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.

Freedom for All… Well, Some… a Few… Maybe

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Day 21 of National Poetry Writing Month (NaPoWriMo) 

Today’s NaPoWriMo prompt:

write a poem in which something that normally unfolds in a set and well understood way  — like a baseball game or dance recital – goes haywire, but is described as if it is all very normal.

Something gone haywire? I give you:

The Constitution

There are three branches of government.
No, wait… two. No… just one now. Well, that’s hardly a branch.
We’ll just call it a stump. 

There’s a president who executes the will of the people.
No… they're a dictator. No… merely a puppet.
We’ll just call them a toad. On the stump.

There are regular free elections.
No, not free. Stolen. No… sold. To the highest bidder,
who becomes the puppeteer of the toad on the stump.

There are governmental agencies meant to help the citizens.
No, they’re for collecting data on the citizens, to be monetized
by the puppies of the puppeteer who controls the toad on the stump.

There are citizens who are free and can pursue happiness.
No, wait… freedom depends on the whims of the dictator, and happiness
is crushed – like the spines of those who once served the people. 

The people have a voice that cannot be silenced by the puppeteer or the oligarchs or the dictator or the slime that surrounds
the toad on the stump. 

Let’s use that voice to call back our liberty and freedom.
Let’s remember we have “unalienable rights endowed by the Creator.”
Let’s uproot the stump and cooperate to build back our nation.

As citizens of this country, it's our duty.

Thoughts

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Day 20 of National Poetry Writing Month (NaPoWriMo) 

Today’s NaPoWriMo prompt is to:

write a poem informed by musical phrasing or melody, that employs some form of soundplay (rhyme, meter, assonance, alliteration). One way to approach this is to think of a song you know and then basically write new lyrics that fit the original song’s rhythm/phrasing.

Roughly, based on the rhythm of Cat Stevens’ Wild World…

Thoughts

When I think about the things I do
think, and I want to think of something new,
I can’t help it but to think about you.

Think. How did I get here? 

When the river runs deep, wide and slow,
as if it’s got nowhere else to go,
you know it’s teeming with life below.

Oh, maybe, maybe it’s the tide’s 
turn, I’m feeling shallow inside
and maybe if I tried, turn,
I wouldn’t have to run and hide.

So many times my eyes I’ve just kept closed.
So many serpentine and dead ends chose,
So many wrong-turned roads.

Think. How did I get here?

When I think about the things I do
think, I wish I’d thought of something new.
I wonder, do you feel the same way, too?

Special Delivery

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Day 15 of National Poetry Writing Month (NaPoWriMo) 

Today’s NaPoWriMo prompt is to write a six-line poem that has these qualities: informed by repetition, simple language, and expressing enthusiasm. And so…

Special Delivery

It’s coming! It’s coming! It’s coming! 
I heard it in my sleep! Two streets down.
Do you hear it now? Come outside!
I can’t see it, but I’ll bark my head off anyway, and 
jump and paw at the fence, because it's coming: the day I
finally break outta here and catch that mail truck!

Pilgrim Ridge

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Day 14 of National Poetry Writing Month (NaPoWriMo) 

Today’s NaPoWriMo prompt:

try writing a poem that describes a place, particularly in terms of the animals, plants or other natural phenomena there. Sink into the sound of your location, and use a conversational tone. Incorporate slant rhymes (near or off-rhymes, like “angle” and “flamenco”) into your poem. And for an extra challenge – don’t reference birds or birdsong!

Here we go:

Pilgrim Ridge

Atop Pilgrim Ridge, miles from nowhere – 
no, that’s not an apt description;
Nowhere is quite near, in fact it’s right here –
crisp, pure silence defies definition
until one acclimates to the endless sky,
the light savory air,
the rocky ground stubbled in dry
remains of early summer wildflowers.

Leaning into the silence, one begins to hear
the percussive opening of a breeze-soft symphony;
gentle crackling of seed pods, split as the sun bears
down, the shaker of seed shot falling to ground,
a brush-on-cymbal swish of grasses swaying together,
the guiro scrabble of chipmunks skittering up
skinny pines to hide in long-needled shelter.
And then the music ratchets up.

The chipmunks begin their cuíca scoldings.
Wind chimes low tones in the clustered trees,
now weaving. Grasses are folding in the
hot air. A steady push now; no longer a breeze.
Clouds scuttle in and the thunder drum shakes,
first slow and lumbering, then brash, a 
crescendoing rumble
that ends with a lightning-bright quake,
and the diminuendo of tambourine rain.

Cuíca Sounds

Pink Moon

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Day 13 of National Poetry Writing Month (NaPoWriMo) 

Today’s NaPoWriMo prompt:

Donald Justice’s poem, “There is a gold light in certain old paintings,” plays with both art and music, and uses an interesting and (as far as I know) self-invented form. His six-line stanzas use lines of twelve syllables, and while they don’t use rhyme, they repeat end words. Specifically, the second and fourth line of each stanza repeat an end-word or syllable; the fifth and sixth lines also repeat their end-word or syllable. Today, we challenge you to write a poem that uses Justice’s invented form.

And so:

Pink Moon

April’s full moon – the Pink Moon – lights the sky tonight.
Its name evokes spring flowers: creeping phlox, moss pink.
Where I live the red flowering currant blooms now. 
Amongst shrubs with still bare branches, a pop of pink.
    I stepped outside to view the moon. It wasn’t there.
    I’ll check later. Perhaps it’s neither here nor there.


Flowering currants are first to bloom in my yard
of native species. Osoberry comes on next.
Its small pale blossoms don’t make nearly the same splash.
Oregon grape blooms next, and then the next, and next.
     The Pink Moon is not pink; the red currant blooms are.
     I’d check again, but cat-in-lap says no, so here we are.

Elon’s Devil’s Fingers

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Oh, Dyssie, suss out:

Bored gods gamble with your life.

Find allies. Fight back.

Elon’s devil’s fingers

Devil’s fingers (Clathrus archeri ), also known as octopus stinkhorn, is a  fungus which has a global distribution. In maturity it smells like putrid flesh.

“Dawn’s rosy fingers” is a recurring metaphor in Homer’s works, like The Odyssey, where it signifies the beginning of a new day and the start of events.

Rain

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Day 11 of National Poetry Writing Month (NaPoWriMo) 

Today’s NaPoWriMo prompt:

Take a look at Kyle Dargan’s “Diaspora: A Narcolepsy Hymn.” This poem is a loose villanelle that uses song lyrics as its repeating lines (loose because it doesn’t rhyme).  Your challenge is, like Dargan, to write a poem that incorporates song lyrics – ideally, incorporating them as opposing phrases or refrains. 

I kept with the villanelle form, using the strict rhyming rules to give you:

Rain

Rain, rain, go away.
Your splitter-splatter irks this crone.
Come again another day.

Schemer of blight and decay,
You chill my heart and steep my bones.
Rain, rain, go away.

Keep to your clouds and drift away.
I wish to ruminate alone.
Come again another day.

To your gods I do not pray,
Though many sins I ought atone.
Rain, rain, go away.

Lightning, thunder, those may stay.
Harsh winds attend my rheumy moans.
Come again another day.

If your path I cannot sway
I’ll lift my face, my plight to own. 
Rain, rain, go away.
Come – if you must – another day.

The only other villanelle I’ve written can be found here.

Punt

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Day 10 of National Poetry Writing Month (NaPoWriMo) 

Today’s NaPoWriMo prompt (briefly) is to write a poem using alliteration and punning (“See if you can’t work in references to at least one word you have trouble spelling, and one that you’ve never quite been able to perfectly remember the meaning of”).

I can easily confuse perceptibly and perceptively. And if you ask spellcheck, there are a multitude of words I have trouble spelling. And so:

Punt

Proficiency at punnery
Jeu de mots complicity
Linguistical agility
Vocabulary perfidy

Your punster-dive proclivity
Performed with such alacrity
Perchance some jocularity
Be prized from life's inanity.

A punning pundit, plain to see;
Puns in your blood; puns right past me.
My eyes roll quite perceptively.
Please punderstand and humor me. 

My own jokes flutter languidly
While yours soar with impunity.
A painful incongruity,
A punishing reality.

I’ll end this perfunctorily,
Abrupt and unpunctiliously,
My pungent poem of jealousy.
My punctured ego needs reprieve.

Against the Grain

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Day 9 of National Poetry Writing Month (NaPoWriMo) 

Today’s NaPoWriMo prompt 

Like music, poetry offers us a way to play with and experience sound. This can be through meter, rhyme, varying line lengths, assonance, alliteration, and other techniques that call attention not just to the meaning of words, but the way they echo and resonate against each other. For a look at some of these sound devices in action, read Robert Hillyer’s poem, Fog. It uses both rhyme and uneven line lengths to create a slow, off-kilter rhythm that heightens the poem’s overall ominousness. Today we’d like to challenge you to try writing a poem of your own that uses rhyme, but without adhering to specific line lengths. For extra credit, reference a very specific sound, like the buoy in Hillyer’s poem.

And so,

Against the Grain

In growling complaint, against the grain
my well honed plane 
chatters and shudders in my hands
as if it understands
I am employing it in vain. 

Nonetheless we do our best
and push through the defiant strain.

Working in tandem, my plane and I,
the zippered whir as shavings fly
going with the grain, it will soon rain
fragrant strips and curls of wood.

Once fallen, on the floor they lie
like spent streamers at the curb
after the parade passes by.