Day 28 NaPoWriMo: Rules to Live by

I followed the prompt and did a prose poem for a post card.

Post Card: Rules to Live by

Please mention to your five year old self that spoons are for noses and forks are for music. The tenor and alto are not for your vocals, only soprano will do. Try harder. Then try a little harder until the hard becomes a rhythm and write using a pen, not a pen using you. The music stops and you stop. Our robotic envy,  we need to see the movement of others, we need the sound of their breath to assure us that we breathe too, that we live too.

Day 13 NaPoWriMo: Earth

Playing catch up again and still more poems to go! I chose to up end the statement "it's raining cats and dogs"

Earth

It's raining people.
They fall like
angels without wings,
neither animal or apostle,
neither holy or evil;
they fall forever
in the spaces between
paradise and the abyss,
a place of air and fire,
made from the clay
of their rough skin
scorched from the sun
upon this beautiful Earth.

Day 12 NaPoWriMo: Haibun: Bare

I'm playing catch up!

Haibun: Bare

A bear found asphalt on a summer’s day

on the cracked roads.

A tire found the bear’s grand paw and up

there in an old rot tree

the bear climbed; its bulk hung like a branch.

Suburbanites took

pictures of a wild pain.

Their Facebook read: ‘bare.”

Day 27 NaPoWriMo: The Devil

Followed the prompt and chose "The Devil" for my tarot card here. I wanted to attribute humans in some kind of animalistic way so I chose us to be the mouse, the devil's prey.




The Devil
To pray or prey the devil
knows both the hunted
and hunter, fallen
and glorified.

He does not require speech. He moves and the world moves. He blinks and the world blinks.
He perches like a hawk
that waits for the mouse
to peek out from its hole
for a chance at Eden.

Day 26 NaPoWriMo: Reality

On prompt. Tried to use all of the 5 senses in this one.

Reality

You are being entertained

in your hot seat

eyes watch in the window

pink copper canyons majesty

forever made from the palm

of love and greed

pixels become images

stilled

hair and wrinkles

stretched and straightened

Your ears are being energized

audio synthesis

beautiful voices

laughter rage sustained

our bodies burn with the sounds

we feed from carbohydrate

to entertainment

the collapse of speech

You are being entertained

our slurs and side thoughts

recorded in rapid speed

we write what we think

we do not think

we speak

our tongues search engines

that churn the abyss

You are being entertained

and all the screens

technicolor sites

as if we could see

really see

into this world

we do not create,

but we only think we can

like the little engine

we could build a planet out of code

brick by numbered brick

baked clay rough on our brain

But we are being entertained

there is no plan B

as a species,

we are entertained

by the simplest of things.

Day 25 NaPoWriMo: No Warning

On prompt today, what warning label do I come with? None. You just have to figure out as you get to know me...

No Warning

I don't come with warning labels
              take me
                              or
                                  leave me
I am a living liability.

Day 24: NaPoWriMo Elegy

Followed the prompt and wrote an elegy for my grandmother.

Elegy

I will remember you as the
hummingbird

that flew in through the porch
door,

the one that fluttered into my
hands

and waited for me to take it
outside

and let you go.

Day 11: NaPoWriMo Woman

Playing catchup...

My state of the union haiku.

Women

Our bodies contain
choices and movements, but words
quiet our freedom.

Day 23: NaPoWriMo Sequence

I followed the prompt by listening to other people talk about their dreams and then I wrote down my interpretation.

Sequence

He talks numbers in his dreams

counts restless formulas

wakes to technicolor sweat

his body thick with numbers,

he forgets how to speak.

...

The old conversations

close your tongue.

You recount the arguments

and calculate the number of

seconds, minutes, hours 

that it took your anger to turn

its cheek and laugh.

...

I laugh deep into the mating call

thirsty to contain murmurs and violins

the sound of the violent tide and forest,

salt and wood, frog and bird, the locust 

recede like silk over skin.

Day 22: NaPoWriMo Fire Flies

Followed the prompt for the sun rising in the west...

Fire Flies

At night fire flies emerge

from the west like a hundred suns.

They warm the night into day,

glow and move through the trees,

lighting up the corners and spaces

that the sun forgets in the day.

They wash the night clean,

letting time quiet and soften.

They confuse the earth’s turn,

making darkness into dawn;

all the suns rise and hover.

It’s so easy to capture a whole star

in a glass jar and then let it           go

Day 21 NaPoWriMo: Petals in Wax

I followed the prompt and decided to riff off of the Narcissus myth a little bit.


Petals in Wax

She watches her face in the mirror

stares at her body, nose, and eyes

and sees her cheeks turn to roses,

her tears form into spring bells,

and her lips kiss into the first tulips;

her arms grow into lilies and trumpets

her buttocks hydrangeas in bloom.

But her petals begin to pucker

So she presses herself into a book

all of her youth captured in

between wax and paper

now lain into a relic and flat

brown and wrinkled

all the time wasted

in the mirror she did not

seek out a love that will last.

Day 20 NaPoWriMo: The Location Rebel

I followed the prompt and went with breaking out of a habit. I always insist on writing new material at cafes or libraries or anywhere else, but home...

The Location Rebel

I write on a hotel complimentary breakfast table

And in a loud café and tune everything out.

I write outside in the spring and summer

and in my tent just as dawn moves the horizon.

I write in the local library with the smell of books.

But I don’t write at home in my office room,

I don’t pull up a chair and sit my notebook

on my desk, I don’t wake up at 5 in the morning

and stumble into my room before anything else.

But for this poem, I wrote in my room and
listened to the occasional car swish by
and realized how the sun slants through
the windows onto my bookshelves;
I could stay in here and write forever.

NaPoWriMo Day 19: Marble

For day nineteen of NaPoWriMo, I used the prompt. I took a paragraph from a short story I wrote and then began to erase words. It's interesting that the paragraph itself is describing a man helping his aging wife, but when I finally put the poem together it almost became sexual. A surprise since the sound and meaning of it didn't come across until I had taken the words and put them together.


Marble

He starts tightening my soiled clothes

with a wet cloth.

He takes everything, rubs out my curved

spine, rests me

down the hall rummaging with a cream-

colored dress.

I remember before we had children,

he lifted each

limb, adjusted them to rest on his shoulders

while I noticed

my stockings smooth into a pale marble.

Day 18 NaPoWriMo Sons of Sinew

The poem I used for my prompt was Nightstick by Kevin Young.

Sons of Sinew

sinew of sun

hands cover the earth

in a horizon gilded 

in the cage of skin

bone and blood

reborn into a sphere

honey ribbons down

upon the peacekeeers 

with their weapons 

made of God and glory

we see you in all the spaces 

the blood bleeds rivers

because handcuffs only work

if the living still live

who will blow the brain 

of a red heron into the lake

dark with death skin

the wrong direction

angles us all onto choices

don't bare your skin

but bear with me my

blood weight heavy arms

stretch up say shoot shoot

we're ready when it arrives

the end will feel breathless

like a horned beast 

that punctures your faith

or a revolver made of skin

the barrel smells like new money

sharp enough to cut a finger

and music plays down the street 

with all the forks and spoons

on the dinner table set for zero

only one heart beats in a room of death

but all of them have lungs

and skin like book covers

their bodies lined up like notebook paper

all of them old humans except one boy

three hole punches in his stomach

that blossoms into violets 

too many to count

but they glisten wet with blood

their petals a raw flesh

delicate and thin

daily weekly they bloom 

more and more on new boys

as they lay down without thoughts

praise the peace the quiet

nothing happens here

in temples to worship

the god of skin

reborn as violets 

fear and loathing

the sons of sinew 

lay upon the death slab

nothing new happens here

Day 17: NaPoWriMo - Adventures at Dammasch

This is for my mother who has stories of her life growing up in foster care in Oregon and about her mother who loved her, even if the system wouldn't let her.

Adventures at Dammasch*

She’ll tell you stories about piglets,

rubber boots, rotten eggs

cracked

over the head, and deep purple bruises.

She’ll tell you about a girl who had

dreams,

who pitched soft ball with arms made of steel,

wilder than the Oregon frontier in the

rain shadow.

She’ll tell you stories about hunger,

eating mayo warm from the

cupboard,

stories of a girl who died by darkness

in the valley of the snow

melt river;

a girl whose mama was strapped with leather

over breasts, arms, legs and

forehead;

convulsed in a stigmata of electrodes;

smothered by people in

white.

She didn’t fly over the cuckoo’s nest;

she lit up like foxfire in the rain, in the

dark.

*Dammasch State Hospital in Willsonville, Oregon was a mental health hospital founded in 1961 and closed in 1995.

Day 10: NaPoWriMo...Threads

Still playing catchup...

Threads

In the street, laying on a wool blanket

out pours jasmine tangled with marigold;

the street seller lounges and smokes his pipe.

A boy begs in the monsoon rain, his shirt

torn, his mouth tired; his lips hold guava

a memory of his mother’s sweet milk.

Silk wraps women into their own smooth skin,

their bindis pools of vermillion,

bangles move music into their bodies.

A woman mixes water and wheat grass,

soaks their threads, forms patties, dries them on

rocks, then chews and eats; her body a blade

a sharp knife in the

              wind.

Day 9: Coin Purse

I'm playing catchup today. With exams and team work, it's been a crazy couple of weeks!

a coin and a purse
come together; one
carries the other.

Day 8 NaPoWriMo: Arrivals and Departures

For Day 8 of NaPoWriMo, I wrote a fantastical poem. A poem of nine lives and nine deaths.

Arrivals and Departures

in your first life a cobra struck

your back right paw

the poison felt

like bath water

that lost its warmth

when you came back

you danced with

that same cobra and found

that it bled blue in

the afterlife

you painted the world

with its blood to celebrate

your next death

how your lover

fed you to the rats

or your third where

a butcher mistook

you for a meal or the next

when a mortal shaved your fur

until the blade cut bone

you bled blue and your skin

forgot how to make fur

you grew scales instead

and swam and swam

and watched Bastet

drown beside you

in the modern river

asphalt so black

it could be blue

the forth you didn’t drown

but you shivered furless

and curled up cold

your fifth you climbed

a great fir tree

to catch your prey

but you never found

a way back down again

your sixth you curled

next to the engine of a car

the seventh a coyote

caught your tail

and ate you whole

your eighth a little boy

dropped you from high up

to see if you landed

on your back

or on your paws

your ninth you ate

your last meal

hunted your last squirrel

and counted down all

your afterlives and inbetweens

and found a cobra

a young one

to let you bleed

blue and               depart

NaPoWriMo Day 7: A Wife on Writing and Men

Day 7 of NaPoWriMo, I followed the prompt and created two lists. One that lists all of my identities and another that lists how I feel powerful or vulnerable. I am a wife and a writer and my husband makes me feel powerful and encourages me to grow as a writer, I know that not every relationship is this way.

A Wife on Writing and Men

You chose well even if you didn’t know it at the time.

It only matters that you know it now and

That he knows how much you appreciate

The hours of solitude at your little desk.

It only matters that you tell him by writing a poem

And leave it in his lunch for him to find.

You know you could have chosen a man

Who wanted to keep you back.

You could have chosen a man who didn’t see the point

of writing your words on a page or

You could have chosen someone who

Burned your words with envy.

But you didn’t, so never forget how he holds you in place

When you sit in your chair and gather doubt

Around you like a sickness. He washes it away.

His voice is rare, but it is full of words

most men don’t have the courage to say. 

NaPoWriMo Day 6: A Small Revelation

For day six of NaPoWriMo, I followed the prompt and tried out different line sizes and experimented with space.

A Small Revelation

you pick up a rock and it’s a rock

but when you feel it

its edges

                smooths

                                roughs

it becomes         more

it becomes c o l o r

when you take your finger over it              take your

                                                                                        time

                                                                                                  pause in its crevices    

                                                                                                                                 indents

                                                                                                                                            caverns

its becomes more than a rock

when you            sip          its grains and scratch off its pieces          it becomes    

               

a landscape

a piece of something large           but

                                                           no less significant

Day 5: NaPoWriMo - In the Flat

Used Day 5's prompt and used the photo below and took inspiration from the Basque poem 

"TEILATUETAN LAN EGITEN DUEN JENDEA" by Harkaitz Cano

Sure they are hungry wild dogs

Flea-bitten deep to the bone and glory

Here in the flatlands all of us are bone deep

And flat, the land so flat trees hide.

We’re all hungry for shadows

we build like the moles, hills out of the flatness

to hide our bodies

from the sun and sky

to build ourselves the possibility of having a shadow cast

against our landscape and turn our flatlands

into more than the plane that we know

but a place where we can bask in the dark

and not feel so wide, so exposed

and the hungry dogs feel less hungry

our bodies no longer the tallest thing in the flat.

NaPoWriMo Day 4: Chaos

Chaos

A hologram grows difficult

Music becomes red, red becomes human

She played the banjo and violin

The thin line of logic separates

As the butterfly from the chrysalis

Your eyes deceive into universe

The blast and the suck, stars die

Music plays on, our capillaries grow

Difficult and gold becomes human

She sang a Sousa march in the church

And one day we’ll walk into the sun

And believe our mother ironed

Our bed sheets with her love,

But we’ll find she had a tool

That heated and cooled

But it too died like the stars

She too died like the stars

Her music no longer human

a black hole nothing feels like

Living.

NaPoWriMo Day 3: In a Certain Order

I'm 10 minutes late to day three, but no matter what I still wrote it! This is a list of poem titles sewn together. I little lumpy, like a homemade quilt, but it more or less works.

In a Certain Order

In a certain order, the roots grow thick.

Special numbers in dance cards, in

the river chameleon, these weapons

come natural, comb and poppy

concentric circles in the humor

of predators and paper females

on Sunday’s she feigns pretentious

into serial waterfalls and sips bubbly.

Maybe the world grows colder, but

In a certain order, the frost seals

the summer into the earth and

she cartwheels into spring

her blue boat, her glass slipper

her body moving into poetry.

NaPoWriMo Day 2: Snow Bird

This poem was originally in third person plural, but I changed it to second. It makes the meaning of the poem change slightly and makes it more personal.

Snow Bird

You travel south for the winter,

your wrinkled hands steer your RV.

You park in the grand lot of Arizona

where you nest, squawk, sip margaritas,

lay out your creaking joints, and sleep.

One night in the RV park, you watch

a woman and her two boys fight the police,

drop their back packs and belongings;

rounded up like livestock and cuffed.

Their things sit in the dust until you

get up and throw all of it in the trash.

The next day you wake up slow,

stretch, make breakfast, strong coffee,

rustle your wisps of gray hair,

perch in the sun, and watch like a crow;

your beak bitter and sharp.

NaPoWriMo: Day 1 - Ben and Jerry’s Phish Food

The first day of NaPoWriMo. It never feels like spring until National Poetry Month comes around. Writing a poem a day for thirty days is a way for everyone to awaken to spring and to sun, to get our heads out of hibernation and winter and open our eyes new. Happy National Poetry Month! Hope you'll join everyone for the challenge to write a poem a day.

Today's prompt asks for us to write a poem about a secret shame or a secret pleasure. My poem is both a shame and a pleasure...

Ben and Jerry’s Phish Food

The empty pint contains nothing

so it has never contained anything;

tabula Rasa, a blank slate.

I cleaned the chocolate out, no residue,

just water droplets, the lid is wet too.

You will not find it on the counter

or at the top of the recycling bin.

I buried it in the garbage can

covered it up with carrot scraps,

banana peels, and coffee grounds,

never to be seen again.

Not a calorie or gram of fat passed

these lips.

But,

someone, I will not name names,

looked in the freezer and saw the hole,

the place where something’s missing.

They shut the freezer and looked at me,

                                                                and only me,

handed me the car keys and pointed

in the direction of the grocery store.

“Go get me some more.”