PAD Day 7: A Cosmic Fellow Traveler

Today's prompts from Poetic Asides and NaPoWriMo: (1) Write a "lucky" and/or "unlucky" poem, and (2) write a popem based on a news headline. NaPoWriMo gives four examples of unusual headlines with links to read the articles, and one particularly caught my attention because (a) I like to write about the cosmic and astronomical, and (b) the headline itself had a bit of a poetic meter to it. So here is my light verse about a recent phenomenon involving our dear planet.

Tiny Moon

Earth has acquired a brand new moon that's about the size of a car.

 - Headline from NewScientist, February 20, 2020

Earth has acquired a brand new moon

and it's about the size of a car,

smaller, in fact, than our everyday moon,

and a mote in the eye of a star.

As big as a Chevy Malibu,

a hitchhiker along for the ride,

its orbit a six-week oval, too -

much too small, though, to pull on a tide.

They dubbed it CD2020,

which is not too romantic a name,

but our big moon is already plenty

for lovers to share in their game.

Besides, it's only temporary,

it will slingshot soon back into space.

But it got lucky - we got to carry

it for a short while through this cosmic race.

PAD Day 6: Trapped in The Garden of Earthly Delights

Today's prompts from Poetic Asides and NaPoWriMo: (1) Write a "trapped" poem, and (2) write a poem from the point of view of one of the people, animals or "things" from the famous triptyph by Hieronymus Bosch, The Garden of Earthly Delights. If you're not familiar, it's a medieval work that is one of the strangest pieces of art ever created, surreal and both beautiful and terrifying, depicting the Garden of Eden, the worldy pleasures of the flesh, and Hell. Here's an excellent interactive site that gives you an in-depth look: https://archief.ntr.nl/tuinderlusten/en.html

I chose what is probably the most famous detail of that painting, one from the Hell panel of the triptych that stands out by its relatively large size in the painting and its sheer disturbing nature. It's known as the "Tree Man":

Tree Man in Bosch's Hell

All the damned fools around me

are suffering for their sins.

I am the vessel of sloth and drunkenness,

my hollow torso an infernal pub.

A woman taps a keg for the patrons

sitting at a long table in my chest -

one is perched on a toad, symbol of Satan.

Another fellow leans despondently

over my rib cage, which is pierced

with rib-like branches, sprouted

from my trunk-like arms, buoyed

by two rowboats, floating down a river

as black as the Styx.

I look back at it all,

bemused, under a hat crowned

with bagpipes, brimming with a parade

of lost souls and demons

who dance to its keening tune.

I am their ship of fools,

and they are trapped here forever,

just as we are all trapped here forever.

PAD Day 5: Zombies!

Today's prompts from Poetic Asides is to write a "moment" poem. NaPoWriMo has a more challenging prompt, one they have done before, and that I've done at least a couple of times before. It's 20 little prompts wrapped up into one poem:

1. Begin the poem with a metaphor.
2. Say something specific but utterly preposterous.
3. Use at least one image for each of the five senses, either in succession or scattered randomly throughout the poem.
4. Use one example of synesthesia (mixing the senses).
5. Use the proper name of a person and the proper name of a place.
6. Contradict something you said earlier in the poem.
7. Change direction or digress from the last thing you said.
8. Use a word (slang?) you’ve never seen in a poem.
9. Use an example of false cause-effect logic.
10. Use a piece of talk you’ve actually heard (preferably in dialect and/or which you don’t understand).
11. Create a metaphor using the following construction: “The (adjective) (concrete noun) of (abstract noun) . . .”
12. Use an image in such a way as to reverse its usual associative qualities.
13. Make the persona or character in the poem do something he or she could not do in “real life.”
14. Refer to yourself by nickname and in the third person.
15. Write in the future tense, such that part of the poem seems to be a prediction.
16. Modify a noun with an unlikely adjective.
17. Make a declarative assertion that sounds convincing but that finally makes no sense.
18. Use a phrase from a language other than English.
19. Make a non-human object say or do something human (personification).
20. Close the poem with a vivid image that makes no statement, but that “echoes” an image from earlier in the poem.

Pretty daunting, I know, but one poem I wrote in response to this was actually published. I don't know how well this one works (particularly the opening metaphor)  but here we go:

Zombie Moment

This moment is a zombie

shambling in old boots,

and I can't outrun it.

It moans, drops little pieces of itself,

and smells of dead fish. The air

tastes acrid and feels like a slimy fog. 

The moment moans again in dark red.

I want Rick Grimes back in Alexandria

to save us. But maybe I don't need him.

Maybe I can outrun it after all.

I'll play some music to get me jumping,

like the Stones - "Get Yer Ya-yas Out!".

Zombies hate live music

'cos they're dead, right?

These ear buds are my jawn,

tiny blossoms of melody,

but this season,

flowers herald  the apocalypse.

I'll wield a samurai sword like Michonne,

slice that moment's head clean off.

Brucie Baby's a bad ass.

He will flatten the curve.

He will dispatch those lovely zombies

one-two one-two and snicker-snack.

And the deus ex machina,

a friendly helicopter, will scoop me up

in its arms, as I wave to all those

groaning, fetid moments on the ground.

PAD Day 4: And Now for Something Completely Demented...

I needed today's prompt. It was silly, demented fun. The dual prompts from Poetic Asides and NaPoWriMo: (1) Write a "wish" poem, and (2) write a poem based on an image from a dream. The latter blog offers several Twitter accounts that generate some strange and surreal dream-like images than could be used as poetic inspiration, so since I rarely remember my dreams anymore, I used them as my source rather than my own brain. I especially got into "Magic Realism Bot", which generates something whimsically weird every four hours, like "An ostrich whispers to an office manager: 'I feel so alone'," or "In Colorado there is a lime tree which likes to drink margaritas." I read a bunch of these to get into the spirit of it, but I didn't steal any of the images for my poem - they are entirely my own. As I said, it was silly fun, and I needed that badly.y.

Ode to Magic Realism Bot

[after a thing on Twitter]

O Bot, I wish I could make my own dreams like you.

I wish I could play pinochle with cheddar cheese.

I wish that Peruvians could drink iced banana wine.

I wish for a private jet stuffed with pancakes.

I wish that dreams could unspool like vacuum cleaner cords,

and slide on linoleum until their hands were blue.

O Bot, give me dreams of major league toads in pinstripes,

or of Michael Stipe as a refrigerator.

Let me dream of falling from a seventeen-story toilet,

checking my cellphone shaped like a unicorn

before I land. Help me see Atlantis through a Coke bottle,

and play "Melancholy Baby" on a tube of toothpaste.

I wish for the ghost of Salvador Dali to pull off his mustache,

for hula hoops to grow from trees, for eight more days

of strawberry yogurt rain, for my bed to turn upside down

and shake me out before I disappear into the mattress.

O Bot, make this all happen every four hours,

and repeat as necessary.

PAD Day 3: Sorry to Bring Down the Room, but...

... it's taking a while to blow through these feelings of anxiety and depression over our current situation, so my poem today is reflective of that. I promise I'll eventually produce something more amusing or uplifting. Today's prompts from Poetic Asides and NaPoWri Mo are (1) Write a poem titled "Follow _____", and (2) Make a list of ten words using any source, random or otherwise, then use a site called Rhymezone to get a few rhyming or near-rhyming words for each one, then use that word bank to write a poem. (You don't have to use every word in the bank.) I went to my "go-to" site for the random words (The Sunday Whirl) and I got these: maze, trapped, land, hand, stash, chatter, armed, wreck, saw, crawl, back, last. i used them all, with some other words suggested by Rhymezone, to come up with this:

Follow the Maze

Trapped in a shut-down land

where one hand washes the other -

in the basement, a toilet-paper stash.

TV chatter that after a while

doesn't even matter,

armed to the teeth with numbers, numbers -

and an amazingly bureaucratic wreck

that can't get out of a corn maze

with a chain saw, everything slowed

to a crawl. People need breathing room

and machines, and their jobs back,

and cash back, and no more fear

of inhaling someone else's bad air.

But the last buck just got passed back

to the one who had it first,

and someone who squirmed past me

may have just passed me their germ.

PAD Day 2: A Safe Space

Today's prompts from Poetic Asides and NaPoWriMo: (1) write a "space" poem, and (2) "write a poem about a specific place —  a particular house or store or school or office. Try to incorporate concrete details, like street names, distances ('three and a half blocks from the post office'), the types of trees or flowers, the color of the shirts on the people you remember there."
These two prompts meshed pretty well today, and the obvious response would have to be reflective of the sheltered times we are going through right now. This is about one of the safer places I feel these days, other than home.

Civic

A round rubber foundation that moves

with a simple key turn, a shift of a lever

and a pump on a pedal.

My new safe space. Not living in it,

but in a sense, living through it.

No crowds in here, few germs (I pray)

and a decent sound system.

The dark gray dashboard is fuzzy

with a film of dust, and random papers

litter the floor, but it's my mess.

I'm not too far from anything here -

my favorite takeout is 1.6 miles

down the road. They open their window,

and I open mine, the bagged transfer

of victuals - minimum contact.

A turbaned guy pumps my gas

(Jersey is still full-service),

and we pass my card back and forth.

If I have to exit this steel-glass bubble,

I don my gloves and mask,

stay a person-length away from anyone

avoid chit-chat, get my necessities,

and walk out into an invisible haze

of particles that look like tiny golf balls

studded with tees.

Many, but fewer, of us are moving like this,

self-isolation on the highway, keeping

a safe distance, just as they always told us

in Driver's Ed, so we don't crash

into one another and die.

Here We Go Again!

Well, here we are, another April, and another Poem-a-Day Challenge. As usual, I will be taking my cues from at least two source, usually simultaneously: Robert Lee Brewer's Poetic Asides blog, and Maureen Thorson's NaPoWriMo blog. I will try to combine their respective daily prompts when possible, but when I can't, it usually results in two poems, which isn't such a bad thing,

This year feels different from previous Poetry Months: we are in the midst of a pandemic, which is becoming devastating in parts of our country and the world. The flu virus itself may not be the worst disease known to mankind, but it is extremely contagious and has a mortality rate at least ten times more than other more common flus. So there is a high level of anxiety and fear around here these days, combined with a general shutdown of social life and non-essential services to try to tamp down the spread. We may come out of this with some aspects of everyday life permanently changed, just as we came out of "9/11" a number of years ago. Some of that may be reflected in my poetry this month, including today. I haven't been writing much in the last five or six months, and this is always a good jump-start for my creativity, but this year it's also a welcome distraction. So here is my first entry. The prompts for today are: (1) Write a "new world" poem, and (2) (in Maureen's words) "write a self-portrait poem in which you make a specific action a metaphor for your life – one that typically isn’t done all that often, or only in specific circumstances."

Fertilizing

One must be methodical about this,

for there is a science to it,

a stew of nitrogen, phosphates, potash.

Too much will leave a chemical burn,

so I push the broadcast spreader,

carefully calibrated by a numbered dial,

spraying little granules across the grass.

I march in parallel rows,                                           

back and forth, back and forth.

It takes my mind off the chaos inside -

the anxieties of a new world unfolding,

and by that I don't mean spring,

which has come early with a vengeance,

while we humans are battling an enemy

too small to see. Birds still regale us

with a cacophony of calls,

and the fruit trees have burst all at once.

But there are fewer planes growling overhead,

less subliminal traffic rumble, and the stores,

the schools, the baseball parks, are dark and quiet.

We hunker down at home trying to keep

from getting ill, and most of us find distractions

to keep the panic from our door.

Spring couldn't care less about our fears,

and goes on, business as usual,

so we try to embrace it, and I do my part,

preparing my lawn for summer, when things -

we hope - will be even more full of life.