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.

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.

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.

I do not normally (not that I am normal) combine one piece or poem to meet more than one prompt. But I’m still on track to write sixty poems this month.

When I read the NaPoWriMo assignment and then the two Round Rock Writers Guild ideas, I decided to write one poem that might leap the bar of each suggestion. None of the proposals suggested a serious poem.

The challenge from the napowrimo.net page was to “write a poem in which you talk about disliking (hate) something – particularly something utterly innocuous, like clover. Be over the top! Be a bit silly and overdramatic.” The two goads for odes from the Round Rock guild were “Ode to a Comma” and “Ode to the Double Space.”

An ode is normally a formal, ceremonious lyric poem that praises or celebrates something. Yet, an ode in poetry can be sarcastic or hateful, particularly in modern or contemporary literature, where it might be used to express intense emotion. Writers often use “anti-odes” to ironically and bitingly criticize, mock, or express hatred towards a subject. (AI guidance)

Space Comma Commando

Highschool memories in black and white,
my mean ol’ gray haired typing teacher and her cane,
“Stop looking at the unmarked keys! You oaf.
Two spaces, you fool, after a complete sentence period.
Don’t dare ask why. Just do it!” Grade F.

Now some wit-wads refuse to spacebar one-time,
like some kind of grammarly crime. And like a religion of punctuation,
a belief they cannot renounce, they proudly pronounce and declare
allegiance to wasting time one needless space at a time, tap, tap.
And like a dance of purity, they bow, stage left.
(Don’t get me started on poets who space after enjambed lines.)

And I turn the page to English class taught by
the wife of the Merchant of Venice for whom
I tried so hard to please, Portia. She was not hot.
But I wanted to try (ms word removed a comma)
to please her. I made sacrifices. I wrote papers—did homework.
But my commas displeased her majesty. The in-ones needed
cast out, while others from the infinite comma supply closet
of the Universe were to ride in and by God I tried!

Look, Lady.   Three spaces and I did not look at my keys.
and then, a, comer, comma, and semi;colon, buthole bitch.
Fifty years hence with hatred in my heart, reading your obit,
I felt sad that I never could please you.

I hate two spaces after my periods and who,
needs or neglects commas anyway.
No question, Mark! Grade F.

Look both ways because many excellent writers hated English class. And many English majors and teachers broke the rules of grammar in best sellers or Pulitzer winners. Mind the gaps and spaces for reason and logic.

Day 4 prompt: Write a poem that involves a weather phenomenon and some aspects of the season. Use rhyme and keep lines roughly even length.

Hush

In snow I sense a calm gentleness,
a serenity of muffled stillness
that surrounds me in a blanket of peace
and isolated absorption of sound
takes me far back to my childhood,
to excitement and entertainment
that grows to surreal serenity.

Snow, my own silent white metaphor
of human sensuality — I smell,
see to perceive, my friend I can feel
by grasp, my childhood toy, to taste
by flake or bonded ball, feelings
of tactile emotion. Snow creates
in atmospheric stillness, rest.
My rare phenomenon of pleasures
within the draw of her cold touch.

That pluvial side of me, snow’s sensed
sensuousness stirs chionophilic
desire to celebrate those rare
meteorological conditions
dependent upon the presence
of all climatological gods
who understand the beck and call
of my old childhood soul of snow.

Look both ways to the pleasures and memories of life, one day at a time.
Mind the gaps and the hidden myths of covered traps.

 

Day 3 Prompt: Write a poem in which a profession or vocation is described differently than it typically is.

 

femme de lettres

Try as she might,
her search for truth required proof.
But she fought the good fight
to tell the world her story as truth.

The byline, the fame and
popular wealth was
the name of the game,
but she stood for a better cause.

Her life, not only to write.
But to make the world a better place.
She obsessed both day and night
to better all souls in the humanity race.

Then one day she just walked away,
but she never shed what was in her head.
To keep still and quiet and see that world
through the eyes of a journalist turned poet.

Look both ways and look closely.
Mind the gaps for a story behind the story of relative truth.

In the Long Run

I’ve Loved.
Lots!

People, places, things;
Not everybody,
Not everything,
Not always forever, either.

Reality awakens.
Only matter is forever.

Look both ways before you love.
Mind the gaps for lost love.

Day 2 prompt: write a poem that recounts a childhood memory.

 

First Fight or Flight

In a stretch I am maybe five-seven, down from eight.
Father was maybe five-two or so. I could say a lot.
Standing near the dining room table the hair on my head
then came up no more than his belt
and I looked up, into his angry gray eyes.

I felt fear and shook from the glare and stare of hate
like I had never before seen from my dad, a mean drunk
who felt no good toward me, and I immediately knew it
in my confused and flustered child mind.
I just wanted to go. To run. To get away. To be safe.

Look both ways at bad memories.
The teachers, fear and pain, reach over the gap of time.

Day one prompt was to write a tanka poem.

 

Medical Tanka

Oh, Doctor, Doctor
what is this that’s wrong with me
Am I gunna die?
Oh, Pain management you say
Okay. Two of these you say?

Click the graphic to go to the NaPo site.