The final week of Post It Note poetry yielded just two poems. A total of 11 poems written for the 28-day project. Pitiful. I was up to my imaginary cajones in class work and could do no more than this. I did write some other, longer poems throughout the month…poems that in the beginning were meant to be short enough to fit on a post it, but in the end blossomed into longer poems. I want to tweak them and ready them for submissions.

My biggest disappointment was that I never quite got the hang of writing a tanka. I made attempts, but they were all either pretty lousy or became the seeds that sprouted into the aforementioned longer verses.

I did learn a lot from this years post-it project.

I seem to be in a Thoreau-type phase and writing a lot about flowers and fruit. That’s my short stuff. My longer stuff has been either self-reflexiive (poetry about poetry, or writing) or dark, weird, bizarre.

I’m looking forward to next years project. My after project includes cleaning up some of these longer pieces for possible publication.

wild eden

fertile, verdant path

meadow grass, a green blanket

yes, we will bloom there

we will thrive like wild eden

beneath trees thick with

sweet fruit on the boughs.

a man in the park who thinks of his life as a website

off the bus & sidewalk scramble,

beating feet & hauling ass.

man coming in opposite direction—

passes an old lady: “Next!” he shouts.

passes a young man: “Next!” again.

Passes a pretty young woman,

backs up until he faces her again:

“Previous!”

moves ahead in the crowd once more

clicking the forward & back arrows

in his mind.