DEAR POEM, THE POINT OF NO RETURN, NaPoWriMo, PAD Challenge, Day 12

NaPoWriMo write a poem that addresses itself. Dear Poem…interrogate it.

DEAR POEM

Dear Poem, why did you leave me in the lurch like that, 

surrounded by mundane words, second class ideas 

and turns of phrase so trite, they made me wince?

We had a good thing going, you left me standing,

you walked out the door like an irate lover.

What on earth were you thinking? It’s been said before.

Didn’t you learn anything at all after all this time, 

that metaphor and simile must always be served fresh 

and piping hot out of the smithy’s forge?

There is no way to resurrect or to save a stale poem, 

no matter how precious the subject matter,

without undergoing a linguistic blood transfusion.

They say poems need to be retranslated every generation 

as language takes a powder, words change nuance 

and meaning dissolves into cliché 

whenever you least expect it.

4/12/23

2023 April PAD Challenge write a sound poem

THE POINT OF NO RETURN

Lonely cars on the tarmac late at night, 

remind me of wind soughing in the pines, 

or the restless surcease of the ocean’s roar 

and I want to follow the vagaries of that road 

leading back to the point of no return.

4/12/23

NUMBERS, NaPoWriMo, PAD Challenge, Day 9

NaPoWriMo write a contemporary love sonnet.

I didn’t feel it.

2023 April PAD Challenge write a numbers poem

NUMBERS

Yeah, I didn’t have much of a dad. 

Not much of a mother either. 

It all came down to numbers. 

No child support was the biggest number.

My mother, who was part alley cat,

dropped me off at my grandmother’s doorstep 

when I was four. Followed by my brother 

who arrived one Sunday morning in a bassinet 

on our doorstep some four years later.

My father came to see me a few times 

during those growing up years. 

And then he ditched me when I was 18. 

He loved a bottle of Seagrams 7 on ice 

more than he loved me. That was his number.

At least my mother tried to love me

as she descended into the depths of depression 

but her good days were a finite number. 

But I adored my grandmother, whose number 

was marred by a widow’s half pension,

so I grew up in the country, dirt poor,

but somehow made whole by the algorithms

of landscape, despite everything.

5/31/23

AS YOU SETTLE INTO THE LIGHT, Burning a path towards the sun, NaPoWriMo, PAD Challenge, Day 6

NaPoWriMo make a transliteration from Poetry International tricky for me, because I can sort of read Dutch, so I extrapolated and stretched it.

AS YOU SETTLE INTO THE LIGHT

Note the steps of the ladder, not the stories of the lost children.
Note the house, not the starry night. Go ahead, drink the wine.

Remember the house is dark. The windows with their eyes shut
doubt the light, they are learning to sing the ways of the wind.

The house speaks of memory and there is no stopping it, 
with its hard wounds and proud flesh and angst it wants…

It wants you to climb into the attic of the psyche and dream
behind closed doors and dwell in the sunlight plaited in gold.

It will make everything seem like new again.
Stand there with the door open wide, your hands trembling,

greet the wind as you settle into the light.

4/11/23

2023 April PAD Challenge write a poem about odor. I misread an earlier prompt, wrote this, wrong piece.

Burning a path towards the sun

The odor of acacia reminds us that spring arrived. But the cold air severs us from beauty. Chilblains become a real thing as cruel April rolls up its trousers. The coastal mountains are still holding onto last week’s unseasonable snow, Cobb Mountain, dressed in a lace gown, is draped in a shawl of clouds and darkness like a grande dame waiting for the opera to begin. Mustard and chamomile brave the elements as if last week’s snow laid down in the deep ravines, was waiting to sleep it off until the morning comes. I admire the bravery of daffodils and tulips, they harbor no grudge against the vagaries of spring, yet rise up from the darkness like phoenixes, burning a path towards the sun. 

4/3/23

As you can see, I wrote this earlier, but it fits.

LAMENT FOR LAKE TULARE, NaPoWriMo, PAD Challenge, Day 5

NaPoWriMo write a poem based on Simic’s Melon.

LAMENT FOR LAKE TULARE

In the Central Valley there once was a lake so vast,
So chock full of fish that it fed entire cities.
As it dreamed of clouds mirroring the Sierra Range,
The rivermelt sang its praises of spring song,
And painted its shores with wildflowers and tule reeds
While steamships huffed and chugged into port.

No one even remembers when the lake died.
The last farmers to whisper its name, all gone now.
The story persisted, and the mad language of water
Returns to haunt the memory buried in that lakebed.
Soon it will reclaim its long-lost shores
As the spring melt rises to reclaim what was lost.

3/11

I merely replaced Simic’s words with my own. See Day 3, CURSE THE FLOODWATERS. Check out this NASA image of the lake now. I never start each line with a capital letter anymore. So it was odd and I kept trying to erase those capital letters but that’s how Chuck wrote his poem. And so it stays.

2023 April PAD Challenge take the phrase "(noun) in (location)," replace the (noun) with a noun, replace the (location) with a location, make the new phrase the title of your poem, and then, write your poem. Possible titles might include: "Dinosaurs in Jamaica," "Popsicle in Cairo,"

The above poem could count for double, I suppose. The PAD prompt didn’t move me. On the other hand,
SUNRISE OVER MT. HOOD, which I wrote before I saw the prompt, fills the niche. Oddly, I uncharacteristically came up with the title first, as I was driving to work. So I think I will let it go. Besides, it’s all a springboard, as long as I wind up with 30 poems.

AT THE VERNAL POOLS, and INNER DIALOGUE NaPoWriMo, PAD Challenge, Day 4

NaPoWriMo write a triolet, an eight-line poem in iambic tetramenter, lines  1, 4,7 are identical, as are the 2nd and last lines—the poem begins and ends with the same couplet, within a tight rhyme scheme  — ABaAabAB. I don’t think I like writing in forms.

AT THE VERNAL POOLS

Across the pond the herons glide,
And the egrets seek higher ground
From prying eyes and compromise.
Across the pond the herons glide,
Hunting for froglings and newts’ eyes.
We used to watch them soar around.
Across the pond the herons glide,
And now egrets seek higher ground.

4/9/23

2023 April PAD Challenge

Write a dream poem, and/or Write a reality poem.

INNER DIALOGUE

Some say that in a dream, 

the idea that we carry a dialogue with us, 

wherever we go, day and night, 

it accompanies us, is like a familiar, 

watching over us, waiting for the news, 

hidden behind a veil of symbolism 

and random metaphor.

4/9

CURSE THE FLOODWATERS, Obscure Facts, NaPoWriMo, PAD Challenge, Day 3

CURSE THE FLOODWATERS 

After Lucille Clifton’s blessing the boats.

curse the rising floodwaters
leaving us bereft
on the rocky shores of grief without a raft
dragging us down
below the murky depths of memory
curse its laughter and gurgle
that stifling heat of scorn     then embrace it
know that the uncertainty
won’t ever have your back   so curse it too
and remember to keep your mouth shut
the sun burning incandescent    too is cruel
and so curse it for the dark knowledge it harbors
as you founder in the quicksand 

seeking solace on an ephemeral shore

4/3/23
NaPoWriMo pick a poem, any poem, change the words to their opposite meaning. Revise.


2023 April PAD Challenge write a connection poem (I accidentally used the wrong prompt for this one, so this is a placeholder.

Obscure facts

Someone said to write about an obscure fact, something that no one else would know about. I couldn’t think of anything. And I thought of how stop lights are not green, but turquoise, reminding us of tropical seas and of our own origins.

After the rain, the drowned wildflowers can’t poke their head above the sludge. After the floodwaters have dropped a foot at a time, the meadows carry a permanent high tide line.

I can’t get over that image of the Tibetan woman with her trio of marmots begging for food like small children. Since winter lives year round in Tibet, I think of those marmots begging at the hem of her skirts hoping for the arrival of spring. Does she sing to them? Her marmot children?

4/3/23

SURREAL QUESTIONS after Celan, VERNAL PATROL, FINAL CURTAIN CALL, NaPoWriMo, PAD Challenge, Day 2

SURREAL QUESTIONS after Celan

1. What is fog?

     The hills hiding from the sun because they forgot their origins.

What is salt?

     That old mill grinding its eye teeth at the bottom of the ocean.

What is a river?

     A sob story that begins deep in the mountains where the ouzel lives.

What is longing? 

     A immeasurable distance of abandoned grief dressed in twilight.

What is a song? 

     The sun, by any other name, dressing the horizon in silk.

(Now throw away the questions.)

2. The hills hid from the sun because they forgot their deep origins.

Neptune’s old mill is gnashing its eye teeth at the bottom of the ocean.

The river begins as a painting deep in the mountains 

   where Wu Wei’s water ouzels seek the mysteries of the gorge.    

An immeasurable distance of grief is dressed in twilight.

Meanwhile the sun is dressing the horizon in flaming raiments of silk 

   to remind it of its intangible beauty.

4/2-3 (playing catch-up. I read the prompts, and let them perk.)

NaPoWriMo make 5-10 impossible questions after Celan or Neruda, you choose. Toss the questions and revise the answers.

VERNAL PATROL

The wild geese were arguing in the meadow again 

as they swarmed the vernal pool searching for frogs. 

Meanwhile, the egrets patrolled the pools 

with the relentless concentration of prison guards.

The fairy shrimp and tadpoles didn’t stand a chance.

4/3

FINAL CURTAIN CALL

Our love affair was a torrid B-movie with a bad plot twist.
It lasted far too long, and had too little reward in the end,
and all that was left were the broken seats in an empty theater.
The curtains were drawn, the limelight snuffed out.  

Popcorn and spilled coke on the floor took mint hostages.
The director had long since fled after the bad reviews came in.
And then you say you want to be friends
like some Frankenstein monster seeking redemption
or perhaps Saturn waiting to devour its young.
But my name still means bitter herbs.

Nothing will ameliorate that fact.

4/3
2023 April PAD Challenge Write a B movie poem.

GREAT WHITE HUNTER, FOOLISH HEART, NaPoWriMo Day 1 haiku

GREAT WHITE HUNTER

Oliver the cat
tiptoes over the wet grass 

then sits on the bug.

He slinks down the path 

flat-eared and round-eyed, he chatters, 

but the birds are no fools.

Foolish cat lays low 

thinking he’s invisible. 

The birds know better.

………….

Last night’s storm damage 

is measured in increments 

by the sheer number 

of utility trucks 

parked by the side of the road

hoisting up cables.

………

Driving any old way to work

So much depends on

the SUV in front of me, 

which way it turns, 

thus mapping my path 

leaving the day’s route to chance.

The road least taken.

………..

Unlucky rabbit 

by the side of the road, split 

like a BBQ chicken.

………..

The marmot was right

Winter didn’t let go 

its hold until April arrived 

rolling up its trousers, 

ready for business.

4/1-3 (I counted syllables all day, but didn’t commit to print)

NaPoWriMo. Haiku & American looons.

FOOLISH HEART

Foolishly, I thought you’d love me forever.
Foolishly, I put all my eggs in one basket.
Foolishly I waited 21 years to seal the bargain
before I had enough of all this foolishness with you.
Foolishly you thought it would all blow over.
Foolishly you hedged your bets. And assumed much.
But when the promissory note came due,
there was nothing left, but your foolish pride.
Foolishly, I believed everything you said.
Foolishly, I believed that forever would last
at least for a half-life of forever and a day.
Foolishly, I believed in the fairytales.
I believed that love was forever today.
But my moth-eaten pride was in tatters,
my heart was dressed in Cinderella rags.
My heart harbored pestilence, rotted from the inside,
because foolishly, I took it all in and blamed myself
gaslighted by your foolish pride.

2023 April PAD Challenge Write a foolish poem.

Here are all 30 of 2022 poem a day prompts. Knock yourself out.

WHEN I WAS 21

My head in the clouds, I tripped over my own feet

and took a spectacular spill down a scree slope. 

I guess the bleeding hearts wanted me to notice them. 

Or were they warning me off this newfound love?

The lover left, something to do with a seven year itch. 

When I picked myself up, I held a thick rhizome in my hand,

and so I planted it and tended to it for 40 years. It thrived.

Who knows how old it was, growing in the talus of an old roadbed.

I carried it from lover to lover, delighting in the showy hearts.

But its demise was a casualty of a relationship that ended 

abruptly, after 21 years, leaving me bereft and homeless.

I learned you can’t save everything, when your heart's broken.

Not even bleeding hearts.

4/23 NaPoWriMo

AT THE LAGUNA DE SANTA ROSA

The drained lakebed, 

long since converted to vines and crops,

as if remembering its ancient shoreline, 

fills the basin with tule fog,

water seeking its own spirit level.

4/21 NaPoWriMo

GARTERSNAKES

I swerve to avoid the wedding carcasses
of small snakes in the middle of the road.
Tiny garter snakes looking for love
in all the wrong places discover

too late that the open road
is also the end of the road.

4/11

THE GOOD DOCTOR POET

      —with thanks to William Carlos Williams

So, we were at this boring party deep in a dull suburb,
much to our surprise, we met an aviator in the atrium—so much

depends upon casual connections, conversations drift and float
upon a sea of ambient noise, the generic hubbub fueled by

a mix of alcohol and angst, the party fizzled, it was a case of nature

red in tooth and claw, soon drunks would be carted off in red

wheelbarrows, our New Jersey pilot was out of his depth, his face

glazed with boredom, he told us a story of scars when he was five,

without preamble, he rolled up his pants, to show us his knee, his eyes
watered, a yawn, he fell out of an apple tree, the poet-doctor stood

beside him, and stitched him up. We leaned forward in unison, was
the name Williams? He said, yes how did you know? We were

white-knuckled with anticipation. We cackled like triumphant
chickens, high-fiving each other, and said, because we’re poets.

4/11 NaPoWriMo 

WAR PROFITEERS

WAR PROFITEERS

With the price of gas, nothing could move

me off this hill except sour

milk, big oil barons raking 

it in, hand over fist,

with windfall profits

enough to sour

anyone’s 

milk gone 

rogue.

Which begs the question: is sour two

syllables or one, ditto that

with oil? I guess it depends

upon where you live and

how you speak to dogs

and horses, no

mistresses

to speak

of.

4/9 NaPoWriMo

 TODAY

I wrote two nonets, one about milk

and the price of gas but Blogger 

erased it, the other too,

now I can’t remember—

something about fugues

of dailiness,

the weekend

still in-

tact.

4/9 NaPoWriMow

DEMI-GLOSA AFTER RILKE’S AUTUMN

      a glosa after Rainer Maria Rilke’s Autumn 

Yes, of course, the leaves all fell, and of course, 

as they fell, they wept to the winds as if the orchards 

were stealing their stuffing from the dark clouds. 

Each leaf, a poem waiting for the right words to find it. 

It was a time of burning tears and the earth hesitated on its axis, 

it took Ithuriel a moment to take stock in the orbit of the stars, 

they were drowning in their serene loneliness in the vacuum of space. 

And there is always some wayward angel waiting in the wings, 

who thinks he is a demagogue, waiting to ambush you, pick you up 

and throw you over his shoulder like a sack of potatoes after the fall.

4/3 NaPoWriMo

Obscure words and poem fragments

Obscure words lifted from @Haggard Hawks

§

Take the Greek word for running, 

drumos, and we are off to the races. 

The hippodrome is for horses, of course, 

not for hippos, those ill-tempered water horses.

Imagine dromedary camels or dromedary dates

racing a mirage of lost palindromes in the desert. 

A man, a plan, a canal, Suez. 

§

Wielding my pen like a ski pole, 

I am torn asunder by a pain in my shoulder, 

My shoulder sundered, separated, an old wound, 

a bad spill on the last run of the last day of the ski year. 

Don’t worry, a torn rotator cuff and a separated shoulder

are enough to keep a firm grip on my imagination.  

TO A BULLFINCH

 TO A BULLFINCH

The Manx word for bullfinch is roo ruy. 

Embedded in its branches, the Irish rí ruadh hidden within. 

The roots of the teanga, destroyed when the English bearla 

was used to capture a dying language. Hurrah for John Bull.

The red lord of the trees sits high upon his branch,

heralding spring with his red breast so like that

of Cock Robin, anglicized from the Welsh, coch rhi ben, 

Lugh’s little red lordling with his breast made of sunset.

A brû-dearg or spideóg with messages from the Otherworld.

Who killed Cock Robin? I did, said the sparrow.

He was having an affair with Jenny Wren, the dreolín.

And who remembers the crime that traitorous bird committed?

Who tolled the bell? I did, said the bullfinch

as he hung the sparrow for his well-placed arrow.

You’d think that the arrow maker, the fetcher did the deed.

There was a goldfinch, a chaffinch, all manner of finches 

and sundry birds who attended Cock Robin’s funeral.

But only the dove truly mourned for him. 

The story got truncated along the way to a bull.

I have never seen a bull with his hangman’s noose 

sitting in a tree, nor a bullfinch, for that matter.

4/2/22 NaPoWriMo.  variants of Cock Robin here 

Obscure words lifted from @Haggard Hawks

Harmonic Convergences

After Robert Hass’ Story About a Body

How we define Eros, the breast becomes the talisman, she said. I gave them back when I was done with them, she said. Mother Earth was there to greet her when that too failed. She was cleansed by fire, she became ash and bone, and carried on with the harmonics of the universe. I have outlived my mother by five years, I am ready to give back my breasts, but it may be too late, as I watch my left breast turn its eye ever inward. Things are what they seem, angry wasps inside my breast seek an escape from the confines of the body.

4/1/22 NaPoWriMo

(I’ve been haunted by this image ever since Bob tried it out on us during a workshop at a Napa Poetry Conference in the early 1980s. I never knew the title.)

April Poem a Day and NaPoWriMo prompts

Robert Brewer’s Poem a Day Challenge and NaPoWriMo poem a day challenge writing prompts (Blogger helpfully removes the links and renders them useless, so you will need to visit their websites.)

TO BEE A FLOWER

To be a flower is a profound responsibility. 

So much depends upon whether or not one has already gone to seed, 

or set seed, even if the bees forgot to visit. It’s one big sex race. 

Finally, I’m old enough to let today be today and not be tomorrow,

or let memory attempt to set back the clock of regret. 

4/1/22 NaPoWriMo

DEMI-GLOSA AFTER A FEW FRAGMENTS OF EMILY’S

Glosa after Emily‘s elliptical lines

So Emily once said forever might be short
and since I’ve been short forever, barely reaching 

my own lofty height, proscribed or otherwise. 

And if to be an elder means pain, I am old enough today.
I’ve got the pain part down cold after a shovel incident,
I eat CBDs and sleep on a heating pad of misplaced desire.

And, I think I’ve got the old part down as well, as I’m pushing 70.
Emily said, the second half of joy is always shorter than the first—
by far, because you already know what to expect, don’t you?

3/31/22 NaPoWriMo