April remains a challenging month, right up there with December. Another NaPoWriMo down & I still question why I keep doing them. As I always say, draining churning out X poems a day is hard work. Even when the topic is one you love & love reading/learning new things about. Sure the challenge is good, the rewards often quite impressive, but there are days when with everything else that’s going on, you just don’t wanna. 

It’s quite amazing then, that we you do actually sit down at the creation station. And have a tweak. Chuck down a couple of lines. Play with an idea. How quickly the juices kick in — even if they’re completely opposite to the poem you thought you were writing. It’s remarkable how many good poems get written because you need to get them out the way to start work on the proper one.

And at the end of every month, there’s always loose lines floating round, titles, ideas with question marks, a swag of half-started, half-finished, half-abandoned drafts. Some of these I pick up & work on in the non chaos months after April. Some never go anywhere.

But today I’ve decided to try & incorporate as many of these half moments into a poem of its own as a kind of exclamation point to the month.

The closing Factoid however is something I wanted to do a big proper poem about (or several) but never quite found the time.

[NB a mini-migraine these past 24 hours has seen the delay of this blog getting posted. Would’ve been so pleasant not having to write a poem today (were it not for this head)]

*****

fungitis 

i. spores
in poetry as in the fungi kingdom
there’s a multitude of diversity

millions of spores drift among us 
without us even realising 

wanted to write a spore-based poem
that wasn’t too stat heavy 

ii. Mycelium
amazing construct doing amazing things
below our feet, all round us
without us even knowing

iii. Wood Wide Web
beautiful phrase coined by David Read
(Sir Dude) about a network way cooler
than that other WWW we’re addicted to

iv. possible titles
the fun guy
the underneath ones
the plastic eaters
the quiet hunt
The Widow’s Guide to (in)Edible Mushrooms
       book by Chauna Craig with a title 
       i think would make a terrific poem

v. whacky name poem
mushrooms have some whacky names 
a poem listing all or some of them
could be quite good fun: Wood Woollyfoot
Candle Snuff Fungus, Sticky Bun
Rosy Bonnet, Powdery Piggyback & so on

vi. split personalities
a Dr Jekyll & Mr Hyde poem
where half is about ants farming
fungi to feed the colony & the reverse 

are literally horrifying fungi 
who zombify ants eating 
them from the inside out

vii. trippy dippy
an exploration of  Alice’s adventures 
as a psychedelic mushroom experience

viii. mushroom collective nouns
as it says on the tin

ix. 
esteemed mycophile & erstwhile
avant-garde musician John Cage 
& a funny story on how his now 
famous 4’33 of silence came about

x. medical miracle workers
cholesterol reducers
organ transplant anti-rejector agents
a plethora of antibiotics

life savers on many levels

bonus. a refuse (reverse) poem … breaking down stuff
not sure what I meant by this
but it sure sounds interesting 

*****

Day 30 Factoid — Optimistic Factoid

2 buzzwords of the future: mycoremediation & ecotoxicology

while 
       wild Aspergillus fungi was found 
degrading spilled crude oil in the Gulf of Mexico 
unasked  unexpected   &   largely  unsung

various,
          other fungal enzymes have displayed talents
in degrading petroleum hydrocarbons, heavy 
metals, xenobiotics — & even some plastics

however,
            instead of hoping they’ll be able to
remediate damage done to our soil, water, & air
surely it would be far better to learn how

not to cause such devastation in the first place