National Poetry Month - Blog Posts

“A Simple Thesis Poem”

Why did the chicken cross the road?

The age old question

To make a better life for zirself?

Did zir walk or perhaps run away from the flames that were on the other side?

We never talk about what zir found on the other side, thoroughly

Did this chicken find a message in a bottle telling them it will all be okay?

Or a worn down album from Sting and The Police?

Zir may stop to pick up the classic vinyl if zir found it laying on the busted sidewalk to listen to the poetry in their lyrics

The chicken makes it across the road

To pick up the record

To realize there is no record player to properly enjoy their poetry

Finding an old Gatorade bottle

The flavor Fierce Grape

Maybe purchased at Trader Joes

The Mecca of grocery stores

Thoughts of childhood soccer games

Slightly dramatic

And traumatic running through their brain waves

Zirs thirst no longer quenched

Remembering to be kind to the earth that continues to hold zirself up day and night

Throwing it away in the waste basket adjacent to where they found that fiercely delicious poetry created by the Police

That does not sting

Zir notices a couple holding hands

Within one block their hand lock changes several times

Are they trying to find comfort in how they show affection?

Can they not comfortably hold hands because their love has become less delicious?

Did their love get too close to the sun like Icarus’s wings?

Will their love melt back into each other or into other’s hearts?

We will never know the answers to all these questions

We will never know why the chicken truly crossed the road

What we do know is this

Zir chicken struts across the road to pen poetry for zirself

Zir chooses to share their poetry with everyone else

In time

On zir terms

Not to impress

Or be cohesive

Simply to get through another day

Deciphering messages found in other’s poetry and empty Gatorade bottles…(Panku)

© Elizabeth Sophia Strauss

Hymn narodowy Polski offical video

भारतीय राष्ट्रगान offical video

BELATED happy National Poetry Month!

“I Know Crips Live Here” by Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha

“Prayer for Werewolves” by Stephanie Burt

“Tin Busket” by Jenny George

“Give Ear to My Words (Psalm 5)” by Ernesto Cardenal

“Penelope / Odysseus” by Alex Peery Clark @two-bees-poetry

“Achilles / Patroclus” by LJ Moore

“First They Came for the Jews” by Pastor Niemöller

“Two-Headed Calf” by Laura Gilpin

“she asked me if i believed in god and i told her that when i was four i almost drowned in a public pool and in my panic mistook a stranger for my father.” by @inkskinned

“all this living is catching up to me” by @hauntedomens

“The Hymn of Patroclus” by Penelope L. P. @penelopelpa

“The first lines of emails I’ve received while quarantining” by Jessica Salfia

“Song for Baby-O, Unborn” by Diane di Prima

“Question” by May Swenson

“Young People” by Richie Hofmann

“The Bronze Arms” by Richie Hofmann

“The Trans Agenda is to Keep My F*cking Friends Alive” by Sol Rios

“For a Student Who Used AI to Write a Paper” by Joseph Fasano

“The Boy Scout Pledge” by Michael Glatze

“How to Watch Your Brother Die” by Michael Lassell

“We Have Enough Dead Friends” by Lena Oleanderson @lena-oleanderson

Happy National Poetry Month!

Poetry recs:

“On Meeting a Stranger in a Bookshop” by Oscar Williams

“Clean Socks” by Anna Kate Stanley

“14 Lines from Love Letters or Suicide Notes” by Doc Luben

“2AM, and the Rabbinical Students Stand in their Bathrobes” by Yehoshua November

“I Remembered” by Sara Teasdale

“a poem to all the dead things” by Ava (@amethyst.hour on Instagram)

“The Raven” by Edgar Allan Poe

“I want to see the tulips in Holland.” by @byrdieprose

salutation seeker, 4/4/24

indoor ocean, 4/3/24

this piece was inspired by a conversation I had with a kid. we were playing with some wooden toy fish and we spilled the whole box of them on the floor, and then he told me that the carpet was the ocean. i loved that imaginative moment. i've been in a few conversations about tapping into your inner child recently, and i myself have been trying to grasp onto more moments of imagination like we had so freely as children.

okay, but for real, this is my fav AI art piece that I've ever gotten from my haikus. gotta love the wombo dream app.

A haiku about feeling addicted to my phone from 4/3/24

well-slept ignorance, from 4/1/24

i've been reading the sandman comics, so this haiku was inspired by that, and also by a particularly good night of sleep i got.

i used artbreeder for the first time today to make this one. it's interesting playing with some new programs.

eternal present

another haiku from April 1st

Happy April! And national poetry month!

I write this haiku about staying up late reading with my roommate.

For the third year in a row, I am writing haikus every day in April! This is my first one from April 1st. I will try to make one of these every day.

The ai app I use to make these just added a watermark which I was a little bummed about. Bahhh the gods of capitalist paywalls have smited me once again!

I hope you are all having a wonderful day :))

alien           4/8/21

sometimes my moments

and awkward blips convince me 

i am an alien