Category Archives: Poetry

Tanks or Tankas? Day 11 of NaPoWriMo–and with 11 1/2 hours to spare!

Leave a reply

A tanka is a verse form of five lines following the pattern of 5-7-5-7-7 syllables. This poem consists of nine tankas that deal with the question, “Does might make right or does write make might?”

Tanks or Tankas?

It is such pleasure
lying in my morning bed,
I forsake those “shoulds”––
pool aerobics and the gym––
save them for another day.

As I exercise
that switchboard of all muscles,
the marvelous brain,
ideas are pumped like barbells
to create a well-toned verse.

Iron man or sage––
which will win and which will lose?
Is it brain or brawn
that moves our species forward
to survive this crazy race?

Our laptops used for
what––as pens or weaponry?
Which serves us better
in this age’s lethal match
for survival, power, wealth?

Which moves us forward?
Philosopher? Iron Man?
Poet? Soldier? Jock?
Which insures our progress toward
a place as Darwin’s fittest?

Physical fitness
in contemporary thought
wins most of the points
to insure a lengthy life
(and a husband or a wife).

but:

They also serve who
sit and wait upon their bums,
writing out their odes
by recording just what comes.
So now you need to tell us

which of these will win:
the muscle man or soldier
or the poet’s pen?
If muscle is your power
If you think that it will win,

please now consider:
the leg may be the longest
of your muscles, but
the largest strongest muscle
is the one you sit upon!

The Ways I Do Not Love You, Day 10 NaPoWriMo (Phew–with one second to spare.)

18 Replies

“An un-love poem isn’t a poem of hate, exactly — that might be a bit too shrill or boring. It’s more like a poem of sarcastic dislike. “

The Ways I Do Not Love You

I do not want to count the ways I do not love you.
To do so casts me too solidly in your image
without your excuses
for doing what you did:
that you were crazy-jealous,
crazy-in love, crazy-in rejection,
crazy period.

I had always wanted to be loved to distraction,
but being loved to craziness is another thing:
your deep truck tracks carving artless Nazca lines
into the fresh sod of my yard,
the new mailbox snapped off at its base,
the queries from strangers who had met you in a bar
and heard all of the intimate details
of your insane version of our love affair.
The letters to every member of the school board,
every administrator in the district, every lawyer,
every preacher in our town of 50,000,
telling of the wild schoolteacher
and outing her gay friends.

I do not want to count the ways
you proved the heartbreak
of your love for me,
those ways that now delineate
the ways I do not love you.

I do not even love the memory of you
at Vedauwoo, standing on the monolithic rock,
your sun-shy son crouched in its shade.

I do not love the memory
of driving to Jackson Hole,
the twelve-foot-high banks of snow
on either side of the highway
that made it impossible to slide off the road.
The dark, split by our headlights,
pixelated by the mesmerizing onslaught of snow;
and suddenly, the miraculous glimpse of the giant elk
arcing from the left hand snow mass, high above us, over to the bank on the other side,
leaving us spellbound and mute,
as though this was a miracle
neither of us had the words to describe.

What are you, about 21? You asked
that first night at the Ramada.
The music was starting
and I thought you were there to ask me for a dance.
When I answered 26, you smiled that crooked smile
and walked away.
That unpredictable mystery of you
was what kept me intrigued.
I never could stand the ordinary.

Not that I love the memory of this.
And not that I know how long the list would be
of why I do not love you any more.
My mind wanders through the memory of you
like a lazy woman picking chocolates:
testing one and discarding it.
Choosing another.
Finally deciding
perhaps it is the brand of chocolates
that does not suit.
Oh, my once-darling,
I despise the thought of you.
Even these intrusive memories
cannot win me back.

You told me once, “Babe, you are so good
that you don’t even realize your powers.”
You’d lost your job and most of your friends
and blamed it all on me.
Even your friends had chosen my side, you said,
blaming me when I didn’t even know there was a game,
let alone its rules or its consequences.

I do not want to number all the ways
I do not love you anymore.
Suffice it to say that once over,
love might as well have never been.
Like a snowflake on a sun-warmed sidewalk,
there is no evidence
of its ever having existed.

Better to exhaust one’s efforts on a new love,
for there is no way to list the ways you do not love.
No way to bring to light now that list
that you have never written.

That list.

That list that you keep hidden
in the back of your heart
with all of your life’s other
impossibilities.

Lost Person (Later, Gathers Her Own Reward) Day 9, NaPoWriMo

Leave a reply

Lost Person
(Later, Gathers Her Own Reward)

She is lost in her home town.
She lives there like a tourist.
Things she sees every day
still don’t look familiar.
Everyone there finds her odd
and she goes into their houses
as though they are foreign countries.

Some of us find the world
in the places where we were born.
Some of us can find no place there at all
except in retrospect.

We write books about these lost places
as though we knew what they were all about;
as though just by living there, we understood that place.
Actually, by writing about them we visit them again
and feel as much a stranger as we did before.
That is how we can stand to write about them.
They become the exotic other lands we’ve traveled to.
Misfortune becomes the best part of the story;
and we, at last, are grateful for it.

Excuses, Excuses (Day 8 of NaPoWriMo)

Leave a reply

Excuses, Excuses

On day eight,
my poem was late.
Alas, there was no time
for any type of rhyme
let alone ottava
before my java.
Then, once my day had started,
I fussed and arted.
The time just wasn’t prime
to pen iambic rhyme––
no variety of verse
long or terse,
rhymed or blank
in my memory bank.

Later in the day, I had to rap
with friends newly arrived, and then a nap
consumed my time for two more hours,
then flowers
to water and a swim to take.
My day, in short, a piece of cake
but nonetheless, no time in it
for having writ.

A dinner invitation was what next
usurped my plans to ponder over text.
Chiles relleno made my life replete
as finally, I reached iambic beat.
A game of dominos was next to steal
my writing time—no time for me to deal
with beats and stanzas,let alone with rhyme.
Quite bluntly, then—there isn’t always time
to meet my obligations versical.
My day, in short, grew worsical
in terms of my poetic obligation,
as I let down the NaPoWriMo nation.

By now the clock had crept
to twelve and then it leapt
to two AM. That’s when I left
my friends bereft
as I deserted them to go and write.
I braved aloneness and the night,
approached my desk and plainly reckoned
to take pen in hand—but then my pool beckoned.
Through the window how the moon
caressed it’s surfaces, and all too soon,
it was more than just a whim.
I had to swim.
That is why
I am one shy
and do not have a
r i m a   o t t a v a ! ! ! ! !

 

NaPoWriMo Day 7: The Invitation

Leave a reply

The prompt today for NaPoWriMo is to write a poem where every line is a declarative sentence and the last line is a question. I have changed the order of the prompt.

The Invitation

“You are invited to a party at our house, Saturday at 7.
Please bring a dish to share and what you want to drink.”

Another invitation for Pot Luck–
what the f—?
I’m to bring a dish to share and what I want to drink.
This makes no sense at all is what I think.
If I’m going to cook a dish and buy some wine,
I’ll just stay home, where all of it is mine!
Folks, a party is for entertaining friends––
Not the other way around! My poem now ends!

Saving Daylight

1 Reply

I live in Mexico. We just changed over to DST today—a few weeks after the U.S. did. As though DST isn’t complicated enough, countries get to arbitrarily decide when to switch to it. Obviously, this poem was written during the fall switchover, not the spring.  I’ve never been able to remember which is switching on, which switching off.  At any rate, this is not my daily NaPoWriMo poem as it wasn’t written today.

Saving Daylight

After altering the course of rivers,
moving or removing coastlines,
forests, ozone-protection,
minerals and fossil fuel,
we look for what next to change
and notice time.

(Perhaps time, a manmade concept anyway,
can be less-devastatingly tampered with?)

There are those who know
better than God or nature
when light is needed
and they have set the world right.

We are saving daylight
all over the world,
taking it from the morning’s wallet
and transferring it
to a back pocket.

Led like blind lambs,
we change our clocks,
lost in dark mornings
so games of golf or tennis
can be played well past
the natural end of day.

Gardeners and house builders
climb the hills to work
lighting their ways with flashlights,
in search of that lost morning hour of light.

Like sheep made clumsy, stumbling over stiles,
schoolchildren’s toes
feel for cobblestones in the dark
between street lamps
spaced a block apart.

as, like investors too anxious
to save up for a rainy day,
a world in the dark
makes forced deposits every morning,
withdraws them, interest free, each evening.
Her animals and birds and tribes
lost to schemes
carefully planned.

NaPoWriMo Day 6- Just in Time

6 Replies

I Promised NaPoWriMo

(or: Why you should never drink tequila when you haven’t finished your daily poem yet.)
11:09 P.M., April 6, 2013

Toss in the tequila
ice cubes and a lime.
Put it in a blender
and mix it for a time.

Put salt on your glass rim.
Pour the liquid in.
Take a little sip now.
Drinking’s not a sin.

If I hadn’t had two
with my evening meal,
I’d be writing verse now
you could take for real.

But Margarita got me
and holds me prisoner now.
I couldn’t engineer a poem.
I can’t remember how.

If you’ve a mind to scold me,
please don’t do it now.
I need to write something
to stay true to my vow.

There are laws against drunk driving
and driving while you’re stoned,
but nothing that forbids you
from writing when you’re zoned.

So please forgive this sad and
paltry little rhyme.
They need to make drunk writing
A misdemeanor crime.

To save you from the souls like me
who dare to take up pen,
disregarding just what
condition they are in.

You should give us pillows
and send us to our beds.
Remove our clothes, take off our shoes
and pat us on our heads.

Tell us that tomorrow
will be another day.
But now, for sure, the writing
we should put away.

Lock up our computers,
hide our ball point pens.
Throw away our pencils
in the garbage bins.

Please try to divert us
and help us to forget
so there will be no errant
verses to regret.

When we wake tomorrow,
we’ll hold our heads up high
with no embarrassing poetry,
no need to wonder why.

We posted here such drivel
that it could make one weep.
We just kept on writing.
We should have been asleep.

We did it for NaPoWriMo
against out better sense.
The late hour made us silly.
Tequila made us dense.

Tomorrow we’ll make up for it––
put bees within our bonnet
and write an ode, a ballad,
A haiku or a sonnet

Once more you’ll dare to call us friend
and read our royal rhyme.
I don’t know why I’m calling me
“We” all of this time.

I really don’t feel royal
my identity’s not split.
I simply started writing
and “we” just seemed to fit.

I can’t seem to finish
this awful little rhyme.
So I’m just going to have to
Stop and holler TIME!!!

The Deadline (A Tweeted Poem) April 5 Poetry Posting for NaPoWriMo

2 Replies

dogwomanallalonecomputerwindowrubberboneeyelockpleadinginvitationonethrownbonebringsjubilationfurtherbeggingisfornaughtasecondlaterfunforgot

The Gardener April 4 Post

3 Replies

The Gardener

There is a story hidden
In the majolica mug
with watermelon,
pear and grapes painted
on a yellow ground
that sits on the
terraza table.

Pasiano, the man who drank
echinacea tea with honey
from this cup, coughed
loudly behind the hand
that cradled the telephone,
sly smile betraying a love story
as clearly as the small child
who sometimes accompanies him to work.

Some senora’s, he tells me,
but the child has
his eyes and solid legs,
his shy manner,
lives with his mother
and her husband,
but sits on my steps
with a sugar cookie––
betraying no more secrets
on purpose
than his father does.

“When Life Gives You Lists, Make Poetry” April 3 Post

“An Ode (of Sorts) to NaPoWriMo” 

or

“When Life Gives You Lists, Make Poetry” 

The poem in a nutshell:

A poem a day might be more possible

if only I were not so bossable.

Or, The unabridged version:

I had the best intentions when

this morning I picked up my pen;

but then the phone began to ring

and all day long, thing after thing

presented obstacles to rhyme,

ate up attention, devoured my time.

First, the printer who needed pay

of course, lived 15 miles away.

 Two hours later, home at last,

I had to cook a light repast

 for company who now have left

me feeling not a bit bereft.

My laptop open, my mind about

to function, I was beckoned out.

My mood was less than  joculant

as the gardener asked for flocculant

 for pool algae gone amuck.

When? Now? It was just my luck!

He made a list, demanded more

since I was going to the store.

He added chlorine and algaecide

as I considered suicide.

Finally home, I yearned to go

devise some verse, but to my woe,

my propane tank had just run dry.

We made the call. They said they’d try

to make it out within the hour.

My mood grew crabby, dark and dour.

From then on, things just kept on being

averse to my poesy-eeing.

Thing after thing came up to do.

If I know you, maybe some from you!

I‘m just a girl who can’t say no

so this is how ‘twas bound to go

until I figured how to make

adversity a piece of cake. 

Make the best out of the worse.

Let interruptions become the verse!