Day 5 Prompt: write one poem using or doing the Twenty Little Poetry Projects of Jim Simmerman. You can google it for other examples.
Torn Knights
He yelled into my face,
“Life’s not a bowl of cherries.”
I wanted to rip him to pieces
then and there, feeling his grip on my neck,
smelling the furious anger of alcohol breath,
I heard the silence of witnesses
sulking away, their fear fed my will to fight,
as his words breathed fire into my eyes,
all could see desperate anger quake the Earth
and shake trees as leaves fell like tears of fear.
Bill and Dan at it again on Butler Street,
brotherly love, kin with no wisdom to share
as each could see the envy of one
less favored dragon slayer.
“You da cool fool, hayna, baby-bro?
Ah tells ya, ‘cuz I luvs ya brudder.’
“Well I’ll swanny over such tots,”
tasting sweat mixed with vile spit.
Waltzing a pugilistic polka
inflamed a poison pit of spite,
played to muffled grunts and groans
Dan became the dragon, thus
Bill drew a slayer’s sword
to end of the fiery brand
brother’s battle forever.
Soft liquid steel shattered
the end, an old beginning.
Fata Morgana
reaching fait accompli,
times past without tears,
Earth swallowed Irish blood
into a hell of hate. Two men swearing,
dancing in the dark
to unending songs of never love.
Look both ways as life is not always as we wish.
Mind the gaps and choose wisely.
Day 4 Prompt: write a poem based on an image from a dream.
Falling
I dream. Real life things.
Clears the mind is what they say,
acting out, kicking or yelling.
I remember falling,
although
I’ve never fallen like that,
frightened.
Trying to swim
in the air, in my bed.
Crazy, right? But seems so real.
The fall ends
with an awakening,
a tension,
heavy breathing, until then
It’s like Aerosmith
singing, telling me to sing,
screaming in my ear
dream on…
Dream On…
DREAM ON!
Uncontrolled. Letting go,
all of it,
the stress, the tests
normal life washed
from my mind as fear falls
into a new day
of happiness and blissful life.
Dream on, dream on,
and sing with me. Before
he takes you away.
Look both ways.
Sleeping and dreaming, both part of living.
Mind the gaps with me, sing with me. Dream on, with me.
Day 3 Prompt: List ten words. Then, list two to four (that’s three) similar sounding or rhyming words for each of the ten. Use the listed words to write a poem.
If Tony Hoagland could write a poem titled dickhead, I can write one using Australian, British, and (when common to all three English speaking countries) American swear words. My list is of ten chosen Aussie/Brit swear words. The rhymes are another matter. Some folks think I need an excuse to swear. I do not (like this guy). I do it a lot, just not so much in the blog.
My List (10+30=40 words). Ten Aussie terms are in italics.
bullocks, hookups, pushups, full lips
bugger, buzzer, butter, sucker
bloody, bunny, dummy, plucky
shag, hag, fag, tag
twat, got, caught, shot
wanker, bonk ‘er, honker, conquer
root, chute, scoot, flute
wristy, twisty, nifty, whiskey
fuckwit, suck it, tuck it, pluck it
dickhead, bed spread, ‘nuf said, bunk bed
Bloody Sweary
Artful Aussies
sound so bloody plucky,
like Brits, when they cuss
to discuss dickhead fuckwits
of a hag. In a pub
they say bullocks
to hookups
with a wanker who’d bonk ‘er
while the dummy bunny
does pushups
holding a fag to his honker.
When the twisty wristy bugger
got caught with a thought
of a twat
he made a nifty switch
to whiskey. That sucker
wanted to root in the chute,
but he had to scoot,
or he’d be shot.
A full lips tag
punched at the buzzer,
a loss I couldn’t conquer
with my twisty flute
when I jumped
into the bunk bed
with a new spread,
when the utter said suck it with butter,
I decided to tuck it or pluck it. ‘nuf said.
Even embarrassed by poems,
look both ways for the universal swear.
Mind the gap lest you twist and shout a cuss or two.
Day 2 prompt: Write a poem about a place (i.e., a house, store, school, or office). How ‘bout a bar?
Packy’s
Sorry to say it’s gone now,
Packy Lenahan’s bar.
Packy too. Kids may age,
Patty and Maureen Keating,
lived in the same attached building.
I forget the people’s names
in the apartment above Packy’s.
It was on the corner of Madison street,
where friends Jimmy, June, and nine more lived,
and my grandpop had lived before I was born,
and Butler street where we lived.
Packy’s, some thirty yards west of
my bedroom window,
was where they drank and smoked,
and where they played games and ate food
until well past my bed time.
Inside to the right a huge mahogany bar
had big high mirrors, stacked whisky bottles, and beer taps.
I learned shuffleboard to the left,
and my first dart board was on the back wall,
left of some stairs up to the dining room
with tables and chairs, a kitchen and
toilets were to the right.
Few stools were at the bar, but it had real,
often used, brass spittoons on the dirty,
cigarette-burn stained, wood floor where beer
was often spilled and seldom mopped
under high ceilings with fans on long poles.
The back door was mostly for exiting,
or entering when closed (but not really),
on Sundays after church or after last call,
always unlocked after knocking.
There was a piano,
and a smell of stale beer
and staler smoke, and a juke box
back in the dining room
where I sometimes played,
but bar spittoons always intrigued me,
men spat, often missing, one of the things
they only did at Packy’s.
Many nights I laid in bed and listened to them
talking or singing and being loud, having fun
at Packy’s. Sometimes fighting
after Packy threw them out and I wanted
to go see who got clobbered
with a brass spittoon off the floor.
You can see Packy’s door and window over my Dad’s right shoulder (circa 1948)
Look both ways cuz it’s not always what you think.
Mind the gaps and don’t trip over spittoon.
It was not so many years ago that I wrote my first poem; an exercise in rhyming couplets about Abilene, Texas. I wrote and posted it for the first day of the A to Z blogging and the National Poetry Writing Month (NaPoWriMo) online challenges, both of which started on April (first) Fools’ Day. Each poem worked dual duty for both challenges in alphabetical order, cuz that is what A to Z is about.
By the first of May of that year, I’d written twenty-nine more poems. I felt a certain amount of pride (yay, I did it) mixed with relief, and some embarrassment about my ignorance of poetry, poets, and verse in general. The next year I wrote separately for each challenge, using the NaPoWriMo prompts each day and I have done so since.
Almost immediately, I loved poetry and embarked on a self-directed program of adventure to learn all I could about the craft and art of poetry. What is it they say about when the pupil is ready?
Since that experience, with one surgical exception in 2018, every day I have thought about, read about, written, edited, and/or read some poetry. Although, I probably did think or talk about it on surgery day.
I’ve bought, read, and reread books about poetry by the likes of Packard, Oliver, Hoagland, and other masters. I have often devoted entire days to a somewhat tireless pursuit of forms and styles; to the art and craft of poetry writing. I learned about poets, which ones I liked and those I’m not yet ready for. I’ve read biographies of poets, and I know many histories and life experiences from the Bard (or Omar or more ancient versifiers) to contemporary characters and personal poet friends.
One day while discussing poetry with a friend we decided we could refer to ourselves as poets after we had written one hundred poems. I claim it now, however, it’s still a forced thing for me to say even after so many poems and, in her case, a published book of poetry. I’m working on a book, too. No promises. I still suffer from imposter syndrome sometimes.
How It Started
About this time last year, I committed to writing at least one poem each day. I call them daily poems (I’m so creative) to differentiate from others. They average slightly more than 100 words each, although some poems are much longer and a few are shorter, like those for Sammi’s weekender prompts which have specific word count requirements. Most are handwritten into one of three medium sized notebooks. Others live in my laptop.
I work on (edit, revise, correct, review) every poem I have written before I post it. Dailies are first drafts and nothing more until I go back and work them.
The experience of writing 365+ poems has taught me much more than I expected. Sometimes (rarely) the first draft is not so bad, but every poem needs work.
I like to think I am a better writer, and if I may claim it, an improved poet for it.
Finally (drum roll)
December’s poem titles were:
Closer
When You Go
Making My Bed
Trudy’s
Happy Days
The True Void
Barricade
Finding My Way
What I Miss
Poetry Comes
My Library
Dream Library
Friday 13th Fears
How I Want It
Cleaning Crew
Electric Romantic
Taste of Love
How Difficult the Challenge
Erect Buck
Twelve Ways to Twenty
The Desert Call
Hubris
Average Joe
Why Do They Die?
The Gentleman I Wished to Be
The Sled
Matters Matter
Old School Casual
Complex
What if it isn’t perfect?
Clinical VA
So, this is it. A year of poetry and 11 other end of month reports like this one. It’s a new year, new decade, and new poems yet to write, but 2019 and my 365-poems project are fait accompli.
Always look all ways. Seek the gaps and mind them well,
wherever you find them time will tell.
Poetry month is finished and we’re into May. Since I posted each NaPoWriMo poem, I’ll not recap, other than to say it was a great experience. Per the challenge, I was prompted to try a few new things with form and content. My congratulations to all participants. This was my third season with the 30 poems in 30 days challenge.
I plan to continue writing a poem each day during May as I have been doing each day of 2019, but I will need to work up my own prompts. I think May could be a good limerick month. Not sure how (or if) I will do that. I do not post every poem I write, but I may put up some Limericks I find written by others (with cred, if I can determine origins). And I do need to write some of my own.
Over on the Dispassionate Doubt page (my other blog), I have no ideas or plans. Something for sure, but not every day as was the case with the A to Z Challenge and my version of a skeptic’s dictionary.
Look both ways, back to March and April, and on to May and June.
Mind the gaps and cracks in everything, that’s how the light gets in.
Today I was to write a minimalist poem. Such is not in my creativity wheel house and my first impulse was to blow it off and write my kind of poem, but I connected it to something I saw hanging on a wall with other art in my daughter’s house. In trying to be true to the minimum challenge, I wrote the poem on a 2×3 notebook that is always in my right front pants pocket.
Look both ways, back at April and on to May.
Mind the gaps, wear sunscreen and shades.
Today I am writing to you from the boonies of Colorado City, Texas. My Monday morning challenge was to produce a meditative poem from a position of tranquility (it is like that here this morning, but I’m snickering), on an emotion I have felt powerfully. I’m not sure what I did, but I felt that.
Today’s prompt was to write a poem about a poem, called a metapoem. I have written such before, but I did not realize there was a name. My poem is about poetry and me.
Like an invisible friend or part
of me, you were always there,
growing and forming, but
unseen by me—unloved
until now—so near
the end of my journey: my life.
My denial of self-darkened
truth, blinded me,
fed my pitiful rejection,
my failure to see you
always there, always with me.
Always you, but part me too.
Is it sad I never had
such; due to my own blindness?
Or do I celebrate the late love,
discovery of passion and purpose?
I must live today playfully
swimming in the purpose of verse.
Now enter my mind, my body,
and open this man’s soul to
the poetry—a part of me, I
didn’t even know I had.
Look both ways to find part of you, that you may be all of you. Mind the gaps but see them, touch them, feel them, look within for the parts that will complete you.
Today I’m challenged to remix a Shakespearean sonnet. I was offered several methods and any form, but I decided to write a new poem that expresses the same (or similar) idea as Shakespeare’s Sonnet XXVII, click here to read it (it is the 27th day, I like that number, and the Bard’s poem). I did 14 lines of about ten syllables (semi-sonnet?) with little attempt at iambic pentameter. While the rhyme scheme is imperfect, it worked for me.
Oh, I feel so tired and I’m so sore,
my poor old body can’t take it no more.
For this poor soul, it’s early to bed;
then begins, those voices in my head,
the muses of my mind. My body is done.
Listen to us–speaks my imagination,
I need to rise-up, and write all this down,
the body says no, but the mind says go.
I’m so torn between both sleep and to act,
no matter the loss, either way I loose;
for my body to relax, and my eyes to close;
hello, hello, we have words for you too—
damn it to hell, will this day ever end?
Will I rest my soul? And love you my friend!
Look both ways, for rest and for work.
Mind and write down the gaps, lest our muses desert us.
Our Literary Journey 