Category Archives: Poem

Haynaku for NaPoWriMo 2020, Day 10 (Kitten on the Keys)

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Kitten on the Keys

Four
months gone
or maybe more

still
she hears
a closing door

thinks
it’s him
walking the floor

but
all is empty
space and time

no
kisses fond
or words sublime

footsteps
are but
creak and groan

she 
lies here
listening all alone

footsteps
on the 
roof top rafter

found
in type
the morning after

once
a wife
no regrets sold

she
doesn’t know
the story told

kitten
paws heed
no man’s barriers

make
the perfect
love note carriers

 

This is a true story. Today while cleaning and organizing my art studio, I found a bag with old notes from my husband in it. Included was this message found typed out on my computer a few months after he died. The kittens loved to walk over the keys and I had heard Talulah or Annie do so the night before. What came out was gobbledygook with “once a wife no regrets sold.” typed out in the middle of it. For nineteen years, I’ve been trying to figure out what the “sold” was about unless it was that we’d put our house up for sale and bought one in Mexico three weeks before my husband died. This message was received as I lay on the floor on an inflatable mattress in the bedroom of the house we would have shared in Mexico. Nope. No regrets, ever, concerning the move to Mexico, but it took me 8 years to stop feeling married.
This is Annie about 16 years later, perhaps remembering her one successful message on those keys she walked over so many times in the 19 years she shared here with me. She was just a kitten in the time period this poem describes.

 

The day 10 prompt for NaPoWriMo is to write a haynaku. Six word stanzas with lines of 1, then 2, then 3 words.

Set in Concrete

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Below is a collage of concrete poetry I’ve done over the past six years. Please click on images to increase the size and read the poems.

 

 

The NaPoWriMo prompt is to write a concrete poem. Here are a few.

Plumbing the Depths

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Plumbing the Depths

They call him the professor because of his great wit.
Everything he says has perspicacity in it!
The way he wrangles words should be no great surprise,
for he’s a modern Shakespeare in a plumber’s rough disguise.
Once he unplugs your loo, he is not finished, but instead
he shares a legendary quip to clear out his own head.

Word prompts for the day are: perspiscacity, wrangle, surprise, legendary and professor

Forward and Back Poem

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You need to read this poem from top to bottom and then bottom to top to get the message. Sent to me by my friend Patricia Dawn and published with her permission. Love it.

Refugees
by Brian Bilston

They have no need of our help
So do not tell me
These haggard faces could belong to you or me
Should life have dealt a different hand
We need to see them for who they really are
Chancers and scroungers
Layabouts and loungers
With Bombs up their sleeves
Cut-throats and thieves
They are not
Welcome here
We should make them
Go back to where they came from
They cannot
Share our food Share our homes
Share our countries
Instead let us
Building a wall to keep them out
It is not okay to say
These are people just like us
A place should only belong to those who are born there
Do not be so stupid to think that
The world can be looked at another way

 (now read from bottom to top)        

Corona Confession

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Corona Confession

My house is in shambles and yes, I’m contrite.
I shudder to see what was once a delight.
My Kindle’s been lost for at least a whole week.
Though I look and I look, I see not what I seek.

The videos loaned me a fortnight ago
still sit on my table, lined up in a row
along with a file, unfettered and scattered
of poems from the past that I really thought mattered

ten days ago when I resurrected
them from an old file folder that I detected
archived in a box hidden under the bed
(Though they probably would have gone better unread.)

Nonetheless, they remain on my table these days
as I wander around in a sheltering haze,
cooking a microwave cup cake or eight
and wondering why I am putting on weight.

Since there’s no one to witness my slothful adventures,
I don’t bother with underwear, makeup or dentures.
If it weren’t for this blog, none would know my disgrace,
for there’s no one to witness my falling from grace!

Prompt words today are contrite, shambles, grace, adventure and witness.

As an interesting footnote to this posting, did you happen to notice that little blue edge poking out from under the tablet on top of the box of videos?  Guess what? My Kindle!!!!

Restoring the Garden

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Screen Shot 2020-04-06 at 1.53.28 AM

Restoring the Garden

Mankind’s not in a bubble, we are linked to Nature’s plan.
There are no separate provinces for animals and man.
All the riches of the world aren’t here for just our pleasure.
What we do to nature, it returns in equal measure.
This folly has gone far enough. The fools must be curbed.
The balances of nature have been cruelly disturbed.

Take back control from those who unwisely wield their power,
or nature will find other ways to make us cringe and cower.
She has put us in a prison in judgement for our sin,
providing us with jailers who control us from within
while those we have mishandled roam freely all around—
Fly and swim and crawl and run, scamper, leap and bound.

Only we are prisoners and will be ’til we’ve learned
not to take more than our share or more than we have earned.
This absurd behavior of the naughty little boys
who have seized our planet’s riches as their private cache of toys
will bring us all to ruin if we don’t curb their powers,
for they cannot see the truth of things up in their lofty towers.

 

For NaPoWriMo 2020, Day 6: Write a poem inspired by characters in Hieronymous Bosch’s painting “The Garden of Earthly Delights. “

Oxycontin Dream: NaPoWriMo, Day 4

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Oxycontin Dream

“Eggplant,” he says, at two in the morning.
“What if I carved an eggplant
and made it look exactly the same inside as outside.”
“What would you carve it from?” I ask.
I already told you.  Eggplant.”

His eyes roll back, his mind still caught
in the penumbra of his inspiration.
He has been having artistic inspiration all night long.
Now that he suspects his last joint is welded,
his last stone drilled and carved and smoothed,
he is regretting not creating
that one last great piece.

For hours, his arms reach up
in perfect pantomime
joining wood to stone,
stitching paper to frames.

“See that shadow behind Lisa’s head?”  he asks me.
“Well, bring it over here and put it on top,
then take the bed rail off and add it to the bottom.”

When he sleeps, his lips move.
Words almost connected come out half-digested.
Hands reach out and clutch.
“Oh, it’s gone,” he says.  Over and over,
reaching out for each thing almost grasped.

 

 

For NaPoWriMo day four, we are to write a poem based on a dream.

Morning Ritual

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Morning Ritual

For NaPoWriMo Day three we are to do pretty much what I’ve been doing every day for the past six years, so I’m combining it with my usual five prompt sites, whose words of the day are: online, lackluster, help, haze and wonder. (When I tried to add five more words to use this for the NaPoWriMo prompt as well, my computer went crazy and the editor turned everything pink and started flashing off and on and erased the first line of the poem, so I guess  WP doesn’t want me to combine prompts, but I’m going to try again. I’ll pick 5 more words at random from sheets of paper scattered on my desk: beginners, solving, developed, warm and milk. Instead of using the rhyming dictionary, I’ll use the one in my head, which works better for me. Okay, here I go again…..)

If your online life’s lackluster, let me help to clear the haze.
It’s no wonder that beginners might feel somewhat in a daze.
Solving all these NaPoWriMo prompts can be a chore.
You develop one poem and next day, must write one more!
Warm wishes I send out to you and others of your ilk.
If I were your mommy, there’d be cookies and warm milk,
but, alas, I’m miles away and locked up in seclusion,
dealing on my own with this confusing ten-word fusion!

online √
lackluster √
help √
haze √
wonder √
beginners √
solving √
develop √
warm √
milk √

 

One’s Company

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A new solar system?

One’s Company

Must you put it in my mind that I will be lonely
just because my life has boiled down to just me only?
That we are not enough for us may prove to be a fiction.
Just a recent sort of fad spread by TV’s depiction
of solitude as something harsh, stressing what we lack,
yet our ship can stay buoyant with just one to hold its tack.

There are so many selves in us. Now there’s time to converse.
The you that you’ve been up ’til now may be the very worse!
Wander into your heartland and see the you’s you’ll find.
Who knows what you’ll discover now that you’re in a bind.
The mind’s a worthy raider, seeking out new plunder.
There may be hidden parts of you full of joy and wonder.

It’s hard to get inside yourself when there’s so much to do—
so many new discoveries and worlds to wander through.
We’ve plundered all the gold mines and withdrawn all the oil.
There’s barely any place on earth left for us to spoil.
But now nature’s decided to produce the biggest clue
that it’s time to mine the resources within the rest of you.

Prompt words today are lonely, fiction, buoyant, raider and heartland.

 

Bali Afternoon, NaPoWriMo, Apr 2, 2020

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Bali Afternoon

Their shadows float behind them in the afternoon.
Sari-clad, they hurry, ahead of the monsoon
where water sheets in currents, a brutal driving hand
sweeping away the humid heat of this exotic land.

Morning-listless palm trees dance to  gamelan of rain.
The dust of temples washed away, they glisten once again.
Monkeys cower in branches. Dogs slink away to hide.
Only water in the streets. All else has gone inside.

In the shadows of their studios, the batik-makers hold
their wax-pots, streaming rivers of waxy molten gold.
They’ll stem the flood of colors as each gently pours
precise tiny rivers that echo those outdoors.

Shadows in the corners. Great baths of brown and blue,
that when the liquid wax is hard, they’ll dip their cloth into.
Then boil off the wax so they can make rivers anew
A different course determined for each successive hue.

Outside the monsoon blows away and sun comes out again.
As all the voices of the world—the music and the din
start up again and heat comes back to bake the village street.
Mud turns to dust, sweat beads the brows of everyone you meet.

Tomorrow in the afternoon, another hour of rain,
for nature follows her own steps over and again,
like the batik artist, who dips his cloth once more,
dries the cloth, gets out his pot, and once more stars to pour.

Sheltering from the Monsoon, Ubud, Bali, 1996

 

The NaPoWriMo Prompt, Day 2 is to write a poem about a specific place.