National Poetry Month

In honor of April being National Poetry Month I have tried to read a poem every day. I haven't, but I've read a lot more poems in the past month than ever before in my life. So that's something, right? Here are two of my favorites so far:

Lust for Life

The elephants ate each other then they dreamed
of eating elephants till their captors came
to feed them. Then they died. My meth lab
tends to explode. I move to a new one
like a hermit crab. I give the gift of gab.

The truth gets me hard. Song selection
is key. The idiot Swedes do a number on me.
They invent refrigeration and sleep in shifts.
I'm tired of being compared to Britney Spears.
She's so pretty. I'm covered in petroglyphs.

That sorcerer bewitched my penis!
I'm speed and space, an Aztec princess.
The truth makes me hurl, the truth's a mistake.
John Milton jumps out of my birthday cake.

The psyched Mohican oils the beaver.
Fruit Stripe gum soon loses flavor.
Everything's flammable. Everything's flash.
Postmen like doctors and doctors like cash.

By Michael Robbins, in the April 12, 2010 New Yorker.

Good Night

It is late
I stand
In front of your desk
Saying something inane
You fiddle with papers
Not looking at anything
Work is over yet
We stay

I smile
You are, after all, very cute

We leave the building
Casually
Like it doesn't matter

There is a beautiful moon
We say Good Night

I unhurriedly stroll to my car
Humming some 1950s love song

I speed-limit home
to
Walk my dog
Give fresh water to the birdbaths
Eat my dinner
Choose my clothes for tomorrow
Set the coffee timer
Slide between my bamboo sheets
And dream
Of you

By Nikki Giovanni in Bicycles: Love Poems, Harper Perennial, 2010