Tag Archives: continuing education

“Looking” for dVerse Poets, May 3, 2024

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     Click on photos to enlarge. 

                                                                       LOOKING

Every Sunday, sitting
on a small wooden chair
memorizing verses from a Bible with my name
stamped in golden letters on the cover,
singing “Jesus loves me, this I know,”
I found a box but didn’t fit inside.

Then in college, 
books and beer and Buddha,
that expanded religion of poetry
and midnight discussions in
the game room. Rumi, Roethke,
Donne and Philosophy 101.
Time after time,
I found a box but didn’t fit inside.

Moving once more into a wider
world with no hard chairs. Just
a backpack and the classroom of an open road,
putting things learned into practice,
that religion of experience, heady,
I found again, box after box, but didn’t fit inside.

For dVerse Poets this week, we were asked to compose ‘Bop’ poems.

The ‘Bop’ poetic form has 23 total lines in three stanzas ordered thus, with the same one line refrain following each of the three stanzas:

  1. a six-line stanza – that poses a problem;
  2. an eight-line stanza – that expands upon that problem;
  3. a six-line stanza – that solves, or fails to solve, the problem

For this prompt, we are to include the following line as the refrain after each of the three stanzas: I found a box and put a room inside
OR:
I found a box… [add your own words to complete the line]

Prompt guidelines:
No mandatory rhyme or meter;
Experiment with enjambment;
Use minimalistic grammar

To Kiss or Not to Kiss?

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To see what led up to this poem, you must first go to Forgottenman’s blog and peek in on a Skype conversation we had prior to my writing it. Go HERE to see his blog, then hurry back here. (In case you wonder who Remi is, that’s what Forgottenman calls me.  Long story…

To Kiss or Not to Kiss.

Please forgive my oscillation
due to my slight trepidation
concerning your excitation
due to your anticipation
of a proposed osculation.
But I fear your oscitation
creates a slight oppilation
blocking much of my elation
concerning your machination.
Will there be conciliation
or gradual occultation
leading to my castigation
and reduction of your station
as simply a tiny ration
of my love life education?

Below are the words he prescribed to be included in a poem, along with their definitions, which he did not bother to provide. Must say, I had never heard of four of them:

Oscillation: to move back and forth between two points, like a pendulumTo vary between two states, amounts, feelings, or opinions
To be undecided about something, or waver between conflicting positions or courses of action
Osculation: kiss
Oscitation:  the act of being inattentive.
Oppilation: the act of crowding or filling together, an obstruction, particularly in the lower intestines.
Occultation: the state of being hidden from view or lost to notice.
Conciliation: the action of stopping someone from being angry; placation, the action of mediating between two disputing people or groups.re settled through conciliation by the official body”

These are additional rhyming words added by me. None of them obscure, so no definitions necessary:  anticipation elation trepidation education excitation castigation machination station ration.

Degrees of Possession

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Degrees of Possession

When a ghost is newly dead and lacking in his knowledge,
is it perhaps required of him to go to haunting college?
Does he become a boogeyman, thereby saving face
only when he’s studied hard and learned to glide with grace
up the stairs and down the stairs and way down to the basement,
polishing his scary moves and practicing debasement?
Will he then earn the esteem of every other ghoul
who passed his apprenticeship at apparition school?

Prompt words for the day are haunting, college, boogeyman, esteem and grace.

Yes, that’s me scaring my sis Patti way back when I was trying to earn my spook degree. If you can think of a better name for this poem, please suggest it. This was as good as I could do.

Continuing Education

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Continuing Education

It’s true that school is great for teaching gerunds, nouns and clauses.
Also for the how-to-do’s, the whens and the becauses.
And so I don’t regret my years in university
learning of the human mind and its diversity.

Couplets, sonnets, iambs—their knowledge served me well.
Chaucer took me to Canterbury. Dante? Straight to Hell.
Will Shakespeare gave me standards of wit to try to mimic,
and modern poets formed my taste from  Oliver to Simic.
But where I really found a classroom that appealed to me
was after school was over, when I was finally free.
Backpacking was geography: islands, mainlands, seas,
and I learned my geology rock-hunting on my knees.

I learn a little bit of life from everyone I meet—
the art of speech in barrooms, diplomacy in the street.
Biology from baby birds fallen from the nest
and taught to fly from towel racks, their wings put to the test.

All the art I ever studied simply came from looking—
geometry in midnight skies, chemistry in cooking.
And though the internet gives facts in every form and guise,
It’s life that serves us best because it’s life that makes us wise.

 

The prompt word today is educate. This is a rewrite of a poem written over two years ago.

Continuing Education

It’s true that school is great for teaching gerunds, nouns and clauses.
Also for the how-to-do’s, the whens and the becauses.
And so I don’t regret my years in university
where I learned about the human mind and its diversity.

Couplets, sonnets, iambs–their knowledge served me well.
Chaucer taught me how to travel, Dante?– to avoid Hell.
Will Shakespeare gave me standards of wit to try to mimic.
And modern poets formed my taste from  Oliver to Simic

But where I really found a classroom that appealed to me
was after school was over, when I was finally free.
Backpacking was geography: islands, mainlands, seas.
And I learned my geology rock-hunting on my knees.

I learn a little bit of life from everyone I meet.
The art of speech in barrooms, diplomacy in the street.
Biology from baby birds fallen from the nest,
and taught to fly from towel racks, their wings put to the test.

All the art I ever studied simply came from looking.
Geometry in midnight skies, chemistry in cooking.
And though the internet gives facts in every form and guise,
It’s life that serves us best because it’s life that makes us wise.

IMG_0884
As I was writing this poem, my house guest came down with this sodden baby bird, rescued from Morrie who had the entire fledgling in his mouth.  It appears not to be hurt, so it is possible Morrie saved it when it was washed out of its nest by torrential rains this morning. Remembering earlier rescued birds, I of course made use of it in my poem.  He’s now nestled in towels in a small cage with a gentle heater blowing him dry.

To read more about the continuing saga of the baby bird, go HERE.

Daily Prompt: In response to The Daily Post’s writing prompt: “Fifteen Credits.” If you’re in school, are you enjoying your classes? If you’re out of school, what do you miss about it — or are you glad those days are over?