April is National Poetry Month. Thirty days for celebrating words, wordsmiths, and the poets who subvert the status quo.

Do you think Donald Trump reads poetry? Maybe he should put the Twitter down and pick up some Walt Whitman. Whitman wrote,

This is what you shall do: Love the earth and sun and the animals, despise riches, give alms to every one that asks, stand up for the stupid and crazy, devote your income and labor to others, hate tyrants, argue not concerning God, have patience and indulgence toward the people, take off your hat to nothing known or unknown or to any man or number of men, go freely with powerful uneducated persons and with the young and with the mothers of families, read these leaves in the open air every season of every year of your life, re-examine all you have been told at school or church or in any book, dismiss whatever insults your own soul, and your very flesh shall be a great poem and have the richest fluency not only in its words but in the silent lines of its lips and face and between the lashes of your eyes and in every motion and joint of your body.

Mark was a poet, an award-winning one. While he was out walking across America for something bigger than himself, he was writing poems, like this one:

sheep death

The earth / died / a little / today / it dies / a little / every day / because / I think / there are too many / ways / for people / to make / death / without / realizing / they’re making death / yesterday / I saw / a sign / next to a pasture / of / sheep / it said / be careful / there’s a gas pipeline / in the dirt / the sheep / didn’t/ seem to understand / they just looked / at the sign / and/ waited for whatever / form / of / death / was next

Take some time this month to read some poetry. Let it slow you down, open your mind, and drop rhymes into that space.

I just discovered George Watsky. I’m richer for that. If you don’t like Whitman, maybe you’ll dig Watsky.