Tag Archives: poetry prompt

It’s about

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You slither across sun-parched deserts,
wend through mossy forests,
slip between crevasses of glass and concrete

We skip together to the corner store for a soda and candy bar; 
we writhe as one, cornered in a dank, underground parking garage.

You come at us, push through us, leave us behind, then
swing back around like a Mobius strip to do it all again.

You take our hand on a warm, country afternoon
and we stroll in comfortable silence down sweet, forgotten lanes.
You cradle us in your fluid arms, whisper memories and dreams,
conjure hope and regret, satisfaction and despair.

We have too much of you, or not enough.
We bless you and curse you, and all the while,
your ineffable presence is steadfast, 
defining our very lives.

If you have taught me anything, it’s this: 
you should not be taken for granted;
if I fight you, I will lose; 
if I embrace you, I will find peace.

     Time waits for no one.
     Time marches on. 
     Time is on my side…

So many misconceptions we have about you.
It's no wonder we continue to waste you.

It’s National Poetry Writing Month (NaPoWriMo)!

Day Sixteen prompt from NaPoWriMo.net: write a poem in which you describe something that cannot speak, and what it has taught or told you.

Cursory

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It hits my mailbox 9 PM,
the Na-Po-Wri-Mo prompt is in.
I read it once, then twice again,
this challenge of poetic whim.

Waterfalls or blossomed trees,
poets of old would turn to these,
find inspiration on a breeze,
then from known words a poem tease. 

Not me! The laptop cursor blinks.
I read the prompt; begin to think.
pull up Thesaurus in a wink,
and if my rhyming really stinks…

A single keystroke and it’s gone.
Without a care I carry on.
When I decide this poem is done,
Hit “Save,” then write another one.

It’s National Poetry Writing Month (NaPoWriMo)!

Day Fourteen prompt from NaPoWriMo.net: write a poem that bridges (whether smoothly or not) the seeming divide between poetry and technological advances.

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.

NaPoWriMo 2023: Day Two ~ Surreal

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Day Two of NaPoWriMo. 

Today’s prompt is inspired by poet Paul Celan, and asks us to:

“begin by picking 5-10 words from [a specified] list. Next, write out a question for each word that you’ve selected (e.g., what is [fog]?) Now for each question, write a one-line answer. Try to make the answer an image, and don’t worry about strict logic. These are surrealist answers, after all! After you’ve written out your series of questions and answers, place all the answers, without the questions, on a new page. See if you can make a poem of just the answers. You may find that what you have is very beautifully mysterious, and somehow has its own logic. Happy writing!”

The words I chose are: fog, clove, gutter, salt , thunder, ghost, acorn, elusive, and song (not in order of use). Nothing “beautifully mysterious” came of it, but an interesting challenge nonetheless. Herewith:

What Is…

A pig, a dentist and a cup of hot spiced wine.
[Sounds like the beginning of a bar joke];
that which climbs out of empty bottles.

The smell of old sheets, the color of forgotten.
Wrinkled memories calling bs.
What the dog seeks beneath the bed.

There is…
a giant underfoot,
looking straight, but seeing crooked,
[humming] mathematical paint splatters
hung on a fence to dry.

[Don’t turn around lest they be seen,]
pillars crying at being left behind.