PAD Challenge Day 30: How to Get to Love Park

 Today's prompts from Write Better Poetry and NaPoWriMo: (1) Write a "goodbye" poem, and (2) write a poem that gives directions about how to get to a particular place. I was thinking about writing a poem with a love theme, and I thought of Love Park in Philadelphia, so named because it has one of those iconic "Love" sculptures by Robert Indiana. But Philly, an otherwise great city just over the river from me, seems to be experiencing a record-breaking epidemic of gun violence. Every single night the local news has at least one report of a fatal shooting in the city, and usually several. Even young children have been victims. I could rail on about gun control, but I won't do that here, today. Instead, I offer what may be a rather naive or even fantastical solution, but one that makes my point, I hope.

How to Get to Love Park
 
Say goodbye to all the family strife
settled with a gun.
Say goodbye to all the parking lot arguments
settled with a gun.
Say goodbye to all the gang power struggles
settled with a gun.
Say goodbye to all the need and envy
settled with a gun.
Say goodbye to all the paranoid delusions
settled with a gun.
Say goodbye to all the traffic stops
settled with a gun.
Say goodbye to all the breaches of brotherly love
settled with a gun.
 
Walk to the river, throw your weapons in,
and walk as straight as you can,
walk through neighborhoods of all shades,
walk past the struggling shops,
walk past the theaters and restaurants,
walk these streets which can be great again,
walk to 16th and Kennedy Boulevard,
walk to the big plaza with "Love" written
right in the heart of the city,

and practice it.

PAD Challenge Bonus: Grandmom the Art Critic

 On Day 18 I wrote "The Answer Squash", an ekphrastic poem based on an installation I read about by artist Anthea Hamilton at the Tate Gallery in London. (You can read about it here.) I find it fascinating, and if I were near the Tate (an excellent museum which I have visited before in prior trips to London), I would check it out. But it's not for everyone, for sure, and one of the most notable features is the squash-shaped full-head masks worn by the models, who walk around in a huge, classically decorated, tiled room. I noted in my blog that day that it reminded me of my wife's Italian family's saying, "You have a head like a gagootz!" The word gagootz is a slang dialectic version of cucuzza, a type of Italian squash. So therefore, if you have a head like a gagootz, you're not very bright or thoughful. All this begged another poem: What if my wife's relatives, like her mother (who was born here) or grandmother (from the "old country") had seen this exhibit? They would not have minced words. This poem, you could say, is a kind of "remix" (see day 28) in that it's different take on the same artistic subject.  Here are some samples of the costumes in this exhibit:

And here is the poem:

If My Wife's Italian Mother Had Visited Anthea Hamilton's 

"The Squash" at the Tate Gallery 

Ai, maron!

What is this place with all the tiles and columns?

It looks like the pope's bathroom!

And how about these models,

wearing these science-fiction clothes?

That one looks like a badger, and that one

looks like some weeds I pulled out of my garden!

Their taste is all in their mouth!

Speaking of which, they should eat something -

so skinny! Mangia, girls!

Here, I brought some pizzelles in my purse!

And what's with these big hats,

or masks, or whatever?

You can't even see their faces,

and their heads all look like a squash, 

a gagootz!

You'd have to have a head like a gagootz

to like this stuff!

Now where's the real art?

Don't they have the Mona Lisa here?

Or the Pietà?

PAD Challenge Day 29: Hopper Night

 Today's prompts from Write Better Poetry and NaPoWriMo: (1) Write an "evening" poem, and (2) write an "in the window" poem. In other words, imagine yourself looking into a window and describe what you see. I was a little stuck on this one, so I decided to go "ekphrastic" and found a painting by Edward Hopper (of "Nighhawks" fame) that fit the subject. So here is the result, a little short story based on the painting. 

Night Windows
(after Edward Hopper)
 
I am an incidental voyeur
strolling through fallen darkness
in a city of yellow eyes
that I can gaze into
and find a story inside,
 
like the woman I spy
in a third floor walk-up,
getting ready to call it a night.
Her derriere and pink slip flash
in the second of three windows.
 
From the left one, wide open,
a blue curtain billows out
into muggy August air
like a sheer flag or a gesture
of a graceful hand inviting me in.
 
The right window is obscured
by a translucent red shade,
so I can't make out all the details,
but I accept the curtain's invitation
and open the brownstone door.
 
I bound up two flights of stairs
and jiggle the doorknob -
it opens without resistance.
I slink like a cat through the flat
and into the back bedroom.
 
Suddenly she turns
and her eyes widen in surprise.
"You shouldn't leave the door
unlocked and the shades up,"
 I growl.
 
"Oh hi, honey," she laughs nervously.
"You're home early."

 

PAD Challenge Day 28: Remix Time

 Today's prompts from Write Better Poetry and NaPoWriMo: (1) Write a "remix" poem based on a poem or poems you have written this month, and (2) write a poem that poses a series of questions. The first prompt is a favorite go-to of Robert Brewer's at Write Better Poetry, so I've done the exercise before. It can be interpreted in a number of ways, including using lines from different poems and cobbling them together into a new poem. One of my favorite ways to do it is to take the last line from several of my April poems, and make a new one, like this one:

Challenging the Gods

Dust,
bright enough to cast shadows
in the thin Martian air,
can flip us at any moment.
I tread lightly.
 
Yes,
Anyone can fly
to their ultimate heights
in the universe,
challenging the gods
with a promise
of new adventures,
where there is still
much more to believe in,
and then we'll sit
and marvel at the view
with quiet wonder
and launch our downy seeds
into the wind.

[List of source poems below]*

My second exercise (and frankly, I consider it more an exercise than a good poem) combined both prompts. In reviewing my poems and lines from the month, I noticed that were a total of twenty questions throughout them - two poems contained four questions and one had six. This one only has three, all used in prior poems. I also used three lines (in order) from a senryu I wrote, not in April, but late March as part of Write Better Poetry's "warmup" prompts.

At the Door of 4B
 
What have you done?
 
What I should have said
long ago. I told her I was leaving
 
Was I supposed to be your next affair?
 
I thought that was what you wanted.
Since last week, your remark
echoes like a cruel spirit
in my head.
 
Will you let me in?
 
I never wanted this.
For all I care you can rot
in the stairwell.

[List of source poems below]**

I'm also offering up this older poem, because I think it's a different take on a "question poem." This was previously published in the print journal U.S. 1 Worksheets. (Try reading it out loud and see what happens to your tone of voice by the end.)

Trivia
 
Who was the first
How many
What is the word for
Who won
When did
Can you name the
Who is the only
In what year did
Where would you find
Which of these is
How many times
Where in the world did you
When did you think
What is the matter with
Why in God’s name
What kind of question
How dare you
Do you expect me
Why should I
How am I supposed to
Who do you think you are?

*Challenging the Gods: I only made minor changes to some of the original lines, but I did split a number of them into two lines because, for some reason, this poem wanted to have shorter lines. This is how they break down:

Line 1: Despot (Day 7)
Line 2: "owl waits patiently..." (tanka, Day 17)
Line 3: Ingenuity (haiku, Day 19)
Line 4: Laurie (Day 8)
Line 5: The Next Day (Day 5)
Line 6: Questions about Aging (Day 24)
Lines 7-8: Up on the Met Roof... (Day 20)
Lines 9-10: Beethoven and Disney in Outer Space (Day 12)
Lines 11-12: Appointments for the Heart (Day 23)
Lines 13-14: At Four, She Believes in Unicorns (Day 27)
Lines 15-16: Up to Fifty (Day 2)

Line 17: Backyard Fox (Day 7)
Lines 18-19: Bursting (Day 6)

**At the Door of 4B: Here are the sources of some of the lines.

Line 1: Earth Day (Day 22)

Line 4: Misappointment (Day 23)

Line 9: It's Me, April (Day 1)

Lines 2, 7, 12: "what I should have..." (senryu, posted March 30)

The other lines are new for the poem.

PAD Challenge Day 27: A Three-fer!

Today's prompts from Write Better Poetry and NaPoWriMo: (1) Write a "believe"and/or "don't believe" poem, and (2) look over The Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows, and pick one of the many words coined there to describe emotions and experiences for which there wasn't already a word, then write about it. 

The prompts wouldn't have been that hard to combine today, but I didn't try that hard to do so. Instead, I came up with two poems for the first prompts and one for the second. I usually try to write a poem about my birthday on my birthday (today!), so that was one of the "believe" prompt poems. The other is about my younger granddaughter's infatuation with unicorns. The poem for the NaPoWriMo prompt is about the word "pâro," whose definition is found in my epigraph. I took some literal inspiration from the accompanying video for the word on that website.

At Four, She Believes in Unicorns
 
An invisible one trots about the house
and whinnies when it's hungry.
She loves to draw them with fat oval torsos
and spindly stick legs, pointy ears and horns
and big smiley faces. Even pictures of horses
in her preschool papers and coloring books
become unicorns, thanks to a magic-wand crayon.
This is how a horse can become blue with a pink mane
and a rainbow-colored spike on its head.
Even unsuspecting zebras and cows can be transformed.
Today she drew me a birthday card with backward Ps
and a Technicolor unicorn. If only I could ride it back
to that magical four-year-old's land
where there was still so much more to believe in.

Big Zero
 
I don't believe in round numbers;
there's nothing magical about them.
No milestone, no benchmark
any more important than any other.
 
So what?
I'm 70 today.
 
I don't feel any different than yesterday at 69.
Some days, I admit, I feel 17, and some days 71.
On my birthday today I feel more like the latter.
 
There's a pharma commercial where people say
they're 53 but feel like 35, or 64 and feel like 46.
Yesterday  I wouldn't touch that miracle drug -
I wouldn't want to be 69 and feel 96.
Today I could be 70 but feel  like 07,
then I could drop the zero and be a little kid again.
But I wouldn't want to.
 
Instead I'll employ the skip-counting method
my favorite second-grader is learning in school.
I got seven candles on my birthday cake today,
one for each ten years. If I skip-counted,
not by tens, but by four, five, or even  six,
I could shave off decades.

Pâro
 
n. - the feeling that no matter what you do
is always somehow wrong.
- The Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows
 
Murphy may have felt this way
when he came up with his Law,
except there should be a corollary:
"If there is a wrong way to do something,
you will find it."
 
I read so many articles in magazines
and papers for advice:
 
"Worried About High Blood Pressure?"
"Worried about Toenail Fungus?"
"Worried About Nuclear War?"
 
"Confused About Refinancing?"
"Confused About Your Preteen?"
"Confused About the Universe?"
 
"Tweeting: You're Doing It Wrong"
"Folding Laundry: You're Doing It Wrong"
"Coughing: You're Doing It Wrong"
 
"Here's the Right Way to Cook Pasta"
"Here's the Right Way to Strip Wallpaper"
"Here's the Right Way to Be Happy"
 
"Why You Should Drink Red Wine Daily"
"Why You Should Avoid Red Wine"
"Why You Should Wake Up Early"
"Why You Should Sleep In"
"Why You Should Go on a Diet"
"Why You Should Never Diet Again"
 
I'm done with the so-called experts,
so I put all the magazines away,
and the newspaper too.
Then my wife says,
"You folded that paper wrong."
 
 

PAD Challenge Day 26: Will We Be Fine?

 Today's prompts from Write Better Poetry and NaPoWriMo: (1) Write a poem with the title "_______ World," and (1) write a parody poem, one that spoofs or pays playful homage to another poem.

I actually decided to go with a song lyric today. It's a parody of a well-known song by R.E.M., updated for our times. I did keep some of their more generic lines, made some word changes in others, and totally replaced a number of them, but tried to keep the rhythm and structure of the original so you can sing along to it, if you choose to try.

It's the End of the World 

(apologies to Michael Stipe)
 
Some fuss, it starts with a virus
spreading on a city bus
And Fauci is advising us
Eye of a hurricane, listen to yourself churn,
World serves its own needs,
paying for our misdeeds,
Speed it up a notch, we got no strength
and our teeth start to chatter
For a fear of death, short breath
Fire on the mire, represent the seven sins
And the government for hire and a drive-in site
Left home, we are coming in a hurry
With the COVID breathing down our neck,
Science teams, reporters baffled, Trump comes unhinged
hawks hydroxycholor-o-quine
Uh-oh, overflow, hospitals are full or woe,
But it'll do, save yourself, serve yourself,
World serves its own needs, listen to your heartbeat,
Maskless in the Rapture with the reverent in the right, right,
you vitriolic, patriotic, rights fight, hurl brick,
feeling pretty sick
 
It's the end of the world as we know it
It's the end of the world as we know it
It's the end of the world as we know it and we'll feel fine....
 
Six o'clock, TV hour, don't get caught in numbers dour,
slash and burn, return, listen to yourself churn,
Rogue cops in uniform, towns burning, bloodletting,
Every motive escalate, human rights incinerate,
light a candle, light a storefront, calm down, take down,
Watch his knee crush, crush, oh no
This means no fear, cavalier and in the clear
A plethora, a plethora, a plethora of lies
Offering solutions, offering alternatives but they're declined
 
It's the end of the world as we know it
It's the end of the world as we know it
It's the end of the world as we know it but we'll be fine....
 

The other night I distanced, I distanced and I stayed inside
Vaccines sit unused, George Floyd, Ted Cruz,
Q-Anon, Biden, Breonna and Kamala,
Mitch McConnell, Pfizer, Moderna, boom 
You symbiotic, patriotic, slam but NECK, right, right
 
It's the end of the world as we know it
It's the end of the world as we know it
It's the end of the world as we know it, will we be fine?...

And here is the original video of R.E.M.'s song:

 

PAD Challenge Day 25: Hug Your Plumber!

 Today's prompts from Write Better Poetry and NaPoWriMo: (1) Write a "thought" poem, and (2) write an "occasional" poem; that is, a poem written for a specific or special occasion, like Amanda Gorman's inaugural poem. 

One of my favorite occasional poems is Richard Wilbur's "Wedding Toast", which I read at my son and daughter-in-law's rehearsal dinner years ago. I've also written a few occasional poems myself, like a villanelle called "Odd Couple" for my in-laws' 50th anniversary. For today, though, I was at a loss for what occasion to write about, then I Googled "today's holidays" and came up with a list of unusual, obscure and lesser-known holidays celebrated today, April 25, like this one. (I worked in the "thought" theme at the beginning, but it's a bit of an afterthought, so to speak.)

National Hug a Plumber Day
 

I know it seems unlikely, but
one day some person thought,
"I hope they don't think I'm a nut

when I say that we ought

to give our favorite plumbers hugs,
those masters of the pipes,
the scrappy gals and hearty lugs
who each day earn their stripes

with wet and dirty work, some days
in water to their knees.
Let's have a day to offer praise
and give them all a squeeze!"
 
Of course, that's hard to do this year
with viruses about -
perhaps instead, just give a cheer,
a fist bump or a shout

to those who fix our sink and loo,
and sundry leaky bummers.
Let's hope in Twenty-Twenty-Two
we all can hug our plumbers!

PAD Day 24: Aging is a Bear

 Today's prompts from Write Better Poetry and NaPoWriMo: (1) Write a "question" poem, and (2) take an article about an animal, then substitute the name of the animal with another noun, concrete or abstract, or even a descriptive phrase. Then arrange those edited passages into a poem. I tried this exercise before, though not with a specific animal subject, and the results can be interesting. Today I took a couple of articles about polar bears and substituted the word "aging" for "polar bear." I even created a scientific name for this new creature (which means "old bear"). I guess my upcoming milestone birthday has something to do with my preoccupation with aging.

Questions About Aging
 
Q: What is aging?

A: Aging (ursus canus) is a large bear
with transparent fur that appears white.
It has three eyelids, four inches of body fat,
and a blue tongue.
 
Q: How big is aging?
A: Aging is one of the largest predators in the world,
reaching a length of 6 to 9 feet and a weight
of up to 1300 pounds. It has 42 razor sharp teeth
and sharp-clawed paws the size of dinner plates.
 
Q: Is aging dangerous to humans?
A: Aging is an apex predator, putting it at the top
of the food chain with no natural enemies.
Aging has been known to hunt humans.
It can stalk them and run up to 40 kilometers per hour.
You can try to outrun aging, and you may succeed
for a while, but eventually it will catch up to you.
It is also an excellent swimmer.
 
Q: Is it true that aging screams when it poops?
A: Yes.

PAD Day 23: Appointments of the Heart

  

Today's prompts frm Write Better Poetry and NaPoWriMo: (1) Write an "appointment" poem, and (2) write a poem that is a response to another poem. I've already done a few poems that could be considered "responses" already this month (see Days 2, 5, 6, and the third poem from Day 19). But, hey, why not do another? I Googled "appointment poems" and came up with this gem from Thomas Hardy:

A Broken Appointment
by Thomas Hardy
 
You did not come,
And marching Time drew on, and wore me numb,—
Yet less for loss of your dear presence there
Than that I thus found lacking in your make
That high compassion which can overbear
Reluctance for pure lovingkindness’ sake
Grieved I, when, as the hope-hour stroked its sum,
You did not come.
 
You love not me,
And love alone can lend you loyalty;
–I know and knew it. But, unto the store
Of human deeds divine in all but name,
Was it not worth a little hour or more
To add yet this: Once you, a woman, came
To soothe a time-torn man; even though it be
You love not me?

So here is his subject's response:
 
Misappointment
 
I did not go.
I couldn't see a way for this to grow.
Was I supposed to be your next affair?
I didn't show for sake of both our hearts,
what lunch might lead to, feelings you might share.
I think that I must stop before it starts.
I left you there, you sorry sack of woe.
I did not go.

Note I kept the same form and rhyme scheme as the original. I guess I threw in that cruel little zinger at the end because I thought the poem needed a surprise twist. Also, Hardy's speaker sounds so sorry for himself.  

And here's a second poem, written for just the "appointment" prompt:

Appointments for the Heart
 
At our age, in these times,
we call any outing a "date" -
the supermarket, fast-food drive-thru,
a walk around the block.
 
Today it was back-to-back appointments
with our cardiologist.
She went in first, then I was invited
to join her as she finished up.
 
The doctor read our EKGs, long
mountain ranges of heartbeat,
and said everything looked good.
The three of us talked test results,
blood pressure, cholesterol,
prescriptions, exercise, diet.
 
We left, papers in one hand,
each other's hand in the other,
two hearts moving us forward
with a promise of new adventures.
 

PAD Challenge Day 22: Happy Earth Day

 Today's prompts from Write Better Poetry and NaPoWriMo: (1) Write a "nature" poem, and (2) write a poem that incorporates "metonyms." A metonym is defined as "a word, name, or expression used as a substitute for something else with which it is closely associated. For example, Washington is a metonym for the federal government of the US." NaPoWriMo points out that a metonym can also be a symbolic object, like a mango to represent the tropics. So  they ask us to write a poem that invokes a specific object as a symbol of a particular time, era, or place. 

I used both types of metonym in my poem today: "college" and "nature" are of the first type, and the clothing references are object metonyms for the era of the late 60s and early 70s. This poem is about an experience I seem to return to frequently on Earth Day, one of my more pleasant college memories. 

 
Earth Day
 
That spring my girlfriend and I
helped our college plant trees.
Part of a tie-dye and bell-bottom brigade,
we dug holes and filled them
 
with root balls of saplings,
then covered them up with soil.
We didn't mind the dirt when
we bonded on that clear April day.
 
I haven't been back there since
to see what became of those trees,
whether  they are fifty feet tall,
or dead and cut down.
 
Today, half a century later,
Nature still sends us warnings,
asking, What have you done, and
What have you done?

PAD Challenge Day 21: From a Dark Place

 Today's prompts from Write Better Poetry and NapoWriMo: (1) Write a poem with the title "________ Me," and (2) write a poem using lines with a "repetitive setup." (I believe the term for it is "anaphora.") One example Maureen of NaPoWriMo gave was an anonymous rhyme called "There Was a Man of Double Deed" which takes an unusual, unexpected dark turn toward the end, a sort of inevitable progression. She also gave an example of an ekphrastic poem she wrote about a "bucket of owls" which gets surreal and darkly humorous. 

All this is turn put me in a rather dark frame of mind, but on a more serious and timely note. Ever write a poem that haunts you? The one I wrote today did. I was so disturbed by it myself that I almost didn't post it, but I felt compelled to put it out in the world. It's far from the best poem I've written this month, but it's easily the darkest. And it's a story that seems to be told over and over these days, unfortunately. So for your consideration, this persona poem.

Don't Take Me
 
They beat me, my parents,
They bullied me, my classmates,
They failed me, my teachers,
They fired me, my employers,
They deprived me, those others,
They mocked me, those enemies,
They embraced me, those new friends,
They empowered me, my brothers,
They told me the problem,
They gave me a mission,
They gave me the targets,
They gave me a gun.
I went on a vendetta,
I went for revenge,
I went on a rampage,
I went for them all.
Now time has run out,
Now I'm trapped in a corner,
Now I'm shooting at cops,
Now I'm desperately saying,
Don't hold back,
Don't spare me,

Don't talk me out,
Don't take me alive.

PAD Challenge Bonus: A Golden Shovel for Big Bird

 Here's a "bonus" poem I wrote earlier this month. It wasn't in response to either of the prompts that I usually follow daily, but to one I saw in the New York Times, who invited readers to write a "golden shovel" poem and submit it to them for possible publication. A "golden shovel" is an invention of poet Terrance Hayes, based on Gwendolyn Brooks' famous short poem "We Real Cool":

We Real Cool

by Gwendolyn Brooks

The Pool Players.
        Seven at the Golden Shovel.

            We real cool. We   

            Left school. We

            Lurk late. We

            Strike straight. We

            Sing sin. We   

            Thin gin. We

            Jazz June. We   

            Die soon.

    Hayes took each word from Brooks' poem and used them as the end words of each line of a new poem (actually a two-part poem - he repeated the process for the second part.) He called the poem (and the creation) "Golden Shovel," after the subtitle of the poem. It caught on as a new form, and here we are. (You can read it here.) A "golden shovel" doesn't have to use every word of a poem, especially if it's not a short one - a line or two will do. And acknowledgement of the original source is expected, of course. Instead of a poem, the Times invited readers to write a golden shovel based on one of their recent headlines. I didn't submit this to their contest, but I had some fun with it, so I'm sharing it here.

Up on the Met Roof, an Artist Is Taking Big Bird to New Heights
-New York Times Online, April 2, 2021
 
Look up,
look way, way up on
top of the building, to find the
yellow hero, feathered, whom you've met
a hundred times on TV. His huge roof-
top nest could fit your couch. He's an
icon, an eight-foot friend, artist
of kindness, with a BFF who is
a kind of mastodon. We're taking
pictures of him as he looks down with his big
beaky smile, this overgrown canary, this bird
on a wire, keeping us warm and fuzzy enough to
think it will all be okay, that tomorrow is a new
day, that anyone can fly to their ultimate heights. 

PAD Challenge Day 20: Dinner by the TV

 Today's prompts from Write Better Poetry and NaPoWriMo: (1) Write a "love/anti-love" poem, and (2) write a "sijo." A sijo is a Korean short poetic form of three lines, but longer than a haiku, with a slightly more complex structure:

·    Sijo are written in three lines, each averaging 14-16 syllables for a total of 44-46 syllables. Each line is written in four groups of syllables that should be clearly differentiated from the other groups, yet still flow together as a single line... 

The first line is usually written in a 3-4-4-4 grouping pattern and states the theme of the poem, where a situation is generally introduced.

The second line is usually written in a 3-4-4-4 pattern (similar to the first) and is an elaboration of the first line's theme or situation (development).

The third line is divided into two sections. The first section, the counter-theme, is grouped as 3-5, while the second part, considered the conclusion of the poem, is written as 4-3. The counter-theme is called the 'twist,' which is usually a surprise in meaning, sound, or other device.

Here is my sijo for today. I guess you can say it subtly fits the first prompt because it's about the love of an older couple in a nightly routine formed after the kids are gone.

Evening News
 
Every night we set up trays and eat dinner by the TV.
I bring in the silverware, you carry plates with our entrees.

Once our news came from the children; now our table is empty.

I wrote a sijo several years ago that was a runner-up in one of Robert Lee Brewer's Poetic Asides Form Challenges for Writers Digest, and it appeared in an issue of the magazine. Here it is:

Solution Unknown

Pencil sharp, I tackle them--crossword puzzles, devilish grids,
squares to fill with many words, intersecting. Yet you remain
an enigma. I write, then erase. No words I know can solve you.

PAD Challenge Day 19: Bonus - The "Wright Brothers Moment"

 

Ingenuity

a little copter

lifts ten feet into the air

the thin Martian air

PAD Challenge Day 19: A Menagerie of Three Poems

 Today's prompts from Write Better Poetry and NaPoWriMo: (1) Write a poem about an animal (with the animal in the title), and (2) Write a humorous "rant" poem. I decided to have some fun with this, and actually produced three poems today. The last one was inspired by Robert's example of an animal title, "Beside the White Chickens":

Tiny Dog
 
in my neighbor's yard,
not much bigger than a rat,
you test my love of canines.
That high-pitched squeak
you call a bark
half-an-octave above high C
makes nails against a chalkboard
sound like a lullaby.
You use it constantly -
whenever a human or dog
or any other living thing goes by,
when you see your own shadow,
when you're happy, excited, upset,
sad, hungry, bored, jealous -
it pierces the neighborhood air
like a siren every time,
day or night,
and God forgive me,
I want to punt you into next week,
but that would only give me relief
till Tuesday or so.

It's a Zoo Out There

 It's a dog-eat-dog world... and I'm wearing Milk Bone underwear.
- Norm Peterson on Cheers
 
Just take a gander
at all the fat cats
who get the lion's share,
and the politicians
like foxes in the henhouse.
It really gets my goat
when they monkey around.
I'd like to see them eat crow
when the chickens come home to roost.
 
Sometimes I feel
like a deer in the headlights
and the wolf's at the door.
I'm poor as a church mouse,
but I won't go to a loan shark,
and this won't be my swan song.

I need to address the elephant in the room
and get my ducks in a row.
No more playing whack-a-mole,
and no backing the wrong horse.
The world could be my oyster
if I take the bull by the horns,
get busy as a bee
and loaded for bear,
then I'll be happy as a pig in mud
till the cows come home.

White Chickens (Red Wheelbarrow Part 2)
 
beside the white
chickens
 
a gray coop
leaking
 
holding nests
of eggs
 
on which we all
depend
 
 
 
 

PAD Challenge Day 18: Head Like a Squash

 Today's prompt from Write Better Poetry is to write an ekphrastic poem (one inspired by a work of art). The NaPoWriMo prompt is a little unusual: Take the title of one of the uniquely-named chapters of a poetry writing craft book by Susan Goldsmith Woodbridge called Poemcrazy. They can be viewed on Amazon.com under the "Look Inside" feature, and there are some quirky chapter titles like "grocery weeping," "the blue socks," "naming wild hippo," and "I dress myself with rain." I chose the most intriguing of all to me, "the answer squash," and Googled "squash art." I came up with a fascinating art installation at the Tate Gallery in London by Anthea Hamilton, where models wander around in a huge tiled room, wearing outlandish fashions, and masks that look like huge pear-shaped squashes. The exhibit is called "The Squash."  (It reminds me of a saying from my wife's Italian side of the family: "You have a head like a gagootz!", or just plain, "Gagootz!" It means you're dumb - a head like a squash.  Cucuzza is an Italian variety of squash, and in dialectic slang it became "gagootz.")

You can find more information on Hamilton's installation here, It's a kid's site but it has good information and lots of photos. Here's  a sample:

And here is my brief poem:

The Answer Squash

I climbed the many stairs to the temple
and there found the oracle in repose,
 
resplendent in white and gold,
reclining in a huge tiled atrium.
 
But her head was an enormous squash
so I forgot my question.

PAD Challenge Day 17: Happy Haiku Day!

 Today's prompts from Write Better Poetry and NapoWriMo: (1) Write a "waiting" poem, and (2) write a poem about the moon. Two pretty basic prompts today - NaPoWriMo offers theirs almost apologetically, because so many poems have been written about the moon. I've written several in my poetic career that are directly about the moon, and probably dozens in which the moon at least makes an appearance. 

I'm surprised though, that neither blog mentioned that today is International Haiku Poetry Day, being the 17th day of National Poetry Month and all. (As in 17 syllables in a haiku, get it?) So I decided to write a haiku about waiting and the moon. Actually, it turned into a tanka:

owl waits patiently
perched in the tall cedar tree -
hoo hooo... hoohoo hooo....
 
mouse darts under a full moon
bright enough to cast shadows

And just as a bonus, here's a moon poem of mine that was published in Writer's Journal and Mad Poets Review way back in 2002. (Writer's Journal awarded it second prize in a poetry contest.)

Li Po
 
That night in the drunken boat,
or so the story goes,
you leaned up and out
 
to embrace your lover the moon,
and with that reach
that exceeded your grasp
 
fell into dark waters,
breaking your lover’s sister
to a hundred flashing pieces.
 
And as she re-assembled
on the black-glass surface
to smile at her twin above
 
you were already gone,
your legacy bubbling
back to the world.

 

PAD Challenge Day 16: Connecting with Famous Poets, and Some Light Verse

Every day on their blog this month, NaPoWriMo features a link to a poetry reading, either live or recorded, and today they featured former Poet Laureate and Pultizer Prize winner Ted Kooser. I was pleased because I like Kooser's work. He also recently started a Facebook page which he admiinsters personally, and he posts one of his new or recent poems there almost daily. The other day he posted a poem about cutting down a cedar tree in his yard. Coincidentally, I had written a poem a few years ago about pondering whether to cut down a cedar in my own yard. I posted it on his page, and though I don't know if he liked it (I hope he did), he responded by giving me advice on the tree. (He suggested I keep it.) He's a nice, down-to-earth, humble guy. My other famous poet news is that my friend Jane Hirshfield read my poem "Public Apology" that was on the Your Daily Poem website yesterday, and she thought it was "marvelous."

Today's prompts from Write Better Poetry and NaPoWriMo: (1) Write a "city" poem, and (2) write a skeltonic verse, which is a rhyming light verse with loose meter and a rhyme scheme which repeats the rhyme as long as you want to, until you decide to switch to another rhyme at your whim. For instance, it could be like the one I wrote today: AAAAAAAABBBBBBCCCCCCAAAA. I've got a very busy weekend coming up starting today, so a silly verse that I could dash off was just the ticket for me. I have written skeltonic verse before - in fact one that I wrote for NaPoWriMo a few years ago (an ode to a skunk!) was featured as their poem of the day. So here's the new poem (pardon the language):

On 'Burban Street
 
I really like New York City
so praised in many a ditty
where the night lights are pretty
and the Broadway plays are witty
but the apartments are itty-bitty
and the streets are rather gritty
and the traffic is perfectly shitty
and the crime rate's such a pity
so I live out in the 'burbs
with perfect lawns and curbs

and very little that disturbs
and neighbors like Beths and Herbs
who could be Koreans or Serbs
but I may run out of verbs
to describe  the work on my yard
which makes some weekends hard
putting down seed and weed guard
and keeping my driveway tarred
but sometimes I'm just a bard
who won't write a greeting card
with a picture of a cute little kitty
I'll daydream like Walter Mitty
and write of the suburb and city
but if you don't like it - tough titty!

And here's the one I wrote for NaPoWriMo in 2017:

Ode-iferous 
 
Now what the hell?
What is that smell?
We know it well.
It’s really vile
and gross as bile,
and lasts a while
and spreads a mile.

You stripy ghost,
unwilling host
who reeks the most,
you lift your trunk
and spray your junk
at any punk
who gives you bunk,

then we must dunk
ourselves and sluice
tomato juice,
head to caboose,
to try and loose
the stink that’s in
our hair and skin.

You black-and-white
child of the night,
we will not fight
lest we lose sight
of your foul might,
and your alacrity
with unsatisfactory
things olfactory. 

Pepé Le Pew,
we don’t hate you,
but for now, adieu.
You do have spunk –
don’t  be in a funk,
or we’ll be sunk
and get a chunk
of eau de skunk.