PAD Day 5: Hard Times for the Gods

I'll start today with a shameless plug: Please note the clickable image on the right, the cover of my new full-length poetry collection, The Bungalow of Colorful Aging, published by Kelsay Books and available through Amazon.com, or directly from the publisher at kelsaybooks.com.  If you would like an autographed copy directly from me, leave me a message in the comments and I will tell you how you can get one.

Today's dual prompts from Write Better Poetry and NaPoWriMo: (1) Write a "makes sense" and/or "doesn't make sense" poem, and (2) write a poem about a mythical person or creature doing something unusual, at least something unusual in relation to that person/creature. My poem gives just a passing nod to the first prompt, I suppose, and focuses more on the second. 

Underemployed
 
What am I doing in this dead-end job?
I have so many talents―I could have been
a rich, successful businessman,
a great public speaker, a communicator,
a travel agent, a casino manager,
a funeral director, guiding souls
to the afterlife. I could have even been
a musician―after all, I invented the lyre.
 
Instead, I deliver flowers. My boss has never
thanked me for saving him a ton of money―
I don't need a delivery van,
just my winged helmet and sandals.
Yeah, that's me on the logo.
 
I'm in a rut. It makes no sense.
I tried one of those job search sites,
but when I entered for experience,
"Ancient God," my computer crashed.
There's not much call for us these days.
The only thing that keeps me going
are the smiles that greet the flowers and me
at the door.  Excuse me a moment―
 
"Two dozen long-stemmed roses for Ms. Williams?"

PAD Day 4: Need Inspiration? Here's Help!

 Today's dual prompts from Write Better Poetry and NaPoWriMo: (1)Write a "catch up" poem, and (2) write a poem about poetry prompts, using as inspiration the surreal Instagram posts of Matthias Svalina.

Poetry Prompts
 
1.
Use the following words in a poem: 
blaspheme, truncate, unctuous, ramma-lamma-ding-dong, blowzy,
armadillo, caterwaul, huggermugger, splunge, sesquipedalian 
Next, delete all the above words. The result is a poem.

 
2.
Take a poem you have already written.
Put it on a leash and take it for a walk in the park.
Once at the park, release it and let it roam.
(Obey local leash laws.)
Run after your poem and catch up with it.
Look at what the poem is rooting for beneath the autumn leaves.
That is your next poem.
 
3.
Write a poem about the darkness of your soul.
Tear the poem into at least a hundred pieces.

Plant each piece of the poem around town, so they will grow

into an overwhelming pall of impending doom.

Write a new poem about sunshine and flowers.
 
4.
Preheat oven to 350°.
Stir 2 cups of words in a large bowl 

with 1 cup each of flour, sugar, milk and hot sauce.
Pour into a 9x12 pan.
Bake 35 minutes or until a knife comes out clean
when poked into the middle stanza.
Cut into 3-inch squares and enjoy!

PAD Day 3: Summer Memories

 Today's dual prompts from Write Better Poetry and NaPoWriMo: (1) Write a "smell" poem, and (2) write a "glosa." A glosa is a poetic form of Spanish origin, where the poet takes a quatrain from one of their favorites works by another poet, then uses the four lines in order as the final line for each of four ten-line stanzas. It therefore becomes a 40-line poem. There is no strict set of rules for rhyme or meter, though the length of the source lines may dictate the length of  lines in the new poem. Also, some follow a rule that the sixth and ninth lines of each stanza should rhyme with the tenth, "borrowed" line. It was interesting to see Maureen Thorson referring to Robert Lee Brewer's Write Better Poetry blog for an explanation of the glosa - it felt kind of "meta" to me. Robert wrote his sample glosa with the aforementioned rhyme scheme but didn't mention it in his explanation of the glosa. I have only written one other glosa in the past, and it too used that rhyme scheme, so I will stick with it.

Also, I used another poetic project for today's prompt. I am currently working on a cycle of poems based on the songs and lyrics of the British rock band Elbow. I've been using lines from their songs as epigraphs, and occasionally even incorporating some lines of lyrics into the poems, so this seemed a perfect fit for writing a glosa.

Return Visit
 
And my sister buzzes through the room
leaving perfume in the air
And that's what triggered this
I come back here from time to time....
―Elbow, "Scattered Black and Whites"
 
Some memories are olfactory―
some say that deep recall remains
the longest in the sense of smell.
These days I rarely sense tobacco
from a pipe, but when I do
it wakes me up, it cuts the gloom
and ricochets me back six decades
to my grandfolks' bungalow―
my grandmom sweeping with her broom,
and my sister buzzes through the room,
 
while in his study, Grandpop puffs
on his meerschaum as he toils
at his desk with paperwork
for clients, their insurance policies,
and he'd go door-to-door collecting
premiums, but always fair.
(Some were just a nickel.) Everyone
in town would know this little man
who puffed along without a care,
leaving perfume in the air.
 
Summer weeks we spent with them,
my sis and I, and we would help
Grandmom tend her roses, feed the squirrels,
Grandpop growing rhubarb, feeding birds.
Friday night was TV on the davenport
and one more smell we couldn't miss,
Jiffy Pop, its silver dome expanding,
the steam escaping from ripped foil,
the popcorn smell a buttery kiss―
and that's what triggered this,
 
the scents of summer with the grands,
popcorn, roses, pipe tobacco.
Not all the memories are sweet―
the bathtime scrubs behind the ears,
the time they force-fed lima beans.
But back when candy cost a dime,
and TV shows were black and white,
there still was innocence around.
The everyday is such a climb―
I come back here from time to time.
 
 

PAD Day 2: Begone, Winter!

 Today's dual prompts from Write Better Poetry and NaPoWriMo: (1) Write a "second chance" poem, and (2) write a poem inspired by or using an obscure word from the Twitter account of Haggard Hawks, an apparent lover of wordplay and word origins. His page is quite the rabbit hole for a word lover like me, but I decided to go with a word that seems self-descriptive rather than totally obscure and in need of definition or explanation. The word is "afterwinter", which describes an unseasonably bad or cold winter-like spell of weather when spring is expected - sort of the opposite of "Indian Summer." I played a little with language in this poem, too, by using several more common compound words beginning with "after-". It seems to help make the argument to re-introduce "afterwinter" into everyday language.

Afterwinter
 
What are you doing here in April,
aftershock of last season,
Jack Frost on afterburners,
riding the Jet Stream back in
like an afterthought,
searing new grass with hoar,
lacquering tender blossoms with ice?
 
We don't welcome you like your opposite,
Indian Summer. In the book of seasons,
you don't get to write the afterword.
It's Spring's chapter now,
and you are just a bad aftertaste,
or like snow blindness,
an afterimage burning our eyes.
We defy you with our new wardrobes
of shorts, T-shirts, light jackets,
even as we shiver into the afternoon.
 
So be gone, rogue season!
We'll deal with your aftereffects,
and unlike you, the flowers, grass
and birds will get another chance,

basking in the afterglow of warmer days.
Take whatever you may have forgotten ―
snow squalls, polar vortex, black ice ―
and slam the door shut afterward.
 

PAD Day 1: Feet, Do Your Stuff!

 Today's dual prompts from Write Better Poetry and NaPoWriMo: (1) Write an "F" poem (the title starts with F and is about something that starts with F, and (2) write a prose poem about the body or part of the body, but include an encounter between two people, some spoken language, and at least one "crisp visual image." So here is mine, which was partly inspired by the silly lyric in the epigraph. I had fun with this.

Feet
 
You need feet to stand up straight with,
You need feet to kick your friends,
You need feet to keep your socks up,
And stop your legs from fraying at the ends.
―Bernard Bresslaw
 
They do me a great service, getting me from here to there, so I try not to misuse them ―
I keep one out of the grave and the other out of my mouth, but I can't help myself 

when I dance and they both turn left.

 
I take good care of them, and every six months we go to the podiatrist. They love him―
they enter the office with heels wagging, and come home feeling trimmed and groomed,
filed and feisty, ready to take on a marathon.
 
One day while walking my neighborhood, I encounter a friend who exclaims,
"Look at those gunboats!"
"Where?" I ask. She looks down.
"Your shoes, your feet. I never realized how big they were!"
I am embarrassed, and want to kick her. But I don't. She is right.
Each foot measures a foot.
 
Instead, I take these vessels on a mission, each with a proud crew of five crowded up
near the bow, loading artillery to fire right through the shoe, obliterating everything
in their path―rocks, branches, a buckled slab of sidewalk, so I'll never have to trip again.
 

April 2022 PAD Challenge: "Early Bird"

 I'm back again for the annual Poem-a-Day Challenge, which officially begins tomorrow! I'll be following NaPoWriMo, Maureen Thorson's blog, and Robert Lee Brewer's blog, Write Better Poetry, as usual. Maureen today has an "early bird" prompt, to write a poem in response to a line from Emily Dickinson. She suggested five choices and I used one of them.

It's already been a big year for me poetically: My first-ever full-length poetry collection, The Bungalow of Colorful Aging, has been published! (See my prior post.) It's available through Amazon.com or directly through the publisher at kelsaybooks.com. I also have a new chapbook coming out soon, Knit Our Broken Bones, from Maverick Duck Press, based on the poems I wrote during the November 2020 Chapbook Challenge from Robert Lee Brewer, in a form called hay(na)ku. I'll also be participating in an artist and author festival in my home town this May, and the Collingswood (NJ) Book Festival in October, and I hope to start doing in-person readings again, although I will be part of a virtual reading for Kelsay Books in July. And I'm currently working on a series of poems based on the songs of the British rock band Elbow.

Anyway, here is today's poem:

Survivors

 

To be a Flower, is profound / Responsibility –

Emily Dickinson
 
The weather people warned us:
hard freeze the next two nights,
brutal weather for early spring.
 
Cover or bring in your potted plants,
they said, and as for your flowering trees,
the blossoms may die on the branch.
 
Yet most of my flowers have survived
two nights of frost and cutting north winds -
the crocuses and daffodils still poke their heads
defiantly up from icy ground,
 
and the cherry tree in our yard, though wilted,
hasn't yet shed its pink spring apparel.
 
It's as if they know this year more than ever
that they are responsible for our happiness.

Announcing My New Poetry Book!

 I'm very proud to announce the release of my first full-length collection of poetry, entitled The Bungalow of Colorful Aging, from Aldrich Press/Kelsay Books. I've previously published seven chapbooks, but this is my first full-length volume, 80 pages long, containing 54 poems on a wide range of subjects, most of them written in the past ten years or so. Here are the front and back covers:

I was fortunate to get blurb recommendations from the renowned poet and author Marge Piercy (whose workshops I've taken a couple of times), Writers Digest Poetry Editor Robert Lee Brewer (who's known me and my work for a good 15 years or more, mostly due to my activity on his poetry-writing blog Poetic Asides), and a newer poet friend, Vince Gotera, a professor at University of Northen Iowa and former editor of the North American Review. I've got a lot of positive reaction to the cover art and title as well, and I hope the contents are entertaining and inspiring to those who read it. It was a labor of love to be sure.

The book is $16.50, and is available on Amazon.com, or directly from the publisher at kelsaybooks.com. I also have a limited number of author's copies that I will gladly autograph and send to you for the cover price plus $2.25 shipping and handling. Contact me at jackbugs@comcast.net if you are interested.

Here's a sample poem:

The Photo from M87

for Dr. Katie Bouman

When everything lined up—

your algorithm, the telescope signals—

when you displayed your array of hard drives,

dozens of them, all housing the bits and bytes

and years needed to accomplish this historic task—

when the photo went viral, a fiery iris

around an utterly black pupil, and people

called it many things, like “The Eye of Sauron”—

when we all realized we were staring at

a black hole, 55 million light-years away,

that we were looking into the darkest, densest

power of the universe, where everything

may go in the end, and we realized that you,

a woman not quite thirty (young enough

to be my daughter), were able to bring it to us

from those mind-blowing reaches of space,

and the camera caught you watching a monitor

as the image finally assembled,

and you held your hands to your mouth,

trying in vain to contain your unbridled joy—

that’s the kind of joy I want.