Category Archives: poetry

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.

Conjoined

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Day 4 of National Poetry Writing Month (NaPoWriMo) 

Today’s NaPoWriMo prompt:

In her poem, “Living with a Painting,” Denise Levertov describes just that. … Today, we’d like to challenge you to write your own poem about living with a piece of art.

Thus:

Conjoined 

Every time I touch you, 
I track a different story.

Of Nature's wisdom and resilience;
how two branches melded into one,
fibers joining to heal a friction wound.

Of what happenstance compelled such intimacy;
sheer gravity, crowding overgrowth, maybe
competition for life-giving light. 

Of the artistic bent of chaos,
that rendered a random bonding into
perfectly balanced asymmetry.

A masterpiece of your own right;
vying with any art created by humankind.
I am humbled to have found you 
discarded in a brush pile.

They wonder why I keep tree branches
about the house. 
I wonder why they don’t see the art.

Why I’m Not a Poet

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Day 3 of National Poetry Writing Month (NaPoWriMo) 

Today’s NaPoWriMo prompt:

… American poet Frank O’Hara [s]… poems feature a breezy, funny, conversational style. His poem “Why I Am Not a Painter” is pretty characteristic, with actual dialogue and a playfully offhand tone. Following O’Hara, … write a poem that obliquely explains why you are a poet and not some other kind of artist – or, if you think of yourself as more of a musician or painter (or school bus driver or scuba diver or expert on medieval Maltese banking) – explain why you are that and not something else!

Hence:

Why I’m Not a Poet

Well, dang, this is embarrassing. 
Here I am, caught in the act;
attempting to commit poesy,
and I’m not even a poet.

I think too concretely to be a poet. 
Poets use stepping stones as metaphor.
I use concrete as stepping stones. 

Poet Frost says “good fences make good neighbors.”
I say good fences guard my veggies from hungry rabbits.

Gertrude Stein: “A rose is a rose is a rose.”
Me: That damned rose I’ve dug up three times now
is growing back yet again! Where’s the shovel? 

You wax poetic,
I wax the teeth on my dovetail saw. 

Alas, if not a poet, then what am I? 
A mason, a gardener, a landscaper, a woodworker?
A stepper of stones, a guardian of gardens,
a shaper of shrubbery, a worker of wood?

I dunno. How’s that for a poetic closing line?

The Protestant

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Day 2 of National Poetry Writing Month (NaPoWriMo) 

Today’s NaPoWriMo prompt:

we challenge you to write a poem that directly addresses someone, and that includes a made-up word, an odd/unusual simile, a statement of “fact,” and something that seems out of place in time…

Herewith:

The Protestant

Are you going to the protest? I am.
Heard that before? That’s because I’ve said it before.
I mean it this time.
I’ll be the queen of protestation!
Thou thinkest I protesteth too mucheth?  Ha! 
And, no, when I said protestation I didn’t
mean prostration. 

But really. I’ve got it all figured out.
I’m making a sign, at my kitchen table
with the curtains drawn so the neighbors won’t see.
I’m sharing my opinions in big block letters,
though I’d rather just print them on an index card.
Maybe file them away in my mother’s old recipe box.
In the back with the newspaper clippings of obituaries
and the torn off corners of Christmas card envelopes
bearing old friends’ new addresses. 

I figure I’ll take the sign out to my car 
disguised in a trench coat like
an under cover bedbug.
Signs don’t wear trench coats? 
A dead giveaway, then.
Okay, I’ll just spirit it out of the house
under the cover of darkness,
like an insomniacal bedbug.

Of course I worry.
What if I get there and I don’t see anyone I know? 
What if I get there and someone I know sees me? 
You say my excuses are infinityesimal?
Tiny and of little consequence, but
they can go on forever.
[eye roll] Very funny.

I mean it this time.
I’m going to the protest.
Are you?

Art Unappreciation

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Sticky Note on Poplar, five minutes ago, artist wishes to remain anonymous

Day 1 of National Poetry Writing Month (NaPoWriMo) 

Today’s NaPoWriMo prompt: Today, we challenge you to take inspiration from this glossary of musical terms, or this glossary of art terminology, and write a poem that uses a new-to-you word. 

I found the term Suprematism which the Museum of Modern Art describes as:

A term coined by Russian artist Kazimir Malevich in 1915 to describe a new mode of abstract painting that abandoned all reference to the outside world. His new style claimed “the supremacy of pure feeling or perception in the pictorial arts” and rejected the deliberate illusions of representational painting. Using the basic components of painting’s language—color, line, and brushwork—he constructed a visual vocabulary of colored geometric shapes floating against white backgrounds, which he felt mapped the boundless space of the ideal.

https://www.moma.org/collection/terms/suprematism

And so my poem:

The Emperor has no Art

I’m no artist, but I can see
and that?
if that’s art, then I’m

no artist
splotches on canvas, forms that go nowhere
interesting

on a white background, a solid colored rectangle 
or two
for the price of one
you want to tell me that’s art?

suprematism, it’s called
supremacy of pure feeling 
  abandon all references
    reject deliberate illusions
      construct a visual vocabulary
        map the boundless space of the ideal

huh.

I’m no artist, but perhaps 
I just can’t see

Portrait

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It’s that time! National Poetry Writing Month (NaPoWriMo) begins tomorrow, with daily prompts from the NaPoWriMo blog. As in the past, we have been given an early bird prompt. Today’s prompt is to write a portrait poem. I hope I’ve done it justice. 

Portrait

I want to draw.
I want to draw you.
I want to draw you in.
I want to draw you into my life.

I want to paint.
I want to paint you.
I want to paint you in sunlight.
I want to paint you in sunlight and gouache.

I want to write.
I want to write you.
I want to write you a poem.
I want to write you a poem of love and concision.

I want to show you your true beauty.
I want to show you true beauty.
I want to show beauty
in my portrait

of you.

Groundhogs and Shadows

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I did not see a groundhog yesterday, shadowed or otherwise. Nor did I see my own shadow. I stayed inside, shying from the cold and wind and rain. 

My doggo, on the other hand, made several forays around the fenced yard, but did not report back on what critters or what shadows he may have encountered. He usually plays things close to his vest that way. A pup of many barks, but few words.

More winter, or early spring? I must wait and see. 

earliest of blooms
dandelions tucked beneath
unmown grass shadows

dVerse Haibun Monday prompt: Groundhog’s Day

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.