National Fools’ Month

It’s the first day of National Poetry Month and also April Fools’ Day, not that that means anyone is trying to tell poets anything, not at all. I mean, okay, fine. Poets are not the most practical people on earth. Nothing we say makes complete sense, and we waste time not making sense when we could be washing the dishes or saving the environment. Probably global climate change is all our fault. But fools? That seems excessive.

I may be making even less sense than usual right now because I spent hours and hours at work today trying to understand a spreadsheet full of technical language that had been imperfectly translated from Finnish (this is not even an April Fools’ joke), which seems to have had the approximate effect on my brain of someone punching me several times in the head, hard. I really would just like to go to bed, ideally for several weeks, but it’s National Poetry Month, so: poetry. You asked for it. You fool.

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once upon a time in the violets

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violets
the taste of blood
under my tongue

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white violets
he catches me
in the act

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until it’s too dark violets

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