Tag Archives: poetry

Necessity

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Day Eight of NaPoWriMo.*

“Today’s poetry resource is a series of twitter accounts that tweet phrases from different poets’ work… Our prompt for the day (optional as always) asks you to peruse the work of one or more of these twitter bots, and use a line or two, or a phrase or even a word that stands out to you, as the seed for your own poem.”

I chose a line I found on @carsonbot.

sidewalk

Necessity

“Sometimes a journey makes itself necessary,”
writes poet Anne Carson.

I’ve taken many a journey in my life.
As to which were necessary and
which were not, I do not know.
It took all of them to get me here, though.

Had I not been lured down dark pathways,
tempted into loud, gaudy marketplaces,
gotten lost in the tangles of a petulant brain,
where would I be now?

Would I be necessary?

I won’t bother asking why I’m here, and why now,,.
for what grand purpose am I intended?
That no longer concerns me.

The sun rose this morning.
I am here, now, in this place,
and my journeys continue,
by happenstance, by choice and – yes –
by necessity.

*National Poetry Writing Month, Day Eight

Happy Hour

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Day Two of NaPoWriMo.*

Today’s prompt:
“write a poem about a specific place —  a particular house or store or school or office. Try to incorporate concrete details…”

My submission:

Happy Hour

Almost six p.m. Happy hour.
Parking lot is nearly full;
it’ll be jumping inside.

Sure enough, the long, narrow, windowless room is packed.
Folks old and young. Well, not too young.
Drinking age. Mostly.

Most every seat is taken.
I shoehorn in anyway, and
sit near a bleary-eyed fellow,
drink sloshing in trembling hands.

Next to him, a woman, talkative.
Soft, brandy-colored eyes.
Voice smooth as well-aged whiskey.

Men bellied up to the long table,
retelling the day’s events.
Conquests, struggles,
anecdotes about their work mates.

Fellow at the far end checks his watch.
Pats his beer belly. Clears his throat.
Shoves his coffee out of the way.
Picks up a big blue book.
“All right, time to start the meeting.”

The room goes suddenly quiet.
“Hi, everyone. I’m Brian, and I’m an alcoholic.”
A full-throated, “Hi, Brian,” reverberates around the room.

And thus begins the AA meeting
at the Grace Episcopal Church on Second and Main.

*National Poetry Writing Month, Day Two

Corvid

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crow

You perch in silhouette on overhead power lines,
a black bird cutout from the gray-mottled clouds.
I’ve read that you recognize faces, and can
distinguish the friendly from the ill-willed.
I’ve read that you can even pass that specific discernment
down to your offspring.

And so, when you begin scolding me in raucous cawing,
I face you square on and remind you that I’m one of the good guys.
You laugh (or so it seems) and swoop down to the garden wall
where you observe (or so it seems) my every move.
When I return to the house, you will drop to the ground
and inspect the results of my comings and goings.
Perhaps I have turned up a tasty morsel from the garden.

You’ll return to your high wire and pose again,
black-on-black in silhouette against the sky.
And somehow, I take comfort in imagining
I have gained your approval and won’t fall victim
to a murder of crows.

dVerse Poetics: On Shades of Black

Portrait

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pipe

He smelled of pipe tobacco,
Prince Albert to be precise.
His soft jaw with a half day’s stubble looked scratchy,
but I never ventured to touch it and find out.
A dark amber bottle – Blitz beer — perpetually clamped in one hand,
his pipe in the other. Sometimes lit, sometimes not
(both he and his pipe),

He didn’t talk a lot. At times it seemed
he wasn’t listening much either,
but then his face would suddenly brighten, and –
with eyes sparkling — he’d begin recounting a story or a joke.
Mom would shush him. “Not in front of the kids.”
Dad would chuckle as if he knew the ending anyway,
and Grandpa Clyde would sit back and take a swig of his beer,
satisfied at getting a rise out of my mother, even if
he never got to finish his story.

I imagined he had a lot of stories to tell.
I imagined him as some kind of O. Henry character,
cloaked in enigmatic layer upon layer
that never quite unfolded in daylight.
Despite his presence at Sunday dinners for most of my childhood,
I never felt I knew him; never heard the punch lines that made him laugh;
never learned the O. Henry-esque twist endings to his stories.

If someday we meet in the “great beyond”
(per my mother’s portrayal of him, it likely won’t be in heaven),
we can sit by the fires, Prince Albert mingling with sulfurous air,
beer bottles sweating in our warm hands.
He can tell his stories. Or not.
I can touch the stubble on his cheeks. Or not.
Regardless, there’ll likely be mischief in his eyes, and – likely —
I’ll leave still not having cracked the mystery
of my grandfather.

dVerse Poetics: On Profiles and Portraits.  The Challenge: write/create a profile/portrait in your verse.

vortex

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You are the funnel circling the bathtub drain.
You gurgle incomprehensible complaints and accusations.
You suck vacuously at lavender scented air,
all the while choking back the bile of sewer sludge
that tickles your throat.

Your vortex pulls in stinky sock lint –
flushed out of hiding from between unsuspecting toes,
clumps of sloughed off hair and slimy scum.
Lots and lots of scum.

I watch and silently will the tub to drain faster
so as to leave as little residue as possible
once you are gone.
And for the umpteenth time, I wonder how it is
you ever got elected to office.

dVerse Challenge: Meet the Bar — Metaphorically Speaking 

Words and Paint

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NaPoWriMo, Day 28

The prompt today deals with:

“the concept of meta-poems – which are poems about poems! In this video, the poets Al Fireis, Lily Applebaum, Dave Poplar, and Camara Brown discuss Emily Dickinson’s ‘We learned the Whole of Love.’ …

And now for our daily (optional) prompt. As you may have guessed, today I’d like to challenge you to try your hand at a meta-poem of your own.

So this is maybe not a proper meta-poem, but after watching about half of the video provided as a resource, this is the impression I was left with:

journal

Words and Paint

Large canvas yawns on studio floor
Cigarette ash lengthens with neglect
Eye sizes up canvas and looks for inspiration
Brushes, paints, splatters, spills
Colors, contrasts, movement, perspective

Figure steps back, surveys result
Artist, art? Crafts-person, handiwork?
Custodian, drop cloth?

♦ ♦ ♦

Blank page of crisp, white paper
Pen taps desk, ink smears
Hand looms over paper and waits for direction
Verbs, nouns, phrases, thoughts
Colors, contrasts, movement, perspective

Figure lifts page, reads and reworks
Poet, poetry? Wordsmith, story?
Shopper, grocery list?

♦ ♦ ♦

Canvas is framed, hung on wall in gallery
Viewers study the painting
Discuss what the artist intended
with each brush stroke or nuanced hue.

Writing is published in journal
Readers study the piece
Discuss word choice and tenor
Delve into the poet’s mindset and meaning.

♦ ♦ ♦

Custodian goes in search of missing drop cloth.
Shopper wonders where they misplaced their list.

Only a Dream

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NaPoWriMo, Day 26. The prompt:

Write a poem that uses repetition.

dream

Only a Dream

I dreamt last night,
but I can’t recall
what happened in the dream.

I dreamt last night
and when I awoke,
I felt lesser than.

I dreamt last night.
Whatever happened in the dream,
I let myself down somehow.

I dreamt last night,
You were in the dream.
And someone else.

I dreamt last night.
You found out what I did,
but I chose to lie about it.

I dreamt last night.
It didn’t really happen.
I did not let myself down,

nor you.

Spring Awakes

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Day 25 of NaPoWriMo.

Today’s Prompt:

Taking a cue from John Keats’ poem, “To Autumn,” write a poem that (a.) is specific to a season; (b.) uses imagery that relates to all five senses; (c.) includes a rhetorical question, like Keats’ “where are the songs of spring?”

I’m so enjoying the warmer weather of late, and all the greenery, I couldn’t imagine writing about any season other than Spring.

Spring

Spring Awakes

In increments imperceptible to most,
light of day expands, hours of dark recede,
and life erupts from warming soil;
sprung from damp earth, a geyser of green,

gushing through garden and bramble and lawn,
flowing up trees, pushing sap as it surges,
splitting through soft bark of branches and twigs,
spewing leaves and blooms when at last it emerges.

While Steller’s jays gather moss for their nests,
the smaller scrub jay and a petulant crow
vie for clear title to raspiest call; and
collared doves hide in tall trees, and echo:

who Whoo who, who Whoo who.

Who planted the bulbs shooting up through the duff?
sacheted hyacinth, tulip and dainty blue bell,
bouquets laced with pungent rosemary sprigs,
and laid atop carpets of soft lemon basil;

as dandelions and dead nettle wait to serve tea.

Jackals in the Key of C-Sharp Major

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Day 21 of NaPoWriMo. The prompt:

write a poem that incorporates wild, surreal images. Try to play around with writing that doesn’t make formal sense, but which engages all the senses and involves dream-logic.

I’ve been told before that I don’t make sense, but I’ve never before been asked to make less sense. Does that make any sense? Here goes:

Jackals in the Key of C-Sharp Major

When the jackals came calling, we hid
on top of a mound of field mice stacked like rows of bricks.
The jackals didn’t see us;
they were searching through the magazine racks to the east.

Turkey vultures triangled above, calling to the jackals,
pointing with their flowing pink boas,
but the jackals didn’t hear them pointing.
They were listening to us sing songs about the stupid jackals.
The field mice joined in on the chorus,
but only when it was in the key of C-sharp major.

Then the tanks rolled in, three across and ten deep,
camouflaged with tie-dyed circles the color of a midday shadow.
They rumbled through the disco,
rattling the ground with their relentless tracks,
strewing trails of Skittles in their wake
like so many teeth shaken loose from a cantaloupe skull.

Turkey vultures flapped their pink boas and chased the Skittles to ground,
trying once more to alert the jackals,
but all the hapless birds could manage to squawk out
through candy-jammed beaks were
the words “peace” and “sunshine.”

The field mice, or at least the bravest among them and
those upon whose heads we were not standing, ran
toward the turkey vultures singing “peace and sunshine.”
They wanted to join in on the chorus,
but only if it was in the key of C-sharp major.

The jackals chased the field mice down the tank tracks,
scattering Skittles, tripping over turkey vultures,
dancing through the disco, flipping through magazines,
and came to a rumbling halt at our feet, and – non-coincidentally –
at the teeny-tiny paws of such field mice as had remained behind.

Other than the pink boas circling their heads like fluffy crowns,
the jackals looked utterly ridiculous.
And stupid.

We sang them a song in the key of C-sharp major
and headed home.
All of us.