Eight Days a Week

It's the end of the first week of National Poetry Month, and I do have seven poems, and another to write today, the eighth, on the 8th. Yes, many of us, poets or celebrants, are writing a poem a day.

Every April, I get 30 drafts, some that develop into real poems after tweaking or deep revision, some that get left behind forever, and some that turn out to be "gift" poems, the ones that fall out whole. I am always amazed and delighted, once I've got a poem out there in the world, to realize how many of my published poems were generated in these April celebrations.

Today's prompt, in my blog and my real-life Poetry Someday workshop, is "the need for wine or beer." I imagine I made this one up to fit the day of the week, as in TGIF, just as yesterday's prompt was "Thor, Norse god of thunder," to line up with Thursday. But other prompts have been and will be entirely random.

And that brings me to another tally--my "eight days a week" project. After the 365-days-of-reading project, I lined up my life in "categories of existence," seeing if I would indeed have seven, to line up with the days of the week, but I had eight, and I don't believe in linear time, so now I write about things eight days a week, sometimes doubling up, sometimes skipping or neglecting certain categories.

I am happy to report that Cranky Doodle Day is lagging behind in the tally! I am not very cranky these days! (I do sort of doodle. These would be verbal doodles, on scaps of paper that pile up in various areas and turn into poems, blog entries, job applications, or to-do lists.  And I do sing nonsense songs around the house.)

So I was looking for anything to complain or crank about, and I only came up with these:

1) An editor wanted to remove two commas from a poem, saying they were ungrammatical.  (There was a reason for them, but it surely wasn't worth explaining or arguing about.) I said it was fine to take them out. I think Mary Oliver would agree.

2) My husband has a bad cold (poor him!), but now I might be getting it just before I have to do a poetry reading in Chicago on Sunday. Water, juice, tea! (Oh! Wine, beer!)

3) It's raining. What's the point in cranking about the weather?!  Soon, soon, it will be warm and sunny, and, as far as I know, this rain isn't particularly acid or toxic. It will bring May flowers.

In the background of Cranky Doodle Day is Crafty Doodle Day and, alas, I'm behind on crafty things like poetry collages and the book purse, but soon I will be making a 5x7 piece of art work for a local exhibit (it shall remain anonymous until sold to benefit the gallery, so I won't say any more about it here!), as, I hope, will my actual artist husband, once he gets over his bad (poor him!) cold.

So, not cranky! Rain, rain, go or stay, then come back on the eighth day... Not logical! Non-linear! Math challenged!

So, today's song is, of course, "Eight Days a Week," by The Beatles.
--book about final world tour here
--book about New Zealand tour here (scroll down)

--info on the single here

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April 8 poem-a-day prompt here:

the need for wine or beer