NaPoWriMo

NaPoWriMo 2023 (Day 14)

Dear Bill,

Today, I challenge you to write a parody or satire based on a famous, favorite, or unfavorite, poem of the past.

Happy writing! And regards,

Maureen

PS: Don’t forget, Yolonda’s birthday is in exactly two weeks.

I love Alfred, Lord Tennyson’s poem, The Charge of the Light Brigade. However, I decided to use it for my ridiculous (or maybe not) parody.

Say What?

Half a league is still
over a mile and a half—
The Valley of what?
Did you say death?
Now hold on there, Cowboy.
Right, we got six hundred.
The rooskies got way more.

Blyme, Sir. Did I hear right?
Charge their cannons
with our lancers?
Another Army SNAFU.
I need to explain something.
I don’t give a rat’s ass why.
We’re all going to feckin’ die.
Not in this man’s life,
not even with six hundred.

All of them artys on three sides,
no cover, no air support, and
whose idea was it
to bring our knives to
this crazy cannon gun fight?
Me and this horse will
just mosey yonder and wait.

What the hell is wrong
with you, Captain? I say
we let them Cossacks
and Rooskies be. They mean
no harm to me.

Oh, shit! Now look what
you did—another “oopsie”
by our genius leadership.
There has been some ugly
stuff out here. We’re not
six hundred no more.

I heard you say that
glorious death awaits me.
Maybe so. But I prefer
don’t be stupid and live
to fight another day.
“Noble six hundred” my ass.

Look both ways, but knives are no help in a gun fight.
Mind the gaps and pass the ammunition.

To learn more about the history of this event, click here.

To read and hear read Tennyson’s poem, click here.

 

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

NaPoWriMo 2023 (Day 13)

On the 13th day I was to write a short poem that follows the beats of a classic joke. My poem should emphasize the interplay between the form of the poem and the punchline.

I use humor. But today? Nada. In desperation I am posting this just so that I post “on prompt” and do not get behind. (Nobody said it had to be good.) I hope to do better tomorrow. Anyway…

Doctor, doctor,
what is wrong with me?

Each morning
when I look into the mirror
I feel like throwing up.
What is wrong with me?

The doctor says
he doesn’t know
then adds,
“but your eyesight
is perfect.”

Look both ways when contemplating the literal and the ironic.
Mind the gaps. Even the best comics flop sometimes.

 

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

Not his best, but Ray is on-prompt, too.

NaPoWriMo 2023 (Day 12)

It’s another hump day and I’ve written (to prompt) a poem that “addresses itself or some aspect of itself.”

I attempted a bit humor using personification, elements of poems, and dialogue (dialogue poems are legit) between two old poem friends.

If I get ripped for being a little sexist, so be it. Bukowski, I’m not.

The Dialogue Readings

Frankie. Wake up! We have a problem.

My name is Francesca. Not Frankie.
What is it now Gabbie?

I’m Gabriella.

Whatever. What’s your problem?

It’s poetry month and he’s picking poems
to read at that open mic thingy.

So what? He does that every month.

He abandoned us years ago.
Now he wants to dress me up and take me out.
He wants to upgrade my imagery.
My metaphor needs to be adjusted.

This scheme makes my verse look fat.
Look, my couplets are sagging!
And my rhymes sound forced.

Gabbs, all rhymes are forced, don’t worry.
And your couplets are pure soliloquy.

What meter will he dress me in?
I’ve lost my rhythm and sorry,
but I forget what that metaphor was for.

At least you’re not a limerick. Or worse,
an ode pastoral haiku.
You got standup stanza, Girlfriend!

Well, I still think my verse is a bit terse,
And my assonance isn’t what it was.
But my onomatopoeia still got its boom-boom.

Sounds wonderful. What are you going to wear?

I think my sonnet bonnet beats that old free verse fedora.
Over my enclosed rhyme-wear, that pentameter blouse
goes well with my cinquain studded skirt.
I saw some nice narrative-tercet flats to tell his sorry story.

You’ll be poetry personified, Gabriella.
Now let me go back to sleep. Have fun.

Hey, sestet, you’re getting read too.
So get ready, Frankie, dear Francesca.

What? Ode noooo.

Look both ways at the new and the old.
Mind the gaps, especially when you stereotype.

 

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

NaPoWriMo 2023 (Day 11)

Today, I was to write a poem that takes as its starting point something overheard that made me laugh, or something someone told me once that struck me as funny. So, one day…

Testimonial Tiptoeing

While walking to Bible Study one sunny Sunday
I thought I heard her say to me, “Sit on your hands
and keep your mouth shut.”
She may have said, “Please.”
I may have laughed,
as they say, out loud.

I don’t recall.
I hadn’t planned for this behavior,
nor had others. I was well-known
for my robust questions effectuating discourse.
But I agreed to remain calm and quiet.

Perhaps a little too proud of my oracular
transformation of boring topics into
heated disputes among those who cared
(maybe a little too much) about all things biblical.

I did my best. I really tried to make her proud.
With both hands literally under my arse,
and my lips drawn to a thin white line,
I was being holy as hell and doing fine,
until the lovely lady facilitating the study asked,

“Bill, why have you been so quiet?
Why have you not blessed us
with your usual wit and wisdom?”
And why is your face so red?

I don’t remember much after that.
The priest said it was demonic.
A friend said smoke bellowed
from my ears. I swear I heard a nun pray,
more impassioned than logical,
“May the saints preserve us from
this cantankerous old toad.”

Look both ways when contemplating all things divine.
Mind the gaps but give respect to get respect.
Sometimes a story is just a story and a joke is just a joke.

 

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

NaPoWriMo 2023 (Day 10)

What is a sea shanty?

It’s a poem in the form of a song, strongly rhymed and rhythmic. Two famous sea shanties, in addition to The Wellerman (listen, it’s fun), are What Shall We Do With A Drunken Sailor? and Blow the Man Down.

My assignment was to write a poem with nautical phrases to keep “the sea in my shanty.” While formerly career Air Force, I’m intrigued by submarines and aircraft carriers and the life sailors live. I decided on a poem about submariners, after knowing some and learning more (for a flyboy/landlubber). I used so much jargon that I decided on extensive glossing.

Blind Man’s Bluff

Shipmate, shipmate, useless thou art
you’ll be chief of the crank
or you’ll be walkin’ the plank
unqualled and unfit to smell a chief’s fart.

Yer like a dog with two peters
so confused in that bubble
a bluenose nub, yer nothin’ but trouble
below-decks with the cooks and the beaters.

The worst we got yet from rottin’ o’Groton
yer too fuckin’ green to sit in the box.
Today yer a FLOB washing my socks.
We’ll rig for red and drop you in Boston.

Shipmate, shipmate, you’re new to the crew.
Bubblehead, bubblehead, give me a clue.
Carry on with target prosecution that’s true,
a fish in the water with the firing solution.

What’s that? A dolphin on your chest?
And the COB now thinks yer one of the best.
Sooner than sonar our service’s a test,
an a-ganger now, yer the best of the rest.

With orders all ahead full cavitate,
it’s hard for the skimmers to fully appreciate
the pukas in our honeycomb tube
remember your days as a dumbass nub-noob.

Shipmate, shipmate, here we go again
bubblehead, bubblehead, give us a clue.
We’re just out of Groton all shiny and new.
We’ll be diving in soon, you tell us all when.

Look both ways, but things can hide behind a submarine.
Mind the gaps on the port and the starboard, but out of the water the rudder is right.

Note: I got the title from Blind Man’s Bluff: The Untold Story of American Submarine Espionage by Sherry Sontag, Christopher Drew, and Annette Lawrence Drew, published in 1998, is a non-fiction book about U.S. Navy submarine operations during the Cold War. I give the book 5 stars.

Gloss: “Shipmate” is pejorative when used sailor to sailor, but not usually otherwise. “Chief” is a senior enlisted rank, but here it is sarcastic. “Crank”s are the shit-jobs on submarines. The “bubble” refers to leveling the sub. A “NUB” is a non-useful body, unqualified without a dolphin badge (like a pilot without wings).

The USN submarine school and museum (I recommend if you like subs and their history) are located near Groton, Connecticut (USA). I’ve heard it called “rotten Groton.”

The “box” is a key location on a sub. “FLOB” is an initialism for freeloading oxygen breather. “Rig for red” is going to red lights to preserve night vision before rising to periscope depth. “Bubblehead” refers to people on submarines. “Fish” in the water refers to a torpedo. US Submariners are awarded a dolphin badge when they become fully qualified. “COB” is the enlisted chief of the boat. “A-gangers” are experienced crewmembers (aka, knuckle-draggers/tough guys). “All ahead full cavitate” is getting away quickly. “Skimmers” are surface ships and sailors. “Pukas” are small hiding places on a sub.

 

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

NaPoWriMo 2023 (Day 9)

Today I was to write a sonnet. While allowed space regarding traditional sonnets, I was to keep with a general theme of “love.” I did not shoot for iambic pentameter, but I did manage ten syllables per line, except for the final two, which are nine and eleven, thus averaging ten. I made no attempt to rhyme.

I don’t think you understood love like me.
When I told Mom that you were a good man
Walking home after making arrangements
She balked. I understood and we agreed.

You had always been a difficult man.
With a world view no wider than the path
Of a tear rolling down my cheek or hers.
Coalminer tough and Irishman drunk.

Your mother died when you were only eight.
You were raised by a strict Scotsman father.
About him and you, you never told me.
He was your only father role model.

Now I wonder about me as a father,
And my wife as my children’s mother.

Look both ways in love and life.
Nobody is perfect and forgiveness is good.
But forgetting is optional.

 

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

NaPoWriMo 2023 (Day 8)

On NaPo day eight (yesterday), we were gifted twenty little “projects” from which we were to construct a poem. If you would like to see that list, follow this link, where you can also see how other poets handled this assignment.

Thunderstruck Dream

I was sleeping deeply and dreaming peacefully. Without warning
outside,
thirty meters from my head,
boom!

David’s deity-voiced metaphor
of frightening lightening, and roaring thunder were rude,
but effective wake-up calls.
God’s anger jolted me.
I calmly rose and charged outside.
There I inhaled the quiet storms.

The odor of thermite filled the black darkness.
Reduced pressure tugged at my body hair.
I could hear charred silence
dipped in white-hot phosphorescent fire.

I felt my limbs move in voluntary equilibrium with my brain.
Electrified air was warm but slowly cooling.
As time passed, normality moaned.
I felt the slow, shimmering return of colors.

Was Zeus passing through central Texas
early that morning? Did Jupiter ambush my restless night?
Was the storm deistically unsourced?
Must a been my own deep dream that caused the storm.

So hard of hearing am I, that I cannot hear thunder.
But I heard that.
And I felt it rock my body in a not-so-good-way.

I smelt like I wanted to be alone.
I’m old as dirt, but not so common as cornbread. Anyway,
maybe so. Can’t dance, never could sing much,
and that thing’s too wet to plow.

The rolling dark clouds of despair reached out to all of me;
body, mind, and soul, which made me feel good about
the inevitability of death.
The pull of sky lifted me away from gravity,
above the earth I floated, and I could see everyone and everything.

Mister Bill was as intended, above and beyond — away from it all.

Storms do not wake the dead but they will always be
part of nature’s plan for life on Earth until
there is no more planet,
no more sun, no more rain.
Certainly, it will be the loud sound of pungent silence.

In the end it’ll be the end, but no one will know.
C’est la vie.
After thunder has spoken. Petrichor stands in the senses.
It says things are better now,
not just that the storm has passed, but because it was here.

Boom! Awakened or not.
The storm was near: too close.
Now it’s there. It’s not here anymore.
So, sleep well.

Look both ways if you sleep in total darkness.
Mind the gaps—those long spaces between he naps.

NaPoWriMo 2023 (Day 7)

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

“Good morning, Mr. Bill. Your mission assignment, should you choose to accept it since all prompts are optional, involves writing a poem that plays with the idea of a list. It may involve a list that isn’t a list, or any on the list of innumerable lists that exist. This assignment will never self-destruct. Nor will your poem.”

A list poem is a type without a required formal form. Sandburg and Whitman both used lists, why can’t I?

Listee-list

Johnny Cash wrote to-do (and not to) lists. On one he wrote to kiss his wife, to not kiss anyone else, and to stop making lists. That’s on my list, too.

Checklists in aviation save lives (best practices and emergencies).
We have music play lists of many kinds,
People to kill lists and shit lists;
A-, B-, C-, and even Z-lister lists,
movie credits and grocery store lists (on or off refrigerators).
Supply lists and tables of contents are lists
as are bibliographies and indexes.

Some have idea lists and lists of
people and things to pray for.
Lists may be random, ordered, numbered, alphabetized, or bulleted.
I eschew Christmas lists (gifts or cards)
and before we die, bucket lists.

Google has movies or books to watch or read,
or lists of banned ones, also wistful
best and worst lists of all kinds.
And within each are lists of credits,
acknowledgments, and thank you lists.
Contact and packing are useful lists.

Menus are food and drink lists,
but not always. We have membership lists
and job listings. Formularies are lists
of oaths, prayers, or medicinal substances.
There are registers, schedules, ballots,
and guest lists. Do you list enemies?
Conscription, by definition, involves
a draft list for armed forces. Santa,
it is said, has lists he double checks.

Look both ways when you make and keep lists,
especially ones about who to and not to kiss.
Mind the gaps because not everything is ever on any single list.

A list from Johnny Cash. Click on Johnny’s list to see Toby Keith sing “My List.”

 

NaPoWriMo 2023 (Day 6)

Today’s assignment: After reading a poem in a language I don’t know (at poetryinternational.com), I was to think about the sound and shape of the words in the poem and the degree to which they reminded me of words in English. Then, I was to use those correspondences as the basis for the new poem I was to write (in my native language).

Like most patriotic Americans, I am monolingual (he said, sarcastically). I try to enjoy prompts involving other languages. My Mexican friend, Edith Blackbird Fly, uses them often. I did not have time to request use of one of her poems.

My first experience with other languages was Latin (grew up in the Catholic [Latin Mass & some prayers] Church). I heard a lot of Czech and Polish spoken by friend’s grandparents, but not passed down generationally. I did not do well in the French I took in high school. I took German in College (groan) and several Spanish/Tex-Mex less formal adult ed classes.

I could not find a poem on the Poetry International page, so I found one on another site. Not easy since everyone wants to translate for me. I chose a Spanish poem by Douglas Wright, a famous writer of children’s poetry from Argentina. I didn’t know it was a children’s poem until I had finished mine.

Ok, I did the “sound and shape of the words” part and ended up with a somewhat goofy “poem.” It’s okay to laugh, but please don’t point. Below are first, Wright’s poem in Spanish; second is my poem in English; and finally the English translation of Mr. Wright’s.

“Bien tomados de la mano” by Douglas Wright

Qué lindo que es caminar,
bien tomados de la mano,
por el barrio, por la plaza,
¿qué sé yo?, por todos lados.

Qué lindo es mirar los árboles,
bien tomados de la mano,
desde el banco de la plaza,
en el que estamos sentados.

Qué lindo es mirar el Cielo
bien tomados de la mano;
en nuestros ojos, volando,
dos pájaros reflejados.

Qué lindo que es caminar
bien tomados de la mano;
¡qué lindo, andar por la vida
de la mano bien tomados!

What a Mess (by Bill)

Ok, Linda. It’s my Camaro.
It’s been tomatoed by some men
over near the barrio, next
to the plaza. Okay for you
and those toad lads of yours.

K-Lindy, it’s more vegetables
been tossed by young men
into the river at a party
and then, they fell in drunk asleep.

Maybe the Land Rover’s better.
Still, tomatoes and those men;
I’m nervous about Yolonda.
She can see the disaster.

Linda, you can run the Camaro
with tomatoes thrown
and take it to the car wash
and dry it like a Tejas tornado.

Holding Hands Firmly by Douglas Wright

How nice it is to walk,
holding hands firmly,
through the neighborhood, through the plaza,
What do I know?, everywhere.

How nice it is to look at the trees,
holding hands firmly,
from the bench in the plaza,
in which we are sitting.

How nice it is to look at the sky
holding hands firmly;
in our eyes, flying,
two reflected birds.

How nice it is to walk
holding hands firmly;
how nice, to walk through life
with hands held firmly!

Look both ways, America has no official national language
yet very few (especially natives) are bilingual.
Mind the gaps and learn another language.

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

NaPoWriMo 2023 (Day 5)

Today, the NaPo prompt challenged me to write a poem in which laughter comes at an inappropriate time. While George Carlin would be my inspiration for laughing inappropriately, I recalled this story about my first experience with laughing in church.

Measure Up

First grade was—what? —age six?
Twelve months before Pope P. declared
us prepubescent Catholic children
to be at the age of reason: still, that’s seven,
thus eligible for eternity in Hell.

That’s the time when we must confess
our sins to a priest and then to receive
the actual body and blood of Jesus
into our mouths (no touching or chewing).

Too young to jerk off;
couldn’t spell rape or murder,
(but could be a victim of either);
abuse, or extorsion.

On Sundays, at nine o’clock Mass, we had to be there
and sit in the front pews, down range from
second through eighth graders
in ascending class order behind us,
thus we were easily seen by everyone.

Our teacher, Sister Mary Menopause, floated by
just as Jimmy Sauer (also six) dropped his punch line
and we both committed the unreasonable, punishable,
but forgivable sin of laughing in church.
She crucified us both.

After Sister M. played whack-a-mole on our heads
with her ever-present wooden ruler,
she further embarrassed us with after Mass detention
upstairs in our school classroom. Mortification!

Dad said, “I hope you learned your lesson.” I did.
Seventy years later, I examine my conscience
by writing a poem about a churchly childhood experience
and a nun whose real name I’ve long forgotten.

Look both ways as the lady in black floats down the aisle.
She comes for you.
Mind the gaps between us and sit in the center of the pew,
well out of reach when she begins her swing.

 

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