Pointless vers libre
I wrote this poem
impromptu, an
extemporaneous literary
ejaculation written to a prompt,
which, oxymoronically, means
improvised unprompted.
An unemotional, virtuous
pronouncement, to wit, I was
fully unprepared
by the fulness of time
to provide profoundness
of contemplation.
In my vernacular,
I pulled it out
of my ass.
Look both ways even on one-way streets.
Some contrivances must be assembled quickly.
Mind the gaps because the Russians are coming.
Na’ama Yehuda’s lovely flower garden picture posted by the incomparable Rochelle, mistress of pools of water and writers was both inspirational and challenging. A rose by any other name is a tulip, even on Friday Fictioneers, right?
Genre: Murderous Fiction
Title: I never promised you a rose tulip garden
Words: 100
We were so much in love, hotly in lust, blindly infatuated—the perfect couple. I decided I could trust him with my biggest secrets. We just clicked.
“Hey Babe, I need to tell you one more thing.”
“Oh, Sweetheart, you can tell me anything. Without trust, there’s no us.”
“I worked as a hooker when I lived in Reno.”
“Okay, Love…that’s over now.”
“I also shot a man there just to watch him die.
“You did what? You’re a murderer? We need to get that mess cleaned up.”
“I’ll be packing tonight. Don’t worry about me leaving. I’m already gone.”
Look both ways to see that no one is perfect, everyone makes mistakes, we can only be who we are. Mind those gaps so you don’t forget that your truth may be none of my business.
***
My story was musically inspired by: (I Never Promised You A) Rose Garden by Lynn Anderson, Folsom Prison Blues by Johnny Cash, and Already Gone (also maybe the line, And there’s some rumors going round, someone’s underground from Witchy Woman) by Eagles (sic).
Watch My Step
On a recent sunny Spring morning I walked comfortably along the yellowish-brown path of a meadow trail. I thought I saw a snake stretched calmly across my path. The trail ground cover and snake were much the same texture and color. I removed my sunglasses, moved closer, and looked directly at whatever it was.
Sure enough, a three-to-four-foot-long Texas rattlesnake, one of our ten species, was calmly holding its head up and making eye contact. It was not coiled-up or making threatening rattle noises. I noticed its tongue sensing the air. Otherwise, it was motionless.
I decided the snake was probably a female, not that I could tell. I’ve always had better luck with female mammals, why not reptiles? It’s difficult to determine a snake’s sex unless you are an expert, a snake, or have a sexing kit. They cost about $70, if you have a need to know and are willing to get more up close and personal with snakes than most folks are, be my guest. That optimistic conclusion helped to keep me calm.
However, I was shocked when the snake spoke to me. She said, “Please, don’t make me move. It’s early and I’m still cold.”
I stepped back and looked around. I tried to speak but I only stammered stupid nothings. I wasn’t afraid and thought it might be a trick. Imagine speaking to any animal. My skepticism must have showed.
“Oh, please,” she hissed, “everyone knows snakes talk. The Bible? Eve? Don’t make me do that bite thing. Humans taste like soap. We don’t like doing that.”
No way! A talking snake. Unbelievable (except biblically).
I hoped no one would hear me, “So, what is your name? What should I call you?
She seemed to smile, “Call me Metaphor. We don’t use names. But, since I’m blocking your progress for a while, it’s apropos, don’t you think? What is your name?”
Holy shit. A philosophical, talking rattlesnake.
“I’m Bill. Do you want me to leave?”
She answered, “Not really. If you’re uncomfortable, walk around me and get on with your life. I’ll do the same. If someone else comes by, it may not go this well. But if you have a few minutes, let’s talk. Think of it as a game.”
Good grief. A fucking philosophical, bible-wise, talking lady-snake who wants to play mind games with me.
She seemed to like me. Other than Eve, who has ever encountered a talking animal? Ok, maybe the fish in that Hemmingway book. Wait. No, never mind. Now that I think about it, talking animals are everywhere in literature, TV, and movies. I couldn’t just up and leave without regrets.
She asked, “Which do you fear more, other humans, aggressively growling dogs, or snakes?”
I admitted it. Snakes scare me. “No dog has bitten me since childhood. People seem safe enough.”
“Why is that?” she asked, “Have you ever been harmed by a snake?”
I could see where her ‘game’ was headed. “I don’t know why. That is how it is with most people. No. I’ve never been harmed by a snake.”
She asked, “Has any human being ever harmed you in any way?”
“Of course.” I said, “Many times. We’re not very kind to each other. Humans have harmed me or threatened to do so.”
Then she asked, “Of the three, you fear least your own species even though they are the ones who have harmed you most?”
“That’s true. But most people seem harmless. I feel safe, most of the time.”
“How many people in your life have been killed by dogs?” she asked.
I replied, “Certain breeds and certain dogs can be dangerous. Most animal pets are innocuous, including pet snakes.”
“That’s my point, Bill. Some dogs, people, and snakes are dangerous. But everyone and everything is not out to get you. I can tell you are not worried about me, nor need I be concerned about you. It’s called discernment. You do that with people and dogs. Try it with snakes. Now we both better get going before someone comes. I enjoyed our little game. Goodbye, Bill.”
We maintained eye contact as I walked around her, getting no closer than she was long. I turned and walked away. It’s always best to let nature, dogs, snakes, and other people do the talking. When I listen, I learn.
Look both ways crossing meadows and encountering other beings in life.
Mind the gaps and learn your lessons well.
My final 2022 NaPoWriMo challenge was to write a cento. This is a poem made up of lines taken from other poems. For my cento, I took lines from various poems in Donkey Gospel and What Narcissism Means to Me, both books of poems by Tony Hoagland.
Heavy Humor
We were drinking beer with the sound off
Greg said that things were better in the sixties
when I was pale and scrawny
and we soar up into the summer stars
but I admit that in the dark
(where a whole life can be mistaken) cavern of that bar
where men throw harpoons at something
costly, beautiful, but secret
jockstraps flew across the steamy
rickshaws gliding through the palace gates,
an act of cruelty which we both understood
the dreams rising from the sleep of children
far out from the coastline of America
a ten-foot sign says, WE WILL NEVER FORGET.
which makes us wonder if Time loves Memory back.
Look both ways (forward to May, back at April) and wonder.
Mind the gaps for those chores left undone.
Ominous luminosity
Nearby outside, a dark
electricity filled night
jarred us with
thunderous raging lightning.
Saint Elmo’s fire
danced and filled our cockpit
with ominous luminosity
from Palpatine,
to our fearless distress.
Look both ways for distress travels any direction.
Mind the gaps as you let the force be with you.
Note: Palpatine (Darth Sidious) was the name of the Emperor in the Star Wars movies.
Today’s prompt was to write a concrete poem. I wanted to do all 30 prompts.
What I did instead was intended to be a black out poem in lieu of the prompt, I’ve done concretes before. Not today.
I decided that rather than black out unused text to create the poem, I would extract the lines from the first few paragraphs of a longer story. If I had more time, I might have attempted some art to overlay the blacked-out area.
If I included the entire narrative, it would have been too long with entire paragraphs blacked out. So, I extracted the parts/words/sections that made up the poem.
I selected the first few paragraphs from the titled section, “On the Rainy River” from the book, The Things They Carried, by Tim O’Brien © (published in 1990 by Houghton Mifflin).
Drafted
one story I’ve never told,
it would only cause embarrassment,
a confession…
makes me squirm,
I’ve had to live with it, feeling the shame,
it’s a hard story to tell.
if evil were evil enough, if good were good enough
I would simply tap a secret reservoir of courage…
Courage, comes in finite quantities,
it offered hope and grace to the repetitive coward.
I was drafted to fight a war I hated.
(You can’t fix your mistakes. Once people are dead, you can’t make them undead.)
…I assumed that the problems of killing and dying did not fall within my special province…
The draft notice arrived on June 17, 1968.
I was too good for this war.
Too smart, too compassionate, too everything.
I was above it. A mistake, maybe…I was no soldier.
Look both ways for reasons why and why not.
Mind the gaps. That’s where the booby traps hide.
Yesterday, Fictioneers Mistress Rochelle dealt us an urban photo by Ted Strutz from which we were prompted to contrive, via inspiration, a micro-fiction story. May my tardiness be forgiven. Three more NaPoWriMo poems and my life returns to whatever my normal may be.
Genre: urban fiction
Title: Tony Loves Rosie
Word count: 100
The slow walking old man stopped. He remembered this corner with ambivalence, but that day with dread.
The ironic sign was near where he’d shot and killed Ted Coffey during the gang rumble. Hearing the Third Avenue elevated pass brought a tear. The bike lay were he almost bled to death. Behind him the spot where Rosie died. Then, her loud voice.
“Tony fucking Del Toro. Is that you? Remember me? It’s Rosie Reyes. I heard you died in Viet Nam. Marines, right? Hey, let’s get a cup a joe and talk old times. Good memories.”
Seeing her changed everything.
Look both ways, even on one-way streets.
Mind the gaps hidden in the crevasses of your mind.
Today, I was to write a duplex poem, a variation on the 14-line sonnet form (also echoes ghazal and blues) developed by Jericho Brown. While I did not make the last line the same as the first, I think it still fits the form near enough.
Look Both Ways
In my seventh decade I can sense
How the shortened horizon stimulates me.
As near horizons power my desire
I feel impatient and curious.
Curious about much, impatient to learn
As my memory seeks its own beginning.
Like flashing movie trailers of memory
I feel a revival of haste when I see
Time is not long, and my need is urgent.
Reality has broken though my dreams
And my dreams bow to stark reality.
From this end I see better my beginning,
My story told from beginning till now.
My seventh decade has finally arrived.
Look both ways regardless of how near or far the horizon is.
Mind the gaps because memory is tricky business.
For my twenty-sixth daily, prompted, voluntary assignment, today I was challenged to write a poem that contains at least one epic simile. These (Homeric) similes extend and develop over multiple lines with decorative elements that emphasize the dramatic nature of the subject. As suggested, I chose to write a complete poem as one long epic simile theme (salted with some metaphor) to carry the poem.
Flying Like Dragons
Like unleashed frightening awesomeness,
like giant thundering flying dragons with
massive wings lifting us skyward, roaring, breathing fire;
my brain blends with this pestilent machine, as if I’m guiding
an iron plague with deafening noise to wreak death,
to pour vengeance down upon their wrongs, a bane
to my enemies, a scourge of fire-for-fire. Flying
at invisible heights, with a sharp stinging tail, breathing
radiation into electrons, as my stealthy flying monster
seeks annihilation of the unjust.
Like a beast, it sees over great distances,
it smells its enemies in total darkness; then skillfully, silently
we approach as offensive defenders with hidden talons;
without emotion or fear, as if by kismet we destroy our prey
with automatic, irreversible, unmerciful curses.
Look both ways to see what is nearby but accept the limits of sensory perception.
Mind the gaps and trust your dragon’s instruments.
For the final Sunday and to begin the last week of National Poetry Month, I’ve been egged on to the sunny task of writing a poem that describes using hard-boiled simile. The prompt suggested similes such as those used in detective stories featuring a tough unsentimental protagonist with a matter-of-fact attitude towards violence. I slipped in some horror genre.
The moon that night reflected light outlining everything and everyone with tarnished silver lines and a grayish tint covering, like the lining of an old vampire’s coffin. Our faces were puffed and molted like poisoned mushrooms on stems growing out of our jackets. The tree we hung him from looked like a dragon’s skull with dead, dried bones — fingers and hands protruding in all directions. It was as bleak and hopeless as a baby’s funeral. The smell was as if standing in an old open crypt exuding the musty odors of long dead flesh. Gravediggers’ shovels made rhythmic sounds cutting earth like piercing chunks of lead striking burned ashes of dead bodies. No one made another sound. Each wondered if we had killed him dead enough, or would he rise again like the devil’s undead corruption? It was our common thought, a fear that united our cause but shadowed our minds like a haunting nightmare’s gloom. We were men, but that night we were like the evil undead lamenting a hopeless mantle of some human hell.
Look both ways when identifying good and evil.
Each defines the other by its absence, yet the absence of one makes the other incomparable.
Mind the gaps when laying blame. Nothing is perfect.
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