NaPo

NaPoWriMo 2026, Day 29

NaPoWriMo 2026, Day 29 prompt: In a poem, compare your everyday present life with your past self, using specific details to conjure aspects of your past and present in the reader’s mind.

It all started
this morning.

I used to was,
now I’m not;
I could
then I couldn’t;
I used to run,
now I walk;
I used to smoke
now I’d choak.
I used to be,
but now I am;
I used to have,
now I haven’t;
I did,
but now I don’t.

And like Auntie Alice said,
I cannot go today,
my mouth is dry
and I don’t know why,
and my hip hurts
and my lip blurts,
when I look over there;
my neck is sore today,
because of what I did yesterday;
Any kind of hair I’ll take
because mine has gone
and I won’t do fake.
My skin had freckles
that I traded for wrinkles,
and my toe hurts on Tuesdays;
And my eyes are red
and like she said,
“It’s no use going back to yesterday
because
I was a different person then.”

NaPoWriMo 2026, Day 28

Happy Birthday to you know who.

NaPoWriMo 2026, Day 28 prompt: Write a poem that follows the beats of Victoria Chang’s poem, “The Lovers”: three sentences, six lines: statement, question, conclusion.

It’s coming around again
to the deep feeling for her music.
Has it been so many years
since her young voice made me love?
Enter my mind again with pleasure
lasting a lifetime.

NaPoWriMo 2026, Day 27

NaPoWriMo 2026 Day 27 prompt: Write a poem in which all the verses contain the same number of lines (couplets, triplets, quatrains, etc.) that give the reader instructions of some kind.

Baker’s Round

Round and round the kitchen look.
Clean the mess left by the cook.

Grab the box and read ingredients.
Find each food and utensil to be used.

Every bowl, each pot, measure,
spoon and scraper, at the ready.

Cake in a box, mixing bowl and mixer,
eggs, extras chopped, ground, cut.

Oven heating as sweltered venom
into the pot as round the room we go.

Beasts breast butter from cows udder,
into the cauldron with toad tongue.

Seeds of hemp for eye of newt
nuts of wall or from a toad.

Drink the lime from the coconut
and call her in the morning.

It’s all lined up and now you know,
a cake to make, ready set go.

NaPoWriMo 2026, Day 26

NaPoWriMo 2026, Day 26 Prompt: Write your personal ars poetica, providing insight into what keeps you writing poetry, or what you think poetry should do.

But is it, Art?

The truly ignorant wont, maybe can’t,
read, they may not listen to hear.

But why run a marathon if I know
I can never win? So few of you will
see me finish, that only I will know
my own many hours of training
and painful trials, my effort is just that—mine!

“No excuse, Sir.”
Why and why and why
did I, do I, will I do it? Why am I?
What is my purpose? Why even try?

Does a good poem define me,
or does a poor poem ruin me?
Must I meter? Must words rhyme?
Sometimes, when I climb those ladders,
yes. But only I can form my story.

Laureates are not rewarded for effort,
but for achievement. My poems are poetry
and unlike Horace, I open my literary
kimono to your trial and judgment
every time I write or perhaps think.
I will for as long as I can. Join me.

I want to be the everyman’s
simple ordinary cranky poet.

NaPoWriMo 2026, Day 25

NaPoWriMo 2026, Day 25 poetry prompt: Write a poem that uses at least three metaphors for a single thing. The poem should include an exclamation, ruminate on the definition of a word, and come back in the closing line to the image or idea that opened the poem.

My bed warms me and holds me down
like a rack and this nurse crystal balled me
with hospital corners cocooned to Kip,
who shouted “get off of my cloud!”
and someone grabbed my neck
as I was falling  like a bouncing quarter
off a tight one, drunk that night
and then in sight a fool rolled me
when the dogs attacked the sack.
I wondered who are you and “she
touched me.” My bed holds all my soul
for a day in three, the third with friends and foe,
and my bed never says “no.”

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 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.