Poetry

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.

RRWG & NaPoWriMo 2026 Day 10

Round Rock Writers Day 10 prompt: Remember tomorrow.

Dwell not on future’s past.
Live behind the citadel walls of today.

Regret is real and tightly sealed.
Fear takes its share of precious time.

We bear the pain as best we can.
Suffering brands upon mind’s memory.

Close the coffin on a life of pain.
Once life is lived, the end is done.

Look both ways in time and space but live the life you have.
Mind the gaps for pain and pleasure, but one go is all you get.

Day 10 NaPo prompt. Write a poem that is a meditation on grief in the style of Geoffrey Brock’s poem, “Goodbye.”

 

When Great Love is not Reality

Great love allows great pain to
open the door to suffering’s
march into the mind
where it sits on tempest’s trigger.

(Will life’s complete happiness
ever return to my heart and soul?
Are we both lost lives or has
a secret page merely turned over?)

She pulls you into hell on earth
until we no longer see the other
and the greatest love loses
to the hard measure of pleasure.

 

RRWG & NaPo Day 8

RRWG Day 8 prompt” Write a poem for the “Earth Album.”

To Do and Feel

That one short step
from off the car park tarmac and onto
the spongy damp forest trail
is like walking into a different world
of true natural wonderland.

I recall the many feelings triggered
by the soft damp soil, the smell of rain
still tapping coded messages of comfort,
playing tunes that musicians envy.
I see a natural cleanliness
that exists only here.

The temperature and humidity
are flora and fauna perfection set
as only gods of nature know how.
Time becomes meaningless
in the soul of an eternal present,
right here, right now.

I am so happy—I can taste it.
I love you but this I must do solo.
Because here
we are never alone.

NaPoWriMo Day 8 prompt: Write a poem that uses a simple phrase repeatedly but includes statements that invert or contradict the phrase.

Typical

I am Normie Normal.
Bill of the bell curve.
A neurodivergent at the
bottom of the class.
Most likely to fail at life
to die young
and got old.

I am Normie Normal,
Joe Six Pack’s standard pal who is
so ordinary I’m exceptionally average.
Grade of passing C for me and my
multiple majors in BS or MA
holding his hip pocket ABD,
named Bill not Joe Schmoe who
gave up Nicky teen
for fourteen
marathons
at sixty-plus, too bad to die young.

Normie Normal is a conforming follower
or changer of rules
for ungifted Irish poets
who publish on late blooms.

A regular of the commons
who may champion the obvious
as he pushes against attempts
at enigmatic morality for Normie of Normalcy.

Look both ways at stereotypical personas.
Mind the gaps in the fortune teller’s magic 8 ball.

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.

 

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.

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.