Category: Poems

The bustling elocution of
the eight-track saints

rattles nerves like diodes
hitched to an electric chair

Rancid impulses coagulate
around anger, another rant
blares from the radio

Car racing homeward
lizards skulking among
dead armadillos on the shoulder

One last chance for a course change
flinging into the driveway

desperate to say, I understand,
forgetting reason frothed to static

going instead for the gun

—

This is for the latest wordle prompt at Read Write Poem (#88). I like these word list prompts because I generally approach the writing with no preconceived notions of what the poem is going to be about. I just let the list of words play and try to see where they land. This one kind of surprised me.

We hadn’t been walking long when I stumbled over ivy-covered stones. I bent to have a look. Found names and dates from the eighteenth century. Other stones, each with familiar names from the island’s past and dates long gone, lay scattered and toppled, poking up through centuries of leaf litter, soft soil and faded old beer cans.

We learned the difference between
boneyards and gardens of eternal rest
in the hours before the sun went down

Where faces fluoresce in ultraviolet light
stories             leapt                from stone

two broad-winged hawks
circle overhead and a little
girl calls for help, her voice
coming from, disappearing into
slow-moving creek water

An incandescent spark
between two wires reveals

dead snake
spiders under a bridge
raccoon scrambling away
water               full of memory

screams

submerged
washed away
generations ago

resurface

You knew this would happen,
my inscrutable friend.

You knew.

—

This is for Read Write Poem’s Prompt #85: Spooky, which asks participants to respond to a picture of two guys in a graveyard. It’s a cool image and you can see it at the RWP site.

We grabbed sounds from the air,
stuck them together, draped
language around actions,
tethering ourselves to history
inscribed in vellum, barked
and trumpeted for all to hear.

All this tonnage… it seems like magic.

We learned to tell convoluted
tales, twisting facts like
movements in a bellydance,
sapient and seductive.

What is that mist out there?

We carved the world like onion slices
to be devoured one-by-one,
ignoring the other passengers’
wrinkled noses.

Hold my hand.

Thumbing through the final pages, I skimmed
the moribund bibliography of My Heart:

Bark, Vellum K. Tether the Bellydancing. New Drape City: Moribund Hand, 2003.
Trumpet, J.J. “Tonnage.” Devouring Convoluted Onions. Mistburg: Sapient & Sons, 1993.

Fasten your seatbelt.
The plane will be landing soon.

—

This is for Read Write Poem’s wordle prompt (#79). The idea is to write a poem using a given set of words. All of those words comprise the bibliography portion of this poem.

Whispers flicker in the void, explaining
each color present and how it combined
absent light with permanent darkness.

Overpowering and blinding,
a quasar burns static and noise.

Here, we don’t need sound;
we imagine music and try to sing.

That radio sun burned out ten years ago.

Or so they tell us.

—

This is for Read Write Poem’s Opposites Attract prompt. The idea is to write 2 poems each dealing with opposing elements, experiences, memories, or whatever. Then alternate the lines between the 2 poems to create a single poem.

This was an interesting exercise that went in an unexpected direction. I started with the ideas of darkness and light. Sound crept into both freewrites, thus creating a third layer of opposites. When I combined them, it seemed that the opposing forces in the poem shifted to light and sound rather than light and dark. After combining them line-by-line, I started fiddling with the lines to get a smoother flow from one thought to the next.

Below, I’ve included the original drafts so you can see how the poem developed.

Darkness draft:

In perfect darkness
Whispers flicker in the void, explaining
the absence of light, the permanence of darkness
a radio sun, burning static and noise
we hear music and try to sing

Light draft:

In perfect light
Each color present, combines
Overpowers and blinds
Here we don’t need sound,
The radio sun long ago burned out.

First Combination:

In perfect darkness
In perfect light
Whispers flicker in the void, explaining
Each color present combines
the absence of light, the permanence of darkness
Overpowers and blinds
a radio sun, burning static and noise
Here we don’t need sound,
we hear music and try to sing
The radio sun long ago burned out.

Update: Changed the first line from “Flickering whispers fill the void” back to the original “Whispers flicker in the void.” I think I like that better. Thanks Julie for making me think about whispers and flickering.