NaPoWriMo

RRWG and NaPo Day 6

While I again wrote two poems to separate prompts, they overlap. David from Round Rock Writers pitched a picture of a sunrise through trees and Maureen from NaPo coached a style. These are in the order I wrote them. You’ll see what happened.

A new day is a symbol of hope
in a hopeless world.
One where deep sadness
is hidden but tasted by many.

While all life itself
is a hopeless endeavor,
always temporary,
phenomenally rare,

I sense, while I can,
that surviving
the darkest night
brings me morning light.

And that light injects
me with desire
fueled by another day
of precious life.

Day 6: In my NaPo poem today, I was to try writing with a breezy, conversational tone, while including at least one thing that could only happen in a dream.

***

Hey, I’m gunna go stand in the yard.
Wanna come with?
I like things better when you’re there with me.
You don’t need to dress. Footwear’s optional.
I know you hate shoes.
We dunna need ta talk. You’ll hear the birds.
Fookin’ loud buggers on Spring mornings.

Just gunna watch the sun rise with ya—
if you want. With me. No obligation, Love.
It’s just that with you there beside me
everything feels different. Safer. Better, an means more.
It’ll only be a minute. So? Ya wanna go?

I’ll show ya this thing we can do.
If you hold up your hands, if ya can,
and close your eyes, you can literally
feel the Sun wrap its arms around ya.
And it’ll kiss ya. We can try it.
Are ya commin’?

Look east then west in the mornings.
Be barefoot so you can feel the morning dew on the grass with your feet.

NaPo & RRWG Day 5

I do not normally (not that I am normal) combine one piece or poem to meet more than one prompt. But I’m still on track to write sixty poems this month.

When I read the NaPoWriMo assignment and then the two Round Rock Writers Guild ideas, I decided to write one poem that might leap the bar of each suggestion. None of the proposals suggested a serious poem.

The challenge from the napowrimo.net page was to “write a poem in which you talk about disliking (hate) something – particularly something utterly innocuous, like clover. Be over the top! Be a bit silly and overdramatic.” The two goads for odes from the Round Rock guild were “Ode to a Comma” and “Ode to the Double Space.”

An ode is normally a formal, ceremonious lyric poem that praises or celebrates something. Yet, an ode in poetry can be sarcastic or hateful, particularly in modern or contemporary literature, where it might be used to express intense emotion. Writers often use “anti-odes” to ironically and bitingly criticize, mock, or express hatred towards a subject. (AI guidance)

Space Comma Commando

Highschool memories in black and white,
my mean ol’ gray haired typing teacher and her cane,
“Stop looking at the unmarked keys! You oaf.
Two spaces, you fool, after a complete sentence period.
Don’t dare ask why. Just do it!” Grade F.

Now some wit-wads refuse to spacebar one-time,
like some kind of grammarly crime. And like a religion of punctuation,
a belief they cannot renounce, they proudly pronounce and declare
allegiance to wasting time one needless space at a time, tap, tap.
And like a dance of purity, they bow, stage left.
(Don’t get me started on poets who space after enjambed lines.)

And I turn the page to English class taught by
the wife of the Merchant of Venice for whom
I tried so hard to please, Portia. She was not hot.
But I wanted to try (ms word removed a comma)
to please her. I made sacrifices. I wrote papers—did homework.
But my commas displeased her majesty. The in-ones needed
cast out, while others from the infinite comma supply closet
of the Universe were to ride in and by God I tried!

Look, Lady.   Three spaces and I did not look at my keys.
and then, a, comer, comma, and semi;colon, buthole bitch.
Fifty years hence with hatred in my heart, reading your obit,
I felt sad that I never could please you.

I hate two spaces after my periods and who,
needs or neglects commas anyway.
No question, Mark! Grade F.

Look both ways because many excellent writers hated English class. And many English majors and teachers broke the rules of grammar in best sellers or Pulitzer winners. Mind the gaps and spaces for reason and logic.

NaPo April 2026 Day 4

Day 4 prompt: Write a poem that involves a weather phenomenon and some aspects of the season. Use rhyme and keep lines roughly even length.

Hush

In snow I sense a calm gentleness,
a serenity of muffled stillness
that surrounds me in a blanket of peace
and isolated absorption of sound
takes me far back to my childhood,
to excitement and entertainment
that grows to surreal serenity.

Snow, my own silent white metaphor
of human sensuality — I smell,
see to perceive, my friend I can feel
by grasp, my childhood toy, to taste
by flake or bonded ball, feelings
of tactile emotion. Snow creates
in atmospheric stillness, rest.
My rare phenomenon of pleasures
within the draw of her cold touch.

That pluvial side of me, snow’s sensed
sensuousness stirs chionophilic
desire to celebrate those rare
meteorological conditions
dependent upon the presence
of all climatological gods
who understand the beck and call
of my old childhood soul of snow.

Look both ways to the pleasures and memories of life, one day at a time.
Mind the gaps and the hidden myths of covered traps.

 

NaPo 2026 Day 3

Day 3 Prompt: Write a poem in which a profession or vocation is described differently than it typically is.

 

femme de lettres

Try as she might,
her search for truth required proof.
But she fought the good fight
to tell the world her story as truth.

The byline, the fame and
popular wealth was
the name of the game,
but she stood for a better cause.

Her life, not only to write.
But to make the world a better place.
She obsessed both day and night
to better all souls in the humanity race.

Then one day she just walked away,
but she never shed what was in her head.
To keep still and quiet and see that world
through the eyes of a journalist turned poet.

Look both ways and look closely.
Mind the gaps for a story behind the story of relative truth.

NaPoWriMo 2026 Day 2

Day 2 prompt: write a poem that recounts a childhood memory.

 

First Fight or Flight

In a stretch I am maybe five-seven, down from eight.
Father was maybe five-two or so. I could say a lot.
Standing near the dining room table the hair on my head
then came up no more than his belt
and I looked up, into his angry gray eyes.

I felt fear and shook from the glare and stare of hate
like I had never before seen from my dad, a mean drunk
who felt no good toward me, and I immediately knew it
in my confused and flustered child mind.
I just wanted to go. To run. To get away. To be safe.

Look both ways at bad memories.
The teachers, fear and pain, reach over the gap of time.

Mack the Knife – NaPo 2025 Day Thirty

For the final day of April and to close out the 2025 version of how I do National Poetry Month, I was to pen a poem that describes various times in my life when I have heard the same band or music.

Congrats to all participants. This may have been my best NaPoWriMo year because the prompts seemed to be in my poetry writing lane. One a day for 30 days, on prompt.

Thanks to Maureen for another fantastic April.

Composed

Melody and lyrics done separately
twenty years before my birth
in a language I did not speak
never intended for my ears
for the Threepenny I’ve never been

Thirteen-ish me,
a maligned Catholic school kid
discovering hormones;
Friday night dances (nun-chaperoned),
and un-churchly music we loved;
songs like The Battle of New Orleans,
Mack the Knife, Personality, Venus,
Lonely Boy, and a hundred more.

The year another paper boy
and fellow music lover, Don M. said
was when the music died.
But it had not. Not yet. Not ever.
My music may die with me. But not today.

Not until Bobby Darin — did Mack the Knife
find me with five up-key modulations
bring marvelous darkness to musical light
to make us feel a special song
in a special time. Then and since.

Wonderful covers, pre and post, but
back then I didn’t know about
someone and something I liked so much,
music that would change with me,
year after year, never the same old song.

Look both ways
“Now on the sidewalk…lies a body just oozing life, eek!”
Mind the gaps cuz,
“someone’s sneakin’ ‘round the corner—could that someone be Mack the Knife?”

Interested in more? Check THIS out—especially the video of Bobby Darin’s version, if you’re not familiar with the song.

EXTRA – EXTRA – EXTRA —- A friend and classmate of mine just let me know about this new, hot, Broadway production honoring Bobbie Daren.

 

 

 

Write me a Song – NaPo 2025 Day Twenty-Nine

Today I was to compose a poem mused by the life of a musician, poet, or other artist.

Then Sing It

What is it like? I will always wonder,
to know at age fifteen or sixteen
what you will do for the rest of your life.

And five or more decades later,
to not only have made it,
but to be at the top,
to still be doing it—still creating.
And to be
a star, a celeb, a household name.
Can you count the awards?

To have your picture
from the covers of several of your many albums
on Mr. Bill’s wall,
to have fifty-thousand plus strangers pay
to hear you sing, to play, what do you say?
To sing it while making your day and theirs.

For a lover of your talent to think of you immediately
when prompted to write a poem about
an artist, a singer, songwriter, both,
and you knew it before I knew who I was.
How does it feel?

Sure, life was not always wonderful,
not as charmed, perhaps awful at times. I know.
I care. But for me there were days
when your music was everything.
Often, it was all that mattered to me.
Maybe it saved me.

Look both ways. Some of us are still trying to figure out life
and who we are and were we are going.
Mind the gaps, the majors, the minors,
and thank someone who doesn’t know who you are.

I did not use a name in this poem because there are so many.

The Aggie Band – NaPo 2025 Day Twenty-Eight

Today I was to author a poem that involves music at a ceremony or event.

Moved

The big deal yells when yesterday ends and today begins—
at midnight.
Some folks think it’s a myth,
but for most Texas Aggies, when the band plays
at a football game halftime, at the game or on TV,
it is a major emotional experience.
An impressive spectacle. Feelings
well up inside, a spirit rises and is felt for miles.
That lasts a lifetime,
not just for students and former students,
but for friends and family, as well.

While the music matters and memories play;
the sights, the marching, the yelling fans
participating with the school and the band.
It is magical. The drum majors.
Game scores are briefly forgotten
when the uniformed cadets rush out onto the north end,
and for ten to twenty minutes the crowd participates
with yells and singing to the marching musical repertoire.

Many fine schools have great bands
providing entertainment, excellent music,
and a unique perspective important to those schools.
But there is exactly one Fightin’ Texas Aggie Band.

Look both ways, especially into the past.
It is possible to feel those emotions again.
To be part of something not you, bigger than self,
but also part of who and what you are.
Mind the gaps and let the yell leaders lead. Stand up and yell!

Happy Birthday to a big Texas Aggie Band fan, Yolonda.

Justice Struck Me – NaPo 2025 Day Twenty-Seven

And so, today I was challenged to write a poem that describes a detail in a painting. My poem was to begin with a grand, declarative statement.

Who Was She?

It is never just the painting and the world, I know.
Each painting unites with each eye, each mind,
to make the art meaningful. Neither stands without the other.

I recall the overall picture vaguely, but it’s the setting
I remember well. An empty courtroom
except for a little girl standing with her back to me,

and a judge looking down from his bench. Authority!
I cannot see her face, but I know it is the face
of every child confronted with

the reality of the state, power, autocratic justice.
Fear. Helplessness. Hopelessness.
I felt all of that. Overpowering feelings.

A Miami artist opened emotions
hidden so deep that I denied them.
I almost cried. I moved on, hiding the real me.

Look both ways as you play the great pretender who will live forever.
Mind the gaps because somewhere out there,
an artist knows your truth and may tell you.