Sunday, April 28, 2024
PAD Day 28: Kindergarten Karma
Saturday, April 27, 2024
PAD Day: Oh, Humanity...
to “trundle” those huge red sandstone rocks
that began to form in dinosaur times
one-hundred-forty million years ago?
You watch with glee as a young girl screams
and they explode to sand on the ground,
ancient marvels, reduced in seconds to dust.
What an example for your daughter,
watching you ruin nature’s antiquities.
Would you dynamite a glacier,
smash stalactites in a cavern with a hammer?
These are Mother Nature’s works of art,
chiseled and polished over eons,
long before you, allegedly, evolved.
As of this writing, I don't think these two have been identified or caught. Unfortunately, they happened to pick an area for their shenanigans that has already been devastated most likely by man-made climate change: the drought-driven drying of Lake Mead.
Friday, April 26, 2024
PAD Day 26: Poetry Advice from a Platypus
It’s a persistent problem among poets –
a plethora of surplus consonants littering our landscape.
Particularly perplexing is a preponderance of P’s.
You can be fined up to four-hundred fifty-five dollars
and forced to collect consonants from culverts, creeks and crevices
with a pointy trash-picker pole. Imagine you in an orange jumpsuit,
sullenly sweeping the shoulder of the roadside.
don’t dump alphabetic detritrus in the dirt.
Take it from me, Penny the Picker-Upper Platypus—
Be Great, Don’t Alliterate!
the Council for Controlling Consonants
and the Anti-Assonance Association)
Thursday, April 25, 2024
PAD Day 25: Death and the Playlist
Today's prompts:
When Death came to the door, I expected
a skeletal specter in a long hooded black robe
with a scythe. Instead, there was a handsome
white-haired man in a gray suit.
Hello again, he said.
Yes. I’ve been around three times,
but each time you cheated me.
The last time was your heart attack.
You didn’t notice me disguised as a doctor.
He had questions for me, an exit interview:
What is your greatest regret?
“That I didn’t take better care of myself.
My pictures in a mirror got more haggard
and frail every year.”
What is your greatest fear?
“That there is no afterlife.
That I will be like the ghosts in the wind,
groaning through the tree branches
with no destination.”
If you were to die and come back as a person or a thing,
what would it be?
“A dog, maybe. Dogs generally have a pretty good life.
A golden retriever would be nice.”
How would you like to die?
“Do I really have a choice?
Certainly no violence, not even drowning
in a river. In bed, I think, in my sleep.”
I believe we’re ready now.
“I always pictured you with a scythe.”
He reached behind his back.
Here it is.
Hello Again - Amos Lee
Pictures in a Mirror - Incredible String Band
Ghosts in the Wind - Richard Thompson
River - Aimee Mann (cover of the Joni Mitchell song)
Here It Is - Over the Rhine
their beach spa, a golf course and more.
When it’s tea time at four,
And it’s tee time for “Fore!”
then they’re there at their shore club for sure.
Wednesday, April 24, 2024
PAD Day 23 Retro Bonus: More Heart
Here is where it was made of gold,
And here, it was made of stone,
Here is where it was melted,
And here, lonely and alone.
Here is where it was lifted up,
And here is where it sank.
Here is where it was bleeding;
Here’s its bottom from which to thank.
Here, it was in the right place,
Here, it was struck with fear,
Here is where it would race,
And here it was held dear.
Here is where it was hardened,
Here is where it was stout,
Here is where it was followed,
And here it was poured out.
Here is where it was broken,
Here is where it was faint,
Here is where it was woken,
And here it was that of a saint.
Here its cockles were warmed,
Here it was worn on a sleeve,
Here it was crossed and hoped to die,
And in here it wished to believe.
Here is where it skipped a beat,
Here it was taken aback,
Here it was heavy, here it was light,
And here’s where it had the attack.
PAD Day 24: What Could Have Been
[I]t’s a miracle to have a life. Any life at all.
—Ellen Bass, Indigo
mounted on the wall of a Rutgers professor
who heads the Psychology Department,
is widely published, and just went Emeritus.
having dropped out after a year of grad school,
but it looks like you have done okay—
your writing, your government service,
a happy marriage, kids and grandkids.
but maybe not for maximum return.
You should also know that if you went
down that path, you would have had
an affair in your 40s with a pretty young student
that would have ended your marriage, two sons
who never speak to you, and an accident
on Boylston Street in Boston that would have
left you walking with a cane.
but I’m not at liberty to discuss them.
Instead, there are pictures of your family
and your wife of fifty years.
Tuesday, April 23, 2024
PAD Day 23 Bonus: A Big Heart
Here is my response to Write Better Poetry's prompt to write a poem with the title "Heart of the _______":
Heart of the Museum
walking through the Giant Heart,
100 times normal size, as if I were
a blood cell, passing through its chambers,
up, around, through and down,
to a natural bass, the original beat,
a deep thump of contracting muscles.
A marvelous construction of paper mâché,
chicken wire and wood, it’s now solid fiberglass,
and a fixture at the Franklin Institute
here in Philly for over 70 years,
literally a rite of passage for any schoolkid,
and countless adults too.
Millions of visitors have pumped through it,
and will continue to do so,
then circulate through the other exhibits,
and out the doors and into
the bloodstream of the world.
PAD Day 23: Dylan, Captain America, and Fighting Poets
Today's prompts:
The Titanic sails at dawn,
Everybody’s shouting
“Which side are you on?”
And Ezra Pound and T.S. Eliot
Fighting in the captain’s tower…
—Bob Dylan, Desolation Row
is the dizzying anachronisms
and unlikely intersections of characters
like Cinderella and Romeo.
Eliot and Pound weren’t on the Titanic,
and in fact didn’t meet until 1914.
What’s more, they were good friends—
Ezra helped Tom edit The Waste Land.
But they could have clashed over politics—
both were American ex-pats,
but Pound moved to Italy and embraced fascism.
Eliot, a bit of an antisemite himself,
nevertheless had no love for brownshirts,
and there might have laid the rub.
scrapping in the control room:
“I can’t believe you support Hitler!”
“Well, you don’t love the Jews any more than I do!”
“I won’t be a party to genocide!”
“Who cares? I never liked your poetry anyway!
‘Ragged claws scuttling across the floors of silent seas’?
“ Well, how about ‘petals on a wet black bough’? Seriously?”
Then in bounds Captain America,
He’s just polished up his shield,
And says to Pound, “I think you’re Red Skull,
You’d better yield….”
Monday, April 22, 2024
PAD Day 22: Grab the Popcorn
- Choose one from each column (A, B and C below). ...
If you’re daring, use a standard die to help you “roll” your selection.
A: Craft Skill Focus
1. Allusion
2. Anaphora
3. Simile
4. Metaphor
5. Personifica.0tion
6. Assonance
B: Restrictions
1. One adjective/adverb only
2. No end-stopped lines
3. No articles (a, an, the)
4. No stanza breaks
5. One verb only
6. No alliteration
C: Must Contain
1. A color
2. A scent
3. “thirteen”
4. Sports team or sport
5. A reference to the body
6. The name of a famous poet
- Set a timer for precisely eleven minutes. You can edit later, but the time constraint during the initial writing will increase your focus.
- Write. While writing, do NOT edit yourself other than attempting to stay within the constraints you’ve already set. Write the entirety of the eleven minutes. Yes, even if you think you’re finished. Keep writing.
- Edit your work.
Sunday, April 21, 2024
PAD Day 21: Romance on a Boat
Today's prompts:
WBP: "For today's prompt, write a trope poem. For most people, tropes are common plot devices used in certain genres. In romance, for example, the "different worlds" trope brings together two characters from different walks of life and/or cultures...."
NPWM: "...write a poem that repeats or focuses on a single color. "
PSH: "First, write a 17-syllable American sentence, as per Allen Ginsberg’s definition.... Then, write down each word of the sentence in order vertically, like an acrostic but with words instead of letters. They will become the first word in each line of a poem.... Extra credit! Add/layer another form on top of it, like a sonnet (if your American sentence is 14 words) or a golden shovel...." (Jim Karetnick)
as blue as April sky. Pierre cast off
the rope. She took ten francs from her blue coat.
choppy.”
“I don’t care,” she said. “Please take me
on a city tour. The Seine, its bridges,
a glimpse of Notre Dame. I want to see
bright lights tonight, I want to see the pledges
spring has made with Paris.” So they sailed all
day. She said her name was Jeanne. She did not
mind he kept her company till night would fall.
hat, fur coat…. I’m a simple fisherman.
Madame, Je t'aime.” And then she touched his hand.
Saturday, April 20, 2024
PAD Day 20: On Haiku, History, and Getting High
The Form: Write three (3) haiku using this prompt."
I combined prompts one and three to create these haiku. Each one contains two words from the word bank:
with my high school band, when we got the call:
Come back to New Jersey—Johnson and Kosygin
are having a summit in Glassboro, our home town.
We arrived the next day.
was just winding down. We hustled off our buses,
all starched up in our uniforms, and got in formation
just in time to play from the parking lot
for the dignitaries rolling by in their black limousines.
My bandmate said he thought he saw Kosygin wave.
at Hollybush, the historic home of the college president
on the state college campus, for three days,
talking about Vietnam, the Mideast,
weapons systems, and who knows what.
They came out to address us, the people crowded
swarmed everywhere. We gave the two leaders
from the “sleepy little college town,”
as the press liked to describe us.
And no matter what it meant to the annals of history,
it meant something to me that I was there.
Friday, April 19, 2024
PAD Day 19: Like a Snake
At 10:30 every evening I take a pill.
It's oval and pink and too big for me
to swallow, so I break it in half.
I take it with a glass of cold water
or ice tea. Sometimes it sticks
in my gullet and I have to
gulp down some extra liquid.
Since I must take it with food,
I have a snack - some pretzels,
half a bagel, or cheese and crackers.
Usually I do it while watching TV.
I've been doing it for almost three years.
It fends off that which has hunted me—
that tumor growing on the outside
of my intestine that they only caught
while looking for something else.
It seems they got it just in time,
cut it out without too much trouble
and sewed me back up whole inside.
But cancer is like a snake, a friend told me.
It can always come back and sneak up behind you.
The pill is my best shot to prevent that snake
from coiling around me again.
Instead of being hunted, I become
the hunter, with my doctor’s help,
scanning the body for trouble spots,
monitoring the blood, being vigilant.
I’ve cheated death a few other times—
heart attack, near-electrocution,
missing a deadly car accident by inches.
I’ve been lucky, so I try to be optimistic,
yet I can’t help but let an element of dread
creep in when my guard is down,
when the snake hunts me in my dreams.
Thursday, April 18, 2024
PAD Day 18: You Gotta Hand It to Me
First, I want to give a shout-out to Rick Lupert and his excellent website Poetry Super Highway , which I had been aware of but didn't get involved with until the past year or so. Rick has lots going on there, including his current poem-a-day prompt feature. Each week he features two poets and a poem or two from each of them. (You can find my feature in the "Past Poets Archive" for the week of August 14-20, 2023.) He also sponsors contests and the occasional anthology, and he has organized opportunities for poets to "swap" their published books with each other (nationally or internationally) and share any e-books they may have for free. Poetry Super Highway also has a public Facebook page, where poets share news of readings, publications, etc. Some of us poets who are participating in the daily challenge are also posting our new poems there.
Today's prompts:
our pendulum swings
both ways but
if it goes
too hard and far to the right
My hands have been a pair of dilettantes.
They’ve lived a rather privileged life,
flitting from one activity to another,
done some light carpentry and yard work,
a craft or two, and a lot of writing and typing.
Today there’s not a callus on them;
they are warm and pink and smooth,
years younger than they deserve to look.
The only trauma they’ve endured
was on the right wrist, a compound fracture
from a fall off my back steps.
Surgery, bars, plates and pins, and months
of rehab made me almost whole again.
A quarter century later, I still have the battle scars—
a vertical line across the inside of the wrist,
two puncture marks on the back of the hand
like a snakebite, another mark on the forearm.
Less range of motion too—pronation, they call it.
I can’t quite turn my wrist completely palm-up,
so lifting things from underneath is hard,
or simply taking change from a cashier.
Other than that, the hand looks as normal
as its southpaw partner.
I wonder what my hands would look like
if I were another person, like my father-in-law,
who worked for years in his metal shop,
his hands stained many days with grease and grit
but scrubbed clean before dinner each night.
The only thing he couldn’t change was
half a missing forefinger on the left hand,
from the bite of a shearing machine.
Or perhaps my young friend the flautist,
whose hands create such beautiful music.
But she complains of pain and stiffness
in the joints that go all the way up
her arms and shoulders, and therapy
is as much a part of her routine as practice.
So yes, I guess I’ll keep these hands—
there’s still a lot they want to do.
I consider this one a draft, really. It's rather prosy and could be a bit shorter. Also, it has a bit of a "pat" ending. But it was an interesting exercise, and I'll probably return later to polish it up.
Wednesday, April 17, 2024
PAD Day 17: Music on the Brain
It’s not dark yet, but it’s gettin’ there. – Bob Dylan
My motor is slowing down and I’m in need of repair.
Today it’s the headlights—I need a cataract removed,
before I slip into clouds and darkness.
probably caused my foggy lenses, and for sure
some nasty lesions on the skin.
But I want it to stick around a bit longer,
even though it’s lower on the horizon,
and the sky is beginning to catch fire.
I’ll let you know when I’m good and ready.
Tuesday, April 16, 2024
PAD Day 16: Brave Little Penguins
Today's prompts:
legions of
march
resolutely to
the iceberg’s edge,
stand
and contemplate
whether to jump.
You,
brave leader,
slide right off
and
belly-flop
into the sea
from
fifty feet
above the surface.
Soon
dozens are
happily
swimming off
into frigid ocean.
I
am afraid
of nearly everything.
Here's the link to the video on YouTube. It's amazing, filmed by a naturalist with a drone:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4PwDFddpo4c
Monday, April 15, 2024
PAD Day 15: A Fishy Triolet
I'm finally caught up with the daily prompts after losing some ground this past weekend. It involved a long road trip that took a whole day of driving each way and only one whole day at our destination. But it was worth it: We visited our former international student, a young lady fron Taiwan who attended high school here in the U.S. for two years while we hosted her in our home. Unfortunately, the COVID pandemic struck at the end of her senior year, and she had to return home where she finished and graduated remotely. She returned in 2021, though, to attend Jacobs School of Music at Indiana University. She is an incredibly talented flute player, and we went out to see her perform her senior recital, which is required for her bachelor's degree. She was incredible, playing a program of modern and contemporary music with a piano accompanist, and she was very glad to see us for the first time in about a year and a half. She will continue her education here next year, pursuing a master's degree at either Jacobs or Northwestern University. We are very proud of her.
is made from dried scales of a fish.
Philatelists and my old Gramp
love Faroe Islands’ cod skin stamp.
But I would ask: If it got damp,
The Faroe Islands cod skin stamp
is made from dried scales of a fish.