For National Poetry Month, I’m sharing poems each day, one that I’ve written followed by whatever one from three sites that share a poem a day that strikes my fancy that day.

When I heard about a young cousin going into rehab, I wrote this free write, which turned into a poem. It was directed toward her at the time.

Reflecting On This Thing Called Life

Sometimes things get thrown away
like today when workers for our landlord
threw away a table that set in the foyer
of our apartment building for years, where
we who live here would gather around it,
sit, talk and b.s. about our landlord:
how this old eyesore of a house on the hill
is in the words of one of my housemates
“the white elephant he sees how many people
he can shove up its ass.”
It's like that sometimes and perhaps 
you know that better than any of us
now as you have been taken away to 
rehab for a drug problem no one in the family
suspected. What are we now supposed to say?

It is a rough world out there, 
and getting rougher every millisecond, 
the molecules are closing in on you 
before you know it, you'll be dead --
that is, unless you straighten up, fly right
into the sun, where everything will be burned
away. You say you can't see? Good...
Let's not talk about it, share, have an open
heart, open your hand and take this
pill, this panacea for your pain, what pain
is there in suburban life, but the pain we
all feel, the pain...

Listen, even in the silence the secondhand
keeps moving, the rat-a-tat of a keyboard, 
one hand clapping 
in the wind.

Where do we go from here?
Upward mobility is a fancy name for 
the dream we dream.
I can't promise you 
the cruelty of the world 
won't try to crush you.
To put it in perspective, 
at least 300 are feared
dead in a Moroccan earthquake,
there are larger headlines to be written
than cousin goes into rehab upstate,
to be sure,
but none so personal to me than to know
what the world needs now
is to see you in it
breathing
in
out
in 
out,
the clock can be your friend,
not your enemy.

Listen, even in the silence 
the secondhand keeps moving, 
the rat-a-tat of the keyboard 
keeps rat-a-tatting along

like some jazz song from
years gone by.
It makes no sense
what we do
but we continue:
to live.

It is what she continues to do as well. For today’s poem from one of three sites that share a poem each day, I’m actually going to share two:

• “Hangman Poem: One Player Puzzle” by Anacaona Rocio Milagros on the Academy of American Poets website.
• “Sad Rollercoaster” by
  Jared Harél on Poetry Daily.

The above poems are best viewed in desktop and sometimes lansdcape on your browser of choice.