Jubilee on the Square

April is National Poetry Month.  I had hoped to write and post more poetry this month here on this blog, but time has a way of getting away from me, and now spiders have begun to build webs in the corners of my blog, and the month is nearly over. 


Some of the bloggers that I visit have been writing and posting a poem every day from a list of poetry prompts.  I didn't sign up to do that because I knew I wouldn't get it done.  I thought I might use the prompts, however, to occasionally give me a jumping off point for my poetry.  You can see the list of prompts on the March 30th entry of JL Dodge's blog here if you are interested.


The poem I am writing for today is using the first prompt in the list which goes like this: "Grab the closest book. Go to page 29. Write down 10 words that catch your eye. Use 7 of the words in a poem. For extra credit, have 4 of them appear at the end of a line."


The ten words that I chose from page 29 of a nearby book were: particular, concoctions, flood, unsavory, fireworks, camp, mopping-up, clairvoyance, bless, and grudge.  I used seven of the words, which I underlined, but I didn't get the extra credit.  (I thought I was doing well just getting the poem written without aiming for overachieving!)  Every summer a street fair called the Jubilee Festival comes to my town, and I chose that as the subject of my poem.

JUBILEE ON THE SQUARE

The carnies wash in on a Friday night

in a flood of pick-up trucks

and tractor trailer rigs.

Just another small Midwestern town 

on their long list of summer gigs.

Ready to set up rides for the street fair,

unsavory-looking men dribble out,

until there's a puddle of them

ebbing to and fro in the town square

smoking and spitting and ambling about.

They set up camp to hawk their gambling games

and their deep-fried, artery-clogging concoctions.

Haggard faces on tattooed men with no names,

gypsies who have thrown to the wind all precautions.

They aren't particular as to where they sleep.

One town is as good as the next.

Everywhere they go, they're judged by the company they keep.

Why they choose such a life leaves many perplexed.

At the end of the week is the fireworks show.

While the townspeople line up to gasp and exclaim,

the carnies start mopping-up, getting ready to go.

Nothing left behind to show they were here

and on to the next town,

they're all the same, all the same.