Human Condition

NaPoWriMo 2024, Day 4, Of Nature

Now that I have gone several rounds with Facebook, finished every chore and honey-do I can recall, and exercised, I am ready to write a NaPoWriMo poem, to the day’s prompt.

That prompt is to poem up something natural that takes my title, some language, and/or ideas from The Strangest Things in the World: A Book About Extraordinary Manifestations of Nature, by Thomas R. Henry. It’s a cool book/Gutenberg Project. I’ll read every word when I am no longer knee-deep in trying to prove to you that I can still turn a phrase, poetic or not.

I love Nature much more than it loves me or you. I roll my eyes at things like “natural ingredients, GMOs (I mean, so what?), organic (prove it and pay for it), back to nature, and off the grid.” Dr. Scott Peck wrote: “…natural does not mean it is essential or beneficial or unchangeable behavior. It is also natural to defecate in our pants and never brush our teeth…” (The Road Less Traveled).

I decided to write a poem:

Of Nature.

I first camped out in the woods or forest
as a Boy Scout, about age twelve.

Years later, I tent camped with my wife
and I learned what chiggers are, sort of.
She had over 100 bites. I had none (that time).

I was sent to Survival Schools by Uncle Sam
to learn skills about how to live alone
with Nature (so we’re never truly alone).

I’ve hiked wilderness trails in several states;
in the mountains, sand pits, and pebble pocked paths
of the Chihuahuan Desert in New Mexico
(26.2 miles, four times),
and I hiked the boonies in Guam.

I swam in streams, rivers,
stock tanks, ponds, lakes, and two
major oceans. I backpacked in and days later
back out again. I pissed and shit in the woods.

I suffered from heat and nearly froze,
wild animals woke me up and threatened me.

Thunder and lightning and torrential rain
made me question my sanity.

I know the creepy crawler creatures
by first name, and I’ve been bit,
stung (once in the ass), scratched,
charged and needled.

I have taken Benadryl to recover
from the sicknesses that being close to nature
bestowed upon me.

It’s beautiful, wonderful, glorious,
and even freakishly mysterious.

Ask the first in. Ask the pioneers. Ask
the natives. Nature is not a safe place.
Most frightening of all: people!

Take Her for granted at your own peril.
Love the beauty but respect it all.
Nature can and will kill you
without fear or regret. Ask anyone
of the frozen dead bodies
of the Everest climbers.

But then again, what the Hell?
Go ahead. Be one with nature.
Stomp that fire ant den. Follow
that rabbit into the briar patch.
Play piñata with that wasp nest,
and charm or handle that snake.
Enjoy your life. It’s all you get.

Looking both ways is not good enough
in the depths and wilds of nature.
Mind the gaps, look, listen, and be careful where you eat, step, sit, sleep;
and appreciate where you decide to defecate.

NaPoWriMo 2024 Day 1 Going after Cacciato

Day one of the NaPoWriMo 2024 event assigns me to write, without consulting the book, a poem that recounts the plot, or some portion of the plot, of a novel that I remember having liked but a book that I haven’t read in a long time. Define a “long time.” Am I supposed to remember plots well enough to recount them? Enough of my whining. No cheese, please.

I decided on Going After Cacciato by Tim O’Brien. I’ve done this in the past, particularly with O’Brien’s The Things They Carried. But as wonderful as that book is, it is a collection of connected stories with literary or psychological plots.

Pass the pipe, Paul.
He is there! We know!
You saw him say goodbye.

Follow his fantasy
to get out of this place,
miracle of miracles, as we

dream on, dream on, dream
ourselves away. Away to
gay Paree as all can see.

As the white rabbit said,
march on and find adventures
and stories, because

you do not have to be
smart to be happy,
you just should be in Paris.

Look both ways as you go after your dreams.
Mind the gaps because that is where dreams morph into gods.

Sammi’s Weekend Writing Prompt #350 – Vapid

Click on graphic for Sammi’s blog and more special vapid writes.

An Ordinary Rage

Ordinary wine works just fine
for normal people like me.

My sister-in law explained,
(about damn near anything
she liked): “it’s all the rage!”

Like mid-eighties, vapid looking,
overpriced, Cabbage Patch Dolls.

Ordinary is good. Strength
resides around the center of a bell curve.

If everything must be so damn special,
think about that, my friend—
because (then) nothing is.

Look both ways because weddings are wonderful and funerals are not.
The first is an option while the second celebrates death more than life.
Mind the gaps and be skeptical of outliers.

A Monday Quadrille at the dVerse Pub

Lillian is hosting today and prompts a 44-word poem that must include the word imagine (or a form thereof). Click here for the pub page or here to find more quadrilles.

Dip Stick

When I heard that our friend Jack
was charged by Olive
with checking Sally’s oil,

Sarcastically I said,
(with a semi-evil grin below a slow eye roll)
“Imagine that!”

I’d bet that Jack’s measure of success
was how often
Jack got that Willie wet.

Look both ways because some fools just cannot stop what they do.
Mind the gaps when you check your dip stick for fluid levels.

Friday Fictioneers for January 19th, 2024

From the pages of Mistress Rochelle’s blog comes a Jennifer Pendergast photo prompt of ladled ice in a frozen spa bucket to inspire us all to contrive a story of not more than a hundred micro-fictional words.

Click on Jennifer’s picture to skate on over to the Purple Blog for a dousing of the simple rules of entry into the welcoming warmth of Friday Fictioneers.

PHOTO PROMPT © Jennifer Pendergast

 

Genre: Romance
Title: August’s Commandment
Word Count: 100

They met one August while she was visiting family back east. There was some talk, wine, a dance, and time alone; eyes met, and after that, a kiss. Then, a sexual tryst. Their love grew, but full-time togetherness was not to be, except each August, same days, same place, same passion.

A few days each year for another fifty years, they met repeatedly. They discussed their polyamory as each was awkwardly enmeshed but still loved their family and were otherwise devoted to a loving spouse back home.

One day a letter arrived. Only memories now. But never again. No regrets.

Look both ways at fact and fiction as neither provides the full story.
Mind the gaps in the years, for love knows no limits.

Click here to read more #FF stories.

From the movie, Same Time Next Year (Ellen Burstyn won a Golden Globe for Best Actress), 1978.

 

Sammi’s Weekender #343 (window)

Click on the window to open up into Sammi’s page and other windowisms.

 

The Side I Never Met

Floating through darkness
I saw a light
in the black universe, one
dot, then
I determined
it was a window.

A woman was there.
She seemed to look but not see,
her blue eyes were calm.

I sensed
honest love, like a mother.
I could see longing—expecting
in her moist eyes.

Then I saw
the window was
a mirror of reality.
She was my reflection,
able to see into my past.
She was the image of the real me.

See both ways when looking through windows or into mirrors,
especially as metaphors of life.
Mind the gaps, the cracks, the wrinkles, and the patina of age.
Everything means something.

Sammi’s Weekender #342 (ocean)

Click it to visit Sammi’s page, to play along, and/or to read other 21-worders.

Two Earths, land and
ocean

perfectly disguised above.

Deadly.
Needed for life.

One Ocean. Four names. Only one.
Awesome is insufficient.

Look both ways when lost at sea.
Mind the gaps in the Marianas Trench.

The third line alludes to the song, “A Horse with No Name” by America (band).

NaPoWriMo 2023 (Day 23)

On the fourth Sunday of April 2023, we’ve been granted the opportunity to write a poem composed of numbered sections. Each section was to be in dialogue with the others, like a song where a different person sings each verse, giving a different point of view.

Additionally, the setting was to be specific, ideally a place where we once spent much time, but no longer do.

I used parts of The Age of Anxiety: A baroque Eclogue by W. H. Auden for methodological examples and guidance. Auden used several techniques in his book-length poem. One was identity tags (“Emble was thinking, Now Rosetta says, Malin says” … or sings, or Auden simply names the character) for who was speaking or thinking. He also explained places or set moods in prose. However, he did not use numbered sections. I must (mine is not to reason why). I have spared us both the book’s advantage of a 49-page introduction.

The Masque of Nave
(“’oh, heaven help me’ she prayed, to be decorative and to do right.” R. Firbank, The Flower beneath the Foot)

      1. He recalled to me…

I sat, stood, and kneeled in the back-most pew
of the bright, modern, incensed church nave.
Why was I there? What did I want?

      1. Jack later said…

I don’t believe all this makes sense, celibacy
without a cause, trans faces reality, real versus
what you think this place can do for you.

      1. Elle complained…

Not a wretch am I, and exactly from what
do any of us need savin’? They will come
if you feed them, and the music isn’t too bad.

      1. Adam looked and talked…

I could live like this, with some of you.
Hungry for your touch. I can show you
the way to find heaven on earth, in church.

      1. Then Ted said…

I will let you, if you allow me. We need
secrets to keep. This place smells, but
however it is, let me be part of it.

      1. Maddie told us…

Ted and Adam can play their sick game
without us in hell to help them; they are
blind and will never see time go so slow.

      1. I recalled…

This is not the place for us above it all.
No one will find a way or feel the fall.
What matters most is how we lived.

      1. And Jack repeated…

What you sense is not the house of God,
but the way to be seen as safe or good,
none here will go farther than the end.

      1. And I said to Jack and Judy…

Ted and Adam are alone and now dead;
you’ll both soon go to join them there;
the end patiently waits. But it always comes.

Look both ways into the good and the evil.
Even the snake only wants to be left alone.
Mind the gaps in all relationships.
People worships for reasons unknown,
often even to them.

 

Just click on the damn button.

Note: I did not use Roman numerals. WP did that on its own when I indented the poem. But they work okay, right?

NaPoWriMo 2023 (Day 22)

For this Earth Day, also a Saturday, I was to select an Emily Dickinson poem and change it by removing dashes and line breaks. I was then to add my own breaks as well as to add, remove, or change words. Basically, I was to make a Dickinson poem mine.

As I read various versions of her many poems, I learned that others over the years have taken license to make changes to the point that I cannot determine original forms or words. In the case of one book I have, an entire stanza of a poem was either added by one or deleted by the other.

Because today is Earth Day, I chose a Dickinson poem that relates to nature: “The Mushroom is the Elf of Plants” – (1350); or XXV, page 97, in my copy of The Collected Poems of Emily Dickinson (intro and notes by Rachel Wetzsteon). Generally, Dickinson did not title her poems, thus the numbers.

Bill’s Magic Trifle

The Liberty Mushroom is
the elf of plants at evening,
but not at morning, in its truffled magic hut
it stopped upon a spot as if it always hesitated.
Yet, its whole life is shorter
than a snake’s delay
and faster than the strike.

It’s its vegetation’s juggler,
the ever-changing nature is like a bubble
on the ground or floating to the trees.

I feel as if the grass was pleased as I
to have it grow in and among her blades of
scion of Summer’s circumspect.

If Nature had a more supple face
or she could pick a favorite fairy;
if Nature had an apostate fungus
the lowly liberty cap mushroom would be him!
And a favorite ‘shroom among us.

Look both ways because then is not now.
Mind the gaps left by migration and imagination.
Happy Earth Day.

 

Click on the NaPo 2023 button to see the challenge and to read more poems (not all are on prompt).

 

Hallucinogenic common magic mushrooms

NaPoWriMo 2023 (Day 21)

My assignment (okay, prompt) for today was to choose a word from a list of 14, then to use that abstract noun to title a poem with short lines containing one or more invented words. I chose calm.

Calm
I recall
from long ago
Dad saying
“If you don’t
stop crying
I’ll give you
something
to cry about.”

That worked
as well as
“calm down.”

He never did.
I had plenty
of reasons
to cry.

I should have
laughed.

Mom said
I was being
demonstrative;
she meant emotional
or dramatic
or histrionic,
or noncalm,
or theatratic.

Now I’m calm,
laid back,
easy going.
Boring.

Now it seems
I should inflate
my former
theatricality.

Look both ways in a world flooded with emotions, actors, and lies.
Mind the gaps trying to find the facts.
Play your role.

 

Click on the NaPo 2023 button to see the challenge and to read more poems (not all are on prompt).

Not so calm: