitting and dining rooms the
baby grand piano we got once somewhere for free, never tuned
sat there looking pretty all my youth
if that’s a metaphor I’ll leave it up to you
travertine floors hand-laid, my
mother’s hands again
what you’re getting at this price is a whole cosmos,
our whole life
Follow the hallway to your left and find a charming home office
here you’ll put your desk, start your business, watch your
children play online games while you make your own way
and just through the laundry room you’ll find the garage
where your kids will build “go-carts” from
skateboards and cardboard boxes,
jump on pogo-sticks when it’s too cold to be outside
stash butterfly nets and tennis rackets they’ll
use to build inventions instead of
just for sport
A branch off the entry takes you through to the kitchen,
ten-foot double french doors to the yard, look
hard enough and you can see her fingerprints there
on the kitchen island she added you’ll
sing happy birthday, sort bills,
make sack lunches when the money doesn’t come
it’s not like you’ll always have family dinner but
sometimes you will, and you’ll stand
around here to make it
together
In the living room you’ll learn to play guitar
I think you can really start to see the deal you’re getting
all that life that was lived, it’s yours too
now with the family pushed out,
the whole god-damned thing,
whole American dream, it’s just ripe
for the taking
again
You’ll open Christmas presents around the fireplace,
your safety-seeking baby boy will watch his comfort movie
four times a day for a year, right here
can you see it?
Can you taste all the days you’ll acquire?
It’s not just this house that you’re buying it’s
everything this house meant at the time that it
went underwater, all the hope it still held and the dreams
it wasn’t finished with yet, and the
family it grew before it-
before the bank took it back
all that’s included for free, it’s a
steal
Anyways, do you have time to see the master bedroom?
You’ll love the his and hers sinks,
and I can’t wait to tell you what losing it all did to
him and to her
-
A. Wylde
April 12th, 2023
NaPoWriMo 8/30
Turns to dust (7/30)
I’ve long collected books and kept them with me
how many times I’ve moved, I moved them too
I have it in my mind to build a library
some place for my children to dream in
some thing to leave behind for them so when I pass
they’ll still have all the ideas and words to clutch
but it occurs to me that
my grandfather passed
and left his library behind him
and no one loved it quite how he did and it went
the way of the wind, and it summons a sullenness
and maybe that’s how all this hoarding books will end
Isn’t it ego to delight in a concept of legacy?
Why are we never satisfied with what we breathe?
I am two walking legs, God willing
and still I ruminate on what I want to leave behind me
What about what I want to
lightly brush with my pinky finger,
or tend to, hold, or press to my cheek?
Is it vanity that leads me to think of my life from a
past where I’ve already gone,
or is it that momentary brush with mortality I
avoid facing when
my focus is on a list of heirlooms, like so many volumes my
children will be individuals who may or may not
seek, appreciate, desire, want what I want
or what I want them to want
I’ve long collected words and phrases and slipped them into pockets
long turned my ruminations into prose and poems and poems
and I leave them here not to outlive me or
uplift or protect my name but because
putting language on a page is the single best part
of my days
and I love the books that way, too
so I’m thinking more about the sizable library that
I myself will wander in and play
thinking of how to best cultivate the space for
my own love of language to be spotlit on stage and to
meet death as an old friend one day, and when
I leave behind the library I Loved
it will have fulfilled its highest ambition
and departed from my pride, it won’t have to be sad if
all its function is used up and it
simply turns to dust
-
A. Wylde
April 11th, 2023
NaPoWriMo 7/30
still, here, now (6/30)
By the time something’s gone wrong
and if plans B through E aren’t enough
I’ll have already analyzed the data and concluded precisely
seven ways I can improve my estimates for next time you see I
am a little afraid to be out of control
Or another way to look at it is
afraid to acknowledge that I
always already am
It’s unhelpful how often this helps me,
this fretting and planning and thinking and planning and fretting
how often a problem truly is pre-solved
a complication strategically avoided
Or another way to look at it is
I had solutions to obstacles that never came and
my life was spent on those plans all the same
I want so much to have quiet
and I’ve been seeking it full-speed, head-on but Love
quiet is not full-speed,
head-on
quiet is still
quiet is still, here, now
not next time, tomorrow, or once everything goes just right
not plans F through Z, or better data, or sleepless nights
up in a cold sweat about insubstantial threats
quiet is still
quiet is still, here, now
and I still haven’t found quiet now
still haven’t found quiet here
yet
-
A. Wylde
April 8th, 2023
NaPoWriMo 6/30
when I quake (5/30)
The walls in my home are tactile
ocean waves, mountain ranges, tiny peaks
I press my hands to them while I think because
they feel like memories
I rely on things that don’t give way when I press, push
when I quake
I steady myself by things that don’t break
when I break
-
A. Wylde
April 7th, 2023
NaPoWriMo 5/30
one thing Less (4/30)
I bought a little house with no bathroom mirror and I’m
disinclined to correct this
it feels reckless to do so ill-considered
what does the mirror compel?
what does it conduct?
I’m always surprised when I remember to question
the things we don’t have to question
I get a funny look when I say I want
Less, and
I do
I want so much less of all of this, to make room
I want space to escalate and disperse,
increase and extend,
unfurl
I want a life that looks like
what I wish I saw more of in the world
Too many things
make me thoughtless
too many options make me numb
too much and much and on and on and my head
fills up with wind and I go stale
I want know what I can create
with all that freed up space
when what I look like is just
one thing
Less, I’m
thinking of
-
A. Wylde
April 6th, 2023
NaPoWriMo 4/30
We planted seed here (3/30)
We planted seed here,
but lured by greener pasture;
harvest left to wilt
-
A. Wylde
April 3rd, 2023
NaPoWriMo 3/30
These old feet (2/30)
I’m looking down at my feet, battle-worn
barefoot, wounded, unsightly
but tough, toughened
thick-skinned survival
bear me through the trek
I wonder out loud how long I have been running
The year my father died was the
same year my family lost our childhood home,
spinning me headlong into breakneck pace, I
tried first to part with my urge for familiar,
make-shifted “home” in every trace of absent
then stumbled into home I couldn’t keep,
wept, deep
made up beds for all retired horrors
held my breath as they’d each gently doze
but forgot how not to lose myself again and I
unearthed them
and running is the pace that lulls their sleep
Only now I know the searching is a wound
I know the nature of the ever deeper hole
and all the seeking never brought home back
and the running never granted my control
This year I fought myself a new seed
as though I raised the timber, feet on earth
and once inside the the walls of my inception, hands on
knees and shins pressed to the wooden floor
Silence displayed my stillness, uniquely raw
healing is the harm anew, anew
I know how to leave now, that’s a skill
I know how to lose, and how to grieve
and even in the torment I can notice
the luxury, liberty, a refuge
I pause to take it in
just for a moment
safe enough to
ponder these
old feet
-
A. Wylde
April 2nd, 2023
NaPoWriMo 2/30
My body remembers (1/30)
My body remembers you in shoulders holding tension
even as I am aimless or forget
my body remembers you in flesh-molds teeth make against soft tongue
even as I pour silence from my lips
Even as I sleep, my body remembers you in vivid dreams,
I’m running for my life but trip,
my legs move only in slow motion
no matter how hard I try I cannot keep my eyes open
and when I wake, my body remembers you in the shapes
my fingers lightly trace across my arms
With all the evidence of evil, I set out to be your antidote
a commitment to kindness as impenetrable as your chaos
a neutralizer for the poison you impart
and not knowing any better, I became a vessel, fortress, citadel
a never-ending home for other’s rage
my durability striking, I was lured toward perpetuity
until once I broke and broke and am broken still
My body remembers where the breach is
I know what I can take before I fracture
I know now how the water floods the town
-
A. Wylde
April 1st, 2023
NaPoWriMo 1/30