Don’t
Who can love
a bit of sweetness
so lacking
at its heart
that it’s more not there than there?
A donut lover!
The prompt for Day 7 of NaPoWriMo is to write a shadorma. Image by Matt Walsh on Unsplash, used with permission.
The shadorma is a six-line, 26-syllable poem. The syllable count by line is 3/5/3/3/7/5. So, like the haiku, the lines are relatively short.
For NaPoWriMo 2021, Day 6, the prompt is: Go to a book you love. Find a short line that strikes you. Make that line the title of your poem. Write a poem inspired by the line. Then, after you’ve finished, change the title completely.
The line I chose was “Not all those who wander are lost.” from —The Lord of the Rings by J.R.R. Tolkein. This is the poem that resulted. The quote in the last line of the poem is from the title character in Hamlet, by Wm. Shakespeare.
Inside My Sister’s Mind
In my life, sometimes,
when I was farthest from knowing where I was,
I was the closest to finding myself.
Is this how it is
for those who wander
the countless corridors of dementia?
Do they encounter themselves,
again and again,
unstuck from time?
Do our constant attempts to bring them back
hamper their journeys,
start them over again,
frustratingly?
Every road we travel
need not be the same road—straight and chronological.
Dreams teach us that.
Unstick us.
Put our minds in the clouds to float
hors d’oeuvres of memory,
a bite here
and a bite there.
Who are we to try to attempt to force feed an entire meal?
Perhaps dementia is a diet, of sorts, for the mind.
Selecting the most delectable,
forsaking the usual progression.
For our whole lives, we stuff ourselves
in a predictable manner,
from soup to crème brûlée.
Perhaps those lost to us are only lost to us,
but not themselves.
Perhaps their minds, led by a different palate,
enjoy a picnic of pick-and-choose,
spread out over a meadow
on a blanket that obscures
memory
to allow them to enjoy
each morsel
unclogged
by the memory of the last.
“There are more things in heaven and Earth, Horatio,
Than are dreamt of in your philosophy.”
Safety in Numbers
It might beseem the patriarch to forego actions radical,
forsaking them for pastimes more blandly mathematical.
Discourse over Pi and coffee a safer course, by far,
than plotting revolution at a local bar.
That there’s safety in numbers is a much-repeated platitude
much favored over taking risks with a subversive attitude.
Prompt words today are radical, patriarch, beseem and coffee. Image by Jeswin Thomas on Unsplash, used with permission.
And for NaPoWriMo, Day 5
Click on images to enlarge.
Empty Cities
The ghosts of hamburgers lurk in the air,
waiting for children no longer there.
All of their voices turned empty and spare,
waiting lines empty and every chair
devoid of bodies. Each table bare.
To where have they gone? Do you know where?
If people all vanished, would the world care?
Would the lynx and the bobcat, the fox and the hare
and deer from the forests and crocodiles dare
to enter our shopping malls and broach the stair
forever silent, frozen and still?
Would they climb the escalator’s metal hill
and move into spaces filled with our things?
Jackets and towels and soup bowls and rings?
Refrigerators, bicycles and shoes,
donuts and bagels and pretzels and booze?
Tip over displays and ponder just what
we ever accomplished with all of this glut?
When we are gone will the animals wonder
what they can do with all of this plunder?
Will they swim in our pools and loll on our greens?
Will they scratch their wild backs on our mowing machines?
Leap over our cars and stream over our bridges,
enter our houses and nose through our fridges?
Will they make a nest of the socialite’s mink?
Have dozens of babies in our kitchen sink?
Remove stuffing from mattresses to create burrows?
Tunnel under our lawns to make ridges and furrows?
Will monkeys swing from our huge chandeliers?
Chimps drive our cars and strip all the gears?
Cows graze through our parks and horses run free,
no saddles inhibiting their liberty?
Just imagine our world once mankind is vanished.
Once we’ve insured we are finally banished.
Clean air and clean oceans. No traffic or noise.
No cars and no airplanes. No rush hour noise.
No traffic or crowds. No exhaust pipes or trash.
No credit cards, coupons or coinage or cash.
What we saw as improvements will all rust away,
covered with vines, to slowly decay.
Mankind just a segment of time’s stony layers,
our music and art and headlines and prayers
all just one strata within the earth’s stories,
buried like all of her other brief glories.
After we’ve suffered earth’s most recent purge,
and we’re all gone, what else will emerge?
Love’s Blindfold
The sunset painted you and me
against a bright raspberry sea.
My eyelash pressed against your lips,
I missed the passing of three ships.
Such freedom does enchantment bring
to cancel every other thing.
to pull the wool over our eyes,
all else but love to exorcise.
Here is the NaPoWriMo prompt that led to the above poem:
And now for our prompt. This one is a bit involved, which is why I’m giving it to you on a Saturday. Today, I’d like to challenge you to make a “Personal Universal Deck,” and then to write a poem using it. The idea of the “Personal Universal Deck” originated with the poet and playwright Michael McClure, who gave the project of creating such decks to his students in a 1976 lecture at Naropa University. Basically, you will need 50 index cards or small pieces of paper, and on them, you will write 100 words (one on the front and one on the back of each card/paper) using the rules found here.
Don’t agonize over your word choices. Making the deck should be fun and revealing, as you generate words that sound “good” to you. The fact that the words are mainly divided among the five senses should be helpful in selecting words that you like the sound of, and that have some meaning personal to you. For example, my deck contains “harbor,” “wool,” “murmur,” “obsidian,” and “needle.”
Once you have your deck put together, shuffle it a few times. Now select a card or two, and use them as the basis for a new poem.
In lieu of choosing just two cards, I kept drawing more cards and choosing one of the words on it, front or back, to include in my poem.The words I chose were paint, raspberry, eyelash, lips and sea. For
The farther up the mountain we went, the smaller the road became. I was on the outiside and for most of the way the drop was severe–with no siderails or walls or shoulders. Vertigo? Yes.
The Road Less Taken in a Modern Age
Who wanders for pleasure, wanders alone
marking no boundary, barrier, zone.
The earth has no limits and time has no chime,
my steps undetermined by schedule or clime.
This used to be my modus operandi—
travel my sweet tooth and freedom my candy.
No email or Google, no iPad or phone,
without Internet service, I rolled like a stone.
But today I am traveling from town to town
with heavier luggage–more weighted down.
And though I go singly, I’m never alone
thanks to my computer, my Kindle and phone.
Right now I’m imprisoned and my progress is bound
by the cords of my ear buds confusingly wound
round my camera charger and Ethernet connector.
My GPS determines my vector.
No more do I travel unfettered and free.
Cell tower to tower is where I must be;
so every person that I’ve ever met
has me perpetually in their debt.
Birthdays to remember and twitters to answer,
queries of grandchildren, hip sockets, cancer.
Traveling with this extra weight is not pleasant.
I much prefer traveling just in the present
unfettered by email, phone calls or that voice
calling instructions at every choice
of northwards or southwards or eastward or west.
Yes, I know GPS directions are best,
but if I’m never lost and never alone,
I’d best just stay home and talk on the phone,
for most of adventure has come when I’m lost
from all of my past, whatever the cost.
Still the ways of the present make planning much easier,
finding my next destination much breezier.
These tricky freeways have changed in past years
and I find my memory much in arrears.
So perhaps for today I’ll turn on GPS
so I won’t get so lost and I won’t have to guess
which freeway to take: eight-oh-eight? Eight-oh-six?
Getting myself in a terrible fix.
Tomorrow’s the time to become vagabond,
using personal radar and my fairy wand
to maneuver through life by the skin of my pants.
Just for today, I won’t take the chance!
Music of the Spheres II:
If Mankind Were A Thought Bubble
What else might nature have done
if it had wanted to have fun?
Could it have made a man, instead
of hair, with hands above his head?
To grab the brush from off the shelf
so it could simply groom itself?
Could the music of the spheres
have been reduced to human ears?
A sort of cosmic saxophone
that altered mankind bone on bone?
Kindness bubbling up from ooze
to be the quality we’d choose
instead of hate and greed and trouble?
What if man were just a bubble
rising through the ocean’s murk
to rise to air and go to work
to turn into a different sort
of human driven to comport
himself with generosity?
You for you and me for me
lost to perpetuity?
What a different world we’d see.
All for one and one for all
precluding mankind’s final fall.
How I wish this fantasy
was all that I would have it be.
Not just a dream within my head
but how things really worked instead.
The NaPoWriMo prompt was to watch this video and write a poem based upon it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bX_xh2do3eM
And HERE is the NaPoWriMo prompt.
lifelessons - a blog by Judy Dykstra-Brown 