PAD Challenge Day 27: A Three-fer!

Today's prompts from Write Better Poetry and NaPoWriMo: (1) Write a "believe"and/or "don't believe" poem, and (2) look over The Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows, and pick one of the many words coined there to describe emotions and experiences for which there wasn't already a word, then write about it. 

The prompts wouldn't have been that hard to combine today, but I didn't try that hard to do so. Instead, I came up with two poems for the first prompts and one for the second. I usually try to write a poem about my birthday on my birthday (today!), so that was one of the "believe" prompt poems. The other is about my younger granddaughter's infatuation with unicorns. The poem for the NaPoWriMo prompt is about the word "pâro," whose definition is found in my epigraph. I took some literal inspiration from the accompanying video for the word on that website.

At Four, She Believes in Unicorns
 
An invisible one trots about the house
and whinnies when it's hungry.
She loves to draw them with fat oval torsos
and spindly stick legs, pointy ears and horns
and big smiley faces. Even pictures of horses
in her preschool papers and coloring books
become unicorns, thanks to a magic-wand crayon.
This is how a horse can become blue with a pink mane
and a rainbow-colored spike on its head.
Even unsuspecting zebras and cows can be transformed.
Today she drew me a birthday card with backward Ps
and a Technicolor unicorn. If only I could ride it back
to that magical four-year-old's land
where there was still so much more to believe in.

Big Zero
 
I don't believe in round numbers;
there's nothing magical about them.
No milestone, no benchmark
any more important than any other.
 
So what?
I'm 70 today.
 
I don't feel any different than yesterday at 69.
Some days, I admit, I feel 17, and some days 71.
On my birthday today I feel more like the latter.
 
There's a pharma commercial where people say
they're 53 but feel like 35, or 64 and feel like 46.
Yesterday  I wouldn't touch that miracle drug -
I wouldn't want to be 69 and feel 96.
Today I could be 70 but feel  like 07,
then I could drop the zero and be a little kid again.
But I wouldn't want to.
 
Instead I'll employ the skip-counting method
my favorite second-grader is learning in school.
I got seven candles on my birthday cake today,
one for each ten years. If I skip-counted,
not by tens, but by four, five, or even  six,
I could shave off decades.

Pâro
 
n. - the feeling that no matter what you do
is always somehow wrong.
- The Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows
 
Murphy may have felt this way
when he came up with his Law,
except there should be a corollary:
"If there is a wrong way to do something,
you will find it."
 
I read so many articles in magazines
and papers for advice:
 
"Worried About High Blood Pressure?"
"Worried about Toenail Fungus?"
"Worried About Nuclear War?"
 
"Confused About Refinancing?"
"Confused About Your Preteen?"
"Confused About the Universe?"
 
"Tweeting: You're Doing It Wrong"
"Folding Laundry: You're Doing It Wrong"
"Coughing: You're Doing It Wrong"
 
"Here's the Right Way to Cook Pasta"
"Here's the Right Way to Strip Wallpaper"
"Here's the Right Way to Be Happy"
 
"Why You Should Drink Red Wine Daily"
"Why You Should Avoid Red Wine"
"Why You Should Wake Up Early"
"Why You Should Sleep In"
"Why You Should Go on a Diet"
"Why You Should Never Diet Again"
 
I'm done with the so-called experts,
so I put all the magazines away,
and the newspaper too.
Then my wife says,
"You folded that paper wrong."