April PAD is Here Again! (Day 1)

 And another year of the April Poem-a-Day Challenge is upon us! I've been rotten about writing lately, so this will be once again my annual jump start for poetic production. I've been upset and depressed about the state of our nation lately, so pardon me if some of my poetry this month has a distinct political leaning.

Once again I'll be following Robert Lee Brewer's April PAD Challenge on the Writer's Digest website, and Maureen Thorson's NaPoWriMo blog as well. Maureen's blog will focus this month on ekphrastic poetry - that is, poetry inspired by a work of art or music - and she will share links to various museum sites and others for inspiration. She also had a "warm-up" prompt from yesterday to write a "portrait" poem, so here is my result:

          

Portrait of Trump in the Colorado Statehouse

Of course, he complains about it —
he may have preferred the pumped-up superhero
from one of his digital trading cards.
But he has a point.
There’s the feathery hair, the flag lapel pin,
and the trademark long red tie,
but it’s too warm and fuzzy, too soft-focused,
like a blurred-edge pastel, and that makes
his portly image even more rounded.
 
Sir, with all due respect,
you could have done so much worse.
Shall we review your gallery of caricatures?
Or perhaps your mug shot, which looks like
a Gotham villain about to blow up City Hall?
There is one detail of the painting I like,
and that’s the mouth, an almost perfect
horizontal line, lipless, that one could call
Resting Despot Face. It’s a precious moment,
one in which you are not shouting, grimacing,
lying, threatening, whining or insulting,
but perfectly neutral, silent, as though someone
has just told you to shut the hell up.

Today's dual prompts from Write Better Poetry and NaPoWriMo: (1) Write a "best of times" and/or "worst of times" poem, and (2) write a poem that uses an art or music term that you were not previously familiar with. I used the name of the early 20th century Dutch school of modern art called "De Stijl", most famously represented by Piet Mondrian. 

De Stijl (The Style)
 
It was the best of art,
it was the worst of art.
It was nature reduced to
Its barest simplicity—
 
perpendiculars, straight lines,
intersecting, primary colors,
composition distilled
to its most basic elements.
 
It is the best of times,
It is the worst of times,
depending on who you ask.
I suggest a new flag
 
that resembles Mondrian’s
Composition No. II,
with Red and Blue,
white with bold black lines
 
describing five quadrilaterals,
a square and a rectangle filled in—
one red, one blue,
corner to corner, no overlap,
 
to represent what we feel to be
the thick borders of our beliefs,
the irreconcilable compartments
of our ideologies.