PAD Day 20: My Brain, the Junk Drawer

Today's prompts from Poetic Asides and NaPoWriMo:
(1) Write a poem with the title, "My ____, the ______", and
(2) Write a poem that states the things you know - a series of facts, beliefs, etc.

Here's my result, a kind of free-association of trivia and facts connected to personal information and observations.  Does your brain work like this too?

My Brain, the Junk Drawer

Johann Sebastian Bach had twenty children.

My son won’t eat anything that swims.

The tomato is a fruit.

My wife’s cousin is allergic to gluten and milk.

Richard Nixon is the only US president to resign from office.

I will be retiring soon.

The basic Medicare B premium for 2015 is $104.90.

I need to pay my mortgage this week.

Thomas Edison produced the first “Frankenstein” movie.

I can’t decide whether to drop Netflix.

Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band was released on June 1, 1967.

I always wanted to be a radio DJ.

Ken Jennings won $2.5 million dollars on Jeopardy!

I was on Who Wants to Be a Millionaire but didn't win any cash.

Walt Whitman was a nurse in the Civil War.

I haven't written a poem today. I need some paper clips.

About 40,000 people die each year from pancreatic cancer in the US.

I think I’m getting a cold.

The first transatlantic telegraph cable was laid in 1858.

I can’t find my cellphone.

The square of the hypotenuse is equal to the sum of the squares of the other two sides.

I need a tape measure. Where’s the tape measure?

Only about 8500 DeLorean sports cars were ever produced –

none were actually outfitted for time travel.

I need to borrow your car keys.

PAD Day 19: Landays and Authority

I'm excited again about today's judge at Poetic Asides, Dorianne Laux. I worked with here, albeit briefly, in a workshop at Peter Murphy's Winter Poetry and Prose Getaway a few years ago.  She's an  excellent poet and teacher, as well as co-author of one of my favorite craft books, The Poet's Companion.

Today's dual prompts from Poetic Asides and NaPoWriMo:
(1) Write an "authority" poem, and 
(2) Write a "landay".  A landay is a traditional Afghan form of couplets containing a total of 22 syllables, usually 9 syllables in the first line and 13 in the second. The form has been popular among Afghan women, many of whom are obliged to write them in secret, or not write them at all but memorize and recite them. The themes are often about male oppression in their culture, but also can be erotic or satirically sensual, or topical, addressing subjects like the American occupation.  I thought this was a perfect mesh of prompts for today, but I grappled with how to approach it.  My first drafts of the landays were from a woman's point of view, but I didn't want to sound disingenuous, so I rewrote them from a sympathetic man's point of view.  I also took liberties with the syllable count in each line, though each still has a total of 22 syllables.

Four Landays

You come to my office, dressed black from head to toe.

If not for your eyes, you'd be a shadow.

You are Pashtun. You can't marry for love.

The closest to a kiss comes from his heavy glove.

American women say they're oppressed.

Your cynical smile is hidden by how you're dressed.

To want an education's not a sin.

A brain is to nourish, not put a bullet in.

And here's a "bonus" poem, written just for the Poetic Asides prompt:

Another Century

I fight authority, authority always wins.

                    - John Mellencamp

After four students lay on the ground at Kent State,

we were galvanized to shout at authority,

occupy the administration building,

march on Washington with long hair,

peace symbols, signs and chants.

Phil Ochs and Joan Baez sang to us,

some of us had a picnic,

some of us were tear-gassed,

but we all thought we were making a difference.

That was another century. Now, I'm planning

nothing more subversive than my retirement

from thirty-eight years with the government,

in a job I'd like to think made a difference

in people's lives, while some may see me

as holding the power of life and death.

I fought authority and won.

I fought authority and lost.

PAD Day 18: Vanishing Vowels

One of the problems of National Poetry Month for me, at least in recent years, is that there always seems to be so much going on that it's hard to find time for poetry - either events (I'm missing two this weekend that I really would have loved to attend) or just finding a few minutes out of the day to write. Not only do taxes loom over me till the 15th (we're always last-minute because we always end up owing Uncle Sam), but there always seem to be a lot of family obligations.  This month, we have a christening and a first communion to attend, a relative staying with us recovering from surgery, on top of our usual duties watching our granddaughter four days a week.  Several times this month I've found myself stealing five minutes here and ten minutes there to work on my poem throughout the day, and on at least one occasion I was up till after midnight finishing it. But I have turned out one or two a day, every day for 18 days, so it's getting done.

Today's prompts from Poetic Asides and NaPoWriMo: 
(1) Write a poem using only two vowels, and 
(2) Write a poem that involves an urgent journey and an important message.

I was fairly proud of this one till I realized I didn't really follow Maureen's prompt - there's an urgent and important message but no real journey, unless you consider the conceit of my poem as a kind of journey,  The conceit is this: Each successive stanza uses fewer of the five nouns (plus "y") than the one before it. The fourth stanza is actually the one that fits Robert's prompt of two vowels (o and e). It was a fun but challenging write, and when I had the first draft almost complete I realized I forgot about "sometimes y" which sneaked all the way into the fourth stanza. So I eliminated both "u' and "y" after the first stanza. I kept "o" and "e" through the fourth stanza so I could continue to use the word "vowel". I'm pretty proud about including "incomprehensiblilities".

Disavoweled

This message has great urgency,

about a dire emergency:

our vowels may soon become extinct,

and then our language indistinct.

For instance, soon we may not see

big words such as “facetiously”.

It’s happened now, two vowels are gone;

we’ve got the rest to soldier on.

This crisis might bring you and me

incomprehensibilities.

And if a headache does kick in,

we’ll take acetaminophen.

We’ve lost another, that’s a fact.

How can our threatened world react?

We need to take care, stop the loss

of more vowels , or regret the cost.

So please take heart, and don't feel odd -

We can spell "chocolate", thank God!

We’re down to two, we’ve got one mess,

More problems loom, we do confess.

Those vowels we’ve lost were good for sense,

so now we've got no recompense.

Don't toss the towel, there's hope  - well, jeepers!

we've got long words - for one, "bookkeepers".

Oh no, not good, got only “o”.

So not OK - no word control.

Don't go to pot, no, not tomorrow -

shot of scotch to drown old sorrow.

Shock of loss? No comfort, fool -

woodwork, cookbook - go to school.

M gd w wr afrd f ths:

wv lst thm ll, ths vwls wll mss.

Nw y ll knw wht hppns nxt -

Th lngg tht s lft s txt.

W cnt wrt mch, wll WTF -

xprss yrslf? M frnd, gd lck!

PAD Day 17: Another Two-fer

Well, I wrote two poems today, but I'm not entirely happy with the results. Today's prompts from Poetic Asides and NaPoWriMo: 

(1) Write a "swing" poem, and 

(2) Write a "social media" poem, using material from your own Facebook or Twitter account, blog, etc. 

I don't think I really succeeded at combining the two prompts, but I guess I'm more satisfied with this one, which was written just for the Poetic Asides prompt:

Congressional Playground

They dedicated it today on Capitol Hill
so the kids of senators and congresspersons
can learn what their mommies and daddies do.
Here, they can seesaw up and down on the issues,
slide down from integrity to scandal and shame,
spin on the merry-go-round without getting anywhere,
sit in a seat on a chain and kick their feet Into the air,
and depending on which way the wind blows,
swing to the left, swing to the right.  

The second one was an interesting exercise if not wholly successful.  I decided to take every tenth word that I've posted in my Facebook account in 2015 and use them as a "word bank" for a poem about social media. Since I'm not the most prolific poster on Facebook, it wasn't a ridiculously long list, but I eliminated the more common, throwaway words like "the", "in" and "for" as well as repeated words (though I kept "poetry" and "poem").  Here's my list:

honesty ever neither wait tricky yesterday grab CD's stereo Sue Bell album great corkboards wife poem while Roseanne also stay Cabot Sporcle beginning man other why know Collins former municipal exhibit how poetry included want

And here's the poem, using all the words and then some. ("Sue Cabot" is a fictional person, and so is my persona, to an extent.)

Corkboard

Dear Sue Cabot:

I unfriended you yesterday.

In the beginning, we were soulmates,

sharing our poetry and offering critique -

I liked your honesty. We also had a mutual love

for music - we discussed favorite CD's and great albums,

even reminisced about our first stereo.

We both liked a Billy Collins' poems,

Roseanne Cash's songs,

Sporcle quizzes and Candy Crush.

Then you started to swing to the Right.

I may never know why you waited till now

to show your biases: "Obama is a Muslim";

"Vaccinations are evil", and other such things. 

That was my warning bell -

maybe we weren't so alike after all.

I'm just an average man with a wife and three kids,

and a job in municipal government.

While I think we should all be included in the dialog,

I can't stay friends with you when your views

grab me by the throat like they do.

How did you ever get this way?

Social media is the public corkboard of our age.

We can post and exhibit anything we want,

but even when we take down our notes,

remove the tacks from the surface,

the afterimage of the words remains.

We need to think of the repercussions;

We're neither blameless nor anonymous anymore.

Online friendships are tricky - one ill-advised comment

can bring it all crashing down.

Your former friend,

Bill

PAD Day 16: Vinegar and Baking Soda

Today's prompts from Poetic Asides and NaPoWriMo:
(1) Write a "science" poem, and 
(2) Write a terzanelle. 
A "terzanelle" is a hybrid of the terza rima (the interlocking tercet rhyme scheme used in Datne's Inferno) and a villanelle. Like the villanelle, there are five tercets and a final quatrain. Here's the rhyme scheme:
A-B-A1
b-C-B
c-D-C
d-E-D
e-F-E
f-A-f-A1
or
f-F-A-A1.
(The repeated lines in caps, the non-repeated in lower case - A and A1 are the only repeated lines that rhyme with one another.)

I've written a few of these, but I was rather daunted by it today, because I put a lot of sweat equity and late hours into a sonnet just two nights ago, plus I'd already decided on a theme after reading Robert's prompt (which always goes up earlier than Maureen's) and thought it might be hard to squeeze my idea into that form.  I suppose it worked, though. You be the judge:

Science Fair Volcano

As a teacher, I've seen them many times

the peaks of conical and homemade plaster

backed up by the obligatory signs.

It doesn't take a lot of skill to master

this impressive demonstration - inside

the peaks of conical and homemade plaster,

a vinegar-and-baking-soda bromide

two strong conflicting forces that react -

an impressive demonstration inside

the gym.  Fourth-grader Tyler did, in fact

make a project like this. Under pressure,

two strong conflicting forces did react,

exploding from his model house.  He'd measure

all the damage done, but didn't keep a chart.

He made a science project under pressure

of a home about to blow itself apart.

The damage done, nobody kept a chart.

As a teacher, I've seen it many times,

backed up by the obligatory signs.

PAD Day 15: Speaking Metaphorically

First some publication news: Spitball Magazine announced their upcoming issue #76, which will feature my poem "Randy Johnson Kills a Bird".  This is my fifth appearance in Spitball, I believe, including my poem that was selected as Poem of the Month for October 2014 on their website.  They also released a list they called "The Spitball 75" the best  poems from their past 75 issues, one from each past issue. I was pleased to see that my buddy BJ Ward's poem "On Hearing that Baseball is Boring to America's Youth" was once of the honored poems.

Today's prompts from Poetic Asides and NaPoWriMo:
(1) Pick an adjective and make it the title of a poem, and
(2) " Write a poem that addresses itself or some aspect of its self (i.e. “Dear Poem,” or “what are my quatrains up to?”; “Couplet, come with me . . .”) "

After spending a couple of hours struggling to write something way past midnight last night, I didn't have the stamina to spend a huge amount of time on this one, but I hope it's amusing and entertaining enough. I didn't follow the second prompt to the letter, but that's okay. It didn't start as a rhyming verse, but it slowly evolved into one.

Metaphorical

You are never what you seem,

and yet somehow you are.

You’re not just stuff of poetry –

I find you everywhere:

symbols, similarities,

archetypes and parallels,

correlations, allegories,

fables, Jesus’ parables.

This is that and that is this,

all the world’s a stage,

but a kiss is just a kiss,

and Maya’s bird was in a cage.

The fog comes in on cat feet,

quiet on its paws.

a man can be a cockroach

or a pair of ragged claws.

You can be sensible

and you can be surreal –

a fish can be an ambulance,

or time a wagon wheel.

You sometimes free-associate

to make an image bright,

in the golden apples of the day

or the dark cloak of the night.

Of your virtues I will sing,

and my praise is categorical:

we should describe everything

in language metaphorical.

PAD Day 14: With Thanks to Nick Lowe

Today's prompts from Poetic Asides and NaPoWriMo: 
(1) Write an "honest" poem and/or a "dishonest" poem, and 
(2) Write a "dialog" or "conversation" poem.

These two seemed to fit so well together. Right away I thought of writing about a dialog between an honest character and a dishonest one.  I struggled all day, though, trying to come up with something. Then I heard a song by singer-songwriter Nick Lowe about a guy who buys cheap roses try to placate his wife or lover into keeping that relationship alive, and I thought I'd run with that theme.  I also tried to do my friend Vince Gotera's invented form, the "terza rima haiku sonnet", but I found that, at least for this poem, I needed a lot more syllables.  So here is my "regular" Shakespearean sonnet:

Last Bouquet

Love's promise in cellophane lace
Or dead giveaway?

                - Nick Lowe, "Stoplight Roses"

My dear, come see these flowers that I brought

for you - I thought you'd like a special treat.

I have no love for roses that you bought

from homeless guys who sell them on the street.

How can I gain your trust, how to preserve

the spark of passion both of us could share?

You can't, because I've nothing in reserve;

that spark was snuffed before your last affair.

Will you have  feelings if I go away?

Just  for the flowers, strangely, I feel sorrow.

We'll live to curse and fight another day,

but like our marriage,  they'll be dead tomorrow.

I always thought our love could be much more.

Just leave - and take those roses to your whore.