Category Archives: Art

Smoke

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Smoke

She had met most of my stepchildren.
Was my husband similar? she asked.
Yes, he was talented and smart and funny.
But, he was very quiet, I said, and often sad.

He never believed he’d been the love of my life,
even though I’d told him so.
He’d raised a hand
to let it fall unused again, one time or more.
I hadn’t any children.
He always thought I’d leave.

For years I’d felt the cause of his unhappiness,
but his children told me he had always been this way.
Less angry with me than the others,
I had been, he told them, (but not me)
the love of his life.

He was a man who trusted few
and loved less.
He could not give what others demanded.
What better time to say I love you
than when asked for it, I pleaded–
his daughter, sobbing, on the phone.
But he couldn’t do it
for me, for her, for anyone.

What he wanted most he always had,
but he was blind to it,
wasting it all: the friends, the fame, the love.
Alone, he stared into the fire, into trees,
imagining tools and studios and sculpture
grander, in the end, than his energy to create it.

He had not been idle in his life.
Houses, children, art, tools, poetry—
he made them all, well and in great numbers.
Yet when he died, he said, “Imagine.
I had thought I’d be making art to the end.
Instead, I am so tired. I’m just glad to know
I have an excuse for feeling as tired as I do.”

They ate him up, his dreams.
We sent them up in smoke with him.

Daily post: Second Opinion—What are some (or one) of the things about which you usually don’t trust your own judgment, and need someone’s else’s confirmation?

(Instead of being about someone who needs someone else’s confirmation and advice, my poem is about someone who never could accept it.)

Unknowing

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Wall piece

                       Wood, horsehair, bamboo, Wall Scupture  17″X23″, Judy Dykstra-Brown

BroochBrooch by Judy Dykstra-Brown: Silver, Fossil Ivory,
Ostrich Eggshell and Feathers on Textured Acrylic

The Prompt: Writer’s Block Party—When was the last time you experienced writer’s block? What do you think brought it about — and how did you dig your way out of it?

                                                                   Unknowing

It was in 1986 and I was in a writer’s workshop in L.A. that was run by Jack Grapes. For the past five years, I had been writing daily, studying screenwriting and then poetry and working as a publicist and P.R. assistant for a TV production company. My whole world had become writing after I quit my job as an English teacher and move to CA to do what I had been teaching others to do for the past 10 years. Then, suddenly, I could not think of anything to write.

I had seen this happen before to others of Jack’s workshop participants and he seemed to have an uncanny knack of finding unusual solutions. For one talented writer who was pale and listless under her spiked hair and punk clothes, he prescribed a program of daily exercise and, miraculously, her poetry came alive as she did. But for me, Jack prescribed another remedy. “Do art!” he said. “I forbid you to do any writing at all. Instead, I want you to do art!”

But I wasn’t an artist, I protested. I didn’t know how to do art! Jack continued to insist. He told me to go to the dime store and to buy whatever interested me and to put it together as a collage. And so for a week, this is what I did. I bought a rubber mouse, a block of Morilla paper, acrylic paint, Popsicle sticks and confetti. I glued the mouse and confetti to the Morilla block, constructed a fence around them with the Popsicle sticks and cut out words to surround them that said, “Party mouse wants to come out and play but can’t!”

I broke Jack’s rule and wrote, filling sheets with words that had no logical connections with each other, then cut them up and made sculptures out of the strips of paper. I took the foil lids of empty individual plastic jam and butter containers brought back from a trip to Europe and cut them up, gluing them down along with other strips of words to form three-dimensional shapes, forming other object/word sculptures.

At the end of the week, I believe I had about seven works of what I didn’t think anyone would even loosely call “art.” Jack had told me to bring them in with me; but when I got to his walkup apartment in Hollywood, I left them in the car, embarrassed to show them. There were 25 others in the workshop. Perhaps he’d forget. I should have known better. When it came my turn to present, he asked me if I’d followed his “prescription.” When I admitted I had, he asked where my product was, and soon Bob (a man in the workshop who would in less than a year become my husband) and I were negotiating the stairs, carrying my “sculptures” up to face their first audience. I remember being so embarrassed to show them, but I was as accustomed as everyone else in the workshop to doing exactly what Jack said.

The reaction was the opposite of what I expected. Everyone loved my sculptures. One of the women in the group who had a gallery on Melrose asked if I’d like to have a show at her gallery. I was stunned. No way. I wasn’t an artist! But from that day on, for ten years I did no writing but did only art. I started out gluing found objects on stones, then when I married and moved to northern CA, I studied metalsmithing and papermaking and made my living for the next 13 years exhibiting in galleries and doing craft shows across the country

Ten years later, as the curator of an art center, I staged a show called “The Poet’s Eye/The Artist’s Tongue” that featured art that included words. This was when I started writing again, and I’ve been writing ever since. When I came back to writing, however, it was from an entirely different place—a place of “not knowing.” I wasn’t trying to write according to a preconceived idea of what writing should be, but rather from a place of intuition and what wanted to be written.

By forcing me to do something I knew nothing about, Jack taught me how to do something I knew how to do so well that it stopped me. My expectations were too high for myself. All of the things that happen naturally when one goes down deep in themselves and just writes got dammed up in me when I thought of what they should be instead of just letting them happen. By doing something that I knew nothing about, I learned how to better do something I knew too much about, and I’ve been writing ever since!

Luddite (Within Reason)

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Luddite (Within Reason)

Resurrect the Luddite gene!
Raise the axe! Kill the machine!
Its use is seldom credible
in products that are edible.

A bread machine for making bread?
Ban that idea from your head.
Bread manufactured should be banned.
The nobler loaf is shaped by hand.

Lasagna, too, it is a fact,
is better manually stacked.
Those frozen ones from Costco? Toss ‘em!
For no machine knows how to sauce ‘em!

Torillas handmade pat by pat?
You simply can’t improve on that.
But I admit I’m not that keen
on ones that come from a machine.

South of the border, arts abound
on almost every wall they’re found.
All over town, the artists stand
creating murals there by hand.

Art that’s produced digitally?
It will simply never be
as satisfactory to me
as this handmade artistry.

The stately dome, even and round,
in Mexico is often found.
With bricks, cement and lime and sand—
it’s true that they are made by hand!

I admit that a brick wall
is hardly any view at all.
The only worse thing in a town
is when you find one tumbled down!

But Mexico excels at walls.
Hand-stacked, a stone wall rarely falls.
And they are things of beauty, too,
and add, not detract, from the view.

I find that I can best assuage
my aches with a hands-on massage.
Our massage chair bought for beaucoup bucks?
Truthfully? It really sucks.

And yet, I know that many lean
in preference to the machine.
I must admit, though I am wary,
that certain ones are necessary.

Elevators beat the stairs.
Electric shavers best cut hairs.
(Those signs extolling Burma Shave
belong outside a caveman’s cave.)

And I admit the movie sector
clearly needs its film projector.
Doctors? X-rays. Dentists? Drills.
Pharmacists? Machine-made pills.

And I am sure I’d really balk
If I were forced to always walk,
so cars and trucks would make my list
of machines that should exist.

I could live if forced to brave
this world without my microwave,
but take my Wifi? Don’t you dare!!!
Some things are better sent by air!

The Prompt: Handmade Tales—Automation has made it possible to produce so many objects — from bread to shoes — without the intervention of human hands (assuming that pressing a button doesn’t count). What things do you still prefer in their traditional, handmade version?

Many Me’s

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Nude Descending a Staircase picture

The Prompt: Frame of Mind—If you could paint your current mood onto a canvas, what would that painting look like? What would it depict?

Many Me’s
If I should have to paint a picture of my present mood,
I’d be walking down a staircase, and I’d have to do it nude—
My many selves preceding me and coming fast behind—
for there would be not one of me, but many of my kind.
This scene is a mere copy of Duchamp’s solution to
a person who perhaps has found she has too much to do.

My list of tasks is growing, though I’ve dealt with one or two;
but how I’ll deal with everything, I fear I have no clue.
And so I guess my canvas style would simply have to be
like Marcel’s (though not cubist, still with more than one of me.)
That way I’d send off each of me to do what must be done.
They’d do all my labor while I went to have some fun.

While self 1 wrote my daily prompt and self 2 cleaned my shelves,
I’d go out to the water park with all my other selves.
We’d climb up all the ladders and slide down all the slides
and play a game of tug-rope where I would be both sides!
We’d go out to the ice cream place and have a cone or three
and they’d get all the calories with none assigned to me!

We’d take my bad dogs for a walk and I would be so free
Two other me’s would hold the leashes, not the actual me.
I’d loll here in my hot tub, swing in my hammock, too,
while selves from 1 to 9 would do all that I have to do.
They’d figure out my microwave instructions all in Spanish.
They’d sort out all my photographs and clean my loo with Vanish.

Agreeable to every task, they’d never mention “can’t.”
They’ll pick off all the yellow leaves from every drying plant.
They’ll organize my studio that is a horrid mess.
(It’s been that way for many months—a fact I must confess.)
They’d sort out all my closets and organize my drawers,
then go into my Filofax and sort out all the bores.

They’d shape my canned goods into rows—sorted from “A” to “Z.”
which makes it difficult for them, but easier for me.
And though my other selves keep warm from their activity,
my idleness seems not to create any warmth for me.
So although I like my colors and my brush strokes strong and bold,
I wish I’d put some clothes on us, ‘cause I am getting cold!!

Dreaming A Path

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Dreaming A Path

Dream, Fri. Oct 18, 2013

We were at a booth in a café. It was a huge room with booths on every side and each booth had a clock, or at least I thought they did. I don’t think I ever looked. Our alarm started going off and there was no way to turn it off. It was by me and I tried and tried but couldn’t get it off. I said I was just going to unplug it, but Patti said perhaps it was timed with all the other clocks at tables and then it wouldn’t match. I said couldn’t they just reset it when we left? Someone agreed, but still we didn’t unplug it and it went on and on and on. Very annoying. Our booth came equipped with a little dog. It was tiny and light with long very curly white hair that was in loose corkscrew very long ringlets. It was so adorable and affectionate. I held it most of the time. It had legs like wires that went straight down..very skinny…and it jumped a lot. When the waitress came, we told her about the alarm and she said yes, she’d noticed that it was going off…but she didn’t do anything about it. We told her how cute the little dog was and she said yes…but then it seemed like it was the little dog who had the alarm that was going off. We ordered and afterwards I was wanting a dessert but thought I shouldn’t order one. Patti was to my right and I suddenly realized she was eating a very rich chocolate dessert—a sort of fudge flan or very moist slippery cake that was hot with a hot fudge sauce over it. She offered me a taste. It was a very small rectangle…not very big…but I tasted it and immediately said I’d have one, too. It was incredible. Still, the alarm went off. It was driving me crazy! Then I woke up and realized it was my own bedside alarm. I reached up with my eyes still closed and tried to turn it off, but couldn’t find the control. Finally I picked it up, opened my eyes and found the control. It was 8:10. The alarm had been going off for 10 minutes!!!!

My interpretation:

I found this dream in a folder on my computer. I have no memory at all of having dreamed it, and perhaps that distance makes it easier for me to interpret it. In a few weeks, I turn 67. For the past year, I’ve thought repeatedly about death and the fact that if I’m lucky, I probably have only 30 years left. For some reason, that awareness is very stressful. I feel a need to finish everything I’ve started and never completed. Earlier, that consisted of a lot of sorting, construction of storage spaces and weeding out of the contents of my house. That effort is ongoing. What also happened, however, is that I have an incredible drive to get everything published that has been lying around in file cabinets for many many years as well as a need to write new work and somehow disseminate it. My blog is part of that effort, as are my efforts to get all my books on Amazon and Kindle.

Seeing this dream as if for the first time, I clearly see that theme of time running out coupled by a sense of alarm that I need to do something about it. The little dog shows the attractive quality (adorable and affectionate) of finally dealing with all these loose ends—(note all his corkscrew hairs). Those wiry little legs that kept him always active certainly reflect the urgency I’ve been feeling to write write write.

One aspect of this awareness in my real life for a time consisted of my fear that I will stop breathing. This often gets me up gasping at night to run outside to try to breathe. For some reason I haven’t had any of these panic attacks since I started writing every morning. What I interpreted as a growing fear of death and a dread of ceasing to exist was perhaps a fear of not living and creating while I am alive.

I think the interplay between my sister Patti and me in the dream reflects a number of things. One is a difference in our approaches to life. I think in a way, she is more of a rule-follower and since she was my immediate pattern for most of my earlier life, I think a part of me feels this same need, but this is coupled with an equal and stronger need to create my own path in a direction unique from my two older and very competent sisters and to break a few rules to do so. At a very early age, much as I admired and imitated my sisters, I felt the need to prove myself. To find something to know that they didn’t already know. I found this route when I started venturing out at an early age to find new ground where they had not gone before me. It led me first into the homes of friends and strangers where I saw life being acted out in a manner entirely different from my own home. The road led further—to summer camp where I was a stranger to all and vice versa. I loved being the stranger. In choosing a college, I fell back on the reliability and comfort of attending the same school my sister had attended, but in my Jr. year I took my first big leap—a trip around the world on World Campus Afloat. That early adventure in seeing dozens of new and strange cultures set my life path. I’ve been traveling ever since and have been living in Mexico for the past 13 years.

I believe this dream depicts the sense of urgency I’ve had my entire life to “do” something with experience. My art and writing allow me to turn off the alarm for the hours in which I practice them. That small dessert might symbolize the rewards of doing what I need to do to do so.

P.S. An interesting insight I have had just as I started to post this: (And, interestingly enough, wordpress will not accept my blog entry. Perhaps it is insisting I add this P.S. before it does so.) I just got back to Mexico from a visit to the states wherein I visited my oldest sister Betty who is now in the depths of the world of Alzheimer’s. While I was there, she seemed increasingly distressed by the fact that she can no longer communicate, but one day as we were sitting in the living room portion of her small apartment in a managed care Alzheimer’s wing, she motioned to the middle of the floor and said, “Look a that cute little white thing there—that fluffy little white dog!” This was the first incidence that I know of of her actually hallucinating visually, and for some reason it popped into my mind in relation to the little dog in my dream. All of these images—of our dreams as well as our daily life—remind us to live while we can and to do what is most important to us. In my case as well as my sister’s—to communicate. Too late for her, although she continues to try. Not too late for me.

P.S.S.  By the way, the instant I completed the above P.S., the wordpress page that had continued to not allow me to post this blog entry flashed the message:  What do you want to post?  Text? Picture?  I chose text and and you have just read it.

The prompt: Freudian Flips. Do you remember a recent dream you had? Or an older one that stayed vivid in your mind? Today, you’re your own Freud: Tell us the dream, then interpret it for us! Feel free to be as serious or humorous as you see fit, or to invent a dream if you can’t remember a real one.

Note in response to this prompt: (When I think of dreams, I think of Jung, not Freud, and he continues to influence my thoughts and actions much more than Freud ever did.)

 

Medium Rare

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Okay.  Finished!!! The picture is the last thing you’ll see.

The Prompt today is: Rare Medium. Describe a typical day in your life — but do it in a form or in a medium you’ve rarely — if ever – used before. If you’re a photoblogger, write a poem. If you’re a poet, write an open letter. If you’re a travel blogger, write a rant. (These are all examples — choose whatever form you feel like trying out!)

This is a hard one for me because I do poetry or prose or art or photography or rants every day, so what is left?  I guess I’ll have to resort to one of the things I am the worst at: drawing.  This I do not do well, but I will try.  Come back in a few hours and you’ll see the result.

I traveled for 15 hours yesterday so bear with me, but please do come back!!! (Gnashing teeth because I really do want to write a poem so badly.  Will right win out or will norm?????)

Three hours later:

Things I had forgotten before I drew this horrible picture

—How hard it is to draw a straight line.

—How hard it is to draw a curved line

—How hard it is to draw a crooked line.

—That  an 8.5X11 inch drawing was going to be reduced to a point where it is hard to make out detail. Come to think of it, this might be an advantage.  Never mind.

—Why I gave up drawing long long ago

—How humbling it is to display something you do poorly for the world to see.

—That it is actually kind of fun to color

—That it is very very hard to color near the edge of a page.

—That art of any kind, no matter how poor the end result, causes you to enter into a time warp.

Four hours later:

Now that I have my sketch scanned, converted to jpeg, straightened and ready to go, my blog absolutely refuses to accept it. I think perhaps I’m not meant to share my lack of sketching prowess with the world. I’ll try one more time, and then give up.

Half hour later: Okay, I’ll try twice and then give up. Rescanning the picture.

Ten minutes later:  Why is it taking so long to scan this picture when it normally takes a minute or less????

Okay, here it is.  Once I actually saw it on the blog, I decided to move it from first position to last.  Remember. I cannot do 2 dimensional art.  I disavow any responsibility for or pride in the below image:

daily life color004

Those are my three kids–Squeak, Frida and Diego.  Squeak is a cat and Frida and Diego are dogs.  Yes, I really did have to kill a scorpion I found in a drawer first thing this morning.  Yes, that is a volcano in the background. (It is saying, “Look at Me.”)  Not possible to read in this small version. No, I do not have any groceries in my house.  No, my studio is not really this messy.  It is 100 times worse!  No, I am not Alice in Wonderland.  The “Drink Me” glass contains a smoothie.  Thankfully, I’d left one in the freezer as I had none of the proper ingredients. Yes, once knew how to draw perspective but I haven’t the patience for it anymore.

This is absolutely the last drawing of mine you will ever see on this blog!!!!!

 

 

World Like a White Stomach

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DSC06818

World like a White Stomach, Red Optional

My world is not round
and so it does not move in circles
like your world.
It is so small I stand above it, my head in space,
while a two-colored rainbow stretches out in my wake—
a straight line which is an echo
of my unbent trajectory into the universe.
Three navels has my world
for the three births it delivers us to:
into this world, within and out of it.
Each is an adventure more easily seen
in a straight world where everything
is not always repeating itself.
Here, fish swim out of the water.
Birds more commonly walk.
And in the distance, we see colors
not of our world.
Stop and go.
The green of earth.
The red that is only an option as we look away,
searching for the million worlds beyond.

The Daily Post Prompt: One day, your favorite piece of art — a famous painting or sculpture, the graffiti next door — comes to life. What happens next?

Immigration, Misspelled Inspiration and Soap Dispensers

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"Southern Icons of the 20th Century" By Joni Mabe

“Southern Icons of the 20th Century” by Joni Mabe

"Travelers" By Larry Walker

“Travelers” By Larry Walker

Yesterday, I arose at 3 a.m. (after just 3 hours of sleep) to be driven by taxi to the Guadalajara airport to catch a plane to Dallas/Ft. Worth where I would catch a connecting flight on to St. Louis, MO. After visiting Mexican immigration at one end of the airport and pulling two heavy bags the length of the airport to wait in the American Airlines line for an hour, I discovered that bad weather in Dallas had caused them to cancel all flights, and would it be convenient for me to come back tomorrow? No, coming back tomorrow was not convenient! Not only was a friend waiting for me in St. Louis, but the additional two taxi fares would amount to my taxis costing more than my airline flight. American was able to schedule me onto a later Delta flight and so it is that at the hour when I should have arrived in St. Louis, I am instead in the Atlanta airport with three hours left before my flight leaves, sitting next to a man who snuffles like a pig every 30 seconds, held prisoner by the electric power strip providing juice to the loyal MacBook Air that is making it possible for me to tell you today’s story.

If you’ve ever gone through your customs and immigration check in Atlanta, you probably already know what I have discovered: that the Atlanta airport has the longest walk and most circuitous queue lines of any airport so far experienced, after which you arrive at an automatic passport check where you scan your own passport, pose for the most unflattering picture possible, then go through yet another maze that is nothing short of an endurance check/ordeal after which you wait in line forever along with 500 other travelers to again be sorted into lines by an immigration employee on the job for the first day (she told me so) who for some reason has a grudge against your line to the point that the other two lines are empty before she sees fit to select people from the pariah line to again get in line to see one of the 4 humans assigned to double check our worthiness to enter the U.S., walk for another 15 minutes to retrieve our luggage and then wait in yet another line for customs.

By the time I actually made it through customs and began my loooooooong trek to where I could catch a train to another concourse, I was as perspiration-soaked as if I had been through an hour-long workout at the gym. You will have guessed right if you are thinking that once I arrived on “B” concourse, I discovered that my gate was the last one on the concourse. Of course it was! There is, however, a fact that mitigates all of the frustration previously endured, for the corridors of the Atlanta airport leading from the plane to Immigration are lined with some of the best and most varied art I’ve ever seen in any airport exhibition and most art museums. Collage, wall sculpture and paintings made me wish the automatic walkways would stall to give me time enough to actually look at the art—with the result that I got off the moving walkway to walk back to do just that. With no hands free to record any of the names of artists, I’ll just have to leave it to Google or airport authorities to give you more specific information, but the art was whimsical, colorful, original, thought-provoking and sometimes naïf. (For certain of those outsider art pieces giving exhaustive social commentary, do not judge the artistic merit by the spelling.)

A $13 pulled-pork plate assuaged my appetite as at that time it had been 13 hours since I arose to drive to the airport and begin my long day’s journey. But it was a trip to the ladies room that assured me that I was in fact back in the good old U.S.A. Spotless cleanliness, two full toilet paper rolls, paper seat covers, a hook to hang my purse, enough room to store my carry-on rolling bag without having to squeeze myself into a corner to do so, a self-flushing toilet that actually flushed and the piéce de résistance—A SHELF TO PUT MY DRINK ON!!!! Upon my easy exit from the roomy stall, I enjoyed an automatic foam soap dispenser installed in the sink next to the warm water faucet, then found paper towels and trash can within easy reach. This of course made me remember (with no nostalgia) the new movie theater in Ajijic, Mexico—my home town for the past 13 years—where only one sink of the eight present actually works and is, of course, the one furthest away from the only towel dispenser. Ah, Atlanta airport. I forgive thee for all other sins.

 

NaPoWriMo Day 29: Chew the Train

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Chew the Train

A metaphor is a freight train
that gets us within 30 miles
of our final destination,
but we still have to catch a taxi to get all the way there.
And a simile is just a metaphor whose brakes have failed.
If we know that peanut butter
is like a circus on a tired tongue,
does it bring us any closer to the smell of peanut butter?
Elephants and sawdust
and sequined camisoles flavored
with the sweat of 100 performances?
Is that what peanut butter smells like?
Does it taste like candy apples
and too-bitter mustard
on stale buns
and hot dogs turned too long
upon the rollers of their grill?
Does peanut butter feel
like the unoiled bump of the Ferris wheel?
Does it sound like a calliope
or look like an ice cream cone?
Peanut butter is peanut butter.
I rest my case.

So how am I going to write a poem
without metaphors and similes?
How can I write verse
while telling the pure unadulterated truth?
How can I make you taste a poem
that is only itself?

How can I be Janis Joplin
when I’ve been taught to be Joni Mitchell?
A Rose is a Rose is a Rose,
said Gertrude Stein,
predating my insight
by a generation or two.
But this isn’t Paris,
and folks in Mexico
want a dollop of figurative language
in their poetry.

So let me say
that my mind is a busy beaver,
trying to fulfill this impossible task
of twenty little things.
I’m expected to imagine
how peanut butter sounds.
The sucking gumbo sound
of South Dakota mud
or thick mucus of a cold?
Anything but appetizing.
Ay, Caramba! you might say,
but if you were Australian,
you would say, “Don’t come the raw prawn on me, mate,”
and you would mean
“Don’t try to pull the wool over my eyes,”
or “Don’t try to con me, man.”

So let me just say that peanut butter is made
by grinding peanuts so finely
that all the oil comes out
and it acquires the consistency of butter.
It isn’t like butter
nor is it butter.
It acquires the consistency of butter.
This is literal fact.
But to know the taste of peanut butter,
you will need to spread a bit upon a cracker
and have a taste, or grab a finger full.
What you will taste will be peanut butter.
The truth of it. Its reality.

And only then will I tell you
that literal truth doesn’t always tell
the whole truth.

My friend says
it is the peyote leached into the soil
the corn grows from
that gives Mexicans
such a remarkable sense of color.
The bright pigments of imagination
flood his canvasses.
His peyote dreams leak out into the real world
and wed it to create one world.
“Peyote dream” becomes its opposite—
a freight train taking us into the universal truth.
A larger reality.
This stalk of corn, this deer,
this head of amaranth,
all beckon, “Climb aboard.”

So when you bite into a taco
or tamale, when the round taste of corn
meets your tongue, and pleasure tries to flow
like a lumpy river down your throat,
look up at the poet standing in the shadows.
She’ll call herself Remi if you ask,
but do not ask. Instead, look deeper
into the shadows she wears around her like a cloak
and see that it is light that creates shadow.
See the many colors that create the black.
Follow where the corn beckons you to go––
into the other world of poetry and paint
and dance and music. Hot jazz with a mariachi beat.
Chew that train that takes you deeper. Hop aboard
the tamale express and you will ride into your
new life. It will be like your old life magnified
and lit by multicolored lights and the songs of merry-go-rounds
and when you bite into your taco, it will taste
like cotton candy and a snow cone
and your whole life afterwards will be a train that takes you nowhere
except back into yourself—a Ferris wheel
spinning you up to your heights and down again, with every turn,
the gears creaking “Que le vaya bien.”
I hope it goes well with you
and that you see the light
within the shadow
and the colors
in the corn.

glass-gem-corn-2-460

Today’s prompt is called the “Twenty Little Poetry Projects,” and was originally developed by Jim Simmerman. Here are the twenty little projects themselves — the challenge is to use them all in 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.

 

 

NaPoWriMo Day 28: Looking Glass Menagerie

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Looking Glass Menagerie

I am trying to escape the menagerie—
all those selves I hold in front of me
as well as the ones I have let escape.
Those that run ahead—
the ones that are my future selves—
are here, hidden in the portrait that you see.
Domineering, perhaps. But seasoned with
an awareness of what might have produced
all of the parts of myself I try to reign in.
This has produced a certain slowness to connect.
The natural is seasoned with a desire to honor dreams
of what I hope to be. When I look in the mirror,
I see them all: my mother and my grandmother
and my sisters. We demand, are stubborn.
Sometime we are martyrs, stifling tears.
Then suddenly, I pass them by like memories
of nightmares: all the anxiety attacks,
illnesses and heartbreak.
We are all wonderful performers,
using bad luck to fuel good.
The belles of our own ball,
we push back the grim news
of what we fear we really are.
Headstrong, we reach for what we can be.
Utterly addicted to change,
Tony or no Tony,
we are the stars of our own lives.

The prompt today was “to find a news article and to write a poem using (mostly, if not only) words from the article! You can repeat them, splice them, and rearrange them however you like. Although the vocabulary may be “just the facts,” your poem doesn’t have to be — it doesn’t even have to be about the subject of the news article itself.”

With massive tornadoes, politician campaign funding fraud, murder and mayhem being the main stories of the day, I was hard-pressed to find any good news to write about. Finally, I chose a very long theater review in the NY Times which I picked at like a foraging chicken, picking a word here, a word there. Above is the resulting poem.

Here is a link to the NY Times article from which  I drew words : NY Times Article