The House in My House

 Write Better Poetry's prompts have been a bit late these past few days, (allegedly due to working the kinks out of a new platform) so I did NaPoWriMo's prompt first: "Write [a] poem about living with a piece of art."  (I'll probably be back later with a poem in response to the other prompt.)

Painting of My House Inside My House
 
My friend Bob has become a “retirement painter,”
which is in no way a put-down.
He’s always been interested in taking up the brush,
but with time on his hands, he got more serious,
and his skills blossomed.
 
A realist with a dab of impressionism,
he stealthily studied our house from his car
one day, and went home to complete the job,
built it from the ground up with oils,
and presented the framed work as a surprise.
He rendered our modest white Cape Cod faithfully,
though he tweaked the curb appeal:
dotting our flower bed with more daffodils
than I think we had, and trimming my rhododendron
more neatly than it really was. Also, he said,
he couldn’t quite get the retaining wall to work,
the one fronting our lawn, so he deleted it.
Artistic license is like poetic license—
if you embellish the truth, it’s still basically the truth.
 
Now we admire it on the dining room wall,
but I can’t help but think of a variation
of that old multiverse paradox:
Is there a painting on the dining room wall
inside this painting of my house,
and is my house just a painting
on someone else’s wall?
And did Bob paint it?

                                            

                                            (Painting by Bob Rogers, 2022.)

P.S.: Here is my response to the Write Better poetry prompt, which is to write an "unexpected mess" poem. I thought of adding soomething to the first poem so it would satisfy both prompts, but I liked this idea better as a separate poem.

The Mess  Inside
 
He paints a picture of their house—
a neat little starch-white bungalow
with perfectly pruned hedges
and a garden with rows of flowers.
 
If only he had painted the inside—
immaculate rooms that belie
closets full of chaos
behind the thin doors of order.

PAD Day 3 Bonus: A Timely Limerick

 Here's a bonus off-prompt poem, a limerick to "celebrate" our fearless leader's declaration of April 2, the date of his oppressive international tariffs, as "Liberation Day."

Tariff-ic?
 
Liberation Day is now at hand!
Ring church bells all over the land
for skyrocketing prices,
a stock market crisis,
and allies who say, “Go pound sand!”

PAD 3: Sculpting Words

 Today's prompts from Write Better Poetry and NaPoWriMo: (1) Write a "short" poem (a short-form powm and/or a poem about something short), and (2) " write a poem that obliquely explains why you are a poet and not some other kind of artist – or, if you think of yourself as more of a musician or painter (or school bus driver or scuba diver or expert on medieval Maltese banking) – explain why you are that and not something else!"

II don't know how "oblique" my poem is today - it's a pretty starightforward metaphor - but here it is, in two verses of the Spanish short form called the shadorma (six lines with syllable count of 3/5/3/3/7/5.)

Why I Am Not a Sculptor 

If I were a sculptor,
But then again, no… Elton John
 
When I chip
and chisel down words,
grind, polish,
sand and buff,
there’s a luster to the form,
the shape of language.
 
But if I
tried all this with rock,
it would crack
and splinter,
my chisel just a weapon,
rubble on the floor.

Day 2: Epistle from the Basement

 Today's prompts from Write Better Poetry and NPWM: (1) Write a "from where I'm sitting" poem, and (2) write a poem that "directly addresses someone, and that includes a made-up word ,an odd/unusual simile ,a statement of 'fact,' and something that seems out of place in time."

My poem didn't come out that ekphrasitc today, but I did follow both prompts, more or less. I describe my basement environment, address Zeus, include a "made-up" word (a portmanteau, actually), have a slightly unusual simile, and I guess talking to mythical gods seems a bit "out of place and time."

Basement
 
Zeus chased me down here
with a couple of noisy thunderbolts.
These days we’re not allowed to say “climate change’
or have the government warn us about the weather,
so I just rely on the gods.
 
I used to cower down here during tornado warnings—
you, know, interior walls, away from windows,
that kind of thing—but now the powers that be
prefer the element of surprise, like the next pandemic.
 
This is my haven, a clutter-clysm of organized chaos—
boxes and crates, half of whose contents I forgot;
the laundry corner, never empty of a mountain of apparel;
and other things that ask to be sorted and sifted.
Instead I’m writing, trying to unclutter my brain of noise,
so much of which must be absorbed these days.
It’s not Next Great Poem, just a self-conscious ramble,
as I type away on a dinosaur PC
and wind-swept rain rattles the basement windows.
 
Suddenly, as a malicious bit of divine punctuation,
a loud boom scares the power out.
Come on, Zeus—
or Jupiter, Thor, Indra, Baal, Tāwhirimātea,
whatever you like to be called these days—
 I’m just trying to write down here.  
 

April PAD is Here Again! (Day 1)

 And another year of the April Poem-a-Day Challenge is upon us! I've been rotten about writing lately, so this will be once again my annual jump start for poetic production. I've been upset and depressed about the state of our nation lately, so pardon me if some of my poetry this month has a distinct political leaning.

Once again I'll be following Robert Lee Brewer's April PAD Challenge on the Writer's Digest website, and Maureen Thorson's NaPoWriMo blog as well. Maureen's blog will focus this month on ekphrastic poetry - that is, poetry inspired by a work of art or music - and she will share links to various museum sites and others for inspiration. She also had a "warm-up" prompt from yesterday to write a "portrait" poem, so here is my result:

          

Portrait of Trump in the Colorado Statehouse

Of course, he complains about it —
he may have preferred the pumped-up superhero
from one of his digital trading cards.
But he has a point.
There’s the feathery hair, the flag lapel pin,
and the trademark long red tie,
but it’s too warm and fuzzy, too soft-focused,
like a blurred-edge pastel, and that makes
his portly image even more rounded.
 
Sir, with all due respect,
you could have done so much worse.
Shall we review your gallery of caricatures?
Or perhaps your mug shot, which looks like
a Gotham villain about to blow up City Hall?
There is one detail of the painting I like,
and that’s the mouth, an almost perfect
horizontal line, lipless, that one could call
Resting Despot Face. It’s a precious moment,
one in which you are not shouting, grimacing,
lying, threatening, whining or insulting,
but perfectly neutral, silent, as though someone
has just told you to shut the hell up.

Today's dual prompts from Write Better Poetry and NaPoWriMo: (1) Write a "best of times" and/or "worst of times" poem, and (2) write a poem that uses an art or music term that you were not previously familiar with. I used the name of the early 20th century Dutch school of modern art called "De Stijl", most famously represented by Piet Mondrian. 

De Stijl (The Style)
 
It was the best of art,
it was the worst of art.
It was nature reduced to
Its barest simplicity—
 
perpendiculars, straight lines,
intersecting, primary colors,
composition distilled
to its most basic elements.
 
It is the best of times,
It is the worst of times,
depending on who you ask.
I suggest a new flag
 
that resembles Mondrian’s
Composition No. II,
with Red and Blue,
white with bold black lines
 
describing five quadrilaterals,
a square and a rectangle filled in—
one red, one blue,
corner to corner, no overlap,
 
to represent what we feel to be
the thick borders of our beliefs,
the irreconcilable compartments
of our ideologies.