Category Archives: Poetry

Poems in many categories: Loss, NaPoWriMo

Excuses, Excuses (Day 8 of NaPoWriMo)

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

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

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

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

dogwomanallalonecomputerwindowrubberboneeyelockpleadinginvitationonethrownbonebringsjubilationfurtherbeggingisfornaughtasecondlaterfunforgot

The Gardener April 4 Post

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!

“Web of Night” April 2 Post

I’m participating in this program where I’ve taken an oath to write a poem a day.  Here is today’s poem!  I need a website to link to their website, so I’m using the only one I have–this one.  By the end of the month, there will be 30 poems here…

 

Web of Night

We have been talking online for hours
and, as usual, lost track of time.
Now, after his good-bye,
it would be easier to go to bed
than to act on his reminder
that there should be hot water
in my hot tub tonight,
pumped in earlier from the volcanic depths,
left to cool all day.

I am living in sub-tropical Mexico
where things like volcanoes are everyday things.
I drink the volcano.
I swim and soak in it.
I absorb its heat,
draw from its power,
grow stronger.

This is the fountain of youth, I’ve often said.
Too long away from it, I start to grow creaky and old––
reversing those effects only by coming home again
to lie in its steaming bath.

I look up from it now
at a night sky unlike any other––
only the major stars distinct, like light seen through
irregularly perforated steel. The stars standing out individually,
between them the remarkable floss of clouds stretched
sparse as angel hair on a Christmas tree
to reveal the ornaments
between.

No one else awake in this morning hour
so early that it is really still the night before.

2 AM. Neither a dog’s bark nor a burro’s bray.
No harsh staccato though the cool night air
of air brakes of trucks
too wide for the two-lane carretera.
down below.

Alone in my world.

The clouds, while I’ve been thinking blind,
have obscured the stars
behind a thicker web of cotton wool.

I think of love so far away,
wishing it nearer but feeling it close
as the keyboard in the room behind me.
There are many of us
caught in this Web of internet romance.
Here we need not fear
the loss of a love
that is a part of an addiction
to the mystery of absence
yet words so close
they are almost
but not quite
touch.

“Old English Teachers” April 1 Post

Someone sent me an invitation from NaPoWriMo to write a poem a day for a month, but I need a website to post them. Since this is the only blog/website I have, I’m going to use this one. There will be a poem each day for a month, all written on the day they were posted, dashed off quickly, but what fun to have completed 30 poems by the end of the month. Please join me and post your poems here, as well.

Earlier today, someone posted a comment, then wrote back to change “lying” to “laying.” Of course, I had to fight my better nature and write back that he was actually right the first time. I then included this little poem, written in about a minute, to soften that pedantic blow. Yes, I really am a “reformed” English teacher. But I backslide now and then:

Old English teachers never die.
They just advise on “lay or lie?”
Driving friends who are grammatically hazy
Completely crazy!!!!