Tag Archives: NaPoWriMo

Cyber Catastrophies: Sleep on It!!!! NaPoWriMo, Apr 22, 2020

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Cyber Catastrophes

Irritated with your friend
and caring not whom you offend,
after you’ve had a bit to drink,
decide to tell her what you think?

Computer keyboard there in sight,
so you decide it’s time to write
an email, filled with words that rend.
You reel them off and click on “send.”

I cannot stress strongly enough
how much you’ll rue your rude rebuff.
It takes long years to make a friend
but one cruel quip for trust to end.

It’s hard to choke back how we feel,
but arguments on even keel
work better than a sharp retort
after you have had a snort.

So this is the advice I’d give.
It’s easier to just forgive
Than to retract one angry word
after it is seen or  heard.

If you can’t say something nice,
best you take this sage advice.
Before you go and leap on it,
grab a pillow and sleep on it.

For day 22 of NaPoWriMo 2020, we are to create a poem that reflects a well-known idiom. Mine is one my mother used to frequently say, “If you can’t say something nice, it’s best to say nothing at all.”

Speaking in Tongues: NaPowWrimo 2020, Day 21

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For the NaPoWriMo prompt today, we were to find a poem written in another language we do not know and to write a poem according to what we thought it meant. Here is my translation of a poem by a poet from the Netherlands. Her original and a true translation follow.

Messages in Bottles

Messages they send out to the world in bottles
(those they think up as they stir their morning cups of chocolate)
—beware their dangers.
These messengers have hands that can slap you awake,
then abandon you as they return to the problems of the privileged rich.These parasites, dosed with their vitamin B, ride roughshod over their hosts.

They linger in their beautiful dreams of percentages,
profit on the hunger of the poor.
They see not your skeletons when they look in the mirror.
They do not see the hearts they have broken.
Once, surrounded by the stricken, they put their fingers in their ears
and pretended they were evangelists to the poor.
Then, their illusions shattered by going door-to-door, they slammed doors shut again.

Their messages in bottles are swift to flow away.
The ocean has no doors to slam in their faces.
And their heads bent in prayer will not open those doors they have closed.
The ballast their bottles carry does no good.
The hunger of the world has no stake in the good books they carry.
The mood of their verses is malevolent. The vows they swear
are words in a wind that has come too late.
                                                                 –Judy Dykstra-Brown, April 21, 2020
Below is the poem in  Dutch, its original language—the language  my grandparents and father grew up speaking. I know about 5 words in it–and the alphabet!

GROUND CONTROL

Meisje van botten en pezen praat een wereld
aan elkaar van ’s avonds drop en chocola
de rijst voor straks bewaren, dagelijks
een handje noten voor het slapen en alleen
geen kaas vanwege mogelijke huidproblemen.

Heeft het over parasieten, vitamine B, genetisch
aangejaagde schommelingen in haar percentages
vet op water. De honger heeft het laatste vlees
van haar skelet gegeten en nu lukt het niet meer
om haar vast te pakken zonder haar te breken.
Onze enveloppen met de stokken, potten pindakaas
en preken neemt ze met een glimlach in ontvangst en
spoelt ze daarna ongeopend door haar lievelings-wc.Meisje van botten en pezen zweeft bij ons vandaanen wij, gebonden door de zwaartekracht, kunnen alleen
nog van beneden naar haar roepen dat ze haar verloren
ballast altijd terug omhoog mag hijsen, dat het nooit
te laat is om het hongeren te staken, een buik te kweken
om moed in te verzamelen, een vrouw van gewicht
te worden en de wind de wind te laten.
                                                         
                                                       —© 2018, Gerda Blees Uit: DwaallichtenUitgever:                                                                                    Uitgeverij Podium, Amsterdam, 2018.

 

And here is a translation into English of the above poem. I did not read this translation until after I had written mine. Obviously!! But, it is interesting that the idea of hunger did come across, somehow, although my poem is in an expanded world context whereas her poem about anorexia is very personal. I prefer hers!

GROUND CONTROL

Girl of bones and tendons strings together a world
of words: licorice and chocolate in the evening
keep the rice for later, a handful of nuts
every day before going to sleep and no cheese
because her skin might break out in a rash.

She talks about parasites, vitamin B, genetically
driven fluctuations in her ratios of
fat to water. Hunger has eaten the last flesh
off her skeleton and now we can no longer
put our arms round her for she might break.
Our envelopes with the sticks, peanut-butter jars
and preaching she accepts with a smile before
flushing them straight down her favourite toilet.

Girl of bones and tendons floats away from us
and we, bound by gravity, can do no more than
call out to her from below that she can always
hoist her lost ballast back up, that it is
never too late to stop starving herself, grow a belly
for gathering courage, become a woman of
weight and let the wind be the wind.

The prompt for NaPoWriMo 2020 day 21 was to find a poem written in another language that you do not know and to write a poem about what you think it says.

Mother’s Day: NaPoWriMo 2020, Day 20

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Mother’s Day

Twenty wooden clothespins, slightly askew,
painted every color of the rainbow,
clipped to an empty Starkist tuna can.

A handful of dirt,
a tiny plant
and a quarter cup
of crushed lava rock.

A gift from an 8-year-old,
it graces my typing table
in front of a painting—
gift from another friend—
that it seems made for.

Thank-you, Yoli, little girl
who makes priceless gifts
for a childless friend.

Like me, my grandmother,
peerless collector of cast-offs,
handicrafter extraordinaire,
would have declared it beautiful.

 

 

For Apr 20, 2020 NaPoWriMo we are to write a poem about a handmade gift you have received.

Leavings: NaPoWriMo 4/19 2020

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Leavings

Do I walk the long kilometers of beach
to look for the next shell
or stand stable, like that woman
casting and recasting her hook,
patiently waiting to pull her world in to her?

I’m gathering things
that I’ll collect into stories–
pinning them down to use like words.
Nothing wrong in finding meaning
through a piece of driftwood, a stone or shell.
Objects are only things
we cast our minds against
like images against a screen—
a shadow glimpsed crossing a window shade.

My shadow cast in front of me
is such a different thing
from one I cast behind.
In the first, I am constantly hurrying
to catch up to what I’ll never catch up to.
In the other, I am leaving behind
what I can only keep by walking away from it.

I take this place along with me in clear images–
not as they were, but as my mind has cast them;
so every picture taken of the same moment is different,
each of us seeing it through our unique lens.
We cast these things in bronze or silver-gelatin,
stone, clay or poetry.
A grandma holds out pictures of her children
and her grandchildren. See? Her life’s work.
And then this and this, without further effort on her part.

I share stories of children I don’t know
who gently unwind fishing line from a struggling gull,
of a minefield of jellyfish found on the beach
or other treasures nestled in a pile of kelp.
I find my world in both these findings and departings—
the leaving each morning to go in search of them
the part I find most exhilarating,
perhaps teaching this woman
of the death-themed night-terrors
not to worry,
that leaving is just a new adventure.

People forget and let me slip away
when I would have held on, given any encouragement,
yet fingers, letting go,
flex for that next discovered treasure.

Life is all of us letting go constantly—
taking that next step away from and to.
A white shell. I have left it there
turned over to the brown side,
so someone else can discover it, too.

 

The NaPoWriMo prompt today was to take a walk and collect objects to turn into a poem.

Here’s to Small Pleasures! Day 18 of NaPoWriMo 2020

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Small Pleasures

That last sip of coffee when you thought that you were through.
A lazy sleep-in Saturday with nothing much to do.
A walk through fields with children or a late-night talk with friends.
When you know just where to look, the pleasure never ends.
That last square of chocolate. The popping of a blister.
Getting there to lick the icing spoon before your sister.
Summer nights with highway noises from a block away.
Knowing that you’ll take that road away from here one day.
Constant daily pleasures are a matter of the mind.
Some pleasures of the present, others of the future kind.

 

Like Chocolate? Here is a song by someone else who does. Me! Lyrics by Judy Dykstra-Brown, music and presentation by Christin Anfossie: https://judydykstrabrown.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/06/chocolate.mp3

Today’sNaPoWriMo prompt is to write an ode to small pleasures.

A Requiem for Film Cameras

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A Requiem for Film Cameras

I’m sure not a single person’s debating
the merits of digital shots over waiting
a week to see whether the shots that you took
would be found to have merit or found to be crook,
but what is it digital cameras have not
that came with each new role of film that you bought?

Those nifty film canisters everyone got
that were handy for bobby pins, just right for pot,
that held your spare change and were toys for the cat?
Digital cameras have nothing like that!
They held rolls of stamps back when folks still wrote letters,
put sponges in others and they were stamp wetters.

The uses of film canisters knew no bonds.
We’d roll them down sidewalks and float them in ponds.
They’d serve as small coffins for dead flies we’d bury
and kept safe our lost teeth until the tooth fairy
whisked them away in trade for a coin.
(Different rates for each one she’d purloin.)

A dime for an eye tooth and quarters for molars.
They formed doll house tables and substitute rollers
for sisters to use in their ratted up hair.
Who could ever discover them there?
But now that film cameras are all passé,
children, I’m sure, have become more blasé.

They need Barbie Doll suites with push sofas and chairs,
hot curling wands to curl up their hairs,
Technical toys that move on their own,
tooth fairy pouches, intricately sewn.
But what do they use to roll down the bannister
now that technology’s banned the film cannister?

 

For NaPoWriMo 2020, Day 17 We are to write a poem about an obsolete bit of technology.

Ode to Morrie

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Ode to Morrie

Oh you ball of energy, you little ball of fluff.
When it comes to hugging you, I cannot get enough.
Your hair so black and curly, your teeth so sharp and white
that it is an honor when you choose to bite.

Your flair at ball retrieval truly has no equal.
However many thrown for you, you always seek a sequel.
Your eyes luminous marbles, your nails a lovely shape
from running over terraces to stem a squirrel’s escape.

Your hairy little jowls would put Borgnine’s to shame.
So many little mysteries for which you aren’t to blame.
What creature eats the birdseed spread out on the wall?
What other creature has your leap? What other dog the gall?

You give the cats their exercise and what possum would dare
to stray into a garden given to your care?
Oh brave little caroler when interloper passes,
Your mighty barks belie your size. No burglar tests your sasses.

At night you serenade me with your howling croon
accompaniment to ambulances or the rising moon.
My revered alarm clock, my companion after dark,
as now and then throughout the night I celebrate your bark.

Each day I laud thy energy, thy beauty and thy voice.
When I contemplate your dogginess, I cannot but rejoice!
This ode of praise I write for thee, I cannot help but pen it.
If there had been a dog messiah, my dear, you would have been it!


(Click on photos below to enlarge and read captions.)

 

That’s bird seed for the birds, Morrie. Since you knocked their bird feeder down and broke it, it’s the best place for me to see them feeding.
Yeah. Good boy, Morrie. Thanks for cleaning up the birdseed I spilled!!!

For day 16 of NaPoWriMo we are to write an “Over the Top” poem of excessive praise for something.

Also for: dVerse Poets.

NaPoWriMo Day 15: Jazz Riff

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For NaPoWriMo, they want us to write a poem that copies the style of a favorite song or type of music. I chose Jazz.music

Poetic Inspiration: NaPoWriMo 2020 Day 14

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Poetic Inspiration

I do not seek to emulate great poets of the past,
for if they were any good, their poems are bound to last.
Why do they need an imitator? Better we’re original.
Modern times do not demand a message aboriginal.
Chaucer’s fine for Chaucer and he was an inspiration,
but Middle English has long passed its date of expiration.
Shakespeare is ubiquitous. No need for one Will more.
Leave Love’s Labor’s Lost to him–and Lady Macbeth’s Gore.
Let Frost mend all the fences. Leave Ozymandius to Shelley.
Nineteenth century topics are best left to film or telly.
What’s left to modern poets? Where can they get their start?
Leave imitation on the shelf and merely write your heart.

We were to write a poem dealing with poets who have influenced us..positively or negatively. For NaPoWriMo 2020 Day 14

Wheeler-Dealer

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Wheeler-Dealer

I am not sorry
for the hours I have stolen
away from your busy life.
You should have given them freely.
I was trying to teach you that.

You were such a poor student,
professing love, then
rushing off hither and yon.

Early morning flea markets
spawned caches—
rental garages stuffed with treasures
that didn’t fit into a house
 already filled with me
years before you moved in.

You picked things up
in driveways
and on curbsides,
widows in the seat next to you 
on bargain flights alone to Mexico.

You snatched me
from that singles party
before I even got my coat off.
Eye trained at the door,
you knew lonely
when you saw it.
   
Commandeering
my Ford Econoline camper van,
you drove me off to most of California,
then to Mexico,
while I tried to teach you how to be
where you were. Pouring salt on your tail,
trying to hold your gaze.

And I am not sorry— either for what I asked of you
or for throwing away the rest of you—
that busy bee, buzzing from bloom to bloom
to see what it could find.

For NaNoWriMo 2020, day 13, we are to write an apology for something we’ve stolen.