NsPoWriMo 2026, Day 22

NaPoWriMo 2026, Day 22 prompt: Write a poem in which you are in dialogue with yourself.

Let it Be

You always pulled it off.
In some strange and lucky way
you were slicker than they thought.
You’d turn and away you would walk.

I was just playing the game like everyone else.
I placed my bet and took my share.
You should know,
you were there.

You never cared about right or wrong,
only if you might get caught.
The trick you said was to never stay too long.
Every love you had you would forsake.

I am not the same and you know that.
That part of me has gone away
and now I wonder who I was.
The guilt and shame, I’m not the same.

It will catch up with you someday
And I’ll be standing in your way.
We will have to take the stand,
You’ll have to choose who’s in your band.

Maybe. But some things will never change.
My life I’ve worked to rearrange.
And now is the time to end it all.
And you’re too late to make that call.

NaPoWriMo 2026, Day 21

NaPoWriMo 2026, Day 21 prompt: Write a poem in which you muse on your name and nicknames you’ve been given.

I never met maternal grandfather, William,
nor do I know any nicknames he had.
Mom named me after her father,
a Welsh Presbyterian, born there.

If my sex was female, likely given
mother’s family history, I was to be
Wilhemina — a moniker mom and sisters
liked to (teasing) call me growing up.
I never cared though.

Billy worked throughout high school,
classmates still use it,
but was later made Bill. I don’t know
for why or by whom. A few friends used
Scratch (as in pool), but it didn’t stick.
That’s a nickname for the devil, Old Scratch,
it could have made a good story.

Nicknames given in military (my career) are often
uncomplimentary and teasing. Obi-Wan
was pinned on me when I was a B-52
crewmember during the Star Wars
craze (1977), the Alec Guinness role,
not Ewan McGregor.

Such names do not often transition
outside the military. I was the oldest member
of my crew (as is Ben in the movie), but some
thought me “lucky” and that “the force”
must have been with me. Maybe so.
I’d rather be lucky than good any day.

Nicknames like Maverick, Iceman, Goose,
Rooster, Phoenix, and Hangman* are assigned by peers
from personalities, mistakes, or play on last names.
“Buffalo” liked to call me “RJ,” my last name is Reynolds.

Look both ways at the names we’re called.
Mind the gaps and don’t let the humor hide the respect hidden under the **mayonnaise.

  • Nicknames from the movie, Top Gun.

**From the movie, An Officer and a Gentleman (1982).

NaPoWriMo 2026, Day 20

NaPoWriMo 2026, Day 20 prompt: Write a poem that uses an animal that shows up in myths and legends as a metaphor for some aspect of a contemporary person’s life. Include one spoken phrase.

The Lone Wolf

I’m not antisocial, I like others.
Not quite Greta Garbo in Grand Hotel,
I don’t “want to be alone,” I just like it.

My family is my tribe, my pack.
We do everything important together.
It’s seven of us this year but a few
older pups will be moving on soon.

Like what humans call introverts,
I find strength and focus from
being alone. It stays with me
and is there when I need it.
But being independent is pleasure too.
It’s not either or, it’s both.

I need others. Hunting alone
requires much more effort for
not much in return. And it is
more dangerous. Humans
seem to want to kill us all.

Alone is when I explore.
I learn things without the fuss
and worry about others.
I am a lone wolf — not a loner.

Humans have lone wolves, too.
It’s interesting when we encounter each other.
It’s like we just know. We can’t communicate.
We each say “howdy” in our own wary way.
But we know and we both just move on
and go down our separate paths.

Look both ways because the leader of the pack may be howling at the moon.
Mind the gaps for hidden snacks.

NaPoWriMo 2026, Day 19

NaPoWriMo 2026, Day 19 prompt: Pick a flower or two from the online edition of Kate Greenaway’s Language of Flowers and write a poem that muses on its names and meanings.

Yellow Cactus Flower

Prickly pear cactus flower,
you have an ugly and painful past and future,
but each Spring for a few days
you display baffling beauty.

You are deep and dedicated to one purpose,
to pollinate and become a red
cactus apple—animal feed or sweet jelly for people.
I like to see you, but I shall pass on picking.

I compared the life of Plath to yours.
Similarities that metaphorically story.
I pretend to understand, but I don’t.
Why must such beauty leave us?

Look both ways and allow every sense to send you the story of Spring.
Mind the gaps but focus on the life and beauty in front of you.

For NaPoWriMo 2018, I wrote a poem in response to Sylvia Plath’s “Poppies in July.” That poem also compared Plath’s life with the cactus flower. Click here if you want to read it.

NaPoWriMo 2026, Day 18

NaPoWriMo 2026, Day 18 prompt: Write a partial, rhyming, narrative poem that could be a section of a longer poem.

Seductive Sorcerous

Within her passionate realm
of moon and stars,
safe from the battles of bedlam,
in the sky a whirling excitement that jars
them. Dancing into dark laughter; her septum
echoing venomous frightening cries.
A vehement sorceress casting her spells,
“Relax, my dear, sensing pleasure is the prize
your haughty spirit submissive to my yells,
tamed by your seductive enchantress.”
As she raged, he endured her loving.
In toil and trouble, his lonely life at risk
as the witch’s cauldron bubbled, her maddening
deadly cries of passion calmed his fears.

NaPoWriMo 2026, Day 17

NaPoWriMo 2026, Day 17 prompt: Write a poem in which you respond to a favorite poem by another poet. I chose “If” by Rudyard Kipling. I did not paste that poem here, but HERE is the link.

When I am a human man and I question,
doubt others, and also myself,
when I move on and forgive the lies
with a smile and a wink,
but I will trust never again.

Then I have lived past my thoughts and felt
an imposter, when my song survives
as I suffer fools, then I’ll find
just the right tools.

When, win or lose, I become all
that I can be and I learn from the past
and question the future. Then, maybe.

When I write the poem that defines me,
when I walk away from fools and pain,
when I see Earth as humanity’s home,
then, Rudyard, I am the man I am.

Look both ways. Mind the gaps. Take what you like and leave the rest.

NaPoWriMo 2026, Day 16

NaPoWriMo 2026, Day 16 prompt: write a poem that describes something that cannot speak. Include what it has taught or told you.

On the Wall

I have seen you hanging around,
always there. My first 40 years you hung there
on Mom’s dining room wall and reflected
all who passed
so many times each day.

Antique photographs display gilded age design
flanked by sconces on grandfather’s wall
a hundred years ago.

Now old and tarnished,
repaired but not the same,
my reflection in you
calls forth ancestry I never knew.

Did they look into you and did you
hold likenesses of my past,
the good days and the bad
as you help us wonder,

How do they see us?

Look both ways because the mirror knows.
It sees the past and the future secrets.
But it stirs the mind to wonder what it saw and when.
Mind the gaps for seven years bad luck.

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.