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 ABCABCDEBDE (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. Nothing stops
me! You, in the left lane, creeping like a toad,
don’t cramp me! Let me give you a couple of hints:
flashing headlights, long loud horn—move over, dammit!
I am the GOAT! I am KING OF THE ROAD!
                                                                    I am INVINC—

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.