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Lay Down, Lady – NaPo 2025 Day Nineteen

Today I was to write a poem that tells a story in the style of a blues song or ballad.

Green Eyed Blues

Loved you as they taught me to do.
Loved it all, as they taught me to do.
Duty, honor, country; I was there — to die for you.

Then, on that day came the blues, as it all withered and died.
One day what I loved just rolled over and dammed-well died.
Shit! Face down in my pillow I lay there and I cried.

I was the fool whose faith and flag I saw with pride.
I was the fool whose heart broke with a deathblow to pride.
No, I am no longer in love with you, such loss I cannot abide.

Good morning, America, how are you?
I’m true to the blue, mornin’ Murica, how are you?
Ima eating my shit sandwich with a hateful red-piss stew.

I’ve lost my world to white-hot green-eyed blues.
Nothing to die or to live for, I got me some green-eyed blues.
Sing me a song of freedom; I can’t eat, sleep, or find love in the news.

Look both ways to face the hopeless world we live in.
Mind the gaps but face the reality of nightmares on the day democracy died.

 

Rock Poem Metaphor NaPo 2025 Day Three

Day three of NaPo prompts me to follow the easy style of Frank O’Hara and to write a poem that obliquely explains why I am a poet and not some other kind of artist.

I looked. Oblique means not straightforward: indirect, obscure, devious, or underhanded. Perhaps metaphorically?

Poemhenge

Like most,
as a child I found rocks and stones interesting
to see, to hold, to gather, and to throw.
There were cool ones for holding
and some for skipping on water.
Some were hot rocks. Jocks protected stones.

I didn’t know any of the names.
Fools gold wasn’t gold or diamonds
but was filled with glittery sparkles.

Rocks had formations.
Many were famous.
Rocks and stones were even in songs.
And in idioms like rock solid
or your stone-cold heart,
or the millstone around your neck.

Eventually, old stone makers interested me
and new stone makers challenged me.
And the colors and cutters of gemstones
like emeralds, sapphires, rubies, and diamonds.

As I grew, my view of stones got more solid.
Famous rock formations attracted me,
I wanted to imitate the creators.
In the gym I used soft rock like talc
as I listened to the rock music and dreamed
of the rock candy mountain.

Rich people wore and collected rocks.
They called them jewels and gems
but I could not always tell you why.

Later, maturity took ahold of me
and I found my fit, even as a fossil,
to make rock and stone creations of my own.
Polishing stones. Stepping stones.
Stumbling blocks are rocks.
My mind one stone quarry among many quarries.
I walked the limestone line on cordoba cream—
noticing colors, styles, and finishes.

One day I collected some of my stones.
I trimmed and polished them. I included
abrasive stones, message stones, smooth stones,
and made them ready for display to the world.
And I named them all poems.

Look both ways and if you see Frank O’Hara, tell him I want to be a painter too.
Mind the gaps, especially as you traverse the rocks, then stop, sit, have a “J.”
Mind what the poets have to say.

Note: “J” is from the Paul Simon song “Late in the Evening.”

NaPoWriMo 2024, Day 21, Overstated

I don’t think I’ve ever had a real favorite color (or colour). But I needed to answer the question: what is it? So, I used to say it was blue. I like green, too.

And while I don’t like yellow cars (think lemons), pants, shirts, or journalism; Motorcycles, flowers, and mellow yellow songs all do well in Amarillo yellow. Also, I liked Jay’s pumpkin colored, semi-yellow-orange Porsche, which was kind of sweet.

Today’s Prompt-areno (it’s been three weeks, folks) is to write a poem that repeats and/or focuses on a single color. While any color would do, I went ahead with ubiquitous blue. It meets prompt.

Overstated

I thought I was cool, or at least being so,
like I would know the trick,
but I was advised
that I looked more like a fool,
the colors were a little bit sick.

My shirt, pants, and shoes were all shades of blues
but shade makes the difference, thus I donned—
a lighter shirt in a bland shade of green.
That was yesterday.

Now at home, I write a blue poem about my casuals,
while wearing a two-tone blue top
and mixed-up blue bottom that is not to be seen.

Long ago, my eyes were blue, but now some say green,
depending on the day,
my shirt,
and my blue-eyed soul.

We dance to the Blue Danube waltz,
and we swim in blue waters,
we pine for the bright blue sky,
then in August we wonder why.

Blue Ridge Mountains take me back,
a Blue Duck sits on my desk
or maybe it’s some Lonesome Dove’s
dark psychotic character.

Like red and yellow, blue is primary.
Mixing gets us shades of green or purple
or a midnight-something.

Blue nose or blue toes, blue jeans on blue teens,
blue men in a Vegas troupe.

Blue moods and Mondays
are both downers but not the blues of bennies,
and blue shaved ice is coconut flavored on blue tongues.

Navy blue is almost black, and baby blue is much too tac.
So blue is good, and blue is bad, and blue can even say
that we are in a mood or feeling sad.

But I thought it through and through
and I must admit,
if I did have a favorite color,
it would probably be something like
a deeper shade of blue.

Look both ways but try not to see red when looking at blue.
Mind the gaps in mismatched tops and bottoms, but blue is the truest of the cools.

NaPoWriMo 2024, Day 16, My Bufferina

Today’s prompt is a revenant from 2016. I was to describe an object or place in a poem that ends with an abstract line.

My Bufferina

In the lower-deck belly
of the B-fifty-two-dee bomber,
two downward shooting ejection seats,
held two-thousand hours
of my youthful ass.

Whatever was bad outside—was worse inside,
oven hot in summers;
meat-locker,
freezing-cold in winters.
All jets, or airplanes, had the same putrid odor:
burned wire insulation, fried electronics, old dry puke,
and piss. Add oil and JP-4 jet fuel.
No shit!

Navigation and bombing, our job, done there.
Twelve-to-twenty-four-hour missions
(mixed with moments of stark terror);
we worked, wrote, drew, set-and-checked,
and double-checked;
we ate our meals sitting there,
sometimes
one napped during deadhead times,
a home where liquid oxygen was life,
and the noise—
literally deafening.

Service ceiling nine miles up,
nuclear
low-level missions
dodging hills, towers, cows,
and Nebraska farmers’ turkeys;
sweat and stink;
then, after debriefing,
it was beer-thirty time.

Happy Days was a great TV show.

Look both ways because perspective is everything.
Mind the gaps on the maps from when GPS was a dream
called, “what do you need me for, now?”

 

Sammi’s Weekender #337 (scribe)

Click the graphic for Sammi’s page and the works of other scribes.

Been a student.
Learned and been taught.

Forgotten most of it by now
like Algebra and French
except the writing. And
some things
that can’t be taught.

Other things
I didn’t learn in school
like telling stories and jokes
that are learnt by listening.

Sitting around campfires
when some was truth,
some memories,
and some was downright lies.

When they ask
I say I write.
“What do you write?” they question.
What should I say? Words? Stuff?

Letters or poems?
Will novels and memoirs
resonate with my interrogators?
What does any writer write?

“I am a scribe.”
Sometimes.

Look both ways for self-identification.
Know the how’s, when’s, and whatever’s.
Mind the gaps and watch for traps but try to be what you say you are.

dVerse Prosery November 6th, 2023

We were to write a flash fiction story in exactly 144 words including a line from the poem, by Rita Dove called “November for Beginners.” The chosen line was “Snow would be the easy way out.” See the Poets Pub here. And other works of flash prose here.

I grew up expecting snow every winter. Sometimes crunchy—always white until later when it would die as wet, ugly, slush. I loved going outside and experiencing feelings that I only felt when I walked on a cold windless night in fresh snow.

It was always coming, and I knew that snow would be the easy way out—out of my life’s tiring and tedious problems (at least for now), as my insecurities about myself were silently made insignificant. It could never be more than one night at a time before the world’s reality marred snow’s existence and mine.

The snow didn’t know or care about my problems. I was welcome to be as I was with snow. While it made my world go silent, it seemed to hear me and to know what I needed without ever saying a word. We had secrets.

I suppose this is interior monologue rather than a story, but it works for me.

 

Sammi’s Weekender #335 (dissociate)

Click on the graphic to be associated with more 73 words of dissociate.

I tried.
George Carlin said
he tried.

I was———
then was not.

I left,
then came back.

Then,
left again.

Later, I went
back again.

More redux
than reborn.

I recommitted.
United
one more time.

I was a long time in,
way over my head.

Finally, slowly,
I surrendered
to what
I’d long resisted.

I’d never
be them.

I didn’t believe
and
never would.

Truth
forced me.

I dissociated
from all things
religious.

Look both ways on the continuum of faith.
Mind the gaps, but when you are done, take your stand.

***

My book of poems is available on Amazon (as paperback, e-book, and/or Kindle Unlimited).

Click on the cover for the Amazon.com page.

NaPoWriMo 2023 (Day 28)

It is Yolonda’s birthday. To celebrate with NaPo, I am to write an index poem (me neither). I could use language from any index or invent one. It is kind of an index to parts of her life.

Yo’s Index (chronological)

Arrival in Cisco, 47; Commencement into the World, 64; Abilene Discovery 65; Blissfulness, 66; PA pronouns after laughing in the Chapel, 66; Travels of Ankara, Turkey, 67; War Hymns, Chig-gar-roo-gar-rems, Hullabaloos, Caneck! Caneck! and au revoir Air Force, 68; Hello Number One, 71; Woodville bounce-back, 72; O-1 with you (she’s back), 72; here/there/everywhere, 73; Hello Cowtown, 74; Welcome two to the gene pool, 74; Redneck Mothers, 75; Happy alert Thursday, 76; How much more of this?, 77; She was number three to stroke back Mother’s Day, 78; Goodbye Stranger, 79; Island fever, 80-82; Missed the bus, 83; Rabbit fever, 84; Rancho Swimming, 83-95; Goodbye friends, 86; Ride the Fiesta, 86-92; Shadows of darkness; 90-97; All Hell breaks loose, 96; Heaven sent, 99-01; Hell sent, 02-07; Emerald water/white sand, 12; The three mountains and it’s 50 as we, 15-17; Near Austin City Limits, 18-23.

Look both ways.
It all boils down to a book of life, which requires an index.
Mind the gaps and always remember names and places.
“Okay, but is it a poem?”

 

Click here to see the pure f-ing magic.

 

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?