NaPoWriMo 2026, Day 15

NaPoWriMo 2026, Day 15 prompt: write a poem that muses on love but isn’t a traditional love poem in the sense of expressing love between romantic partners.

So many songs about love of so many flavors,
sames and differences, in this sense or that,
in a dish topped with cost, risk, and crushed regret.
Songs, “I’ll do anything for love” (but I won’t do that),”
Unrequited love Creeps up on Jessie’s Girl,
and Layla has him on his knees. Have we sung and said
everything that can be professed about love?
Where does it come from? Where does it go?
Or does it?
The love of parents, children, art, animals, food, moments
(because of something else), God, self, when a man
loves a woman, a woman loves a man, a fan
loves a celebrity, and the love partners. And what of passion?

I am not sure that love is voluntary or epiphanic.
Will you still love me in the morning?
Is the inevitable pain worth the pleasure?
Do parents love their difficult teens in the same way
if they were wonderful creatures blessed of talent and wisdom?

Can I love everyone and is that a good idea? Certainly,
I can show concern, but I honestly have never wanted to
have sex with everyone. Not even close.

Love is a kaleidoscope of interweaving verbs and nouns,
of feelings and actions, of objects and persons. And every hero
has a few worthy enemies who cannot be loved
if they are to remain enemies.

Look both ways before diving into the deep end of any love pool. But let’s face it.
We cannot always help ourselves as with pleasure, addiction holds the helm.
Mind the gaps for impermanence of emotion.

NaPoWriMo 2026, Day 14

NaPoWriMo 2026, Day 14 prompt: Write a poem that bridges (smoothly or not) the seeming divide between poetry and technological advances.

Some do not read.
No books with poems. No nursery rhymes,
no love songs, no humorous verse or limerick.

Is that the gap—the divide?

Art and science are children of the human mind.

Is poetry still true if mediated, assisted,
or generated? Did other humans tamper with Edgar Allan Poe,
or Leaves of Grass?
Is it still art?

Machines resemble poems.

Write your poem with paper and pen,
a pencil and Big Chief tablet. Write on a manual
typewriter or one electrified with a ball of letters.

Does the computer keyboard bridge a gap?

No bridges to cross, no crevasses to span.

As old as the Epic of Gilgamesh.

But is a poem still a poem if no one reads it?

Look both ways to see art and technology.
Recognize the gaps, but do not create bridges where there were never any divides.

NaPoWriMo 2026, Day 13

The prompt was to write a poem about a remembered, cherished landscape. Include unusual language or syntax.

Everywhere

The Texan saw flat earth and big sky.
But not so much big trees, but some. —
It’s a huge state and even has several
mountain ranges without oil rigs.

Wonderful as it is,
landscape photography and paintings are far from the same
as sight for Washington State’s landscape of two-mile high,
some volcanic, mountains. Feel and see their majestic earth.

In awe of the tall trees, the hills, the water of the Sound,
a Texan eventually misses geography, sky, stars, & planets.
Maybe even the heat. The green summer and colorful fall,
the feel of Washington’s temperate climates and micro-climate’s call.

Memory of realities warming mind, heart, and soul,
aroused senses from bone to skin to smells, taste, sounds,
and sights as we feel a photographs recall of
deep down emotions we want to feel again. 2+3 or 5.

Look both ways to see that beauty is not a carbon copy but the love of diversity.
Mind the gaps but know it’s all part of one real beautiful vision.

RRWG & NaPoWriMo 2026 Day 12

Three prompts to which I matched tree short poems.

RRWG Day 12 prompt #1. Uses for Smart Underwear

Seriously. Seriously?

Jungle warfare combatants removed underwear
for sanitation and health reasons before
going commando became a fashion statement
(panty lines notwithstanding).

People have been wearing undies for more
than six thousand years. Moses and Pharaoh
both probably wore tighty-whitie precursor garments.
Some religions have special undies. Dunno why.

Enter fart counting and odor analyzing tech-wear.
Thirty-six times a day without vibrations or penetrations
smart underwear collects gut info gastro docs want to know.
Other uses? Maybe, but I’m disinclined to write poems about it.

 

Prompt #2 (expanded): “Some people are born without hope (a theological state of spiritual separation from God). Others are born without doubt (an innate state of confidence, certainty, or purity, signifying a lack of hesitation or fear, often in the context of spiritual faith, potential, or personal conviction). Neither of those kinds of people matter a farthing, because their lives are already writ in stone.”

This is where the cheese gets binding,
when push comes to shove, when he told me
his father turned commie after a SOC course.

This is when the questions are more important
than the answers. Genes matter. Triggers count.
When it’s good to hope, it is also wise to doubt.
To live lives that discover answers and approach truth.
When we understand that to someone
even a farthing had value in their world.

NaPoWriMo Day 12 prompt: Write a poem that recounts a memory of a beloved relative and something they did that still echoes through your thoughts today.

Aunt Lori

We called her Lori, but mom’s older sister was Delores.
Lori had a restrained sense of humor and was a devout Catholic
until Vatican II ruled restoration of unity through a Sign of Peace.
Lori, shockingly, stopped going to Mass. English was bad enough.
But shaking hands with strangers? She took a permanent pass.

Lori was strict in a good way. She wore a blue turban, glasses,
was curious, and lived her life exactly that way. She never married.
Of course, Lori was a bit quirky. She lived in Washington, D.C.
where she was a life-long typist for the Federal Government.

She, like my half-siblings, was a 2nd degree relative
and a big part of my life, despite only seeing her on visits
via bus rides from DC to our town.

I will never forget, and it’s been over 70 years since, Lori sent me
letters with enclosures cut from DC newspapers: puzzles, articles,
and cartoons (sense of humor), her favorite to me
was Dennis the Menace who I must have reminded her of,
or vice versa.

Look both ways at people in your life, past and present.
Mind the gaps when mining for perfection.
It’s love that counts. Memories keep them alive.

RRWG & NaPoWriMo 2026 Day 10

Round Rock Writers Day 10 prompt: Remember tomorrow.

Dwell not on future’s past.
Live behind the citadel walls of today.

Regret is real and tightly sealed.
Fear takes its share of precious time.

We bear the pain as best we can.
Suffering brands upon mind’s memory.

Close the coffin on a life of pain.
Once life is lived, the end is done.

Look both ways in time and space but live the life you have.
Mind the gaps for pain and pleasure, but one go is all you get.

Day 10 NaPo prompt. Write a poem that is a meditation on grief in the style of Geoffrey Brock’s poem, “Goodbye.”

 

When Great Love is not Reality

Great love allows great pain to
open the door to suffering’s
march into the mind
where it sits on tempest’s trigger.

(Will life’s complete happiness
ever return to my heart and soul?
Are we both lost lives or has
a secret page merely turned over?)

She pulls you into hell on earth
until we no longer see the other
and the greatest love loses
to the hard measure of pleasure.

 

NaPo 2026 Day 9

Day 9 prompt: write a poem in the voice of an animal or plant, (persona poetry).

Listen.
I hear danger over there
The man with a gun
I must beware.

Run.
Away from danger
That way quickly
so they can’t go.

Look.
For food. Hungry, always hungry.
Smell first. Then eat.

Taste.
After smell.
Is it safe?

Watch.
For danger move too close.
Away if another moves.

Rest.
When I can if no danger.
Horns mean danger.
Noise is danger.

Feel.
The wind, cold, rain.
Coming down on me.
Danger is everywhere.

Eat.
Find food. Find food.
Look. Watch more.
Trust nothing.

Around.
Turn. See and smell.
Eat. Look. Eat. Scratch.

Light.
I see light, but it’s night.
Look into the light.
What is the light.
That noise.
Silence.

RRWG & NaPo Day 8

RRWG Day 8 prompt” Write a poem for the “Earth Album.”

To Do and Feel

That one short step
from off the car park tarmac and onto
the spongy damp forest trail
is like walking into a different world
of true natural wonderland.

I recall the many feelings triggered
by the soft damp soil, the smell of rain
still tapping coded messages of comfort,
playing tunes that musicians envy.
I see a natural cleanliness
that exists only here.

The temperature and humidity
are flora and fauna perfection set
as only gods of nature know how.
Time becomes meaningless
in the soul of an eternal present,
right here, right now.

I am so happy—I can taste it.
I love you but this I must do solo.
Because here
we are never alone.

NaPoWriMo Day 8 prompt: Write a poem that uses a simple phrase repeatedly but includes statements that invert or contradict the phrase.

Typical

I am Normie Normal.
Bill of the bell curve.
A neurodivergent at the
bottom of the class.
Most likely to fail at life
to die young
and got old.

I am Normie Normal,
Joe Six Pack’s standard pal who is
so ordinary I’m exceptionally average.
Grade of passing C for me and my
multiple majors in BS or MA
holding his hip pocket ABD,
named Bill not Joe Schmoe who
gave up Nicky teen
for fourteen
marathons
at sixty-plus, too bad to die young.

Normie Normal is a conforming follower
or changer of rules
for ungifted Irish poets
who publish on late blooms.

A regular of the commons
who may champion the obvious
as he pushes against attempts
at enigmatic morality for Normie of Normalcy.

Look both ways at stereotypical personas.
Mind the gaps in the fortune teller’s magic 8 ball.

NaPo 2026 Day 7

Day 7 prompt: Write a poem that has sing-songy beats like those that accompany people with jumping rope and skipping. Something with rhythm and rhyme; something to snap, clap, and jump around to.

Boom, boom, boom
Mmmm maybe baby come on home
boom, boom, boom, bae, bae
heh, heh, hey and that way

Ho, ho, ho, ho
and go, go, go
let’s make some room
For boom, boom,boom

Roll the dice
Do it twice
zoom, zoom, zoom.

RRWG and NaPo Day 6

While I again wrote two poems to separate prompts, they overlap. David from Round Rock Writers pitched a picture of a sunrise through trees and Maureen from NaPo coached a style. These are in the order I wrote them. You’ll see what happened.

A new day is a symbol of hope
in a hopeless world.
One where deep sadness
is hidden but tasted by many.

While all life itself
is a hopeless endeavor,
always temporary,
phenomenally rare,

I sense, while I can,
that surviving
the darkest night
brings me morning light.

And that light injects
me with desire
fueled by another day
of precious life.

Day 6: In my NaPo poem today, I was to try writing with a breezy, conversational tone, while including at least one thing that could only happen in a dream.

***

Hey, I’m gunna go stand in the yard.
Wanna come with?
I like things better when you’re there with me.
You don’t need to dress. Footwear’s optional.
I know you hate shoes.
We dunna need ta talk. You’ll hear the birds.
Fookin’ loud buggers on Spring mornings.

Just gunna watch the sun rise with ya—
if you want. With me. No obligation, Love.
It’s just that with you there beside me
everything feels different. Safer. Better, an means more.
It’ll only be a minute. So? Ya wanna go?

I’ll show ya this thing we can do.
If you hold up your hands, if ya can,
and close your eyes, you can literally
feel the Sun wrap its arms around ya.
And it’ll kiss ya. We can try it.
Are ya commin’?

Look east then west in the mornings.
Be barefoot so you can feel the morning dew on the grass with your feet.