Monthly Archives: April 2015

NaPoWriMo 2015, DAY 14: The Holy Apewoman of Mexico

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The Prompt: Write a poem that takes the form of a dialogue. My dialogue takes place between my 7 year old self and my 67 year old self who, ironically, is writing this in Mexico.


Childhood Dreams

7
The mysteries
of Grandma’s barn
and basement–
whole lost worlds down there.
Our own attic–that door held down
by a gravity never challenged.

I wanted to see
the hanging gardens of Babylon,
Mexico and Africa–
all these places from books,
their pieces jumbled together
like puzzle pieces
in the deep recesses of my closet,
scattered,
but ready for assembly
some day
when I would
make my future memories
happen.

67
I crouch with myself at seven–
sharing imagined dangers
in deep closets,
trying to conjure the world.
So many small town stories
overlooked
while I dreamed of living
in those fairy tale places
of Bible stories
that stood on a shelf
sandwiched between
the Bobbsey Twins
and Tarzan.

Some of us spend our lives
trying to be like books,
then spend our old age
trying to remember childhood,
mainly remembering
childhood’s dreams.

*

Some Sacred Spaces

I asked women about their favorite places.  These Story Boxes are a reflection of what they told me.  Unfortunately, I forgot to take a picture of my favorite before i sold it.  It was The Artist’s Studio.  These Boxes are all 11.5″ X 8″.

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The Beauty Shop

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The Souvenir Shop

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The Kitchen

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Center Stage

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The Parlor: A chest of memories substitutes for life: a wedding veil, old love letters, pictures and a solitary bottle of champagne furnish her Saturday night company.

 

https://dailypost.wordpress.com/dp_prompt/from-the-collection-of-the-artist/

NaPoWriMo 2015, Day 13: Riddle Poem–“Sort of Rhymes with Rimbaud”

The prompt: Write a riddle poem that describes something without ever naming it.

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Sort of Rhymes with Rimbaud

If you speak my language, Ndovu is my name;
but in any other country, my name is not the same.
No fair using Google.  Save that for the end.
It’s more fun solving riddles if the rules you don’t bend.
I pack my own big suitcase, my own piano, too.
Once people thought I wasn’t smart, so that’s another clue.
Part of me’s a stocking. It’s what I’m noted for.
And I am also loyal–faithful to the core.
Sometimes I hold umbrellas, though it’s a cruel fate.
People like to look at me  in spite of all my weight.
I’m playful as a baby and a workhorse when I’m older.
Have you solved my riddle or are you getting colder?
If you haven’t guessed by now, I think you’ll never get it.
Why don’t you be my opposite?  Why don’t you just forget it?

Solution: 1-8, 3-17, 5-21, 7-1, 8-20, 9-22, 11-33, 12-32
Solution to Title: 2-3, 3-17, 6-24, 9-17, 14-5

The solution key: The first letter of the answer to the riddle is the 8th letter of line 1 of the poem. The second  letter is the 17th letter in line 3, etc. Be forewarned that the word hinted at in the title is in Swahili.  How else could I insure you wouldn’t cheat? Okay, now you hate me.

 https://dailypost.wordpress.com/dp_prompt/from-the-collection-of-the-artist/

Sunday Stills: Cups

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https://sundaystills.wordpress.com/2015/04/12/sunday-stills-the-next-challenge-cups/

How to Paint a Painting

This is the first essay on how to paint that has ever made me both want to paint and think I could, so I have to reblog it. Hope others agree. Judy

Belinda Broughton's avatarBelinda Broughton

paint

Mix paint so it won’t flow, or so it will drip unexpectedly and in the wrong place, or will dry a different colour, or so it cludges or pools.

Choose a brush that doesn’t work, has its bristles all askew, is dried up like a stick, or is a stick, or a grass stalk, or the hair of a dog, or a clump of your own hair bound with string, or paint with the string.

Choose a canvas that has holes in it, is the skin of your lover, or the hide of your ex-lover.

Take a large garbage bag and into it discard: your concerns, your politics, the shopping list, your body, your hard-earned craft, your ego, your desires, your name.

Look at your subject (if you have one.) Stare at it a long time. Stare at it until it shimmers like illusion. Stare until it dissolves behind its…

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Curl: NaPoWrimo 2015, Day 12

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Curl

Walls are the minds of other people.
I sit in piles on the desktop–
a black sun,
the leg of a poem.

A glass eye drops
to the bedside table,
having seen enough.

My rumpled bed
is full of poems.
My closet stuffed with words
in too many sizes
that go unworn.

They are purses never used,
these poems I have departed from.
Still, I slip into their pages
day by day.

I drown in these things
I have assembled a life from.
Prehispanic bowls on the mantel.
A tiny dried seahorse
standing on a curled tail

The Prompt: Describe in great detail your favorite room, place, meal, day, or person. You can do this in paragraph form. Now cut unnecessary words like articles and determiners (a, the, that) and anything that isn’t really necessary for content; leave mainly nouns, verbs, a few adjectives.

In case you are curious, here is my original paragraph the poem was culled from:

Around me on my walls are the minds of other people. A black bird faces an orange sun, a leg lies suspended over a poem. Fish swim by with hands and a woman stands bare breasted holding birds on the palms of her hands. A Bedouin woman holds three roosters and there is much more of other people’s minds on other walls. My mind sits in piles on the desktop. boxes, papers, heaps of contents migrated from other rooms. A case with hundreds of different DVD’s behind a TV with VCR player. my life piled around me ..what is not nailed onto walls. A half-empty glass with soda straw and eye drops on the bedside table. I am too tired of this room to describe it more. My backboard of my bed is a file cabinet full of poems. My closet stuffed with clothes in too many sizes. Belts that no longer fit. shoes that go unworn. Purses lined up but never used. Int the bookcase, poetry books I haven’t read for years. Words of friends I have departed from or who’ve departed this world. My house my room like a giant scrapbook of my life I slip into the pages of more securely day by day. Wondering about escape but questioning whether I really want to. We are all consumed by our lives in the end. My air running out. In my mind I escape seaward. Where I drown instead of smothering. No way out of this life in the end but t drown in something: life or death. Either way, we need to leave these things we have assembled a life from. Prehispanic bowls on a mantel. A clay warrior holding a lance, a tiny dried seahorse, standing on curled tail, and a Huichol painting of curled string.

As you can see, many of the images in the above paragraph fell away, mainly because I’d dealt with them in an earlier poem. Links tto hat earlier poem and to photographs of the room are given below:

For another poem about this room go HERE.
And for images of the room described in both poems, go HERE.

https://dailypost.wordpress.com/dp_prompt/interplanet-janet/

Rainy Season

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“Rainy Season” Mixed-Media Assemblage by Judy Dykstra-Brown 8″X5″: brass, sterling silver, pewter, iron, plastic and acrylic paint.

For fourteen years, I’ve intended to establish a website for my art, but somehow I always preferred to spend the time constructing my assemblages.  Hearing the first rainbird of the season, I was reminded of this piece and it occurred to me that I could start posting pictures of my art on this site. Perhaps tomorrow I’ll post a poem to go with it.  (A rainbird is the name for a local cicada, whose buzzsaw song always presages the rainy season.)

https://dailypost.wordpress.com/dp_prompt/all-its-cracked-up-to-be/

WordPress Weekly Photo Challenge: Afloat #2

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https://dailypost.wordpress.com/dp_photo_challenge/afloat/

Power Failure

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Sapphics are quatrains whose first three lines have eleven syllables, and the fourth, just five. There is also a very strict meter that alternates trochees (a two-syllable foot, with the first syllable stressed, and the second unstressed) and dactyls (a three-syllable foot, with the first syllable stressed and the remainder unstressed). The first three lines consist of two trochees, a dactyl, and two more trochees. The fourth line is a dactyl, followed by a trochee.

As luck would have it, my power–restored after a 32 hour off-and-on outage–clicked off completely just after I received this prompt and so there was little else that entered my mind to write this poem about. A very difficult form, by the way, and not a stellar accomplishment in terms of theme, but at least I did the assignment. But, on the positive side, the electricity has been on for one hour now without faltering and I see  my internet is now streaming boldly in.

Actually, now that there is electricity again, this day is turning out to be all that it was cracked up to be, and this poem luckily also fits in with the WordPress daily prompt, as well, so here it is!

Power Failure

Would that I had power to run my life with–
turn on my computer or cook my breakfast–
charge my phone or open my own garage door.
It’s not happening!

One day stretches after another, without
help for one imprisoned within her casa.
Fridge that drips from every hinge and juncture.
Loos unflushed by any means but by bucket
hauled from swimming pool.

Other folks do not have to light these candles,
locate flashlights all in some hidden drawer,
fish out ice cubes quickly from freezer section,
hoard computer time.

Yes, I do love Mexico more or less–
more for weather mild and the constant sunlight.
Less for lights that flicker and fail at night and
do not light again.

Oh that ladder placed in the kitchen aisle,
found in darkness, when perchance stumbled over.
Glass in hand dropped, shattering to each corner.
Perils multiply.

Now I shuffle through the dark house to locate
matches, candles, dustpan and broom to sweep up
further dangers, accidents bound to happen.
All things difficult.

Here I sit just thirty-six hours in darkness.
Help will come in one hour or perhaps thirty.
Beeps from starving phones sound from every chamber.
Growling stomach groans out a matching rhythm.
Help comes haltingly.

Hours since the outage are forty-two now,
Lights flood on and do not dim shortly after.
Please, dear God, let this be the end of darkness.
Wifi? Wunderbar!!!!

The NaPoWriMo Prompt: compose a poem in Sapphics.

For the Ragtag Prompt, STELLAR

WordPress Weekly Photo Prompt: Afloat

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I love how the clouds are afloat in both the sky and the water.

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That blue mass to the right of the picture is definitely a “float.” Love the little pink beach bunny, complete with matching trike.

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Afloat on the muddy Amazon

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Candelabra Island, Peru. Hundreds of thousands of birds.

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There are thousands of white pelicans that winter on Lake Chapala.
https://dailypost.wordpress.com/dp_photo_challenge/afloat/
More floats to come tomorrow!  Now I must go float in the pool!!!!