PAD Day 18

Rather late today, partly because it was pretty busy day, and mostly because I really had a hard time with getting inspired.  Ironically, the two prompts were pretty easy: (1) Write a poem with the title "I Am _______," and (2) write a poem that begins and ends with the same word.  The second one got me to thinking of palindromes for some reason, so I wrote a poem with palindromic word order, and in the form of a Fibonacci too.  (A Fibonacci poem is based on "Fibonacci numbers", a series in which each number is the sum of the two numbers that precede it: 1,1,2,3,5,8,13,21, etc.)  The number of syllables in each line adhere to this sequence, and mine has the added bonus of counting back down to 1.  If nothing else, it's an interesting exercise.


I Am Busy

I

am

busy,

too stressed out,

working on errands,

tiring chores, honey-do lists,

spinning plates, juggling balls, throwing out garbage - no

time to write, just Fibonacci in palindromes. In Fibonacci, just write to time,

no garbage out. Throwing balls, juggling plates, spinning

lists, honey-do chores, tiring

errands, on-working,

out-stressed, too

busy

am

I.

Today I'm also featuring a poem by Joseph Harker, and I encourage you to visit his excellent blog Naming Constellations.  He is also doing daily posts for Poetry Month, and this is one of the new poems he's writtten:

Karma

My mother swings off-course and cries, fresh corn!
The sign hangs awkward, painted red and white:
she knows the market. We are sometimes born-
again to local farms, lapsed converts sworn
then swayed and swayed again. A secret right,
an unpaved road, the farmer’s gingham wife
up to our window. Taste this, have a bite–
but we crave corn. The wife sighs, money’s tight,
we had to sell. Instead, she has black plums
like far-off planets ready for the knife.
Of course, desire denied is hard-replaced:
but see the yard, the house. My mother thumbs
through dollars: we’ll make cobbler, or still-life.
The fruit is passed; my mother’s hand, embraced.

[Used with permission of the author]