PAD Day 6: An Anti-Ode to Brussels Sprouts

Today's dual prompts from Poetic Asides and NaPoWriMo: (1) Write a poem about a food (with that food as a poem's title), and (2) write a poem that goes out of your "comfort zone" regarding line breaks - make them longer or shorter than you usually do, break them in unconventional places, etc.  So here is my result. (I exaggerated my dislike of the food just a little here - I have been known to eat it on rare occasions.)

Brussels Sprouts

I blame the Belgians

                for you, atrocity

of the produce isle

                and grocer's freezer.

Insidious little cabbage buds,

                tight clumps of green,

bite-sized and potent,

                I will never invite you

for dinner. Even your friendship

                with bacon

will not woo me,

                and I care not whether

you are served steamed,

                roasted or raw.

You shall not pass

                my lips, no matter

how dressed.

                I'm not even a fan

of your larger cousins,

                except maybe as coleslaw.

So move on,

                and join the ranks

of peas, limas

                and asparagus

on my no-fly list               

                of vegetables.

PAD Day 5: Some Photo Inspiration

Today's' prompts from Poetic Asides is to write an "intelligence" poem. NaPoWriMo's prompt is a little more complex: 
"Today, we’d like to challenge you to write a poem that...reacts both to photography and to words in a language not your own. Begin with a photograph. Now find a poem in a language you don’t know.... Ignore any accompanying English translation....  Now start translating the poem into English, with the idea that the poem is actually “about” your photograph. Use the look and feel of the words in the original to guide you along as you write, while trying to describe your photograph. It will be a bit of a balancing act, but hopefully it will lead to new and beautiful (and possibly very weird) places."

There's a word for the process of "translating" a poem from a language you don't know into English, but that word escapes me at the moment. All I know is I've tried that exercise a few times, and never felt I was really successful. But I tried it again today, and I'll let you, gentle reader, be the judge. My source poem was selected rather randomly (Heinrich Heine's "Saphire sind die Augen dein"), though I went with German because I actually know a few words and thought that might help my process. (It really didn't). Anyway, here is the poem, and the photo I used, more or less, as the other inspiration.

Blue is the Eye Then

(after Heinrich Heine)

Blue is the eye then,

the  lover so sudden.

Oh drama! Clueless is the man

to see with such large love.

Then hurt is a diamond

whose edge etches the surface.

Oh, drama! Clueless is the man,

for then is love truly glueless.

Reddened are the lips then,

but the man cannot share in the scene.

Oh, drama! Clueless is the man

who sees the love staying.

Oh, I can't be such a clueless man,

Oh, I am not so near fantasy.

What is so right in the green wood

will soon be bare in the end.

And since I really didn't incorporate the Poetic Asides prompt into that one, I wrote another poem, also inspired by a photo:

The One Tree

(after a photo by Colin Jennings)

all your wisdom shines

backlit through your leaves

as you stand proudly near the horizon

amongst miles of corn rows

fence posts and dirt roads

all diminishing toward you

you have grown here to impress

and nothing for miles around

has reached your heights

yet there is little you have done

except stand alone in a field

waiting for the lightning to strike

but isolation is like dry rot

and unless you have shared your shade

or your hanging fruit of knowledge

for the betterment of the world

they may not remember you long

after they plow your stump under

PAD Day 4: Tired, So Tired

...annnd, here is my Day 4 poem. Now i'm officially caught up. Today's dual prompts from Poetic Asides and NaPoWriMo: (1) write a poem with the title, "Case _______", and (2) write a poem that is about an abstract concept, but which discusses or describes that abstraction in the form of relentlessly concrete nouns.  This was inspired by a very long, tiring and busy couple of days which were largely responsible for me being a little behind in my daily poeming. For some reason, it almost seemed to dictate eschewing punctuation.

Case of Fatigue

the suitcase with broken corners

held together not by a clasp but a man's belt

lugged through the airport because it is too old

even to have wheels carried by a man

with tire tracks on the back of his shirt

hair uncombed for at least three days

shoes worn down to holey soles

and clothes as dirty and rumpled

as all the others packed in his luggage

with squeezed-out toothpaste and a dull razor

and he will sleep tonight at the terminal

in a slippery plastic chair because his flight

was delayed by a plane a pilot and crew

who just had nothing left in the tank

PAD Day 3: Pick a Title, Any Title

I'm a day behind due to a couple of very busy days, so here is my poem based on yesterday's prompts from Poetic Asides and NapoWriMo: (1) write a "stop" and/or "don't stop" poem, and (2) write a list poem with "made-up names", like in Peter Davis' book Band Names and Other Poems. So here's a very unlikely list of poetry book titles.

20 Possible Titles for My Next Poetry Collection

Three Metaphors Walk into a Bar

Leaves of Crass

Gossamer Butterflies of Love

The Half-Eaten Italian Hoagie of Life

The Waist Land

I Wrote This on a Napkin Just Before the Open Mic

The Assassination of James Franco

Stop! in the Name of Cheese

I'm Parked on Poetry Street and My Meter's Expired

Damn You, Billy Collins!

The Gel Bar

A Basket of Puppies and the Blackest Despair

Pair o' Dice Tossed

A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Poetry

Iamb What Iamb

32 Pages if You've Got Nothing Better to Do

Getting Sick-drunk on Charles Bukowski

3,768 Haiku and a Dirty Limerick

Look, the Old Fart Has a Hobby

PAD Day 2: Zombies on the Brain

Today's dual prompts from Poetic Asides and NaPoWriMo: (1) write a "portrait" poem, and (2) write a poem that plays with "voice" (i.e., speaking from a different point of view, or from multiple "persons" - first person "I" vs. second person "you", etc.). Maybe because I watched The Walking Dead just last night, this came to mind:

Self-Portrait as a Zombie

I always wondered what I'd look like

after I'm dead, or rather,

when I come back from the dead.

Here's a photo of me after the apocalypse.

My complexion is the color of wet cement,

my eyes sunken into dark sockets.  

I'm drooling like a Saint Bernard,

and several teeth are missing, as is,

inexplicably, my left arm.

There's a deep gash through my right cheek,

and it appears I've lost some intestines.

 Miraculously, I'm still moving,

but I'm shuffling like a sleepwalker.  

Most of you left alive could easily beat me

in a foot race, but if you stumble, you're my dinner.

Sooner or later you'll stop me with a head shot,

and if there is anything left in my brain

other than motor functions,

its last thought will probably be,

I should have taken better care of myself.

PAD, Here I Come!

It's that time of year again - the April Poem-a-day Challenge!  Despite my dismally paltry output of poetry since last November when I last did a poem-a-day challenge, I'm getting back on the horse and trying to crank out at least one poem a day for the next thirty. I may start out a little rusty, but I hope to produce something of value. (One of my poems from last April will appear very soon in the new issue of US 1 Worksheets poetry journal.)
As usual, I will be trying to combine the prompts each day from Robert Lee Brewer's Poetic Asides blog and Maureen Thorson's NaPoWriMo blog. Today is easy, because they both seem on the same wavelength: both prompts are to write a poem about a secret, but Maureen's more specifically suggests writing about a secret shame or secret pleasure. Since they sometimes go hand-in-hand, here's my take on it:

Balance

I walk a line, a boundary between two properties -

on the left is shame; on the right, pleasure.

I can't tell you where these secret places are,

but when I walk that line, surveyed out,

marked with chalk and little yellow flags,

I am in both places and neither.

So when I stay up late while everyone's asleep

to watch trashy movies and eat tortilla chips,

when I'm supposed to be doing my taxes,

but instead I go down a rabbit hole of click-bait,

when I air-guitar to some favorite classic rock

instead of pushing a vacuum cleaner,

I am walking heel-to-toe on that long borderline,

and maybe I feel guilty, but I'm smiling too.

November Poem-a-Day: A Sampler

So I made it through another poem-a-day challenge in November and emerged with 39 new poems. I can't say they're all great, but it was good to write regularly again for a while after a long dry spell. There were days, like there always are during challenges like this, when it seems really forced to get something out, but as fellow poet and workshop maven Peter Murphy says, "Give yourself permission to write a shitty poem." I followed the annual November Chapbook Challenge that Robert Lee Brewer hosts at his Poetic Asides blog, and used his daily prompts. Sometimes for a little extra creative "juice" I went to the Sunday Whirl blog and used their weekly word bank of a dozen words. The object, according to Robert, is to have enough good poems at the end of the month to put together a chapbook, and if you wish you can submit a short manuscript to him to compete in a contest. He selects a winner, whose only prize ostensibly is bragging rights. but even if you don't win, you may have the makings of a viable and sell-able manuscript. It's harder if you don't have a coherent theme, which I don't think I did this year, but in 2013 I wrote a month's worth of baseball poems which turned into my most recent chapbook.

I already shared one of my November poems in a previous blog entry, so here are nine more of what I consider some of the better poems I wrote:

[Day 1: "New day" poem - also used word bank from Sunday Whirl blog (chime, pine, try, sigh, sky, shore, walk, mist, signal, pebble, limber, mimic)]

Clearing the Air

Today I'll shake my worries free, or try -

I'll limber up and briskly walk the shore,

the morning mist still breaking, and before

the sun rolls up to dominate the sky,

before the seagulls hail me with their cry,

I'll keep the pace, a mile from my front door.

Beneath my feet, the pebbles underscore

my rough escape, acknowledged with a sigh.

The gulls come back to mimic my despair,

to signal that this all will be in vain.

I disagree. Beneath a windblown pine

I vow this is the day I will repair

the damage done, turn back to ease the pain,

and like the wind, I'll gently ring the chime.

[Day 2: "Disguise" poem]

This Guy's Disguise

You won't find me in a beret

scribbling furiously in a French café,

or pondering in an ascot

with a quill pen and a raven mascot.

No, I move among you incognito.

That whining noise like a mosquito?

Those are my poems, buzzing near your ear.

So next time in a bar, look up from your beer -

that might be me, two stools down to your left,

or at the Home Depot, you might see me heft

a ceiling fan over my bony shoulder.

Do you picture me younger or older?

I could be that hot guy at the cocktail party

or an old geezer in the cheese shop, buying Havarti.

I move like smoke - I can disperse in a minute,

then suddenly there's  a poem, and surprise! - you're in it.

[Day 8: "Object" or "thing" poem]

Nail Pop

You little rebel,

poking your head above the floorboard,

who snagged my sock last week -

you're the cause of the hole in my sole.

Worse yet, you ripped the skin

on my wife's foot that same day. 

I took a hammer and a nail set punch

to you, banged you down subfloor

where you belong, only to find you

creeping  aboveground again the next day.

I drove you down again, sealed you in

with a spot of glue, but you were made

of stronger stuff, and popped up

like a prairie dog two days later.

This morning, you bit my sock again,

the last straw.  I grabbed a pair of pliers,

pulled you out like a bad tooth,

and plugged up your hole with wood filler.

Now no one knows you were ever there,

except now in your absence, the board,

a little looser, utters a ghostly squeak.

[Day 11: "Unlucky" poem]

Lucky at Cards...

It's time to ante up

before I cash in my chips.

I can't bluff through this anymore.

You're not fooled by the poker face.

You'll see me and call me

and I'll have to lay down my hand.

I'll be straight with you

before you flush out the truth.

I'm not the king of fidelity;

in fact I'm a real jack-off.

You are the queen of patience

but it hasn't always been aces with us.

You said if we are to remain a pair

then we have to raise the stakes.

I need to be all in, or in the end,

I'll lose to the house.

[Day 12: "Transformative" poem - also used word bank from The Sunday Whirl blog (clear, taunting, body, fury, test, war, mission, lesson, dirt, slide, pay, disbelief)]

What They Brought Home

There's no time for disbelief

when a body lies in front of you.

You tell yourself to keep it together

with each exploding cloud of blood and dirt.

You can't forget the mission

even with the Devil taunting you.

Every minute is a test

of how long you can withstand the fury.

Success is the clear objective,

survival is secondary.

Back home, you slide down every night

and the war invades your dreams.

The biggest lesson that you've learned

is that everybody pays.

[Day 15: Title "Stranger ______"]

Stranger Universe

Before the digital age, if you tuned your TV to somewhere between channels, it would show the faint hum of white noise or snow. One percent of that snow was actually made up of radiation left over by the Big Bang.  - Zeeya Merali, A Big Bang in a Little Room

A stranger universe could not be made

by man. It blows our minds that TV sets

could catch the particles that never fade,

that beamed out from Creation, cosmic jets

of energy and matter blowing out,

but also that we breathe the oxygen

that dinosaurs inhaled, and how about

the rain that pelts our heads, to think that when

Li Po or Charlemagne walked out in storms,

the same rain soaked them too.  And then it hits

us - everything's a cycle, taking forms

from molecules and subatomic bits,

to supernovas - all of which surprise

and show us nothing ever really dies. 

[Day 20: "What I learned" - also used word bank from The Sunday Whirl blog (monkeys, chop, relish, strap, sting, moon, fly, kiss, merge, shimmy, crime, sword]

What I Learned About a Barrel of Monkeys

Almost anything in the world is more fun.

From the moment Amazon delivered it,

they emerged and wreaked havoc on my house,

shimmying up the curtains,

mooning me from the top of the TV,

taking flying leaps from my chandelier,

mocking me with kissy faces.

One of them took my ceremonial sword

off the wall and began to chop up my coffee table.

I took off my belt to threaten them,

thinking they would fear the sting of the strap,

but then they pantsed me.

I need to call animal control

before I'm arrested for a crime.

I don't relish this situation at all.

Maybe I can sell my house with the listing,

"as is - pets included".

[Day 23: "preface" poem]

Grace

Let me just say before we begin

that we have a lot to be thankful for.

For instance, I'm thankful for the free turkey

we got with our $300 purchase at Giant.

I'm thankful that my wife didn't make me

peel more potatoes than I did,

and that the nieces, nephews and grandchildren -

No running in the living room, kids! -

haven't broken anything in the house yet.

Thank you Uncle Jerry for not talking politics

and limiting yourself to one beer before dinner.

Thank you Bob and Jennifer for another year

of your killer green bean casserole, 

and thanks to my sister Marie for smoking outside.

So let's take a moment to give thanks to God,

or Jehovah, Allah, Gaia, humanity,

the Flying Spaghetti Monster,

or whomever you feel responsible

for this wonderful feast.... Dig in!

[Day 26: "Shine" poem]

My Back Door Someday

I've been waiting for that bright sunshine to show up

and shine in my back door someday.

- Luther Allison

When we moved across the street

after so many years, the sun followed us there,

but it was an old friend in a new light.

Before, it greeted us in the breakfast nook,

streaming in the back window most mornings,

and beat on our front door after noon,

sometimes mercilessly in summer.

Now, in our new home, it comes opposite -

mornings, a warm smash of yellow light

through the picture window, a golden glow

in the back yard through the cedar trees

in the afternoon. When the light slants just right,

it beams straight through the kitchen door,

and when it leaves at twilight, it's graceful enough

not to slam the screen.