PAD Day 23: Turbulent Season

 Today's prompts from Write Better Poetry and NapoWriMo: (1) Write a "juxtaposition" poem, and (2) write a villanelle that ends with a question. 

Before I share my new poem, I want to share one of the earliest ones I wrote in what I call my "adult" writing period. (I started writing poetry regularly again in 1999.) It was a villanelle to commemorate my in-laws' 60th anniversary. I loved them both, but they were a study in contrasts. I'm sharing it now because it would fit both of today's prompts almost perfectly. (It doesn't technically "end" with a question, but there are four in the poem, including one in the last stanza.)

Odd Couple 

He’s so slow and she’s so fast,
They’re opposites, one would presume.
So will this marriage ever last?
 
Methodical, he’s fly-fish-cast,
She sweeps like a brand-new broom.
His style is slow, while hers is fast.
 
He’s half-done the night’s repast
When she clears dishes from the room.
How can this marriage ever last?
 
He measures twice, with notes amassed,
She’s kitchen-sink and sonic-boom.
He takes life slow; she likes it fast.
 
Her fuse is short, his patience vast;
They were not knit from common loom.
Why should this marriage ever last?
 
And how much time between them passed?
Sixty years as bride and groom.
She loves him slow, he loves her fast.
They made this marriage ever-last.

You may note that it's in iambic tetrameter rather than the "traditional" pentameter. That was an oversight on my part, but I left it as is because I liked the way it came out. My in-laws loved it, and they were with us to celebrate their sixty-fifth anniversary too, before they passed away about six months later, just weeks apart. 

So here is my new one, inspired by the spring we've had here in New Jersey. We haven't had much "extreme," as in stormy, weather; in fact it has been a rather dry spring. But there have been a lot of extreme temperature swings. Late last week I was running around in T-shirt and shorts with record high temperatures above 90, and the following Monday I was out in a winter coat listening to frost and freeze warnings. The meteorologists have been using phrases like "roller-coaster temperatures" and "weather whiplash," so I incorporated those metaphors into this poem.

The Ride
 
This season has included everything,
ongoing wars between the hot and cold,
the roller-coaster whiplash of the spring.
 
Today the wind whips up an icy sting,
tomorrow we’ll want shorts and T’s, we’re told—
this season has been full of everything.
 
With blizzards and tornados happening,
It’s hard to weather weather, grab a hold—
the roller-coaster whiplash of the spring.
 
And yet, the flowers blossom, songbirds sing,
the sun warms up and bathes us all in gold.
This season has included everything.
 
Soft rain, hard hail, let Mother Nature fling
at us whatever comes, we will be bold—
we’ll ride the coaster whiplash of the spring.
 
By August, we’ll be wishing we could bring
back April. Won’t you come back to the fold,
you season that would burst with everything,
you roller-coaster whiplash of the spring?

PAD Day 22: Happy(?) Earth Day

 Today's prompts from Write Better Poetry and NaPoWriMo: (1) Write a "nature" poem, and (2) "Jaswinder Bolina’s poem “Mood Ring” imagines the speaker as both himself and an interior being (who happens to take the form of a small donkey). It’s quite silly . . . and not silly at the same time. A sort of “serious fun.” Today, we’d like to challenge you to write your own poem in which the speaker is in dialogue with him or herself."

Today is Earth Day, and it makes me a bit sad. Back on the very first Earth Day in 1970, my first college girlfriend and I helped plant trees on the green space in our dorm quad. Now, over half a century later, we are under a regime that is undoing everything we've worked for to preserve our environment and our planet, all to make corporations richer. Anyway, I try to celebrate the good things in nature that are still here to enjoy. My poem was inspired by Bolina's wonderfully whimsical and surreal poem - I was fascinated by the concept of an alter ego inside me who might be an animal. As I mentioned in previous entries, I am a big fan of the Bruce the Bear children's books by Ryan T. Higgins, so my "inner animal" seems a lot like him. I also found this poem developing an undercurrent theme of my health worries as I get older. (I have an important medical test later this week that is making me anxious.) Anyway, here it is.

Bear With Me
(after Jaswinder Bolina)
 
Inside of me lives a bear,
whose name is also Bruce.
I’m not sure how he found the room
to crawl in there, but he certainly
makes his presence known,
especially when I wake in the morning.
He’d rather pull the covers up
over his head and sleep the winter away.
Except now it’s spring, and all the flowers
and birds and bees are in peak form.
“Hmm,” he says, “Bees make honey.
Let’s go find a beehive.”
“Let’s not,” I reply. We argue a lot,
and usually I win, but then he’s
grumpy for the rest of the day.
He can be warm and fuzzy one day,
and cranky the next.
He doesn’t like salmon; he’d prefer a good steak.
(Maybe that's just me.)

But some days we have no appetite.
We take a walk on a beautiful April day,
and I mention how our planet is dying.
That makes him want to ROAR.
He calls me a stupid human
and wants to move out.
I say, “If you must,
but don’t take any of my organs.”

PAD Day 21: Musing on Nicknames

 Today's prompts from Write Better Poetry and NaPoWriMo: (1) Write a "high" and/or "low" poem, and (2) "write your own poem in which you muse on your name and nicknames you’ve been given or, if you like, the name and nicknames for an animal, plant, or place. "

So here is my poem for today. Note I used the phrases "high times" and "low places" to satisfy the first prompt. 

Niedtie
 
My name doesn’t lend itself well to nicknames,
so none of the ones I acquired ever stuck,
at least not for a lifetime.
My grandmother was the only one in the family
who called me “Brucie,” fortunately,
and a friend in junior high was the only one
who ever called me “Moose.”
Why, I don’t know—I was never a big burly type.
My younger cousins called me “Big Bruiser,”
after a toy truck popular in those days,
though to my knowledge, I never bruised them.
Occasionally I would get “Cousin Brucie,”
the nickname of the famous New York DJ.
That was okay with me—I always loved music,
and even spun disks at my college station.
But my closest college friends called me “Niedtie,”
which I tacitly accepted, as it made me feel
part of the bunch. Oh, we had some good times,
some high times, and I met my future wife.
She never really called me that—instead,
I’ve accumulated a whole list of pet names,
and in recent years she’s called me “Bruce Bill,”
because my middle name is William,
and it’s a play on those Southern nicknames
like “Jim Bob” and “Billy Joe.”
The thing about nicknames is,
if they’re used with affection,
few things are better to pull you out of low places
than what a good friend or lover calls you.

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 saw it first in the heavens,
with long pointed horns and a bright, bloodshot eye.
The Greeks say Zeus put it there, to remind us
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.]