The prompt for the 30th day of NaPoWriMo 2022 was to write a cento–a poem made up from the lines of other poets. In my poem above, the lines are numbered. The sources are given below:
I listed Hilda Morley as a 4 in two places in my poem because although both lines were from the same poem, they were not sequential, but were in different parts of her poem.
Family Links
These are the gifts I was given at birth:
my father’s high cheekbones, my auntie’s wide girth.
Legs that are solid and a brain that is sound,
a head that’s too big and a stomach too round.
From my mother, a funny bone and a fine wit
in sharing my life by writing of it.
A talent for rhyme and a need to be telling
stories original, tight and compelling.
A thirst for travel, squelched in my dad,
allowed me adventures he rarely had.
A love of babies and a wicked humor
that didn’t go wasted in this baby boomer.
I’m forever grateful that I came to be,
thanks to those genes that created me.
With both foibles and talents, I’m not perfect for sure,
but all that I am, I have come to endure.
I’ve lived to an age where I appreciate
all of the gifts that I’ve come to relate.
Here I am, the next link in the family queue,
and what they shared with me, I now share with you.
Today’s NaPoWriMo prompt is “to write a poem in which you muse on the gifts you received at birth.”
Building Joy in the World
If I forgo mere toil and strife
for a more playful sort of life,
and live this playful sort of life
to the accompaniment of fife,
of fife and whistle, flute and drum,
my narrow life might expand some.
Expand from shard to full-blown bowl,
filled to its edges with more soul
’til edges of my soul have filled
the bowl from which it now has spilled.
Spilled out to change the world it touches,
wrested from my lonely clutches.
Freed from their clutch, to build a life
that has transcended mere toil and strife
Prompt words today are narrow, forgo, playful, shard and touch. This poem is also written to fulfill the NaPoWriMo2022 day 27 prompt to write a “Duplex”—a 14 line poem of seven two-line stanzas where the second line of the first stanza is echoed by (but not identical to) the first line of the second stanza, the second line of the second stanza is echoed by (but not identical to) the first line of the third stanza, and so on. Then the last line should be the same as the first line of the poem. Image by Joanna Kosinska on Unsplash.
Advice to a Poetry Critic
Each poet worth her salt adores
well-appointed metaphors,
but when they step up to the mike,
similes they only like.
Before you discuss simile
consult an expert vis a vis
the difference between the two
so you will never have to rue
mislabeling your imagery.
Hyperbole is not allusion,
so don’t add to the confusion.
Synecdoche to oxymoron––
as you choose what to write more on––
get their names right for your reader.
There’s more to poems than rhyme and meter!
This is a rerun from a few year ago, but couldn’t resist using it for NaPoWriMo.
Mother Mexico
We cannot lock our doors to dreams. They enter where they will
and we cannot put them out when we have had our fill.
They wander through the rooms of us, half part of us, half ghosts
who all night long make use of us as their compliant hosts.
The one whose skirts are widest, who fills the most of me,
is a vibrant lady who stretches sea to sea.
She brings her music with her, caught up in her hair.
Auras of mariachi swirl around her in the air.
Paint oozes from her fingertips and ornaments the wall,
creating lovely murals depicting nearly all
of what she has to offer: the castillos and fiestas,
empanadas, handicrafts, salsa and siestas.
Chihuahuas yap about her heels. Vaqueros follow after.
Pinatas and serapes are hung from every rafter.
Her history trails behind her—subjugation, revolution.
Every wave of conquerors offering absolution
for what came before it—wave after wave of those
with sacrificial knives or guns and armor worn as clothes.
Mayan, Aztec, Spaniards, French, Americans all seeking
gold or land or slaves or a sacrifice that’s leaking
out behind her in a trail of footsteps made of blood
pooling into earth beneath everywhere she stood.
Chiles, corn and amaranth flavor all the food
that she provides with plenty to feed her hungry brood.
The dreamer sups with all the rest, slipping away at last
when the morning beams of sun over the bed are cast.
Then she awakes to a world that dreams can only echo—
the coatimundi, fighting cock, the donkey and the gekko.
Creatures, food and music catch her in their grasp
and before she can struggle or even scream or gasp,
she’s held in the real world, imprisoned in the beam
of what through the whole long night she’d thought to be a dream.
For NaPoWriMo we are to write an aisling, a poetic form that developed in Ireland. An aisling recounts a dream or vision featuring a woman who represents the land or country on/in which the poet lives, and who speaks to the poet about it. Today, I’d like to challenge you to write a poem that recounts a dream or vision, and in which a woman appears who represents or reflects the area in which you live.
Fin de Semana
The streets are filled
with ice cream and cerveza
and the wildly patterned legs
of senoritas.
It is a day
of sunlight and red flowers
and fuchsia flowers and blue.
A slight wind
strums the swaying branches
of the palms,
joins other village sounds
to compete with the passing hum
of traffic streaming
from the city to our shores,
seeking the gentle lap of water against willow,
hypnotic bobbing of the pelicans
between the undulating liria––
a lazy day away
from urban life.
For NaPoWriMo
Death Slips in Like a Slippery Eel
We sail life on an even keel,
solving every small ordeal
until one day, it turns surreal.
Death slides in like a slippery eel,
our place in nature to firmly seal,
our invulnerability to steal.
In youth, our lives are stainless steel.
All pain is solved, our wounds all heal.
It’s true these thoughts were never real,
but still, we feel what we must feel.
Then death slips in—that slippery eel.
No second chances does it deal.
A carnival barker with his spiel,
death lures us with unfettered zeal,
to spin us on the ferris wheel—
all our accomplishments to peel
and all our woe and all our weal
to cast from us, reel after reel.
In a fate that nothing can repeal,
it’s our turn to be nature’s meal.
The surreal now becomes the real.
Joining the universe’s wheel,
the organs keen, the bells all peal
as death slides in—a slippery eel.
For NaPoWriMo 2022, Day 22 we are to write a poem that features repetition. Since that is a repeat of a NaPoWriMo prompt from 2017, I thought it was fair game for me to do a rewrite of my poem written to that prompt. Here it is, with changes. The one rhyme used throughout the poem is the first use of repetition, the slippery eel line in each stanza is the second.
Impertinent Food
I don’t enjoy it when food talks back.
A potato chip or Crackerjack
makes too much noise when you are chewing,
and gives away what you are doing.
Beans tattle in retrospect
so all around you folks suspect
that you have eaten of their fruit,
betrayed by legume’s blatant toot.
Food should be eaten but not heard.
That it talks back is most absurd.
That’s why edibles less rude
are my favorite sorts of food.
NaPoWriMo prompt: I’d like to challenge you to write a poem that anthropomorphizes a kind of food.
Upon Running into a Former Best Friend
Don’t give me cause to regret our reunion.
Don’t bring back to mind our former disunion.
Don’t lament my career or cuss at my kids—
those actions that once put us into the skids—
dissolving our friendship and our former ties
when I’d had enough of your conniving lies.
Don’t inveigle or bemoan your lack of a pension.
Past times I’ve come through I won’t bother to mention.
And if you’ve a reaction and want to explode,
do me a favor. Take it on the road!!!
The prompt for NaPoWriMo today is the post a poem that begins with a command.
lifelessons - a blog by Judy Dykstra-Brown 