Poem in Your Pocket Day

"Pocket Poem"

If this comes creased and creased again and soiled
as if I’d opened it a thousand times
to see if what I’d written here was right,
it’s all because I looked too long for you
to put in your pocket. Midnight says
the little gifts of loneliness come wrapped
by nervous fingers. What I wanted this
to say was that I want to be so close
that when you find it, it is warm from me.
by Ted Kosser

Keep A Poem in Your Pocket Day April 18, 2019

The idea is simple: select poems you love, carry them with you, then share it with co-workers, family, and friends.

This event was created by the City of New York in 2002, and became a nationwide festivity in 2009. In the past, librarians have distributed poems to local hospitals in Charlottesville, Virginia, and winesellers in San Fransisco, California handed out books of short poems to shoppers.
According to NPR,people across the country are celebrating in unique ways this year. A sandwich vendor in Charlottesville, Virginia is putting poems in the sack lunches, rather than the customary chocolate chip cookie. A third-grade teacher in Pennsylvania had her students sew pockets on their shirts since many have no easily accessible pockets.

Poets.org recommends handwriting "some lines on the back of your business cards" or distributing "bookmarks with your favorite immortal lines."
If you're at a loss for which lines you'd like to share, printable poems to download can be found at 
https://www.poets.org/national-poetry-month/poem-your-pocket-day

Here are a few fun poems to get you started for the day 
"Lost Poems"
Anonymous

I wrote a bunch of poems,
stapled them together,
took them to a friend’s house.

But they somehow slipped
through the floorboards
and disappeared.

I never got those poems back.
I tried to rewrite them
But they weren’t the same.

One night two months later,
sleeping at my friend’s house,
we heard restless sounds,

strange little noises
that my friend insisted
were nothing but squirrels or mice.

But I pictured my lost poems
scurrying on little feet
between the floors.

"Squished Squirrel Poem" 

Anonymous

I wanted to write about
a squished squirrel
I saw on the road
near my house last week.

You can’t write a poem
about a squished squirrel,
my teacher said to me.
I mean, you just can’t do it.

Pick a sunrise or an eagle
Or a dolphin, he suggested.
Pick something noble
to lift the human spirit.

I tried. I really did. But I kept
Coming back to that squirrel.
Did his wife send him out
To fetch some food or something?

There was blood and guts
but here’s what really got me:
he had pretty dark eyes
and they glistened still.

You can’t write a poem
about a squished squirrel,
my teacher insisted,

But I don’t think that’s true.

"Hungry for Poetry"

By Ralph Fletcher

First I saw him chew
a tender Japanese haiku.

He ate a foot-long sonnet
with mustard seed spread upon it.

He downed a bag of ripe cinquains
while walking in the pouring rain.

He gulped an epic, chomped an ode,
wolfed a couplet to cure his cold.

He munched so many limericks,
they made him absolutely sick.

He tried a plate of fresh free verse;
but all that did was make things worse.

He took some onomatopoeia
to cure a case of diarrhea.

He ate a poem of sixteen lines,
and after that he felt just fine.