Today's prompts from Poetic Asides and NaPoWriMo: (1) Write a poem about a favorite local cuisine (with the food name as the title), and (2) write a lullaby. It's not easy to write a lullaby about food, but it made for kind of a fun light verse:
Philly Cheesesteak Lullaby
Hush, little Phillies fan, now don’t you cry;
they’ll make the World Series again, by and by.
So sit back and enjoy the game, just relax,
and have some of your favorite local snacks:
soft pretzels and hoagies, a Philly cheesesteak,
and for dessert, water ice, Tastykake.
Wash it down with some beer, if that is your wish:
Dock Street or Yuengling, perhaps Flying Fish.
With your belly full, and your head a-spinning,
you’ll probably doze off before the eighth inning.
And for a bonus, here's a tanka about a local cuisine that I left out of the previous poem:
Scrapple
no misspelled word game
but pork product, square slab sliced
and pan-fried with eggs
don’t ask what’s in it – the whole’s
more than the sum of the parts
Wednesday, April 18, 2012
Tuesday, April 17, 2012
PAD Challenge Day 17
Catching up now! Today's Poetic Asides prompt is to write a science fiction and/or fantasy poem. NaPoWriMo's prompt is more complex: Write an epistolery (letter) poem to an inanimate object and include at least four of the following in your poem:
1. a song lyric
2. a historical fact
3. an oddball adjective-noun combination (like "red grass" or "loud silence")
4. a fruit
5. the name of a street in your neighborhood
6. a measure of distance
So here's my science fiction poem, with those other elements included:
Dear Desktop Computer
What a rush to see you again.
I remember when I was a little kid,
you took up half of my desk,
and rumbled, whined and clicked when
I slipped a disk into your lipless mouth.
It took seconds, even minutes,
to download the most basic data.
Still, you’d come a long way from when
those devilish saints, Gates and Jobs,
trucked out their first prototypes.
My dad used to recall how he was
the first one on Media Road with a PC.
What would he think of us all now?
As I got bigger, you got smaller – a pad,
a palm-sized phone, soon no bigger
than a raisin, and after that, nanobots
the size of red blood cells. We no longer
needed desks to put you on top of.
As we worked more closely together,
the lines began to blur. Kurzweil
was right, only things moved faster
than even he could have dreamed.
We’ve come light years since then,
and as I regard you, desktop, in
the antique store window, my irises
contract and click to save the image.
I tap my temple to access my data bank
and Googleplex you to see when you
were made. It’s hard to believe it’s been
just thirty years. You can hardly tell us
apart any more. Pink Floyd used to sing,
“Welcome to the Machine.”
Well, Machine, welcome to Us.
Note I used all six elements of the NaPoWriMo prompt: (1) song lyric: "Welcome to the Machine" - actually a song title; (2) historical fact (more or less): Gates and Jobs introducing Apple and PC; (3) oddball adjective-noun: "devilish saints"; (4) fruit: raisin; (5) name of a street in my neighborhood: Media Road (how appropriate!); and (6) measure of distance: light year. Whew!
1. a song lyric
2. a historical fact
3. an oddball adjective-noun combination (like "red grass" or "loud silence")
4. a fruit
5. the name of a street in your neighborhood
6. a measure of distance
So here's my science fiction poem, with those other elements included:
Dear Desktop Computer
What a rush to see you again.
I remember when I was a little kid,
you took up half of my desk,
and rumbled, whined and clicked when
I slipped a disk into your lipless mouth.
It took seconds, even minutes,
to download the most basic data.
Still, you’d come a long way from when
those devilish saints, Gates and Jobs,
trucked out their first prototypes.
My dad used to recall how he was
the first one on Media Road with a PC.
What would he think of us all now?
As I got bigger, you got smaller – a pad,
a palm-sized phone, soon no bigger
than a raisin, and after that, nanobots
the size of red blood cells. We no longer
needed desks to put you on top of.
As we worked more closely together,
the lines began to blur. Kurzweil
was right, only things moved faster
than even he could have dreamed.
We’ve come light years since then,
and as I regard you, desktop, in
the antique store window, my irises
contract and click to save the image.
I tap my temple to access my data bank
and Googleplex you to see when you
were made. It’s hard to believe it’s been
just thirty years. You can hardly tell us
apart any more. Pink Floyd used to sing,
“Welcome to the Machine.”
Well, Machine, welcome to Us.
Note I used all six elements of the NaPoWriMo prompt: (1) song lyric: "Welcome to the Machine" - actually a song title; (2) historical fact (more or less): Gates and Jobs introducing Apple and PC; (3) oddball adjective-noun: "devilish saints"; (4) fruit: raisin; (5) name of a street in my neighborhood: Media Road (how appropriate!); and (6) measure of distance: light year. Whew!
PAD Challenge Day 16
Late again - yes, taxes and computers again, but at least now the former issue is behind me. April 16's dual prompt from Poetic Asides and NaPoWriMo: (1) Write a "mixed-up" poem, and (2) write a poem based on one of three photos on NaPoWriMo's blog (or a photo of your own choice). I used the third one they provided, which you can see here.
Tanka: Aimless
four empty rowboats
drift together on the lake
unnavigated
four captains wander the shore
unaware of who they are
I've also returned to Madeline Kane's Limerick-Off contest on her humor blog, after several weeks' hiatus. As you may know, she provides the first line and you have to finish the limerick, and at the end of the week she selects the winners. I've won first place a couple of times, so here's hoping these will do well. (Note: the second limerick was also inspired by one of the NaPoWriMo photos.)
A gal was recounting her woes:
"The singles bar scene really blows!
It is quite alarming
to look for Prince Charming,
and find Curlys, Larrys and Moes!"
A snail was recounting his woes:
"The gardeners try to dispose
of my body with salt -
being here's not my fault -
and my friends have become escargots!"
Tanka: Aimless
four empty rowboats
drift together on the lake
unnavigated
four captains wander the shore
unaware of who they are
I've also returned to Madeline Kane's Limerick-Off contest on her humor blog, after several weeks' hiatus. As you may know, she provides the first line and you have to finish the limerick, and at the end of the week she selects the winners. I've won first place a couple of times, so here's hoping these will do well. (Note: the second limerick was also inspired by one of the NaPoWriMo photos.)
A gal was recounting her woes:
"The singles bar scene really blows!
It is quite alarming
to look for Prince Charming,
and find Curlys, Larrys and Moes!"
A snail was recounting his woes:
"The gardeners try to dispose
of my body with salt -
being here's not my fault -
and my friends have become escargots!"
Sunday, April 15, 2012
PAD Challenge Day 15
Late again, for the same reasons: taxes and computers. In the middle of preparing my last-minute return on my wife's laptop (because my desktop is still busted) I got an e-mail from Comcast Xfinity that they identified a possible bot or virus in the laptop. What perfect timing. The tech guy scanned everything remotely and cleaned up the hard drive - took about an hour - but everything seems fine now. That's what i get for having an unsecured network.
Today's prompts from Poetic Asides and NaPoWriMo are (1) write a poem using the words slash, button, mask, strap and balloon, and (2) write a parody poem, preferably of a poet you don't like. Well, I don't which I love more: word prompt poems or parody poems, so I had a ball with this one. My inspiration for the parody is Francis Heaney's hilarious Holy Tango of Literature, in which he anagrams a famous poet or writer's name, makes a title out of the anagram, and writes a poem or prose piece in the writer's style, usually parodying one of that writer's famous works. Thus, T.S. Eliot becomes "Toilets". ("Let us go to the john, you and I...") So I decided to parody Gertrude Stein, whom I never really liked or "got". As a bonus, she wrote a series of prose poems called "Tender Buttons", a perfect tie-in with one of the words in the prompt. Finally, to my mind, at least, the anagram is perfect:
Registered Nut
by Gertrude Stein
Tender buttons, but on tender, tender your buttons, butter your tendons. Strap on your mask to mask the strap. Button the strap on your mask and strap your mask with buttons. Button your yap and yap yap with a strap on your tender buttons. The moon’s a balloon and the balloon’s a moon balloon too soon in June. The moon’s a tender button with a mask or a mask with a moon. Slash the strap and stash the slap and button your yap. Prices slashed on masks with buttons, balloon straps and moons that yap. Tender, tender button-strapped masks and slashed balloons under the yappy moon.
Saturday, April 14, 2012
PAD Challenge Day 14
Today's prompts from Poetic Asides and NaPoWriMo: (1)Write a Doomsday poem, and (2) write a sonnet. Hence, my Doomsday sonnet (I have to give props to my teenage son for inspiring the opening line):
Sonnet 2012
(after Shakespeare)
Shall I compare you to the End of Days?
You are much safer and predictable
than cataclysm that the Mayans say
will come December of this year. I will
not buy this, can’t believe your grace would die
in conflagration, earthquake, hurricane,
your smile erased by some tsunami’s tide,
your spirit melted in monsoon-like rain.
But still, there is that chance they got it right,
and this may be our last year on this earth,
so let’s abandon hope and dance all night,
and if there’s sunrise, watch for all it’s worth.
So long as I can breathe and I can see,
I’ll thank the world for your good company.
Sonnet 2012
(after Shakespeare)
Shall I compare you to the End of Days?
You are much safer and predictable
than cataclysm that the Mayans say
will come December of this year. I will
not buy this, can’t believe your grace would die
in conflagration, earthquake, hurricane,
your smile erased by some tsunami’s tide,
your spirit melted in monsoon-like rain.
But still, there is that chance they got it right,
and this may be our last year on this earth,
so let’s abandon hope and dance all night,
and if there’s sunrise, watch for all it’s worth.
So long as I can breathe and I can see,
I’ll thank the world for your good company.
Friday, April 13, 2012
PAD Challenge Day 13
Happy Friday the 13th! Today's dual prompts from Poetic Asides and NaPoWriMo: (1) Write a poem about luck, and (2) write a ghazal. Joseph Harker's blog Naming Constellations has a good primer on the ghazal, and I tried, more or less, to follow his guidelines. So here's a short ghazal about luck:
Serendipity
Why should the date and day of the week dictate
whether or not our day will be full of poor luck?
So many talismans – the broken mirror, the ladder,
the crossing black cat, the rabbit’s foot we rub for luck.
Being in the right place at the right time – or
the wrong place at the wrong time –makes your luck.
Not getting on the Titanic or Buddy Holly’s plane;
Being the one millionth customer – that is sure luck.
Meeting you the way I did – in the dorm lounge
that September day – I couldn’t have asked for more luck.
PAD Challenge Day 12
Still having computer issues, so I'm about a day behind in my posts, but still doing a lot better with this blog than before I started this poem-a-day project. I hope to make this a weekly blog after April blows over, instead of a once-a-month-if-I-don't-forget blog.
The Day 12 prompts from Poetic Asides and NaPoWriMo: (1)Write a poem that with a title that begins with the word "Something", and (2) take a poem in a foreign language that you don't know, transcribe it phonetically into English based on the appearance and/or sound of the words, and try to rewrite it as a poem that makes sense, even if it bears little or no relation to the intent of the original poem. The word for this is a "translitic" poem, and I had some success doing one from the French a few years ago, but I struggled mightily with it yesterday. So here is the one I thought was the more successful of the two I wrote, even though it's full of abstractions. It's based on a French poem by Michéle Métail:
Something Coming Down
You arrive on a convoy of importance,
crossing streets, as luminaries line
the entire course through the town
that repeats your name, the proper term
for a voyager who advances our imagination.
At the premiere, you plan an entry dance for two.
You pass strangers, produce indecision
in your advance with your retinue of franchise,
yet you are hesitant in the long run,
where the definite looms disheveled,
and that precise inventor, the soul,
announces your income as a ruse,
and a litany of memories is caught astray.
And as a bonus, here's one I wrote based just on the Poetic Asides prompt:
Something to Talk About
It was one of your biggest hits, Bonnie,
but long before that you’d paid your dues.
When most of your peers formed garage bands,
you hung out with old blues men and women,
and learned your chops on bottleneck guitar.
You played dinky clubs and coffee houses
and formed a following, but mainstream fame
eluded you, and you endured rough patches.
Then one night you brought home
an armful of Grammys, and really gave them
something to talk about. Who is this chick?
most of the world wondered, but those of us
who already knew were proud of you.
Life is more comfortable now, but you’re still
out there recording and touring with your band,
leading them with your whiskey-honey voice,
your sharp, slim features,
your red mane with the shock of white,
and the sexy glissando of your slide guitar.
The Day 12 prompts from Poetic Asides and NaPoWriMo: (1)Write a poem that with a title that begins with the word "Something", and (2) take a poem in a foreign language that you don't know, transcribe it phonetically into English based on the appearance and/or sound of the words, and try to rewrite it as a poem that makes sense, even if it bears little or no relation to the intent of the original poem. The word for this is a "translitic" poem, and I had some success doing one from the French a few years ago, but I struggled mightily with it yesterday. So here is the one I thought was the more successful of the two I wrote, even though it's full of abstractions. It's based on a French poem by Michéle Métail:
Something Coming Down
You arrive on a convoy of importance,
crossing streets, as luminaries line
the entire course through the town
that repeats your name, the proper term
for a voyager who advances our imagination.
At the premiere, you plan an entry dance for two.
You pass strangers, produce indecision
in your advance with your retinue of franchise,
yet you are hesitant in the long run,
where the definite looms disheveled,
and that precise inventor, the soul,
announces your income as a ruse,
and a litany of memories is caught astray.
And as a bonus, here's one I wrote based just on the Poetic Asides prompt:
Something to Talk About
It was one of your biggest hits, Bonnie,
but long before that you’d paid your dues.
When most of your peers formed garage bands,
you hung out with old blues men and women,
and learned your chops on bottleneck guitar.
You played dinky clubs and coffee houses
and formed a following, but mainstream fame
eluded you, and you endured rough patches.
Then one night you brought home
an armful of Grammys, and really gave them
something to talk about. Who is this chick?
most of the world wondered, but those of us
who already knew were proud of you.
Life is more comfortable now, but you’re still
out there recording and touring with your band,
leading them with your whiskey-honey voice,
your sharp, slim features,
your red mane with the shock of white,
and the sexy glissando of your slide guitar.
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