Category Archives: humanity

Improv Screams

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Day 5 of National Poetry Writing Month (NaPoWriMo) 

Today’s NaPoWriMo prompt is a bit complicated to explain.

… inspired by musical notation, and particularly those little italicized –and often Italian – instructions you’ll find over the staves in sheet music, like con allegro or andante.

We are presented with three columns of words, and instructed to

First, pick a notation from the first column below. Then, pick a musical genre from the second column. Finally, pick at least one word from the third column. Now write a poem that takes inspiration from your musical genre and notation, and uses the word or words you picked from the third column.

I won’t reproduce the full columns, but the notations include gems like, “play like you are about to start crying,” “tempo di murder” and “with a hint of frenzy.” Musical genres include, “yacht rock,” “jazz fantasia” and “breakup anthem,” among others.

My selections were: genre “power ballad;” notation “improvisatory screaming;” and the word vampire.

Thus, my poem:

Screaming Meemies

A ballad not for faint of heart
this story I’m about to [scream]
a tale so foul [a shuddered moan]
derived from Satan’s basest dreams.

The clock tolled noon one fateful day.
A lightning strike; earth split a seam
and from the depths of hell arose 
a fiend astride a golden gleam.

This incubus [a prolonged shriek]
this vampire spewing blood and greed
loosed upon our hallowed grounds
to feast upon our direst needs.

A knight in armor tarnished gray,
and yet a hundred score and five,
fell at his feet [cue gnashing teeth]
to save careers (and ruin lives).

Such devastation [Banshee’s screech],
depriving souls their tended dreams,
all done to fatten Satan’s purse
and trample those of lesser means.

This [haunting howl] yet to resolve,
to hell consigned or fait accompli?
No hero comes to save the day.
It rests on you, it rests on me.

It’s time

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We can’t straddle fences 
once the barbed wire goes up. 

We can’t walk a fine line 
when the lines have blurred into nonexistence. 

We can’t look the other way 
when there ceases to be any other way. 

If we concede that this is the best we can hope for,
we are forsaking hope and forsaking one another.

It's time.

We are only as helpless as we allow one another to be.

Fire in the Ballot Box

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Burn the ballots, ban the books, bash the ones who disagree.
When did it become the norm to forego common decency? 
Ignore the truth, assert your lies loudly and repeatedly. 
And God forbid you dare to challenge ye olde patri-assity.

Why do you try to stop the votes, what do you fear so mightily?
Why must you foment rage and hate, distrust and blind antipathy?
Why lurk in darkness, wearing masks to veil your true identity? 
Why hide behind your guns and flags, then call it Christianity?

I am not Dem nor GOP, to none do I pledge fealty.
I aim to act with common sense, with self respect and dignity.
Far from perfect, none too wise, often lacking clarity.
Perhaps we’re more alike than not. Let’s strive for peace and harmony.

Thanks for the Favor

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A book is not about the cover that protects it.
A gift is not about the paper that wraps it.

A favor, though, is about all that surrounds it,
and not merely about the favor itself.

A favor is a gift of protection; of connection;
the resurrection of feeling secure and loved,
and the knowing that someone has your back.

A favor is about the wrapping; not mere trappings,
but the tapping into kindness and caring and 
feeling seen and warmed by the soul of another. 

When you do someone a favor, know that you, too,
will be fortified by the community you are 
helping to create and maintain. Know that you, too, 
will be enveloped in the love and wellbeing that comes
 
with the honorable act of giving.

Dog Walk on a Drizzly Day

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The gray sky is low, pushing down on me
as my dog and I sidestep puddles in our path.
A sense of sadness seeps onto me, settling
like heavy mist on a wool coat. 

Unexplainable loneliness rises up as though
from the rain-dampened earth and I am 
enveloped in a fog of… it almost feels like despair …
that I know is not my own. 

My dog, a double-coated spitz,
shakes his body in a spasm that 
sprays rain water off him in all directions.
My pants leg is flecked with tiny droplets.

Arriving home, I unbuckle his leash and dry him with a towel.
He shakes again and the moisture from his 
undercoat surfaces. I touch his fur; it’s as wet
as though I hadn’t wiped him down at all. 

If I were to sift my fingers through his thick coat
down to the skin, it would be dry and warm.
I, conversely, am cold and shivering and wet.
An involuntary shudder courses through me,

as my psyche tries to shake the melancholy
from my soul.

Funeral

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Little cherub on mama’s lap, 
surrounded by strangers,
crammed into narrow pews
in a room she does not know.

No color, no toys, no talking. No joy. 
She squirms, but just a little.
Everyone stands in unison.

An organ plays, slow and plodding.
Grownups sing, low and droning.
She doesn’t recognize this song, 
but music! Music is a familiar friend!

She listens, watching mama’s lips move.
The hymn ends. She knows what follows music.
She claps her little hands together 
and gives a cheerful, “Yay!”

The congregation laughs.
Thank God for laughter amidst sorrow, and
thank God, too, for toddlers who 
haven’t yet had to learn 
the somber intricacies of mourning.

Day Five of National Poetry Writing Month! Our prompt today from NaPoWriMo.net talks about the “juxtaposition between grief and joy, sorrow and reprieve,” and asks us to:

write a poem in which laughter comes at what might otherwise seem an inappropriate moment – or one that the poem invites the reader to think of as inappropriate.