PAD Day 20: Bull in the Sky

 Today's prompts from Write Better Poetry and NaPoWriMo: (1) Write a poem with the title "No _________," and (2) "try writing your own poem that uses an animal that shows up in myths and legends as a metaphor for some aspect of a contemporary person’s life. Include one spoken phrase."

I took the prompt rather literally today, and I'm not sure what the "spoken phrase" would be - I ended up writing in the first person so that whole last stanza sounds "spoken." Maybe the phrase in quotes ("You break it, you bought it") wound count. Anyway, here's the poem.

No Ordinary Bull
 
The Mesopotamians noticed it first, a large bull in the sky,
with long pointed horns and a bright, bloodshot eye.
The Greeks say Zeus put it there, as a reminder
of the time he became a bull to seduce Europa.
 
Now it still rises in the late April night,
when the sensual world is in full bloom—
tulips, cherry trees, azaleas—
and the red eye of Aldebaran still glares down.
 
Some born under that sign became famous:
Shakespeare and Florence Nightingale,
but also Hitler and John Wilkes Booth.
The astrologers say, we Taureans are steadfast
and loyal, artistic and loving,
materialistic, stubborn, and slow to change.
 
That’s me in a nutshell.
I’m also dangerous in a china shop—
“You break it, you bought it” was invented for me.
But I’m also a peaceful sort,
like the Spanish bull Ferdinand
in that kid’s storybook. Rather than fight,
I’d prefer to sit under a tree on a hill
and smell the flowers.
 

PAD Day 19: A Smelly Bouquet

 Today's prompts from Write Better Poetry and NaPoWriMo: (1) Write a "family" poem, and (2) "Today, pick a flower or two (or a whole bouquet, if you like) from this online edition of Kate Greenaway’s Language of Flowers. Now, write your own poem in which you muse on your selections’ names and meanings. If you’re so inclined, you could even do some outside research into your flowers, and incorporate facts that you learn into your work."

REgarding "family," I've already written a couple of poems about my pateranl grandparents. Today, my focus is my wife, whom I like to present with flowers about once a month if not more. (Sometimes she just buys them for herself.) I didn't do a very deep dive in the origins and meanings of my floral subject because I don't have time to do much research this weekend. I do know they have some connections to spirituality, particularly in the Christian faith. And I learned that jonquils and narcissus are both members of the daffodil family, so all narcissus and jonquils are daffodils, but not vice versa. There is one aspect of jonquils I find less than attractive, though, as I note in my poem.

I Give My Wife Jonquils
 
I find them at a local road stand,
cut bunches of little daffodils
with yellow collars and orange trumpets
bright enough to play a fanfare.
I bring them home to my wife
who smiles a thank-you
and puts them in a cut glass vase
on the dining room table.
 
But soon we remember the reputation
of jonquils—their heavy, heavy perfume
that not everyone finds pleasing.
To me, they smell like swamp water.
They have commandeered the house
with their overpowering odor.
 
Greenaway, in The Language of Flowers,
says they mean “I desire a return of affection.”
Not with that stench, fellas,
any more than I would expect a hug
from my wife after a dirty, sweaty
day of yard work.
 
So we relegate that feisty bunch
to a table on the back patio,
where they look just as pretty,
and the bees don’t seem to mind the smell.

PAD Day 18: An Epic Regime

 Today's prompts from Write Better Poetry and NaPoWriMo: (1) Write a "reconsideration" poem, and (2) "Today, we don’t challenge you to write all of a long, dramatic, narrative poem, but we invite you to try your hand at writing a poem that could be a section or piece of one. Include rhyme, include unlikely and dramatic scenes (maybe a poem about a bank robbery! Or an avalanche! Or Roman gladiators! Or an enormous ball held by mermaids, where there is an undercurrent (hee) of palace intrigue!) Basically, a poem with the plot of an opera (evil twins! Egyptian tombs! Star-crossed lovers! Tigers for no apparent reason!)"

The NaPoWriMo prompt is definitely something one could have fun with, and I really wish I could have worked "tigers for no apparent reason" into my poem, but I went in a slightly different direction, a political one, which is all too easy to do these days. It's sort of a darkly comic look at what have actually been some pretty ominous moments in the last couple of weeks. (By the way, the Roman numeral "section number" of this imagined epic is 468, the exact number of days since the beginning of this administration.)

Le Roi de l'Orange (Excerpt)
 
CDLXVIII.
 
And then, because he could not earn
the noble prize of peace,
the king went on a mad tirade:
“The dogs of war, release!
We’ll storm the evil empire
and we’ll attack the Persian!
It will be like a pleasure cruise—
we’ll call it an ‘excursion!’
By Xerxes’ toes, we’ll crush the foes,
and bomb them to the Stone Age!
I’ll use my bunker-buster bombs—
wait till you see their tonnage!”
 
He ordered up a fusillade
of missiles, drones and bombs,
that killed their leader and his staff,
but also kids and moms.
He bombed their military bases,
hospitals and schools,
to get them to kowtow to him,
but Persians are no fools.
They blocked the strait where oil ships pass,
to call the mad king’s bluff,
and when the price of petrol soared,
the people had enough.
 
“Let’s end this war!” they cried. “It’s wrong,
and what’s more, unprovoked!
Our king has lost his marbles and
the world thinks he’s a joke!”
But then l’Orange did double down,
and sent this ultimatum:
"I’ll end their civilization now—
oh boy, how much I hate ‘em!”
But now he’s reconsidered, and
the fearless leader speaks:
“Because it’s TACO Tuesday, I
will give them two more weeks!”
 
[Coming up next, CDLXIX: The Pope vs. The Dope]
 
 
 

PAD Day 17: Spaceship Earth

 Today's prompts from Write Better Poetry and NaPoWriMo: (1) Write an "ambiguity" poem, and (2) "write a poem in which you respond to a favorite poem by another poet."

Today I chose to respond to a recent poem by one of my favorite poets (and people), my friend Jane Hirshfield. This a new poem that appeared in "Poem of the Day" on Poets.org in March. Jane is a very passionate citizen of the planet, and this poem reflects both her concerns and her hopes for its future, ending with a kind of benediction or prayer.

My poem is not so much a "response" as perhaps an elaboration on, or interpretation of, her sentiments in her poem. Her language is so lyrical, while mine is a bit more didactic. I also try to explain the concept of "kalpa" referenced in her poem. It exists in both Hinduism and Buddhism and represents an enormous span of time. (Jane, as you may know, has been a student and practitioner of Zen Buddhism.) As far as the "ambiguity" prompt, my message is pretty unambiguous, but perhaps my ending is not. Will it be merciful death or merciful survival? (Oh, and the title is from a phrase coined by philosopher Frank White, referring to the feeling that astronauts get when viewing the Earth from space.)

Overview Effect

 

“Trust us, you look amazing, you look beautiful….”

—     Victor Glover, Artemis II crew

 

Zoom out with a lens and a spaceship

and find our other spaceship, the round blue one

surrounded by a void as it hurtles around the sun.

 

All the cliches come out—no borders in space,

and so on—but the feeling is real.

Sometimes we need to pull away to look closely,

and reflect on who we are on this rock,

who we could be, and what we can do as a species

now that the walls of Paradise have come down.

 

The Hindus say a kalpa, the time between creation

and destruction of the world, is four and a half billion years.

That’s how old our planet is.

 

There is no room for complacency.

We need to act, to do what we can now,

before our future spins into darkness.

 

But we also need to pray that our children

and grandchildren will survive what we have left them,

and that if there is a Higher Power, it will be merciful.

[Pardon the wide line spacing - I had some formatting issues with the blog. And here is the now-famous photo of Earth from the Artemis II mission.]

 

PAD Day 16: Lawn Season

 Today's prompts from Write Better Poetry and NaPoWriMo: (1) Write a "new" poem (in whatever sense of the word you wish), and (2) "try writing a poem in which you describe something that cannot speak, and what it has taught or told you."  

I must say, I have been enjoying the sample poems that Maureen has been using this month as examples of, or lead-ins to, her prompts. Today it was "Ocean" by Robinson Jeffers, and you can find it here. 

Here's my result of combining the prompts:

New Grass
 
Now it is still a sea of light brown,
dead blades of zoysia that weathered winter
out my front and back doors.
 
Here and there,
wild onion and dandelion poke up
through its tough network of roots.
 
This is first green I see,
and while I fret the weeds
and their first yellow flowers,
 
the lawn seems to whisper, Patience—
We shall prevail, given a little more
time, sun, and water.
 
We are not dead, only dormant.
I should know this by now.
With help, the lawn will be lush green
 
and ripe for mowing by the first of May.
If only I were so confident
that I could return so strongly every year.
 

PAD Day 15: Mr. Loveless

 Today's prompts from Write Better Poetry and NaPoWriMo: (1) Write a poem titled, "Under _______,"

and (2) " write your own poem that muses on love, but isn’t a traditional love poem in the sense of expressing love between romantic partners."

Once again, I feel I went off on a bit of a tangent on the NaPoWriMo prompt, but I guess it's a kind of musing on love - or the inability of a person to feel it. I got a bit political once again. 

Under a Loveless Regime
 
What must it be like for you,
when the only things you seem to love
are money and power?
When “empathy” is like a foreign language,
and “care” is for suckers?
 
It must get very lonely when your own wife
brushes your hand away in public,
when you can’t muster up enough love
even for a pet.
 
People to you are not a source of comfort,
but just means to an end, transactional objects,
victims to be duped, insulted, threatened,
conned into thinking you’re on their side.
 
Of course you can always take solace
in your love of yourself, the self-appointed GOAT,
sharing god-like images of yourself,
surrounding yourself with people
who think, or at least say, you’re wonderful.
You say, “My people love me!”
but the only thing you really seek from them
is fear and loyalty. 
 
You must have got everything you wanted
as a kid, except the thing you needed most.
At the end of the day,
do you have anyone to hug?
Would anyone really care
if you weren’t here tomorrow?
I would feel pity for you
if you didn’t make me, us,
and the rest of the world,
miserable.

PAD Day 14: Please Hold...

 Today's prompts from Write Better Poetry and NaPoWriMo: "Write a form and/or anti-form poem," and (2) "write a poem that...bridges (whether smoothly or not) the seeming divide between poetry and technological advances."

I know the tech topic I chose is "low-hanging fruit," but I still had fun satirizing it, and I picked the villanelle form because in a way it reflects the frustratingly cyclic nature of so many automated customer service menus. 

Customer Service
 
Welcome to Megacorporation Inc.!
Para Español, oprimo uno.
We’ll solve your problems as quick as a wink!
 
Press 2 if your favorite color is pink.
Press 3 if you live in Nome or Juneau.
We care at Megacorporation Inc.
 
Press 4 if you need a new kitchen sink.
Press 5 to hear “We Don’t Talk About Bruno.”
We’ll solve your problems as quick as a wink!
 
We’ll transfer you to our chatbot named Link.
He’s AI, and he knows more than you know.
“Hi! Welcome to Megacorporation Inc.!
 
I’ll help you out, but give me time to think…”
[Hold music plays, courtesy of Suno.]
“There, I solved your problem! Emoji wink!”
 
We hope this helped, but would you say we stink?
Take our short survey—we’d really like to know!
Thanks for calling Megacorporation Inc.,
Where problems are solved as quick as a wink!
 

PAD: Bonus Poem from Day 10

 I'll be back later with a new poem, but for now, here's one I wrote for the Day 10 prompts that I didn't post. (Instead, I posted a rewrite of a poem I first wrote a month ago that had a more powerful and timely message.) This one's worth sharing too, though.

A Journey
 
No one can tell you how to grieve.
Maybe they’re not in a better place.
Maybe their long life wasn’t long enough.
Maybe you should never move on.
 
What right do they have?
You can cry whenever you want.
What right do they have?
Throw yourself on the casket if you wish.
 
We all have different countries of hurt.
It’s a long walk through dark countryside,
before you get to a flowered clearing
which you must find yourself.

PAD Day 13: Magic Garden

 Today's prompts from Write Better Poetry and NaPoWriMo: (1)Write a "problem" poem, and (2) "Try your hand today at writing your own poem about a remembered, cherished landscape. It could be your grandmother’s backyard, your schoolyard basketball court, or a tiny strip of woods near the railroad tracks. At some point in the poem, include language or phrasing that would be unusual in normal, spoken speech – like a rhyme, or syntax that feels old-fashioned or high-toned."

I focused again today on memories of my grandparents' house. I'm not sure if I quite captured the spirit of the NaPoWriMo prompt (I wax "old-fashioned" poetic toward the end - I resisted the urge to use the word "gossamer," though), and I made just a nod toward the Write Better Poetry prompt. But for what it's worth:

Grandparents’ Garden
 
Just a small, near-perfect rectangle
of grass out their back door—
to the left, the pink and white roses
she pruned meticulously.
To the right, his garden by the side
of the garage, growing tomatoes
and peppers, red-green rhubarb
and strawberries, the whole plot
edged with marigolds,
because rabbits didn’t like the smell.
He kept the bunnies away,
but she fed the squirrels—
there was one with a limp right ear
she called “Gimpy-ear,” and he
took peanuts right out of her hand.
In the center, a stone birdbath
that the robins and sparrows
would revel in, fluttering wings,
spraying water like a lawn sprinkler.
I spent many summer afternoons
out there, on an Adirondack chair
with a lemonade in hand, any problems
I left back home melting like the ice
in my glass. I would watch
the pines shift in a warm breeze,
and imagined how there must be magic
hidden in those whispering boughs,
how it might come down while we slept,
old-fashioned storybook or poetic magic,
ere Eos painted the morn a sensual red
and birdsong graced the day,
and if I peered out the back window,
I might perchance spy fairies in the birdbath,
translucent wings flashing in the dim,
just before the sun began to show his rim.
 

PAD Day 12: Choo-Choo!

 Today's prompts from Write Better Poetry and NaPoWriMo: (1) Write a "set" poem (using any definition of the word you choose), and (2) " write your own poem that recounts a memory of a beloved relative, and something they did that echoes through your thoughts today."

Did you know that there are over 400 definitions of the word "set" in English? The OED has over 20 pages listing the definitions of that one word. No other English word had more definitions. I believe I once wrote a poem about that, using the word in about 30-plus different ways. I'll have to sort through my body of work to find it. 

Anyway, I thought of "train set," which inspired this poem. Interestingly, it could also fit yesterday's theme of "home."

Little Woodbury
 
I used to dabble in model railroads,
as did my father, and his father before him.
Grandpop had a set of the original Lionels,
solidly made, not an ounce of plastic on them.
He ran the steam locomotive with its loud whistle
and real smoke pouring from its smokestack,
competing with Grandpop’s own pipe.
It pulled a caravan of box cars, coal cars,
cattle cars, gondolas, even passenger cars,
and last but not least, a caboose.
The train traversed a large oval, chugging over a trestle bridge
and through a tunnel in a papier-mâché mountain,
then circled a little village that looked like his hometown.
In fact, he built scale models of the buildings of Woodbury
from cardboard, balsa wood and paint—
the city hall, the hospital, the Methodist church,
the movie theater, advertising The Wizard of Oz,
the diner, the gas station, and several houses,
including his own, a three-bedroom bungalow
he shared with my grandmother, flanked by two
large cedar trees, just a block from the real-life
train station, also represented on his layout.
The town was populated with little ceramic people
and 1930s-style die-cast Fords and Chevys.
I’d spend hours watching that Lionel logging scale miles
around and around little Woodbury, and sometimes
he let me take the controls. Once I asked him,
“Why do so many train sets have oval tracks?”
And he answered, “Because no matter how far you travel,
you always come back home.”
 

 

 

PAD Day 11: Got My Eraser

 Today's prompts from Write Better Poetry and NaPoWriMo: (1) Write a "home" poem, and (2)"write your own erasure/blackout poem. You could use a page from a favorite book, a magazine, what have you....Feel free to maintain the whitespace of the original text (as is traditional for erasures/blackouts . . . if anything can be called traditional about them) or to pluck words/phrases from your chosen source material and rearrange them."

I chose the latter treatment: taking words and phrases out of a source and rearranging them, so I could try a "double tanka" form. My source was a page from the article "The Design Lab" in the March 2026 issue of Better Homes and Gardens. It featured the home designs of Ralli Clasen, and I used both text and quotes from that page and played with them. It seemed to turn into a poem about a restless, pensive designer/homeowner. I think my first tanka stanza works better then my second one, however.

Shore House
 
The home’s bold punches—
the knots and all the weird things
that swirl in her mind
come in big waves, inky blue—
one-minute walk to the beach.
 
More subtle whispers:
“Drywall to me is sterile.”
“Wood warms everything.”
Possibilities out loud:
“Likely that we’ll move again.”

PAD Day 10: A Country of Grief

 Today's prompts from Write Better Poetry and NaPoWriMo: Write a "mini" poem (10 lines or less) or a poem that focuses on something "mini" that's longer, and (2) "In his poem, 'Goodbye,' Geoffrey Brock describes grief in three short stanzas, the second of which is entirely made up of a rhetorical dialogue. Today, write your own meditation on grief. Try using Brock’s form as the 'container' for your poem: a few short stanzas, with a middle section in which a question is repeated with different answers given.

The two prompts work together pretty well, except Brock's poem is 12 lines long, not 10. I did write a 12-line poem on the topic of grief, but I won't share that one here today. Instead, I rewrote a short three-stanza poem that I had written last month, reworking all the stanzas, especially the second one, to include questions as in Brock's poem. So it's  a little longer than specifiied in Robert's prompt, but it does have an element of "mini" (or "small") incorporated into it. I felt it needed to be shared even more than the first one I wrote.

Holes in Minab
 
We are not sure what the drone sees at first—
dozens of rectangular holes, some still undug,
their dimensions etched in the dirt,
near the rubble that used to be a school.
 
What are those little holes in the ground?
They are scars, the wailing of souls.
What will go in those holes in the ground?
The remains of more than a hundred children.
 
Three reckless rockets found their mark.
Three reckless rockets fired by our country.
The holes look so small from up here.
And we, too, are so very small.

 

PAD Day 9: Amaze, Amaze, Amaze

 Today's prompts from Write Better Poetry and NaPoWriMo: (1) Write a poem titled "_____ But _____," and (2) " try writing your own poem in the voice of an animal or plant, or a poem that describes a specific animal or plant with references to historical events or scientific facts."  

I went off on a little tangent with the second prompt. Instead of writing in the voice of an animal or plant, I chose a certain intelligent alien in a certain new SF movie called Project Hail Mary, based on the novel by Anrew Weir (who also wrote The Martian.) I highly recommend it. It's exciting, funny, heartwarming with a positive message, with amazing non-digital, non-AI effects, and a perfect family-friendly "popcorn movie." The last sentence of the poem, spoken by "Rocky" in the film, is already becoming a catch-phrase, in fact one of the Artemis crew recently quioted it in reference to their views of the earth and the moon. So without further ado, here's Rocky (via the translator built by Dr. Grace):

Rock, But Living
 
Hello, I am [unintelligible musical language].
My human friend Grace calls me “Rocky.”
That is because I am made of rock, but living.
I am from planet you call Erid.
We meet in space, near star you call Tau Ceti. 

After I send Grace messages
made from metallic xenon, we dock our ships.
We are scientists and engineers.
We work together to try to solve problem 

of “astrophages” which are eating our suns. 

We become friends, even though we are very different.
I breathe ammonia, he breathes nitrogen and oxygen.
I have five appendages, he has only four,
and something called “face.”
I can only “see” by echolocation.
But we have same objective, to find way
to save our suns and our universe.
Good job, good job, Rocky and Grace.
Grace tells me not to say more,
or I will make something called “spoiler.”
Grace says, come watch moving picture
of our story. Amaze, amaze, amaze!

PAD Day 8: What a Fool Believes

 Today's prompts from Write Better Poetry and NaPoWriMo: (1) Write a "paranoid"poem, and (2) " In your poem for today, use a simple phrase repeatedly, and then make statements that invert or contradict that phrase."

It seems I can't help getting political these days, especially since we seem to have dodged Armageddon (at least for now) in the past 24 hours. But these days when I hear "paranoid,"  I immediately think of conspiracy theories, which seem to be predominately the product of right-wing fanatic groups like Q-Anon. Here, I list several of the more popular ones, plus a couple of my own creation. 

Q-razy
 
I’m not paranoid,
but a cabal of rich ravenous cannibals
are eating babies in a pizza parlor basement
in Washington DC.
 
I’m not paranoid,
but windmills and chemtrails cause cancer,
and additives in juice boxes
are turning our children gay.
 
I’m not paranoid
but JFK Jr. is alive,
lurking outside Area 51,
plotting to rescue all the captive aliens.
 
I’m not paranoid,
but George Soros pays radical leftists
to fly American flags outside their homes
to make us think they’re patriotic.
 
I’m not paranoid,
but Jewish space lasers cause wildfires,
and Democrats have secret technology
to steer hurricanes toward red states.
 
I’m not paranoid, 

but the first moon landing was faked 

on a Hollywood set, and the latest mission, 

Artemis, was all done with AI.
 
I’m not paranoid,
but I can feel you all judging me.
That’s all right. I’ll get the last laugh
when Trump and Jesus take me to heaven.

PAD Day 7: Double Dutch

 Today's prompts from Write Better Poetry and NaPoWriMo: (1) Write a "dawn" or "dusk" poem, and (2) "In her poem, 'Front Yard Rhyme,' Cecily Parks evokes the sing-songy beats that accompany girls’ clapping games, and jump-rope and skipping rhymes. Today, we challenge you to write your own poem that emulates these songs – something to snap, clap, and jump around to."

Considering the downright scary threats our "president" has made against Iran over the last few days, I pray, ironically, that they are lies and that he has no intention of bombing an entire country out of existence. These are troubling times, so I apologize if this poem appears to make light of the situation. I take it dead seriously.

Jump Rope Chant
 
Liar, liar,
dawn to dusk,
frenemy to Elon Musk.
 
Liar, liar,
dusk to dawn,
rant all night, you do go on!
 
We just wish you’d go away,
how many lies did you tell today?
One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight….

PAD Day 6: You're No Jesus

 I hope everyone who celebrates had a Happy Easter yesterday. My weekend was, as usual, extremely busy, as our family spends all of Good Friday making our special Easter bread for family and friends. Think of it a kind of giant calzone, stuffed with Italian sausage, ham, hard boiled eggs, and three kinds of cheese. Yum! Sunday we had sixteen people for dinner, and an Easter egg hunt for the kiddies which unfortunately got rained out before we could finish it. All in all, a good weekend, but I'm exhausted. Still, I've been able to keep up with the daily prompts.

Today's prompts from Write Better Poetry and NapoWriMo: (1)Write a "water" poem, and (2) "try writing with a breezy, conversational tone, while including at least one thing that could only happen in a dream." Well, as someone who celebrates Easter, I've had Jesus on my mind, and like most GOOD Christians, I bristled at not only the right-wing evangelists who last week practically anointed a certain President as the second coming of Christ, but also the same guy's vrtriolic, profanity-laced posts about what he plans to do to Iran, some of the most belligerent and un-Christian swill ever to come out of the mouth of a "world leader." So here is my response.

A Parable
 
They compared this guy to Jesus,
so he thought he would test that theory.
He rowed his bigly boat to the middle of the lake
and stepped over the side, immediately
falling in, his heavy suit pulling him down.
 
As he screamed for help, a water strider
happened to skate by.
“Jesus could do this, and so can you,

you lowly bug! Why can’t I?” he sputtered.
 
The water strider laughed.
“Because I’m so light, I skim
on the surface tension of the water.
It’s a talent God gave me.
You humans sink from the weight
of your own sins. And brother,
you’ve got a ton of them!
Good luck on the bottom.”
 

PAD Day 5: Speed Demon

 Today's prompts from Write Better Poetry and NaPoWriMo: (1) Write a "safety" poam, and "write a poem in which you talk about disliking something – particularly something utterly innocuous [...] Be over the top! Be a bit silly and overdramatic."

Today I thought I'd try a curtal sonnet, a favorite form of my poet buddy (and Iowa Poet Laureate) Vince Gotera. He is also doing the same prompts as me this month, but moreover, he has been doing the "Stafford Challenge" - a poem a day for a year - for well over a year now. (Check out his blog here.) A curtal sonnet is a shortened (11-line) version of a sonnet created by Gerard Manley Hopkins, with a rhyme scheme of ABCABCDBCDC (although there are variations), with the last line being much shorter than the others, only a metric foot or two. I played a little more loosely with meter and feet in this one than I usually do, but I think it came out okay. It's a persona poem from the point of view of a driver type I see more and more frequently these days - the type who weaves in and out of traffic at a high rate of speed, creating hazard conditions for everyone with their recklessness. When I see that, I secretly hope to see their vehicle wrapped around a tree or a light pole a few miles down the road. I tried to get into the head of a driver like that, imagining a combination of grumpiness, anarchism and arrogance. For what it's worth:

Safety Lesson
 
Look at these morons on the road. I hate morons.
Look at these speed limit signs. I hate speed limits.
They are meant to be broken. When there are no cops
or radar, I make my own rules.  The Autobahn’s
unrestricted, why aren’t we? When I’m in it,
(the “zone,”) I dart like a wasp. This car hops!
Hey you, in the left lane, creeping like a toad—
I flash my lights, blare my horn—move over, dammit!
Why should you yield? Well, listen closely, Pops:
I am the GOAT! I am KING OF THE ROAD!
                                                          NOTHING STOPS—

PAD Day 4: My Fickle Friend

 Today's prompts from Write Better Poetry and NaPoWriMo: (1) Write a "friend" poem, and (2) "craft your own short poem that involves a weather phenomenon and some aspect of the season. Try using rhyme and keeping your lines of roughly even length."

Here's a simple rhyming verse that's inspired in part by the sample poem the Maureen offered, "Spring Thunder" by Mark Van Doren. (Trivia fact: He was a Pulitzer Prize winner, but also known as the father of Charles Van Doren, who was involved in the TV quiz show scandal of the 1950s, as depicted in the film "Quiz Show." Paul Scofield played Mark Van Doren and Ralph Fiennes played his son Charles.)

Early April
 
O April, old and fickle friend,
Today you set the fashion trend—
T-shirt and shorts this summ’ry day.
Tomorrow, though, they go away
for winter coat and knit wool cap.
I watch with awe the weather map,
The war of warm and cold’s begun,
The battles—wind and rain and sun.
The trees have blossomed, but I know
you could betray us with spring snow.
And yet, when August bakes me red,
I’ll wish I had you back instead.

PAD Day 3: Step Right Up!

 Today's prompts from Write Better Poetry and NaPoWriMo: (1) Write a poem with the title "Open _____", and (2) "write a poem in which a profession or vocation is described differently than it typically is considered to be. Perhaps your poem will feature a very relaxed brain surgeon, or a farmer that hates vegetables."

I went on a little bit of a tangent on this one. I was thinking about the "typewriter poets" I've heard about lately - folks who set up with a folding table and manual typewriter in a public place and create poems on the spot for passersby, sometimes for free, sometimes for a fee. Then I thought: What if such a poet was part of a carnival side show and had a barker to sing his praises? That would be an unusual subject for a barker, to be sure. My other inspiration was the "poetry tent", a fun venue at the annual Collingswood Book Festival near my home. (I have been a featured reader there a few times.) So here is the result of this mash-up:

Open Tent
 
Hey-ya, hey-ya, hey-ya, step right up, ladies and gentlemen,
to see some amazing feats of prosody and verse!
SEE the Tortured Poet, hammering away
on his old Smith-Corona, crumpled papers
and empty whiskey bottles strewn all around him!
SEE his amazing creations, the scintillating similes,
mesmerizing metaphors, alluring alliterations,
immersive iambics and powerful pentameters!
SEE the products of his labor come to life,
like Monsieur Villanelle,
who will not go gently into that good night!
SEE Dirty old Mr. Limerick, who once knew a man from Nantucket!
SEE  Sister Sestina, who uses the same six words
to fascinating effect!
SEE Haiku-san, a man of few words which say oh so much!
And the piece de resistance, the resplendent Sonnet Sisters,
rumored to be of royal blood,
all fifteen of them, each wearing a crown!
I tell ya folks, you won’t regret this experience,
and it’s ONLY a dollah! So step right up
and experience the Poetry Tent! It’s right this way!
 

PAD Day 2: A Formative Moment

 Today's prompts from Write Better Poetry and NaPoWriMo: (1) Write an "express" poem (in any sense of the word you prefer), and "write your own poem in which you recount a childhood memory. Try to incorporate a sense of how that experience indicated to you, even then, something about the person you’d grow up to be." Without further comment, here is mine:

My Dad Teaches Me to Shoot
 
I’m twelve, lying prone on the ground,
elbows propped, holding a .22 rifle,
while my father tells me how to squint
and sight the paper target 50 yards away.
 
“Don’t yank the trigger,” he says,
“Squeeze it slowly, like a tube of toothpaste.”
I tighten my grip and there’s a loud crack
like a little bolt of lightning cutting the air,
as the wooden gunstock mule-kicks my shoulder.
It’s not toothpaste, but a small lead missile
flying at the speed of sound,
capable of ripping into paper and wood,
but also skin, muscle, bone, organs.
 
“Not bad,” he says, and I peer through the sight
to see a hole about an inch from the black bulls-eye.
He shows me how to reload and I squeeze off
a few more shots. “What do you think?” he asks.
I can’t express all that I’m feeling, but I hand
the weapon back to him. “It’s okay,” I say.
 
It was one of many times I would disappoint him.
I never held another firearm again.

PAD Day 1: Life is Fragile

 Today I begin my annual tradition of writing a poem a day based on the prompts from Write Better Poetry (Robert Lee Brwer's blog on the Writer's Digest website) and Maureen Thorson's NaPoWriMo. Today's prompts from those two sources are, respectively: (1) Write a "seed" poem, and (2) write a tanka. (A tanka, of course, is a sort of expanded haiku, with a traditional syllable structure of 5-7-5, and an additional stanza of 7-7.)

I recently visited the New York Botanical Gardens for a spectacular orchid exhibit, and I learned from one of the conservatory staff that orchids are extremely hard to grow from seeds. They are tiny and do not contain their own nutrients, unlike most other seeds, so they must "find" the ideal conditions to germinate. This usually involves a symbiotic relationship with certain fungi in the soil. They are also extremely hard to germinate at home on in a greenhouse, often requiring laboratory conditions to succeed. (It's actually easier to "clone" an orchid than to germinate one, and most orchids sold to retail markets are cloned plants.) Anyway, I boiled down these fascinating facts into a tanka:

Orchid Seed
 
small as a pinpoint
the odds against survival
astronomical
 
but with perfect conditions
a perfect, fragile flower

And here is one of many photos I took at the orchid show:

Poetry Month is Almost Here!

 It's going to be a very busy April this year, so I hope I'm able to stick with the Poem-a-Day challenges. It looks like carving out even an hour a day to write might be tough, especially this week, as Easter is a big deal with my family, between baking the traditional family Easter breads, the Easter egg hunts for the kids, a big family Easter brunch or dinner, and so forth. Somehow, I manage every year though - in fact, one of my best published poems was about prepping sweet potatoes for Easter dinner. 

I'm getting a head start thanks to the NaPoWriMo website (now in its 23th year!) headed by Maureen Thorson. Here is her prompt for today:

"Start by reading Katie Naughton’s poem, “Debt Ritual: Oysters.” Now, write your own poem in which you refer to a specific writer or artist (or work of literature/art) and make a declarative statement about want or desire. Set the poem in a particular, people-filled place, like a restaurant, bus station, museum, school, etc."

Here's one based on my recent experience in New York City:

Terminal
 
I have an hour to kill
before my train rolls out
of Grand Central, and I
want a hamburger.
 
Beneath the marble arches,
below the faux heaven of
an almost-impossible ceiling,
past the information booth
like an island, and the iconic
ball-shaped clock,
 
past the flurry of people I dodge
and weave around on the concourse,
I find on the sidelines a Shake Shack,
and as I’m biting into my greasy
but satisfying lunch, I wonder
 
how all this looked sixty-some years ago,
before they started to care again
and shined and buffed it up,
and made it once again

the landmark destination it deserved to be, 

and whether back then 
I might have run into 
Simon and Garfunkel,
their fame still a misty dream,

as they busked on the 4 Train platform,
wondering if they had 
enough change in their guitar case 
for a hamburger.