Tag Archives: NaPoWriMo 2020

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.

Patchwork

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Mask quilt by Deanna Taylor
Detail from mask quilt
African motif quilt by Deanna Taylor

Please click on photos to enlarge.

Patchwork

I’ve put my life together
like a patchwork quilt,
and almost finished.
It is beautiful—
the lawn freshly groomed,
drawers organized,
all of the pictures straightened on the walls.
Friends, travel, career, family, art, writing–
a happy life that 
I have stitched together,
hiding the pain under the seams.

The NaPoWriMo prompt today is  to peruse the work of  a twitter bot, and use a line or two, or a phrase or even a word that stands out to you, as the seed for your own poem.  “Under the seams runs the pain.” is the line from a Mary Ruefle tweet that I selected as my seed. When I Googled it, it said that it was a quote by  Anne Carson in Autobiography of Red,

For some reason, my Photos system has gone crazy on my computer and I can’t preview or edit them or get them down to size, so I’m publishing this and will try to add photos later. Thanks to Forgottenman, we now have photos.  I hope.

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 √

 

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.

Childhood Games Revisited: NaPoWriMo Day 1

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Childhood Games Revisited

Hide and seek, hide and seek.
I set them down and then I peek
here and there, in purse and pocket.
Find my keys and grandma’s locket
but I do not find my glasses
even after countless passes
over tables, desks and floors.
Opening cupboards, searching drawers.
My life is like that childhood game,
but it’s hardly just the same,
For unlike others seeking me,
what I’m seeking I cannot see.

 

The first NaPoWriMo prompt this year is to write a poem wherein our life is described in terms of a metaphor that is an action. I am comparing my life to playing hide and seek. More literal than figurative, I fear.

(If you’re not familiar, NaPoWriMo – the National Poetry Writing Month – happens every April, an offshoot of NaNoWriMo. Back in 2013 I joined the movement, and I’ve been writing poems daily ever since. If you’re curious, HERE is my first NaPoWriMo poem!)