There is a glamourless reality to the art of the poetic line. Any simpleton with a wishy washy imagination can push together heart stopping metaphors. As a hopeless romantic of language, the poet is marked as the biggest fool of the trade. In a black market of having something to say, the poet engages in clandestine rituals of language every second we're not looking. These poor fools find beauty in inhaling oxidized air that breaks down our lungs with every intake for Christsake! They go around with notebooks, pens and knives, searching for the next line to imprint into the palm of your hand.

And you'll cradle it...hoping to keep a speck of beauty, cupped in the base of a naive heart taken by this being, the poet.

No art = no city!

My soul lays homeless,
laid out for sheep
to trample and graze.

I'm only vapors of a girl
who once was scribbled
on the bridge of life's nose.

Without vowels
and constants,
the ground is nameless.

I walk aimlessly
among clumps of
flesh, eyeballs, slabs of meat
grotesquely topped
with hair roots
and toenails.

Every moment
the book lays closed,
the pen stays still,
equals the blend of a
reality that has no indicators.

The world is as uniformed
as water, some parts
cleaner than others,
my eyes housed in the murkier
parts, lips moving soundlessly
against the tide of
the United States of land-filled
discontent, waiting
for the ink to blot.

This is a day that I partially believe in.

This may seem silly to say, but as a poet, I always carry a poem in my pocket. Not literally of course, but you know, in that whole in my soul thing blah blah blah. Plus with the power of technology, I can carry a book of poems in my pocket. There's no excuse to not have poetry with you at all times.

But in the spirit of NaPoWriMo, I still do it on the actual day. This year's poem is one that every New Yorker should recognize if they ride on a NYC subway. It is Voyager by Mary Ruefle, a poem that is a part of the MTA and the Poetry Society of America's Poetry in Motion.

This poem reflects on how I feel about my life at the moment. Every time I see it on the train, I pause and repeat it to myself softly like a prayer. I feel immense comfort and wonder, while I vow to still find my miracles.

But enough about that! Without further ado, the poem:

Voyager (Mary Ruefle)

I have become an orchid
washed in on the salt white beach
Memory,
What can I make of it now
that might please you -
this life, already wasted
and still strewn with
miracles?

As a bonus, I'll add pictures of my second favorite poem in the current series, Ragtime by Kevin Young. I know I certainly have felt this way about someone:

Dark places, rough days,
I look for your claws
baited on the back of my neck
to draw out the privation
your lips once granted me,
a poisonous Mecca
that has clung to the
back of my eyelids
as my core collapses
into an asylum of memories,
blistering in the wake of your
abnegation of storms and nestled arms.