The Road Best Not Taken

NaPoWriMo 6 April: “This one takes its inspiration from Yentl van Stokkum’s poem, “It’s the Warmest Summer on Record Babe,” which blends casual, almost blasé phrasing with surreal events like getting advice from a bumblebee. In your poem today, try writing with a breezy, conversational tone, while including at least one thing that could only happen in a dream.”

 Okay. What can I say? (Other than this poem might not stay up very long…) At least I’m on prompt today. And I tried. Really, I tried… May Frost forgive me.

The Road Best Not Taken, by Elizabeth Boquet
with apologies to Robert Frost

The next time I come to that fork,
(you know the one, where two roads diverge)
I won’t be taking the one less-traveled again.
At first peek, I thought I spotted a carpet
of soft moss between two lanes of trees
with shade on offer, but as I made my way,
from a sudden puddle, bubbled up a mossy jaw
that clamped and glued my feet in a green,
Jell-O-ish thing meme-screaming,
“This could be a poem!  Words fail,
but poetry speaks! Poems are windows
to the soul! Write on! Write on! Write on!”
The trees folded their leaves into origami
teeth and tossed them in the moss, better to bite
and frighten me, before their magic trick:
Up rose two rows of music stands. Each one
had a mannequin waving its baton to the beat
of the memes still screaming round my feet.
With no way to move my below, I grooved
my above in a dance something like the twerk.
The dummies stopped and stared—they couldn’t
move their middles. Only their arms swung in the air.
With no more beat to scream its memes,
the jaw of moss dove deep down underground.
This freed my feet to flee back to my desk,
turn this prompt into a mess, and hope
that this has made no difference whatsoever.