The Prompt: High Noon–At noon today, take a pause in what you’re doing or thinking about. Make a note of it, and write a post about it later.
As it happens, I couldn’t sleep last night and so didn’t actually fall asleep until 5:30 this morning. Therefore, high noon found me signing on to the NaPoWriMo site to get my day’s assignment. So, at high noon, that’s what I was doing. The results you may find HERE.
Today we were to write a poem inspired by Emily Dickinson. The first poem below is the one I wrote. Hers is given last.
Spendthrift
I exist in silence—
rare life hidden from gross eyes
until an instant ambush
rocks me in surprise.
Pierces all my “shouldn’ts,”
spends my hoarded dimes,
melts my frozen assets
saved for future times.
We dare not look too closely,
lest we see adventure’s end.
If we knew what came of it,
we’d doubtless never spend.
We cannot live for endings
lest the story never start,
For all that lives in memory
is paid for in the heart.
The Prompt: Find an Emily Dickinson poem – preferably one you’ve never previously read – and take out all the dashes and line breaks. Make it just one big block of prose. Now, rebreak the lines. Add words where you want. Take out some words. Make your own poem out of it! (I chose the below poem:)
I know that He exists (365)
by Emily Dickinson
I know that He exists.
Somewhere – in silence –
He has hid his rare life
From our gross eyes.
’Tis an instant’s play –
’Tis a fond Ambush –
Just to make Bliss
Earn her own surprise!
But – should the play
Prove piercing earnest –
Should the glee – glaze –
In Death’s – stiff – stare –
Would not the fun
Look too expensive!
Would not the jest –
Have crawled too far!
(
Sand Castles
Under the sand are palaces, I’ve seen them in my dreams.
Vast halls and empty chambers smooth rounded at their seams.
Every wall is made of sand. Each ceiling, archway, floor
carved by master craftsmen–each digging at its core–
so magnificent, you’d think they were the stuff of lore.
You, too, are free to see them, but you must provide the door.
For the chambers are filled in, though they are there without a doubt.
You are the one creating them by what you will scoop out.
The beauty’s hidden in the sand, waiting in your sleep
for you to dig the castles out from where they’re buried deep.
All your day’s exhaustion your dream labor will abort,
for what you build in slumber is work of a different sort.
Sand brought to the surface is what you get to keep
of subterranean palaces dug out in your sleep.
As you build above ground castles in the world that we all know
you reveal the outward structure of the inner rooms below,
furnishing the magic that the world will see through you,
showing what’s inside of you by what you choose to do.
The Prompt: Just a Dream
The Prompt: For this week, write a shadorma (a non-rhyming six-line poem consisting of 3/5/3/3/7/5 syllables.) Instead of following the WordPress prompt, My Circle of 5 will be 5 Shadormas. Thanks, Sam, for the prompt.
Used
This paper
very slightly used–
erasures
and a stab.
This morning’s poem now dead–
unsung, unmourned.
Chinese Takeout
That rice grain
and the plastic fork–
evidence
against me
of another food court sin.
Yes, I ate it all.
Misanthrope
Walk away
lest you find reason
to stay here,
fouling up
your determination to
have a fucked-up life.
Signing the Papers
You prompt me
to mind my timing.
Five o’clock
on the dot.
I come early anyway.
Her scent signs the air.
Salt Water Taffy
Sweet toffee
cannot hide the tang–
bitter salt
on my tongue–
of all the tears I swallowed,
waiting for your touch.
To see more shadormas, go HERE.
Fault Lines
She lives up on a hillside far from the busy town,
and every year she lives there, she’s less likely to come down.
Her dog sits on her house’s dome and barks at all that pass.
One day she’ll likely join it, but for now she feels it’s crass.
Besides, she’s not that agile. She seems to fall a lot–
merely due to clumsiness. A drinker, she is not.
She spends too much on artwork. The results hang down her halls,
sit upon her furniture and cover all her walls.
Her closets? Full to bulging with sizes large to small.
Her friends keep telling her there is no need to keep them all,
but to toss the ones that do not fit would cause her great duress.
She cannot throw any away, for next year she’ll weigh less.
Her refrigerator is her favorite scenic spot,
though entering’s an adventure with dangers amply fraught:
dog food barely balanced on a small sweet pickle jar
she has to brush against to get to where the short ribs are.
I’ve said that she is clumsy. She doesn’t take her time.
This really isn’t new, for she was like this in her prime.
Her elbow strikes the pickle jar, the dog food comes out spinning.
They crash upon the tile floor. Our heroine stops grinning–
her thoughts no longer on the food but on the awful mess
of dogfood, pickles, broken glass–the rest you’ll surely guess.
The exercise that she will get mopping all this glop up.
will surely compensate for all the ribs she’ll later sop up.
And so she’ll lose her weight again and fit in that size eight.
As soon as this feat comes to be, he’ll ask her for a date.
Her dog will come down from the roof and she’ll come down the hill.
Her fridge and all her closets will suddenly unfill.
She’ll sell the art and cease to fall and fulfill all her scheming.
For the sixth thing true about her is that she’s prone to dreaming!
The Prompt: Far from Normal–Take a step back and take a look at your life as an outsider might. Now, tell us at least six unique, exciting, or just plain odd things about yourself.
For more writing on this topic go here: https://dailypost.wordpress.com/dp_prompt/far-from-normal/
Today’s prompt was really “Plead the Fifth” about a question we hate to answer. We were given the choice of an alternate prompt, which is the one I chose, but ironically, it was one I didn’t want to answer so my post really fulfills both prompts. Tricky. If you want to see today’s prompt and other answers to it, you will find it: HERE.
Odd Little Saturday Morning Poem
I lie in bed, flat on my back, head raised by pillows,
computer raised to eye level
by a wadded comforter over bent knees.
I listen to raised voices in the village down below,
the staccato of an inadequately mufflered car revving up,
a hammer falling on wood, birds in the coco palms.
A pianissimo chorus of dogs spread
over the surrounding hills swells to a frenzied crescendo,
then falls silent but will swell again.
I have dropped obligations
like clothes shed for a lover.
My Saturday morning pool aerobics and zumba,
I slipped out of years ago.
Group luncheons hang from doorknobs and chair backs.
Committee meetings lie sloppily abandoned in the hall.
I have retired from the running of the world
to run my own small universe on paper.
Saturday morning is my brainstorm session
with “Me,” “Myself” and “I.”
“I” suggested feeding the dogs,
but they are quiet now, so
“Me” suggested we let them lie.
“Myself” laid out some words to dry
in the heat of the fire of our communal
inspiration, laying them smoothly on the page,
rumpling up others in her fist to send them sailing
to join the crumpled singles event invitations in the corner.
This slow Saturday morning dressing of pages
and stripping them bare
is a sort of ceremony celebrating seizing time
and making it my own.
Pages fill up with passion, angst, anger,
irritation, joy, laughter, camaraderie.
There is more than one word for each.
Imagine such control over your world–
not having to live the world of any other.
If you could have any life you wish?
Imagine a Saturday morning building it.
The Prompt: Me Time–What do you like to do on Saturday morning? Are you doing it now?
You would think there would be some remnant left,
but death was simple.
You were there and then you weren’t.
After one deep ragged breath
you were so gone that even your body
seemed to miss you. That stillness
so irrevocable. So not right.
Our friends all came
to see the place where you had been,
bringing offerings
to fill the void.
It was a full-packed house–
your sons, their wives, your daughter–
eight of us filling out every hollow corner.
I slept in the bed meant for two,
trying to convince myself I was enough–
trying to fill in the space you left.
That empty cup.
The Prompt: Cut Off–When was the last time you felt completely, truly lonely?
Before our dad told us its real name,
we used to call it wild mustard.
What did we know about sweet clover except for its color
and that summer smell, cloying in its sugared perfume.
It filled the air and smothered the plains—
bright yellow and green where before
brown stubble had peeked through blown snow.
On these dry lands, what flowers there were
tended to be cash crops or cattle feed.
Sweet clover or alfalfa.
The twitching noses of baby rabbits brought home by my dad
as we proffered it to them by the handful.
Fragile chains we draped around our necks and wrists.
Bouquets for our mom
that wilted as fast as we could pick them.
Summers were sweet clover and sweet corn
and first sweethearts parked on country roads,
windows rolled down to the night air,
then quickly closed to the miller moths.
Heady kisses,
whispered confessions, declarations,
unkept promises.
What we found most in these first selfish loves
was ourselves.
The relief of being chosen
and assurance that all our parts worked.
Our lips accepting those pressures unacceptable
just the year before.
Regions we’d never had much congress with before
calling out for company.
That hard flutter
like a large moth determined to get out.
Finding to our surprise,
like the lyrics of a sixties song,
that our hearts could break, too.
Hot summer nights,
“U”ing Main,
cars full of boys honking
at cars full of girls.
Cokes at Mack’s cafe.
And over the whole town
that heavy ache of sweet clover.
Half promise, half memory.
A giant invisible hand
that covered summer.
The Prompt: The Transporter—Tell us about a sensation — a taste, a smell, a piece of music — that transports you back to childhood.
When he asked me to marry him
and when we had to bury him–
these times inevitably set
wherein we find that we must let
nature have its way with us.
It does no good to rant and fuss.
Life’s made to reward, then abuse.
Its vagaries we can’t refuse.
All is part and parcel to
the next thing that we’re meant to do.
Good comes from bad and bad from good.
Birth, courtship, marriage, parenthood
fill our lives in marching order,
but every joy must have its border.
Birth leads to death. Love’s often lost.
To release life’s pleasures is the cost
of having and enjoying them.
Coal under pressure becomes a gem.
Remembering this must get you through
the next trial that’s set up for you.
Every day’s an offer you can’t refuse–
another pleasure to gain, then lose.
Life’s losses are also its seeds.
We lose our wants to gain our needs.
The Prompt: Set the timer for ten minutes and then tell us about an offer you couldn’t refuse.
Many have not come to terms
with the benefits of worms.
They find them repulsive and squishy.
Revolting, creepy, crawly, ishy.
But these folks tend to just react
without examining each fact
of all that folks could find to do
with worms if they’d just buy a few.
Granted, worms that wad and mingle
lack the charm of just a single
worm that can be used for bait
on a hook and with a weight,
but every person knows this use,
which always calls for worm abuse.
Worms, however, also toil
to break up and aerate the soil.
In jars with holes poked in the lids,
worms make good pets for little kids.
Good for hours of watching, they need
little care and little feed.
Worms don’t need collars, leashes, dishes,
never go against your wishes.
They are not barkers nor run-arounds.
None of the nastiness of hounds.
They have no hair to grow and shed.
You do not have to pat their head.
They have no other nasty habits
like gerbils, hamsters, cats or rabbits.
You don’t have to change their litter.
When traveling, you don’t need a sitter.
No vet bills when your pets are worms–
no fleas nor ticks nor mites nor germs.
Worms take up very little space
and may be trained to run a race.
And if you make a well-placed bet,
they just might get you out of debt.
The benefit of worms now told,
May I consider this worm sold?
Surely you’ll find much to do
with one or two that leave with you.
If you’re not a fisherman
and if a pet’s not in your plan,
If you are a sadistic sickie,
just put one down your girlfriend’s dickie!*
*for the youth among us, a dickey is a turtle neck or collared inset
that may be worn under a vee-necked sweater or jacket to create the illusion that one is wearing a sweater or blouse under it.
The Prompt: Embrace the Ick–Think of something that truly repulses you. Hold that thought until your skin squirms. Now, write a glowing puff piece about its amazing merits.
lifelessons - a blog by Judy Dykstra-Brown 