PAD Day 30: The Reaper Returns

 Today's prompts from Write Better Poetry and NaPoWriMo: (1) Write a "harvest" poem, and "try writing your own poem that discusses a real or mythical being or profession (demons, firefighters, demonic firefighters) with [a] musing yet dispassionate tone."

Here is mine, a sequel tof sorts to my earlier poem "Last Poem" (Day 26):

International Harvester (A Sequel)
 
And then, after he gathered up the poet,
he heard of other places that needed reaping,
so he laid down his scythe and climbed
aboard a huge machine which chugged
and roared over fields, its razor-sharp blades
whirring and cycling, slicing crops by the hundreds,
the thousands—Ukraine, Gaza, Iran—
as he prepared for the long winter ahead.

Sorry to end the month on such a downer topic, but I just couldn't seem to shake that image today. I enjoyed writing this month, even though 32 new poems is a little less than my usual production. Thanks to everyone who read and shared here. I'll be back soon with a summary and a selection of my "best" of the month. Let's hope that harvester machine shuts down.

PAD Day 29: Madeleine

 Today's prompts from Wrute Better Poetry and NaPoWriMo: (1) Write a "pocket" poem, and (2) "compare your everyday present life with your past self, using specific details to conjure aspects of your past and present in the reader’s mind."

Robert's prompt is in honor of tomorrow, which is "Poem in Your Pocket Day," when we're encouraged to carry a copy of a short poem in our pockets and share them with family, freinds or strangers. So we could write a pocket-sized poem, or a poem about pockets. Mine certainly didn't turn out pocket-sized, but it's interesting how thinking about the contents of your pockets can conjure up memories sometimes. You might say the rock in this poem is like Proust's "madeleine."

Talisman
 
I find a rock in my pocket,
a smooth white one my granddaughter gave me
for safe keeping. She thought it was a diamond,
but I didn’t correct her, and I rub it absently
with my thumb, which summons up memories
of when I used to collect rocks in my pocket,
and I could name them—
shale, sandstone, granite and quartz—
and kept them in my dungarees
(that’s what we called jeans back then,
before supermodels wore them)
along with some string, a compass,
a pack of Juicy Fruit Gum, a seldom-used comb,
(I had a crew cut that summer)
and some change from my allowance,
back when parents paid allowance in change,
so I could ride my one-speed Schwinn into town
and buy a Matchbox toy, back before they were
all speedy, slick-wheeled sports cars.
Today I would buy a milk truck, #35 in my collection.
I’d pay my 50 cents and stick it in my front hip pocket,
safe inside its little cardboard box (hence the name)
before stopping at the newsstand to buy candy
with the rest of my change, maybe a Baby Ruth
or some Good & Plenty. I had no car keys, no credit cards,
no phone in my pocket (if there was trouble,
you found a pay phone booth, like Superman),
but I did have rocks, just like I have one today,
pacifying my nervous thumb, which somehow
has unlocked its magical powers.

[Note: Tomorrow I am embarking on a long road trip and may not have time to bang out a poem for the day. If that happens, look for me to post my contribution by the weekend.]

PAD Day 28: A Glass of Wine

 Today's prompts from Write Better Poetry and NaPoWriMo: (1)Write a "love" and/or "anti-love" poem, and (2) "try writing a poem that follows the [following form]: three sentences, six lines: statement, question, conclusion."

I was fishing for a poem, so I dipped into the Sunday Whirl word bank, and this week's dozen was unusual in that three of the words rhyme. Instead of trying to use all twelve words like I usually do, because the form of the poem is relatively short, I chose to use just the three rhyming words, and came up with this poem that could be construed as either "love" or "anti-love."

Glass
 
Love is a wine,
sparkling, not still.
 
But what is the damage
when the glass tips to spill?
 
You get to clean up,
I get the bill.

PAD Day: Three Quarters of a Century!

 Today's prompts from Write Better Poetry and NaPo WriMo: (1) Write a "fan" poem, and (2) "write your own poem in which all the verses contain the same number of lines (whether couplets, triplets, quatrains, etc.) and in which you give the reader instructions of some kind."

Good grief, it's my birthday again! And this is a pretty big one. My family celebrates four birthdays in one celebration each year, all of them within two and half weeks of each other: me, my oldest son, my daughter-in-law, and my younger granddaughter, in that order. My wife made me a delicious pina colada pineapple upside down-cake, and I got lots of nice presents, including registration for a big poetry workshop retreat this fall. (More on that later, if I'm accepted.) Anyway, one of my traditions is to write a birthday poem to myself each year on my birthday as part of PAD. Regarding the prompts, I found that couplets do seem to work best when giving instructions, and I make a passing reference to the "fan" theme in stanza 8.

How to Celebrate a 75^th Birthday
 
Be proud that you’ve been here
three-quarters of a century.
 
That’s three generations,
entering great-grandpa territory.
 
Ignore the ache of the day
and tell your body to behave.
 
You’ve got important things to do,
including nothing.
 
Think of all the metaphorical bullets
you’ve dodged along the way.
 
Think of all the presidents
you have suffered through.
 
Think of all you’ve accomplished—
family, travels, books, charity.
 
The world is your birthday balloon.
Be your own biggest fan.
 
Have a margarita or a Moscow Mule.
Toast dear ones who never made it this far.
 
Relax, enjoy the warm spring day,
the azaleas that celebrate you every year.
 
Look ahead, and try not to worry about
what may lurk around the corner.

PAD Day 26: Dots & Scythes

 Today's prompts from Write Better Poetry and NaPoWriMo: (1) Write poem with the title "Last ________," and (2) write an "ars poetica" poem (a poem about poetry).

I've written quite a few ars poetica poems in my career. The first section of my full-length collection The Bungalow of Colorful Aging contains several of them. But this morning, after a busy and tiring day yesterday in which I was still able to crank out one of my longer poems of the month, I decided to be brief, although I've produced two short poems for today. Here's the first:

Last Line of the Poem
 
There. The pen inks
a final period.
It’s perfect.
Nothing more
needs to be said.
Except, maybe
it’s not really the end.
Three more dots….

My second poem adds a third prompt that has always been one of my favorites. I was inspired by Thomas Alan Holmes, who shares a blog with my friend Vince Gotera (The Man with the Blue Guitar), and wrote a poem today which employs song titles from the band R.E.M.  The third prompt is to take a music playlist (from a streaming service like Pandora, Spotify or Amazon Music; or an FM radio playlist, a CD, etc.), shuffle the playlist program, and write down the titles of the next five songs. Then incorporate those titles into the text of your poem. It's interesting how those words an phrases may take you in a direction you may not have thought about, as they did for me here. So here is my "Last"/ars poetica/ playlist poem:

Last Poem
 
Knock, knock.
I’m here. You weren’t expecting me?
Wasn’t I in your dreams last night?
What about the night before?
No, you can’t finish that poem.
It’s time. ‘Tis the damned season
for harvesting—
well, every season is,
as long as I have this scythe.
Don’t fear the reaper—
but don’t beg another chance,
a plea for starting over.
I’m just doing my job,
with the tool of my trade on my shoulder,
just as yours, filled with ink,
is in your hand.

The song titles were:

(Just Like) Starting Over - John Lennon

(Was I ) In Your Dreams - Wilco

The Night Before - The Beatles

(Don't Fear) The Reaper - Blue Oyster Cult

'Tis the Damn Season - Taylor Swift

Interestingly, three of the five songs had parentheses in the title, which I felt gave me the option not to use the parenthetical part (as in the Lennon song.) Also, I changed the title of the Wilco song from "Was" to "Wasn't",  and changed the Swift song from "Damn" to "Damned", because it seemed more appropriate in a poem about Death.

 

PAD Day 25: Remix Time

 Today's prompts from Write Better Poetry and NaPoWriMo: (1) Write a "remix" poen, and (2) "write your own poem in which you use at least three metaphors for a single thing, include an exclamation, ruminate on the definition of a word, and come back in the closing line to the image or idea with which you opened the poem."

Robert usually includes the "remix" prompt toward the end of the month. It means to take a poem or poems you have written in the month of April and "remix" them somehow. For instance, turning a free-verse poem into a sonnet (or vice versa), or mash up two or more poems into a new one, etc. I usually take lines from several of the poems I've written in April and rearrange them into a new poem. But that wouldn't quite work with the second prompt, which sort of dictates that you use at least some new material. So what I did was to borrow a few lines from previous poems and weave them into this new one, which I did, while following the rather complex second prompt. The phrases I used from prior poems were "bright escalator" (Day 24), "roller-coaster whiplash" (Day 23), and "[their] other spaceship, the round blue one" (Day 17), all of which figured into the three metaphors; "Amaze, amaze, amaze!" (Day 9), which counted as my exclamation; and "no matter how far you travel/you always come back home" (Day 12), which served as my closing "return to theme" lines. I also satisfied the prompt by briefly ruminating on the words "astronomical" and "Artemis." So here it is:

Artemis

 
They rise, plowing the lower atmosphere
on a bright escalator of flame,
the roller-coaster whiplash of G-force
and escape velocity as they leave
the embrace of their other spaceship,
the round blue one, on their mission
to slingshot around the Moon.
 
Midway between the Earth and Moon,
they marvel at the views of both
from opposite windows, and NASA,
quoting a popular movie alien,
replies, “Amaze, amaze, amaze!”
 
Artemis, named after the huntress goddess,
speeds like an arrow toward its target.
Artemis, the matron goddess of girls and women,
carries a mission specialist, a woman
who inspires others of her gender to say,
“I’d like to do that too.”
 
This will be the furthest humans have traveled
from Earth, but the journey has just begun.
As we probe deeper into the universe,
what are the odds against meeting another
intelligent species, even one who says “Amaze”?
Astronomical. From the Greek, meaning literally
pertaining to the charting of stars. But “astronomical”
does not mean "impossible."
 
Three red parachutes blossom in the Pacific sky,
gently setting down four travelers in the sea,
the mission a rousing success.
Through all the curiosity, awe, and hard work,
they’ve kept with them the hope
that no matter how far you travel,
you always come back home.
 
 

PAD Day 24: Little Teal Men

 Today's prompts from Write Better Poetry and NaPoWriMo: (1) Write an "unidentified" poem (about A myaterious or unidentified phenomenon), and (2) "write your own poem that takes place at night, and describes something magical or strange that happens but that no one is awake (or around) to notice."

The prompts today fit together perfectly, and I had a lot of fun writing this little narrative, most of which I composed in my head while wating to get through a medical test this morning. I hope you enjoy it too.

The Mission
 
Long after midnight, a beam of light
slices the dark like a bright escalator
from the UFO to the ground,
and a small army of “little green men”
(more like teal, actually) scurries
in all directions to begin their mission.
 
Some raid the local coffee shop
because they’ve discovered they like matcha,
while others go to locate the wormhole,
finding it in a janitor’s closet at the high school.
 
Then they trace all its tendrils to most
of the houses in town, and use a contraption
like a cosmic Roto-Rooter to extract all the things
the townspeople have lost over the years.
They work like shoemaker’s elves,
quickly and silently, these benign beings,
and an hour later they are sucked up
into the beam, and hurtled back into space.
 
It’s like Christmas for the humans
waking up this morning, like Joe Martinelli,
who comes downstairs to find on his kitchen floor
an assortment of keys, combs, and umbrellas,
and in a big separate pile, the long-lost mates
of thirty-seven unmatched socks.