Is it National Poetry Month already?

I don't read a lot of poetry. I read too fast for it too make much sense unless someone reads it out loud to me. Unfortunately, I live alone nowadays, and no one ever does that any more. I do write poems from time to time though, so I will offer the following in celebration. They were written some years back with the help of one or two of those magnetic fridge poetry kits (which at the time were available solely from the coffee shop next to where I did my laundry in Minneapolis and now they're all over the place in all kinds of dopey themes just like those Chicken Soup for the NASCAR Soul books).

And for you purists, yes I know the kits don't have punctuation. I added it myself. I'm compulsive that way.

Magnetic North

i.
I recall a thousand lies & no place easy.
These blue moments,
some rain,
& an enormous singing vision.

I felt the knife of your sweet & sordid urge.
A sweet hot lake,
our forest,
& the powerless dreaming flood.

I picture the soaring essential beauty.
Languid whispers
beneath trudging music
& a stormy shadowed moon.

I needed your shaking rusted worship.
Crushed petals,
my screams,
& a shining bitter ache.

ii.
I told her that her gift would not please those cool mothers,
but it only played into the ugly dreamlike moment.

I did no screaming yet my breast stormed.
Her bitter vision irons out my will.

iii.
Together our power of recall may be weak,
but these singing girls need only picture some shadowy gift
& there they lie, no less mad or lazy for it.

And when I said I would not trudge on your road after
a thousand frantic trips over it,
it was as though I could soar above those blue lakes.

iv.
My days before you were less easy.
Our sweet language recalls a time I never did have,
shining with play and dreams:

A love with a thousand essential parts-
some frantic, some cool.
A need like enormous delicate storms
and still water.

All true.

v.
In a dream I will drive where I please,
cook when I want.

I may watch some TV or read,
but you will have to ask to play with me
and what we say could crush our sleeping summer lust.

vi.
After our vision cools and you tell me
I can cry and scream and live,
it is time to eat.

You always like these chocolates.
Take a thousand,
they are tiny and essential:
bittersweet produce from the garden of this love.

vii.
It's a bitter path I drive.
You always stop me with your smooth stare;
its shadows rob me of most of my gift.
My apparatus for asking is crushed & sad,
my need true but now so tiny;
a fast car trudging.

viii.
Woman,
your chanted language floods the garden.
My tongue plays easy & sweet across your need.
My power, languid now, is nearby when I want it.

As I recall its use and I read your hot beauty,
I picture a rock,
the moon,
a forest
& I could drive you there in the rain.