Poetry Report: November Poems + Ann’s

I’ve written that the best thing about August is September. Not this year. September brought several personally stressful events into my normally complacent private world. October was a month for healing and action. Gradually, recovery unfolded as those things apparently changed to my favor thanks to the efforts of a few loving people.

I did not win the lottery, but I began to relax. November was the best of the three months—not exactly perfect, but the worries from two months earlier seemed controlled. I’ll take it.

Thanksgiving Day is the traditional time our immediate family gathers. It is our time. Indeed, we had a house full, but I put in my notice for next year. We’re too old for that shit. It was fun and we are all grateful for how things have turned out so far. But there are people out there trying to make a living fixin’ turkey, giblet gravy, cranberry whatever, and all that stuff. I should help.

This poem was written about me writing a poem each day by a friend from my writers’ group. After Ann, who I like to call Barbara Ann (not her real name – long story: Ba ba ba ba Barbara Ann and the Beach Boys), read it during one of our poetry sessions. I requested, and she gave me, permission to post it here.

One Poem A Day?
By Ann Bordelon

“A poem a day?” That’s quite a task!
I say that’s wa-a-a-a-ay too much to ask.
One a week might be realistic,
But one a day is too optimistic.
They don’t have to rhyme, you say,
But still, one every single day?
There aren’t that many words in my brain,
I’ll run out in a month, what a strain.
Please tell me that this is a sort of a joke
And the reality is that you misspoke.
Instead of “one poem a day” you meant,
“One poem a week is what we should invent.”

Thanks, Ann. Wonderful poem. I’m honored.

I don’t know if I could cut back to less than one poem a day, much less to one a week. On this coming New Year’s Eve, I will complete my mission of composing at least one poem each day during 2019. After that, who knows?

The titles/topics of the daily poems I wrote during November were:

Dying Dignity
Ineffable
First Reading
Finding Treasure
Poets are Dying
Editing
Don’t Bite Me
Natural Brutality
Liminal
Some Cussing Required
Precious and Rare Days
To PC or not to PC, a Question
Thoughts
Imagined Solutions
Muse Berries
Draconian
Up Your Rolex
My Colorado Morning
Extraordinary Knowing
Lie to Me
Dear Deer
The Gap is Gray
I Hear You Died
The Final Week
My Twilight Swim
Ignorance is not Bliss
Expectations
Cowboys 2.0
Body Gremlins
Morphology

As we enter the last month of the year, I look both ways—to future months
as I wonder what’s next with a curious fantasy about the advent
of a new time and age. I think about past months
with more satisfaction than I’m entitled.
I shall mind the gaps in my life, one day at a time.

Sammi’s Weekender – ‘morphology’ in 37

Morphology

We are corrupted sons and daughters,
DNA mutated zygotes of morphological mystery,
victims of copy and editing errors
peppered by pinpoint mutation mistakes
riddled with repeated chromosome
rearrangement. We are human GMOs
hopelessly mutating and morphing,
naturally.

Look both ways, inside and out, for wonders and miseries of life.
Mind the evolutionary gaps in dividing cells.

Poetry: Sammi’s Weekender, ‘longevity’

I Hear You Died

Letting go of one you know,
or knew, reminders of a finite
life, is not easy as we
reminisce of times when
longevity was forever.

Another man down, life
brought to end before ending,
not here to listen to, no one
hears me talk about you.

When I heard you had died
My mind began to trip and bounce
over thoughts and memories
of our times past,
when we both were alive.

You taught me well.

When faced with loss, look both ways,
your past with them, your future alone.
Mind the gaps for hints of eternity.

Poetry: Sammi’s Weekend Prompt: Draconian

***

My heart sank into deep depression when I saw
sitting in front of me, blocking my way,
between self, freedom, and happiness,

Draco, the symbol of inequity, of unfair
rule, of the man, of draconian reality,
life dulls when the dragon appears.

He has all the power. I have none.
Draco must be who and what Draco is,
a cancer, a deadly error of nature.

The dragon does no harm, it looks
without emotion or caring, without malice,
Draco kills from silent idleness.

Nature serves an onerous messenger—
truth, there is no life without death.
The dragon cares nothing about how I feel.

***

Look both ways and mind the gaps, but
if you see the dragon nothing else matters.

Poetry: On Being a Veteran

I chose to go into the Air Force,
twice,
and to stay long enough
to eventually be told,
“your service is no longer required.”
So, with that, I promptly retired.

I joined up. Some call it served.
I’ve never been thanked for joining,
only for service,
a word with twenty meanings
as a noun,
five as a verb, and five more
as an adjective, where I fit in;
but not in the three more legal terms
nor most of the twelve listed
as kids definitions.

My service included my promise
to kill millions of them
should they undertake
to kill millions of us, as we
would both destroy more than
half the planet in the process
of a world-wide Armageddon.

My service was learning
how to do that and fully
intending to do exactly that!

It was my sworn duty to protect
and defend the Constitution, and,
as I understand it, still is because
I have not been released from
that oath, and, technically,
I’m still on the payroll.

I struggle even today with
being anti-war, but if
there is one,
I’d rather not miss it.
If a deed needs to be
done to protect and defend,
and if I’m still able, let me
stand in line to join up again,
with others, willing to kill
and maybe to die for
some vague idea which
so few of us seem
to correctly understand.

Don’t thank me
for my service,
or for your freedom,
or for any sacrifice
by my family or me.

Thank the Constitution
for that. Or, better yet,
if you can do for your
country, which is the idea,
join up in a way
that suits your person
and your conscience.

As I watch the guards, I notice they march both ways.
There are no gaps.

Poetry: In This Pen

***

In this pen are words
which form poems
and prose
which makes me feel good
which coaxes me to
pick up this pen
which connects with
the fingers on my hand,
thence my wrist and arm,
which then winds to my
brain and mind,
which connect deep down
within me, and it knows.

Somehow, something goes
clear to my toes.

I don’t love
(or even like)
everyone or everything
and I never will.

Which reminds me,
I love you.
And this pen, too.

***

Look both ways in the moving alley of creative neurosensory discovery.
Mind the gaps. They’re there for you and for us.

Poetry: Sammi’s Weekend Prompt – Liminal

The Pall of Fear

Sometimes, when I lie down and relax
I feel senseless liminal fear stir inside me
until it gathers and settles
at my core. I become desperate to
deny the tension, or I will die.

Depressive mental illness is taking
control of my mind, filling my body
with this awful sadness.
What is left for me to do?

If you don’t look both ways, someone may die. Mind the liminal gaps.

Poetry: On Raising Teens

I recall, eons ago, when I was neither adult nor child,
during a phase of life known as adolescence
or numerically, being a teenager.

I also recall later being
a male adult parent to three, at one point—
all three almost simultaneously fitting
the technical teenager definition.

We all age up, but teeny boppers, as was once
a more affectionate term, stay the same.
Someone is always oddly 13, 15, 17, or some
age of that hormonally unbalanced
and the musically misguided post-pubescence.

I recall that back then, I was often bored unless
in the midst of violent volcanic eruptions,
and even then, given time, I found them dreary.
Almost everything of interest
involved getting into trouble, things which
I confess to doing with reckless abandon.

Now I look around and see grandchildren,
mostly in some phase of teenage-ism,
some exhibiting familiar behavior, some not.
I see parents, once teens themselves, distraught
over viewing in their progeny reflections of
their former life, a past they seldom
confess or want to remember.

I have no solutions and few suggestions for
those raising difficult teen personalities, like me,
like them, maybe like my parents in the
years of the Great Depression or
WWI or II. But I smile slightly
and I sympathize greatly.

Two things in life are not for sissies:
raising teenagers and getting old. That,
having done both, I can swear to. But,
in the long run, they are worth it.

May we all live long, prosper,
and remember. “Tomorrow, and
Tomorrow, and So Forth.”

Look both ways as life transitions. Be mindful of the gaps in denial.

Sammi’s Weekend Prompt

***

A Sip and a Nib

The poet sits and stares,
then doodles and sketches,
wondering where this will lead.

A sip from the cup of wisdom,
a wandering stare looks
through a window, searching
for worldly ineffable words
of brilliant order, expressing
the unspeakable, describing
all indescribable forbidden things.

A pen finds the artist’s hand,
familiar fingers hold its frame
and place the nib upon paper.

It begins: a poet’s search
for perfection and beauty.

***

Look both ways through the window of inspiration.
Mind the gaps for perfect words.

Poetry Report: October Poems

Even if I was bad at math (I’m not), with 61 days remaining this year, I have written more than 300 poems during 2019, beginning with my commitment on New Year’s Day. Writing at least one poem each day has been more of a learning experience than I expected. Originally, I thought it would be difficult but fun, and it has been, but I wondered if I could manage it every day for a whole year.

An unintentional consequence has been that I read much more poetry and I’ve bought more poetry books this year than ever. I’ve also become comfortable trying to write a poem about anything at any time. Sometimes I have no idea where it will go—I just sit down and write. A poem happens (no claims for first draft quality).

I’ve written around the clock. With my pen or laptop at my fingertips, I have composed poems during the wee hours after midnight, before dawn and at sunrise, before and after breakfast, at mid-morning with coffee, while dropping crumbs of my lunch onto my poesy, before and after dinner and while drinking wine or coffee (sometimes too much).

I’ve written them in the car as Yolonda drove, in coffee shops (alone or with groups), at meetings, on my back porch, in other people’s back or front yards, in my daughter’s kitchen, and in every room of our house except the garage and bathrooms (but I should, right?). Using sights or happenings for prompts, I composed while cooling my heels in waiting or examination rooms, while sitting, standing, or on the lie. I have composed mental poems that are never written down, but they don’t count.

Except when I use prompts, like Sammi’s weekender, at writer’s group meetings, or during NaPoWriMo in April, topics are virtually random thoughts or events. Billy Collins even wrote a poem about people telling him there’s a poem in that. I try to write as soon as a thought occurs to me.

I’ve now happily welcomed poetry as the biggest part of my writing life, with encouragement from friends, family, readers, and other poets/writers.

The titles of the 31 poems I wrote each day during October were:

Hard Times Were Had by Us
Shots and Jabs
Choose Your Role
Old Feelings
I Need an Answer
Haven
We’re Number Two
Old Man in My House
Music in Me
CSL (Clive Staples Lewis)
Projects
Irreplaceable Love
Relief Strategy
Too Much
Fallen Pride
Debatable
Art in Us
Your Own
Where Goes the Candlelight?
Aurora
Oldies
Risk & Danger = Life
My Lucky Tree
I could have been a Poet
Road Trip Pits
Saturday at Dawn
The Sunday Marathon
On Raising Teens
Open
It’s All Just Stuff
Times Around

Trust no one.
Look both ways on one-way streets.
Mind the gaps with a skeptic’s crown.

	Rosemary Nissen-Wade on Poetry
	Bill on Poetry
	Bill on Poetry
	ms pie on Poetry
	Bill on Poetry

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