Persona

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I can read  minds, you know, and it’s not always pleasant. 
Like right now, you’re showing interest and kind of nodding along like you totally buy into what I’m telling you, because 
that’s the persona you want to project: openmindedness.
But what you’re really thinking is that my purported ability to 
read minds is totally bonkers, and I must be, too. 

We all have personas that we try to sell.
Intellectual, confident, bad ass, honest and open…
Yep, that last one is a projection, too. I mean, maybe you are 
honest and open. I’m not saying you aren’t. 
But you also want to be seen as honest and open,
because that’s your persona. 

So here’s the problem with reading minds:
I can read who you are, who you think you are, 
who you think other people think you are,
who you wish you were, who you wish others would think you were…
That's a lot of reading, and -- as I said -- not so pleasant. 

So, what about me? Who am I? Who do I think I am? 
Who do other people think I am? Besides bonkers, that is. 
I really haven’t a clue. What do you think I am, a mind reader?

It’s National Poetry Writing Month (NaPoWriMo)!

Day Six prompt from NaPoWriMo.net: In your poem today, try writing with a breezy, conversational tone, while including at least one thing that could only happen in a dream.

The Odious Ode

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To think that something so revered
could set my teeth to grinding gears,
	one only needs to ken
	I hate to structures bend.

Too oft I fail to recollect 
the rules an ode dost interject.
	I’m simply left to guess
	and strive to do my best.

I’m sure this poem proves my case
though I confess 'twas penned in haste;
	the ode – no friend to me –
	remains a mystery.

It’s National Poetry Writing Month (NaPoWriMo)!

Day Five prompt from NaPoWriMo.net: write a poem in which you talk about disliking something – particularly something utterly innocuous, like clover. Be over the top! Be a bit silly and overdramatic.

Horizontal Rain

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It blusters, it billows,
the rain comes in droves.
It's typical winter 
on the north Oregon coast. 

No point in umbrellas,
The wind is a beast;
shreds the cloth with its talons,
snaps the ribs in its teeth.

The rain hits you sideways
soaking deep to the skin,
but springtime comes swiftly
to atone winter's sins.

Now the rain’s slightly warmer
when it slaps at your face.
Umbrellas still useless
as the winds keep their pace. 

You can spot season’s changes:
birds perched high lest they drown,
and the newly sprung flowers
soon blown flat to the ground. 

It blusters, it billows,
the rain comes in droves.
It's a typical spring day
on the north Oregon coast.

It’s National Poetry Writing Month (NaPoWriMo)!

Day Four prompt from NaPoWriMo.net: craft [a] short poem that involves a weather phenomenon and some aspect of the season. Try using rhyme and keeping your lines of roughly even length.

Stat

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He listens carefully to the recounting of symptoms,
performs some preliminary tests, 
and they discuss options for treatment.

A clean cloth is laid out at his side, with a
tidy row of tools he will use to 
perform the operation

He selects the appropriate instruments, 
and sets to work. 
Prep, syphon, excavate the offending material,
rinse, close, seal. 

“All done,” he says, washing up at the sink
with anti-microbial soap.
“I fixed the leak, cleared out the s-trap, 
and replaced some worn washers.
Your toilet should work fine now.” 

“Oh, thanks, man,” says the homeowner to the plumber. 
“You saved my life.”

It’s National Poetry Writing Month (NaPoWriMo)!

Day Three prompt from NaPoWriMo.net: Today, we challenge you to write a poem in which a profession or vocation is described differently than it typically is considered to be. 

The Art Lesson

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The canvas panel lays before me, blank and pristine.
Or almost pristine. Scuff marked and yellow tinged;  
it's been sitting around for a while.

A horizontal penciled line, not quite centered.
Top portion is the sky. 
Paint it blue, I’m told.

But skies aren’t out-of-the-tube blue on flat canvas.
They’re deep, dappled with clouds sometimes,
softened by invisible breezes at other times.
Troubled by storms, 
subdued by dawn’s tentative tendrils. 
That all comes later, I’m told.

I dab at the blue mound on waxed paper.
Oil or acrylic, I don’t recall.

Mom sits nearby, chatting with her friend
who is -- ostensibly -- here to teach me art.
They gossip – well, the friend does.
Mom listens, jokes, commiserates. Passes judgment.

A large book lies open on the table,
showing step-by-step how to recreate the painting:
an old barn on a rutted dirt road alongside a 
generic, leafless tree. 

Sketch the outlines as illustrated, I'm told.
I don’t want to. 
This is someone else's painting, not mine. 
I don’t know what the barn has seen,
what the tree has felt.

Who traversed the road to carve the ruts,
Where were they headed? 
What did they find upon arrival? 

I put lines on the canvas with a #2 pencil. 
That’s enough for tonight, I’m told.
My mom and her friend barely glance at my work,
make vague plans for a return visit. 
The friend leaves.

The half-blue, scuffed canvas sits on the floor 
in a dark corner of my bedroom closet.
For years. 

When I am forty, I paint skunk cabbage.


It’s National Poetry Writing Month (NaPoWriMo)!

Day Two prompt from NaPoWriMo.net: “write [a] poem in which you recount a childhood memory. Try to incorporate a sense of how that experience indicated to you, even then, something about the person you’d grow up to be.”

Beauty in the Eye of the Eyesore

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“Your yard gets a lot of attention from my visitors!” my neighbor calls from the edge of her manicured lawn. I survey my property, a burgeoning habitat for native plants and the native critters that feed upon them. 

“Yeah,” I reply. “Someone recently asked me if I was letting the yard go wild to reduce my property taxes.” 

My neighbor laughs, and then admits the nature of the “attention” to which she had alluded.

“My visitors ask, ‘Does she mean for her yard to look that way?’ ‘She’s planting all that brush intentionally?’” 

bear grass and buckbrush,
coyote bush and deer fern…
and skunk cabbage? Please!

I wonder if those are the thoughts of visitors or of my neighbor, or maybe of all who see my native landscaping. So be it. I settle into the rocking chair on my back porch and watch bees – legs plump with pollen – buzz through the California poppies. Ladybugs dine on aphids among the large-leaved lupines, and a pair of mourning doves peck for seeds beneath  a clump of prairie june grass. 

summer solstice nears
farewell-to-spring’s pink petals
blossoming on cue

dVerse Haibun Monday: Summer or Winter

Fleeting Blossoms

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While walking through the park, my dog Chules and I pause at an apple tree. I am drawn to the white-pink blossoms and the bees that float among them. Chules is more intrigued by the base of the trunk, and the invisible messages left there by other dogs. He lifts his leg and adds his own note to the trunk. 

cherry blossoms wane

pink petals carpet the ground 

apple tree looks on

Day 29 of National Poetry Writing Month (NaPoWriMo). In response to dVerse prompt: Haibun Monday: late cherry blossoms.

Read the Signs

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Day 26 of National Poetry Writing Month (NaPoWriMo) .

Today’s NaPoWriMo prompt is to write a sonnet. The strict rules of sonnets:

  • 14 lines
  • 10 syllables per line
  • Those syllables are divided into five iambic feet. (An iamb is an unstressed syllable followed by a stressed syllable).
  • Rhyme schemes vary, but the Shakespearian sonnet is abab cdcd efef gg (three quatrains followed by a concluding couplet).
  • Sonnets are often thought of as not just little songs, but little essays, with the first six-to-eight or so lines building up a problem, the next four-to-six discussing it, and the last two-to-four coming to a conclusion.

The “rules” are somewhat bendable, but I tried stay relatively true to the strict format. Herewith:

Sales Pitch (Read the Signs)

The sign says No Solicitors. You knock.
Beware the Dog that lunges at my door. 
“The rats and piss ants this year run amok.”
You’ll slay them all. They’ll bother me no more.

A spider egg sac hangs upon the wall.
“A hundred spiderlings your home will fill.”
More likely to my garden they will crawl
to feast upon the bugs you wish to kill. 

No rodents, bugs or crawlies bother me.
The poison’s “safe for pets,” you persevere. 
My Wildlife Habitat sign plain to see;
No chemicals have touched my yard in years.

Your sales pitch failed, now please just go away.
My “pests” will live to see another day.

Bird Speak

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Day 23 of National Poetry Writing Month (NaPoWriMo) 

Today’s NaPoWriMo prompt is to write a poem that focuses on birdsong. I wrote about birds, but not songbirds. Oh, well. Here ’tis:

Bird Speak

Scrub-jay squawks accusingly at me
from atop my backyard fence.
What offence I may have committed, 
I do not know, but he’s got that
“you know what you did” tone.
“I shouldn’t have to tell you.” 

Always a tricky situation. Do you
try to guess, and risk confessing to something
they didn’t even know you'd done? Do you 
ask forgiveness, even though you don’t know for what? 
Am I overthinking the meaning of this jay’s
strident vocalizations? 

My dog Chules joins me on the deck, and the scrub jay
aims his admonishments at the pup. 
Now I know he’s just making stuff up. 
Chules is a good boy, and – while he’s been known to
chase some wildlife now and again – 
he always gives them a good head start
lest he actually catch something. 

Rather abruptly, scrub jay zips his beak, and
flits up into the canopy of the black walnut tree. 
A large black crow swoops over my rooftop
and lands on the fence, inches from where the 
jay had been holding court moments ago. 
With one loud caw, he announces: there’s
a new corvid in town. I don’t see a badge, 
but I won’t argue.

Chules and I are forgiven our sins, so long as 
we don’t try to pull any of that crap on the crow. 
Mind you, crow has no better idea of 
our transgressions than Chules and I do. 
We agree to his terms nonetheless. 

Chules is tempted to run at the crow and scare him off the fence,
but thinks better of it when he remembers being previously 
dive-bombed by said bird for just such behavior. 
I go back to pulling weeds, and the scrub jay… well, 
we likely won’t hear much from him for a while.