April A to Z Challenge Days 1-4

I'm playing catch up here, with the first four poems uploaded as one post. I am participating in two challenges in the month of April. One is the April A to Z Challenge. The subject for that is open, so for this I chose poetry. That's right, a poem a day in April. Which leads to the second challenge which is hosted by WritersDigest.com, called (unsurprisingly) the April Poem a Day Challenge.
I'm trying to revive my blog a bit and I thought this was a good way to start.

So my inspiration this month is poetry, and I'm going to take a line from T.S. Eliot's The Wasteland and create a poem based on that line. It's challenging, and I hope I'll make it all the way through. Hopefully at the end of this month I'll have enough here for a chapbook, because that's the goal. 

So here's the first four:

A to Z Poetry Challenge April 2015

A)    April is the cruelest month

1.                                 

April stands for spring

And spring equals hope

And hope

Well, we know.

      2.

There’s a map on my jeans

So I wouldn’t lose

Myself

I forget things easily.

That by something as

Simple as

Breathing or walking

I might disappear.

What did I come in here for?

I want to be

On the floor

I like it there

Inside myself

I can’t see myself with you

Is this what I wanted?

3.

Wearing me with your eyes wanting

Could my emptiness be you-shaped?

So the pain is really

New, bright and shiny as a

Rodeo belt buckle

He still visits though

Still

That’s how I know he cares he

Still

Seeks out the terrain.

Earlier I came across another flash

Someone else in my memory

The other one runs

Like a loop

Up (and down) my thighs

It would be nice to see one

That

Maybe one that

Runs to instead of

Away

B)    Belladonna, Lady of the Rocks

Lady of the pavement, and of birth

Thinking you know how

To solve everything

Left praying, left kicking

And screaming,

Please Don’t.

Belladonna, do you

Wonder how whores live

Glass shards fills you up till you stop

Them getting their  

Needs getting met.

When Belladonna makes people

She cracks them open

Inside the head

From the inside out

Didn’t even pretend

To care.

Where those glass shards

Shred.

Because it will.

Several hundred tiny needles

From every direction

Stabbing you until the day you die.

They come from

From

Living and loving too much

Or not enough

They come from

Puddles from spring mud

and

From the roof

Dripping down

And other people too.

The place where I always head to

Is the swirl

Like the pavement and the wall

All blending together.

Because time stops

Thinking it will stop

I want to be noble, like her

Like that Belladonna chick

I wanna be.

And I would even take the swirl

Talking from life

Because life is a swirl, you know

Like a spiral or a sleeping snake.

I fight myself a lot.

Bottom falling out onto the street

Shredding my palms

And holding myself up just

like I lived before.

C)    O City, City

Evil and sensuous beneath the fog

Yes there is fog here.

Have you ever seen Vegas in the fog?

Fog not smog.  

So let’s go to Valley of Fire and be

This.

You know they filmed a bunch of movies here

Like L.A.’s trashier cousin

Like the cousin who wears daisy dukes and

Smokes and Does Things With Boys.

What is it, like Star Trek. Some

Western movies. Twilight Zone, too.

I brought lunch, and now we are

We are fragments drifting about the sky
The sin has vanished

Everything gets bleached clean

Pure, bone white and smooth.
All blue near the land

Beneath the atomic air

The darkness has fled
before the clouds.

They’re so fluffy and chunky like

Japanese pets.

I converse with old ghosts  

beside the water.

(You have to know where to look

In hidden places.)
Before I know what to say, the thought will vanish
opaque and hopeful 
over the horizon. 
A trace of sadness 
Running back or

Down what streets.  
I still see

your face in my mirror

for days after you left

And as I look for familiar landmarks 
I miss him turning away,

And now there’s nothing in the mirror

At all.

D)    Death By Water

Today I dreamed of houses underground

People lived there

Just living their lives

So focused on the dream.
I ‘d like to live like that in the land

Under the water

beyond your reach and underneath the ground.

The day was hard
And what was I trying to avoid?
Sometimes I can only see through other people

Grabbing thoughts out of the water.

It’s a stream, see?

It’s not that hard when you
Become transparent.

Become clear.  

The day was hard
Behind the light

Under the water

Invisible hands reaching through

the stream to get me

The day will come again
scared I’ll start 
walking out of the world 
no words left 
In whose heart 
the refugee will
take another road 
before help could come.