Stuck in Limbo

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There is nothing new under sun or stars, so 
bleak a plight we dread admit as much. 
Life’s meaning now on apathy depends;
and even that we scarce rely upon.

A rose is a rose is a 
rose, especially if that rose is red,
primary on the color wheel,
predictable on barn or barrow.

You see it in our eyes, glazed 
over and toneless and done with
useless tears. Instead, we let rain
track our cheeks in sham rills of water. 

There’s nothing to do now but sit beside 
old memories: books with cracked spines, the
way new snow appeared impossibly white,
and the cackled surprise of egg-laying chickens.


It’s the last day of National/Global Poetry Writing Month (NaPoWriMo). I’m taking today’s prompt from dVerse, where we are challenged to write a Golden Shovel poem. The form:

*Choose a line from a poem that resonates with you.
*Build your poem so each line ends with a word from that line.
*Keep the words in order, forming the original line down the right margin.
*Let your poem move in its own direction.  Surprise us!
*Include attribution (after [poet])

The poem I chose was The Red WheelBarrow by William Carlos Williams. Since there are only sixteen words in the poem, I used the entire poem to form my own.

The Red Wheelbarrow, by William Carlos Williams*

so much depends
upon

a red wheel
barrow

glazed with rain
water

beside the white
chickens

*Source: The Collected Poems: Volume I 1909-1939 (New Directions Publishing Corporation, 1938)

RESPECT

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On a wall near my kitchen hangs a whiteboard, a space for grandkids to draw or write or doodle. It also bears a list of household expectations in the form of an acrostic that spells RESPECT. 

In response to this week’s dVerse Poetics prompt on The Seven Grandfather teachings, I have expanded the acrostic, adding haiku (or haiku adjacent 5-7-5’s) to reflect on each point. Herewith: RESPECT.

Respond when spoken to.

    nocturnal creatures
    turn skyward their plaintive calls
    answered by the night
	
Exhale, don’t explode.

    fire breathes hot and harsh
    wind goads it into fury
    water stills the breath	

Share

    sun shines and rain falls
    life-sustaining to us all
    flowers do not hoard

Politeness

    Wildlife etiquette?
    Was the lion ever told
    “Chew with your mouth closed?”
	
Expect good things

    each spring life unfolds
    hibernators search out food
    seedlings seek the sun

Contribute

    fast dive, talons splayed
    the prey snagged and now airborne
    there are mouths to feed

Tell the truth

    “Who?” asks the barred owl.
    “Me, me, me,” says the catbird.	
    Northern flicker laughs.

untended

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The hedgerow of knee-high slender saplings
now towers and spreads with abandon.

No longer sure of myself but –  faint and insistent – 
do I hear knocking at the door?

I should have known, of course it wasn’t;
just a large crow, pecking bugs out of the gutter.

It’s National Poetry Writing Month (NaPoWriMo)!

Day Twenty-Eight prompt from NaPoWriMo.net: 

Victoria Chang’s poem, “The Lovers,” is short and somewhat shocking, bringing us quickly from a near-hallucinatory descriptive statement to a strange sort of question, before ending on the very direct statement of a “truth.” Six lines, three sentences, and to top it off, a title that I think works for the poem but is only obliquely related to its text. Today, try writing a poem that follows the same beats: three sentences, six lines: statement, question, conclusion.

In Others’ Words

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How to make a stained glass panel. 
It’s like falling off a log:
practice makes perfect!

Make a pattern for your pieces. Otherwise,
If you fail to plan, plan to fail.
Hope for the best, but plan for the worst.

Select your glass,
half empty or half full.
One man’s trash is another man’s treasure.

Remember, the glass is
always greener on the other side.
Beauty is in the eyes of the beholder.

Cut the glass.
measure once, cut twice.
If it ain’t broke, fix it.

Solder the pieces together.
Strike while the iron is hot.
A pane is only as strong as its weakest link.

Clean the glass panel.
Cleanliness is next to godliness.
The squeaky glass gets the streaks.

Hang your panel in a safe place.
People who live in glassed houses
should not throw stones.

Admire your work.
A picture is worth a thousand words.
All’s well that ends well.

It’s National Poetry Writing Month (NaPoWriMo)!

Day Twenty-Seven prompt from NaPoWriMo.net: Start by reading Robert Fillman’s poem, “There should always be two.” Now, write your own poem in which all the verses contain the same number of lines (whether couplets, triplets, quatrains, etc.) and in which you give the reader instructions of some kind.

Cat and Mouse

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Snoozing on the back of the sofa,
one eye just a slit open to surveil,
and I see it: movement, a streak of color.

In a snap, I’m wide awake, muscles tensed,
prepared to pounce. 
I’m a missile, flying through the air.
Direct hit! I have it pinned beneath my paws,
squirming and squeaking.

I bat it around, let it free, then catch it again;
toss it in the air, even take a little nip 
to see how it tastes. 

Then suddenly it goes silent and limp.
I poke at it, but it doesn’t move.
Well, that’s no fun.

I turn away and focus on paw licking and
whisker grooming, but there it is again! 
That blur of motion. I swing around, but 
all I see is a scrawny tail slipping through
a crack in the wall. 

And this, you see, is how I write poetry,
chasing ideas as they scurry by,
pouncing on furry little words,
chewing them to see if they taste right.

Sometimes I fuss with the lines too much,
and they die right there on the paper.
Sometimes I think I’ve got the perfect phrase
pinned to the page, but it slips away and disappears.

But there are other times when it’s a clean catch,
when I finesse my prey into a perfect, plump little gift
that I proudly lay at your feet, confident of the
appreciation and praise it will garner. 

And then I –  warrior of words, slayer of syntax – 
strike out in search of another poem to wrestle.
And that, you see, is why I write poetry.

It’s National Poetry Writing Month (NaPoWriMo)!

Day Twenty-Six prompt from NaPoWriMo.net: write a poem giving the reader some insight into what keeps you writing poetry, or what you think poetry should do.

unsown

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It's time, my little raised bed garden.
This is the year I’ll plant the seeds,
and you will have them grow
a copious crop of carrots, peas and such
as I have yet to determine.

No more a fallow field of failed fecundity,
unfilled, unfulfilled… fill in the blanks.
In fairness, also faultless, as it was I who –
in seasons past – failed to plant the seeds.

A battlefield devoid of bullets.
I did not engage the enemy weeds.
No tanks rolled in to claim the ground,
no trenches dug to shelter in. 
I fled, falling, failing, foiled, felled…
so many four-letter f-words can apply.

A shallow grave without a body, living or dead.
Unsullied by shovels, spared of spades 
that may have turned up sweet surprises,
or skeletons with bleached, broken bones and 
smiling skulls. 

But not this year!
This year I will 
quell the weeds, 
plant the seeds,
and watch my 
raised bed garden grow.

It’s National Poetry Writing Month (NaPoWriMo)!

Day Twenty-Five prompt from NaPoWriMo.net: write a poem in which you use at least three metaphors for a single thing, include an exclamation, ruminate on the definition of a word, and come back in the closing line to the image or idea with which you opened the poem.

I didn’t ruminate on definitions, I suppose, but I had fun playing with words!

Control Issues ~ a villanelle

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How strangely life unfolds,
Are we merely standing by
with our fates beyond control?

At the outset we are told
we can reach beyond the sky.
How strangely life unfolds.

We set out proud and bold,
but our paths soon turn aside.
Are our fates beyond control?

We rethink what we were told.
Were they dreams or outright lies?
How strangely life unfolds.

So we struggle at the shore
to restrain the ebb tide high.
Are our fates beyond control?

Ah, the tide will ebb and flow.
Just relax into the ride.
How strangely would life unfold
if we let fate take control?

It’s National Poetry Writing Month (NaPoWriMo)!

Day Twenty-Three prompt from NaPoWriMo.net: write a villanelle, and have the poem end on a question.

Not All There

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Gerard Sekoto, Police Man on a White Horse in the Fields (1959)
Some days you’re there, but maybe not. 
Part way there and part way... where? 
How does one choose which parts 
to bring along on any given day? 

Some days you see things
that may or may not be what you see.

Some days the only thing that matters
is that the horse you are riding 
has all four feet and seems to know
where he is headed.

dVerse Poetics prompt: Exploring the Art of Gerard Sekoto.

For today’s Poetics prompt, Melissa challenges us to “choose one of the paintings featured in [today’s dVerse] post and base your poem on it. Write whatever comes to mind as you explore the colors and images of the painting. Please let us know in your post which painting you’ve chosen and credit the artist.”

I chose the painting featured above, “Policeman on a White Horse in the Fields” by Gerard Sekoto (1959). Thank you, Melissa, for the prompt.

Phoenix Falling

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no mother needed – apparently; simply born within the
patriarchal legacy, aromatic right from the start and 
already robed in the royal purple of kings

no mother needed as he rises full of promise, strong 
of his own accord, self-sufficient, one-of-a-kind,
anointed with the frankincense and myrrh of 
his father’s own funeral pyre.

no mother needed, but the father is revered, his 
honor and reputation preserved and feted for eternity,
ancestral ashes hidden away lest the paternal lineage
become tainted by the scrutiny of daylight

no mother needed to nourish him,
to prepare him for flight,
to remind him of inborn vulnerabilities,
no reference for humility and compromise,
no haven for non-transactional love

"Pull yourself up by your own bootstraps!"
ah, but the phoenix wears no such 
pedestrian footwear

and in the end, in his nest alone,
consumed by the flames of his own making,
his only solace is that a son will emerge
to give his life meaning

It’s National Poetry Writing Month (NaPoWriMo)!

Day Twenty prompt from NaPoWriMo.net: write a poem that uses an animal that shows up in myths and legends as a metaphor for some aspect of a contemporary person’s life. Include one spoken phrase.