PAD Day 30: Made It Again!

 Today's prompts:

WBP: Write a "beginning" and/or "ending" poem.

NPWM: "... write a poem in which the speaker is identified with, or compared to, a character from myth or legend..."

PSH: "Compose a poem using the photographs on your phone or on display in your home –
Write as if scrolling through them, describing each one briefly....
Keep scrolling and start adding pictures that aren’t there ....
Keep mixing real images with imaginary ones. The poem will tell you how it wants to end." Brendan Constantine)

I combined all three prompts today. It's up to you to figure out which of the photos on my list are real and which are not. 

The End of Argos’s Google Photo Gallery

The last name is Panoptes, which means “all-seeing,”
which applied to my one hundred eyes,
and my camera as well.
 
Here is Marvel’s The Hulk made entirely of Legos
appearing to push a toddler in a stroller.
 
Here are zookeepers tossing fish to harbor seals
for rolling over, waving their fins, and kissing.
 
Here, blowing bubbles with my grandson.
 
Here are huge flowers of blown glass,
and here is a car door growing from a garden.
 
Here are some Christmas trees.
 
Here is a fishing boat shaped like a shark,
and here is a shark shaped like a school bus.
 
Here is sunset on the Gulf of Mexico.
 
Here is an opossum on my son’s head.
 
Here is a bowl of Italian wedding soup.
 
Here is a white heifer, really a mistress of Zeus,
whom Hera asked me to guard.
 
And here is a shepherd who looks suspiciously
like Hermes, probably sent by Zeus.
His words are making me sleepy,
and he is the last thing my many eyes see.
 
Here is a selfie of Hermes with my head.

(I'll be back soon with a summary and highlights of April.)

 

PAD Day 29: Taylor's Sweater

 Today's prompts:

WBP: Write a poem titled "Until ________."

NPWM: "Merriam-Webster put together a list of ten words from Taylor Swift songs....[W]e’d like to challenge you to select one these words, and write a poem that uses the word as its title."

PSH: "Write non-stop for 3 minutes about whatever comes in to your head. Draw a line down the center. Number it section a and section b. Choose one section. Using most if not all the words in that section to make a poem. You can’t use any of the words in the other section but you can add any words other than them to create a new poem." (Judy England-McCarthy)

These are the words that were the result of prompt #3. They sort of became a "word bank" and an "anti-word bank." I did eliminate smaller words that I felt didn't need to be eliminated or included, like the, it, and, on, etc.

USE (list B):
comfortable behold high school sweater indicate area expertise mine maroon gold marching band after life
DON’T USE (list A):
open buttoned everybody least one big letter sewn football gymnastics chess club applique lyre give sweetheart time who would 

I chose Taylor Swift's word "cardigan," the title of her lead single from folklore, her first of two album releases from 2020. (I'm no Swiftie, but I thought those two albums were some of the best music I heard that year.) My free writing prompt was influenced by the word, but I tried not to let the lyrics of the song directly influence the writing. I melded the two title prompts by including both "until" and "cardigan" in my title. 

Until the Cardigan Was Lost
 
Behold the 60s high school sweater,
emblazoned with some alphabetical emblem,
a prize for any girlfriend whose guy’s area
of expertise was usually sports,
a garment she would wrap around herself
as though it were him, comfortable and caring,
warmth that could be adjusted, fastened shut
or not, a knitted billboard indicating
that she was spoken for by a desirable fellow.
How many of those sweater-pledges really lasted?
 
Mine was maroon and gold, the school colors,
awarded for marching band, not the most enviable
of high school credentials, and though there were girls
in my universe I could imagine wearing it,
it wasn’t to be. My true love didn’t appear until later,
after that cardigan was lost, yet somehow
we still both became comfortable and cozy,
and life went on.

PAD Day 28: Kindergarten Karma

 Today's prompts:

WBP: Write a "dead" poem.

NPWM: "...try your hand at writing a sijo. This is a traditional Korean verse form. A sijo has three lines of 14-16 syllables. The first line introduces the poem’s theme, the second discusses it, and the third line, which is divided into two sentences or clauses, ends the poem – usually with some kind of twist or surprise."

PSH: "Think back to your first day of school. Remember the place, the building, the classrooms, the teacher, the other kids. Then try to get in touch with your apprehensions, fears, excitement, the feeling of becoming an adult. Examine how you felt when you let go of your mom’s or dad’s symbolic hand and walked in there alone. Was there a special person you became friends with? A teacher who loved or abused, a yard where you played, made friends or got bullied…" (Rose Mary Boehm)

I'm not sure if I have completely followed the second and third prompts, but here is my sijo. I followed the NPWM examples of translations that break the three lines up into six.

Four-Eyes

First day of kindergarten,

I was already reading,

and the only one with glasses.

Some mean kids called me "Four-eyes."

Now I need cataract surgery

and some of them are dead.

PAD Day 27: Oh, Humanity...

 Today's prompts:

WBP: Write a "remix" poem. (That is, take one of your previous poems and change it up in some way - turn a form poem into a non-form one, or turn its message into its opposite, mix the lines around, etc.)

NPWM: Write an "American Sonnet."

PSH: "Human beings are so pervasive; we insert ourselves in every situation. Write a poem about a time you saw human’s influence in an unexpected place. Bonus points for using an unexpected form (one you don’t use often.)"  (C.W.Bryan)

I'll probably do the "remix" prompt later. (What I have liked to do in the past with that prompt is take individual lines from previous poems I wrote this month and string them together into a new poem.)

The "American Sonnet" is simply a shorter poem of about 14 lines, with very few rules regarding meter or rhyme. It's just supposed to be a discursive poem that captures the general spirit or form of the traditional sonnet. Several famous poets have written what they dub "American Sonnets,", like Billy Collins, Terence Hayes, and Gerald Stern. I often find, when I've written a shorter free verse poem, that it happens to end up being fourteen lines, with maybe an average of ten syllables a line, so some of them could probably be labelled as American sonnets. As to the third prompt, one example that sticks in my mind (and certainly not a positive one) is an incident at a national park that was captured in a now-viral video and made the national news.

To the Two Men Who Destroyed Ancient Rocks at Lake Mead
 
Bros, what made you think it was cool
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.

PAD Day 26: Poetry Advice from a Platypus

Today's prompts:

WBP: Write a "persona" poem.

NPWM: Write a poem that involves alliteration, consonance, and assonance.

PSH: Write a parody to Bukowski's poem "So You Want to Be a Writer.”  (Jackie Chou)

I combined all three prompts today, more or less. Bukowski's poem contains some good, frank advice as well as some dubious advice, in my opinion. My takeoff was more inspired by Bukowski than a parody of his poem.  It's more of a parody of public service announcements and of poets who overuse alliteration. Regarding the second prompt, I did focus more on alliteration than on consonance and assonance, although there are probably (albeit serendipitously) examples of assonance and consonance too.

Be Great, Don’t Alliterate!
 
It’s a persistent problem among poets –
a plethora of surplus consonants littering our landscape.
Particularly perplexing is a preponderance of P’s.
 
In some municipalities it’s illegal to alliterate.
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.
 
So please, next time you compose a poem,
don’t dump alphabetic detritrus in the dirt.
Take it from me, Penny the Picker-Upper Platypus—
Be Great, Don’t Alliterate!
 
(This public service message sponsored by
the Council for Controlling Consonants
and the Anti-Assonance Association)

 

And here is an AI-generated cartoon of Penny. I think she looks more like a duck than a platypus, and I'm not sure what she's holding in her left hand:

 

PAD Day 25: Death and the Playlist

 Today's prompts:

WBP: Write a "homonym" poem (one that uses homographs or homophones).

NPWM: Write a poem based on questions in the "Proust Questionnaire," a list of personal and self-revealing questions that were apparently used as a parlor game or icebreaker in Victorian times. (Maureen lists 35 possible questions to work with; I won't list them all here.)

PSH: "One of my favorite prompts is the "Playlist Poem." Take one of your favorite sources for music playlists - Spotify, Sirius XM, broadcast radio station, your CD player or iPod (remember them?), etc. Now shuffle or randomize the playlist and take the titles of the next five songs on the list. Write a poem on any subject that incorporates those titles into the text of the poem." (Bruce Niedt)

Yup, that's my prompt that Rick Lupert used for today. I think it was my son who originally suggested this prompt years ago, and I've used it several times since. (One of the poems resulting from the prompt was actually published.) When I first did it, I was still using my iPod, which has been retired now for years, but I still have my Apple Music library, so I used that for old-time's sake. One of the titles that came up made me think a lot about death and the afterlife, so I thought, why not use some of the "Proust questions" on Maureen's list that Death might ask you when he's come to take you away? As far as homonyms go, I might have to work them into another poem.

Exit Interview

 
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.
“Hello again?”
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.

 

All five questions that Death asked were in the Proust Queationnaire list that Maureen compiled. The song titles I used were:
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

I got pretty lucky with this list. One-word titles are usually not a problem, nor are more generic ones like “Hello Again” or “Here It Is.” The other two were more challenging, but the more unusual titles can push your poem into surprising or unexpected directions.

And here's a silly little limerick for the first prompt. Including the title, it contains five sets (twelve words in all) of homophones:

A Scene to Be Seen
 
Posh ladies and gents do adore
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.

 

PAD Day 23 Retro Bonus: More Heart

 Here's one I was working on yesterday and finished today, in repsonse to Write Better Poetry's "Heart" prompts. Yesterday I wrote and posted "Heart of the Museum," so today's poem is titled:

Museum of the 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

 Today's prompts:

WBP: Write a "maximum" poem.

NPWM: "...write a poem that begins with a line from another poem (not necessarily the first one), but then goes elsewhere with it. This will work best if you just start with a line of poetry you remember, but without looking up the whole original poem. Or you could find a poem that you haven’t read before and then use a line that interests you. "

PSH: "Write about options of any kind. To choose one leaves others behind. Personalize an option left behind and write from its perspective. The option might be relieved, excited it wasn’t chosen, or feel rejected." (Kathleen Hunkele Schardin)

So here is mine, using all three prompts. I picked my beginning line more or less at random: I have the Copper Canyon anthology A House Called Tomorrow, which is an excellent fifty-year retrospective of poets they have published. I  haven't got that far into it, but I skipped to the more recent poems in the back, found a poet whom I have read and like, and picked a line I liked from her poem without reading the whole poem first. I also decided to use her line as an epigram rather than a first line. As far as the "maximum" prompt goes, I just kind of worked the word into the poem rather than making it a major focus of the theme.

A Note from the Ph.D. You Never Got
 
[I]t’s a miracle to have a life. Any life at all.
                                                                —Ellen Bass, Indigo
 
Just wanted you to know I am alive and well,
mounted on the wall of a Rutgers professor
who heads the Psychology Department,
is widely published, and just went Emeritus.
 
I know sometimes you have regrets,
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.
 
Getting me would have taken maximum effort,
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.
 
And don’t think the Rutgers prof has no regrets—
but I’m not at liberty to discuss them.
 
So you don’t have me on your wall. Big deal.
Instead, there are pictures of your family
and your wife of fifty years.
 

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 

I remember being awestruck at eight,
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.

If you are a fan of the comedy series Abbott Elementary, set in a elementary school in Philadelphia, you may remember that in their Season 2 finale they took a school field trip to the Franklin Institute. The episode was shot on location (the first time they actually did that in the series), and you can see several areas and exhibits in that episode, including the Giant Heart. Here is a photo of it. (It will be closing on May 6 for six months of renovations.)

 

PAD Day 23: Dylan, Captain America, and Fighting Poets

 Today's prompts:

WBP: Write a poem with the title "Heart of the _______" or "______ of the Heart."

NPWM: "...  write a poem about, or involving, a superhero..."

PSH: "Write a poem that records a dialogue between two famous poets arguing a point of controversy. "

I combined prompts two and three to write a poem based on a lyric from what is probably my favorite Bob Dylan song, a fever dream of a fantasy narrative featuring a wide cast of characters, including two famous poets. (The superhero enters only in the last stanza. And admittedly, it gets a bit silly with a rather serious subject.)

Clash of the Poets
 
Praise be to Nero’s Neptune
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
 
Part of the charm of that song
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.
 
So for the sake of setting, leave them on the Titanic,
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’?
What does that even mean?”
“ Well, how about ‘petals on a wet black bough’? Seriously?”
 
And here Dylan could introduce another character:
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….”

(I"ll circle back to do the "heart" prompt later.)

PAD Day 22: Grab the Popcorn

 Today's prompts:

WBP: Write an "earth" poem.

NPWM: "...write a poem in which two things have a fight. Two very unlikely things, if you can manage it. Like, maybe a comb and a spatula. Or a daffodil and a bag of potato chips. Or perhaps your two things could be linked somehow – like a rock and a hard place – and be utterly sick of being so joined. "

PSH: (from Tara Elliott)

1. 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

2. Set a timer for precisely eleven minutes. You can edit later, but the time constraint during the initial writing will increase your focus.
3. 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.
4. Edit your work.

I rolled a die and got 1, 2 and 6. That means I must employ allusions, have no end-stopped lines, and cite the name of a famous poet. I also have to work "earth" and an unlikely conflict into the poem if possible. So here's the result. I expected "Earth" to spawn a poem about conservation or climate change, but instead I ended up in a completely different direction, describing another existential threat, if only imagined. (A line from another poem I allude to is in italics.)

[poem removed]

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)   

An "American Sentence" is simply like a one-line haiku, except it can be about any subject and should form a complete sentence. I already employed the methods of prompts two and three in my Day 14 poem, "Anaphoric One-Line Haiku on Mary Cassatt’s The Boating Party." I focused on the color blue (prevalent in the painting), and I wrote a series of one-line haiku to describe the painting. So I decided to pick the first line as my "American Sentence," even though it's debatable whether it's actually a complete sentence: "blue as the river, choppy on a bright spring day - mind your hat, Madam." It also happens to be exactly fourteen words, so I can take up the "extra credit" challenge and try to turn it into a sonnet. As to the first prompt, the poem itself will reveal the "trope."

Le Tour
 
Blue was her mood when she climbed on his boat,
as blue as April sky. Pierre cast off
the rope. She took ten francs from her blue coat.
 
“River’s not good today,” he said. It’s rough,
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.
 
“Your manner is refined,” he said. “Store-bought
hat, fur coat…. I’m a simple fisherman.
Madame, Je t'aime.” And then she touched his hand.

Obviously, I used the old romance novel trope of "lovers from different worlds." The story is inspired, again, by the Cassatt painting, but without the baby. (Maybe that came later.)

I did change "river" to "river's" and "Madam" to "Madame" for the acrostic words, but since those words were also originally mine, I guess that gives me license to do so. 

Also I paid service to the second prompt by mentioning the color blue (again) three times in the first three lines. I broke up the lines to set off the dialog for effect. I know the meter could use some tightening, but I'll work on that later. 

               

PAD Day 20: On Haiku, History, and Getting High

So I just thought of a new poetic form. In honor of today, I call it the "Four-Twenty." It's simply four lines that total twenty syllables. How many syllables are in each line is entirely up to you...man. The subject matter can be anything, although something appropriate to the day (a reference to mind-altering substances, some psychedelic imagery, etc.) would be cool.

Here's my example:

"Dispensary"? Wow.

We've come a long way

from Panama Red

in a nickel bag.

(For the record, I haven't partaken in many years - I'm just getting into the spirit of the day.)

Today's prompts:

WBP: Write a poem using at least three of the following words - bear, collar, flair, hear, praise, ramble.

NPWM: Write a poem that recounts a historical event. 

PSH: "The Prompt: Birds and Bees Are Better Than Us

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:

praise the grizzly bear

with no tackle he swipes

salmon with one paw

collarless cat

rambles through our neighborhood

on no one's schedule

radar-eared deer

have a flair for vigilance

and hear what we don't

For the "history" prompt, I'll tell a story I may have told before in poetic form. It's rather narrative (as have been a number of my poems this month - some of the prompts tend to lead one in that direction.) 

Spirit of Glassboro
 
I was sixteen, at a competition in Virginia
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.
 
It was June of ‘67. The Six-Days War in the Mideast
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.
 
The President and the Russian Premier met
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 

on the grounds, while news cameras and reporters
swarmed everywhere. We gave the two leaders

a warm reception, reflecting well on us folks
from the “sleepy little college town,”
as the press liked to describe us.
 
In the end, not much was really accomplished,

but the Cold War may have thawed just a little.
And no matter what it meant to the annals of history,
it meant something to me that I was there.

PAD Day 19: Like a Snake

 Today's prompts:

WBP: Write an "emotion" poem (with the emotion as the title.)

NPWM: "What are you haunted by, or what haunts you? Write a poem responding to this question. Then change the word haunt to hunt."

PSH: "Write a poem that provides an unbearably in-depth description of an everyday task, such as getting out of bed, brushing your teeth, or tying your shoes. How much meaning can you mine by really considering an activity you normally take for granted? What will you learn? Where will the poem lead?" (Robert Wynne)

And here is my response to all three. (I took the second peompt to mean: Replace the word "haunt" with "hunt.")

Dread
 
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.

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:

WBP: Write a "pessimistic" poem.

NPWM: "...write a poem in which the speaker expresses the desire to be someone or something else, and explains why."

PSH: "Look at your hand. Really look at it. Notice the graph of its fingers, knuckles. Look at both sides. Study the lines a fortune teller would study. Now think about where this hand has been… whom it has touched… when… where. Think back to the kinds of chores and work this hand has done. Hammering? Cooking?Writing? She pauses. Has this hand been in pain? In ecstasy? In embarrassment? You certainly by now have images of your hand you will continue to see as you close your eyes. Close your eyes. Peruse those images. Pick one or more you’d like to write about… or, when you open your eyes, just describe your hand." (James Penha, describing a prompt from Sharon Olds)

Here is my response to the first prompt, a "shadorma", a short form supposedly of Spanish origin with 6 lines and a syllable count of 3/5/3/3/7/5. It's been suggested that the shadorma is an invented form that has been passed off as a historical one, a "hoax" if you will, something like Billy Collins' "paradelle." But it has gained legitimate popularity, and I've already written a few in my career, so here's another one:

Shadorma: Democracy
 
I worry:
our pendulum swings
both ways but
if it goes
too hard and far to the right

will it break our clock?

And here is my poem for the other two prompts:

My Hands
 
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.

Even great music has its price.
 
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.

PAD Day 17: Music on the Brain

 Today's prompts:

WBP: Write a poem titled "Not ________."

NPWM: "...write a poem that is inspired by a piece of music, and that shares its title with that piece of music. "

PSH: "Make a haiku with 3 songs that are stuck in your brain." (Gayle Bell)

It's interesting that two of the sources both have music-based prompts today. (And I know for a fact that Poetry Super Highway will have a music-themed prompt coming up next week too.) I wasn't sure how to combine those two, though, so I started with the haiku prompt. I have been listening to a fascinating CD box set called I See You Live on Love Street. It's three discs of music by artists who lived in the late 60's or early 70's in Southern California's Laurel Canyon, which gained quite a reputation as an artists' community. Featured in the box are the likes of Buffalo Springfield, The Doors, Linda Ronstadt, The Byrds,The Mamas and the Papas, Frank Zappa, Warren Zevon, Gram Parsons,The Turtles, Three Dog Night, Fleetwood Mac, and many more, as well as a number of more obscure artists and their songs. Two of the three songs "stuck my brain" are from this collection: Stephen Stills' "Love the One You're With," and "Twelve-Thirty," a cover of The Mamas and the Papas' song by Scott McKenzie (of "If You're Going to San Francisco" fame) - the Mamas and Papas do a different song in the collection. Joni Mitchell doesn't appear in the box (nor do some other famous Laurel Canyon residents, due to contractual issues,) but her song "Ladies of the Canyon" is also stuck in my brain by association. So here is my haiku. (The second line is from a lyric in the song "Twelve-Thirty.")

canyon ladies

say good morning and mean it

and love who they're with

For the other two prompts, I thought of songs that I like whose titles start with the word "Not," and one of my favorites is Bob Dylan's "Not Dark Yet" from his 1997 album Time Out of Mind. It's just a beautifully reflective song about aging and disillusionment, and one of my favorites of his whole catalog. So I listened again to the music and lyrics and came up with my own impressions and interpretation of the message of the song.

Not Dark Yet

It’s not dark yet, but it’s gettin’ there. – Bob Dylan
 
I can count more days behind than ahead.
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.
 
The sun, that enemy in disguise,
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’m not ready to pull the shades, not yet.
I’ll let you know when I’m good and ready.

This poem looks like it really wants to be a sonnet. It has a generally loose meter, and it could be easily extended from twelve to fourteen lines. Maybe I'll rework it when I have more time.