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—