Category: Poetry

A nycticorax nycticorax brouhahas behind my back,
Monkey swings a question: axes if I’ll take a hack.
Banging fall against my led racks one up for me.
On a wire, freezing fire, spinning tire, unicycle riders flee.
A liar pulls his pants up higher.
Typewriter, scared-of-spiders, aims a little higher:
Could the cold of clouds combine?
Do the roses know the thyme?
This is strange—her thin I thought; you thought it
Too. You know it’s true.

—

This is for read write prompt #68: meaning is optional. Surprisingly enough, it was fun. I tried to write something that sounded interesting and would be fun to read out loud yet with as little meaning as possible. Despite my initial attitude indicated by the words in bold, it was more difficult than I imagined it would be. It also required more thought than I anticipated. Who knew it would take so much time to write something that doesn’t mean anything?

Nycticorax nycticorax is the Latin name for the Black-crowned Night Heron. The literal translation is “night raven.”

Can you find the line from a Cure song that snuck in here slightly altered?

In the dusky woods behind the lighthouse,
legends flourish and tangle, thick as weeds.
Liars, poets and pranksters all espouse
fair warnings they know you’ll never heed.
You’ll wish your sword weren’t now a plow
if you should dare proceed.

She warns you not to leave the path
or wander into dark and mossy woods.

In nightmares, ignored warnings bloom like flares;
branches claw the clouds; darkness settles round.
Wandering till trees repeat and even prayers
unheard are lost, and rising, make no sound.
Faint steps—wolf or bear? Turn, but nothing there.
Each steps’ crunch—bones rattling underground.
Each step deals a lonely solitaire
against your faith in being found.

She warns you not to leave the path
or wander into dark and mossy woods.

Desperate, you forsake the trail.
Without a map, you seek a fairer route.
When after darkest days, you find a vale,
a bright respite from fear and pain and doubt,
you discover, then, that only when you’ve strayed
you find your truest way.

She lies about leaving the path
to trap you in the dark and mossy woods.

—

This is a bop style poem written for Read Write Poem’s share the bop prompt. Participants were asked to donate two lines of poetry, and then pick someone else’s lines to serve as the refrain in their own poems. The refrain in this one was donated by Christine Swint who writes at balanced on the edge. I loved the mystery of the “dark and mossy woods” and wondered what was off the path.

I didn’t know where it would go (neither the path nor the poem), but it was fun using someone else’s idea as a jumping off point. As I wrote, I found the poem wanting to rhyme, which I don’t usually do, but this is all about experimenting so I followed that path and wound up using a sonnet-like rhyme.

And, for those who may be interested, Deb at Stoney Moss wrote a very cool poem with the lines that I donated. Her poem is called “A Vulture’s Love Is True.”

Update: Angie at The Space Between Words also used my lines. Her poem is “cathartes aura bop.” Go read it.

a fugitive starlet
escapes her vise.

a moment’s graft;
we covet her vice.

an iron ecstasy,
we’re infected by virus

spread by paparazzi
who turn it to cancer.

—

This is for Read Write Poem. I used the read write word #10 prompt where you try to write a poem using the words provided in a list. It was an interesting exercise. Usually when I write I know what I want to write about. Well, sort of. Sometimes. Anyway, this time, I only knew what words I would use and this poem is what they wanted to do. The words I used were: fugitive, starlet, covet, graft, vise, ecstasy, iron, virus, paparazzi.

It is interesting that the words shaped themselves into something that deals with my continued surprise that with 2 wars and an economic meltdown we still seem to be more concerned with the doings and undoings of celebrities than anything else.