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Tag: poems

Darkening

April 30, 2010 • • 6 Comments

It’s warm this afternoon,
and sunny—a spring day
of bluebonnets and tall grass
and songbirds in the trees.

It’s a beautiful day, but
heavy beyond my horizon.

The pictures are coming,
we all know they’re on the way,
we’ve seen them before:
birds dying in oil-choked seas,
blackened beaches, ruined
estuaries and suffocation.

They say it’s going to hail
tonight, here.

—

This is for Read Write Poem’s NaPoWriMo #29: Front Page News supplied by D.S. Apfelbaum. The poem is based on the dread I feel about the images we’re about to see when the oil slick hits the Louisiana coast. The pictures that will be on front pages in the coming days.

This is my last poem for National Poetry Writing Month. It’s also, sadly, my last response to a Read Write Poem prompt, since RWP is closing down tomorrow. It is Read Write Poem that inspired me to fulfill one of last year’s new years resolutions, which was to start sharing my poetry. It also led me to a vibrant community of online poets and writers of which I’m happy to be a part.

There are new sites gearing up, growing out of the community created by RWP, and that’s a great thing. Big Tent Poetry developed by Deb Scott, Carolee Sherwood, and Jill Crammond-Wickham will be doing weekly prompts starting next Monday, and I’ll be helping out as a “barker.” Starting on Thursday, We Write Poems, conceived and organized by Neil Reid will launch their weekly prompts. I’ll contributing a prompt or two there from time to time. Rounding out the online poetry prompt madness will be the Friday prompts at Rob Kirstner’s Writer’s Island.

Thanks to all of you mentioned above who are so dedicated to keeping these online poetry communities alive, and thanks especially to Dana Guthrie-Martin for Read Write Poem.

Standardized High Stakes Panic

April 29, 2010 • • 10 Comments

Sorry, kid. You’re on
your own today. Just
you vs. the State of Texas.
Give ‘em Hell, remember
the Alamo & your #2 pencil.
Should you not pass
(we won’t say fail) you may
retake this test, repeat
this grade or possibly
redo your whole life.
Don’t work too fast either:
these tests may cause nausea,
dizziness, double-vision,
vomiting, hallucinations,
panic attacks, bitterness,
resentment, depression,
and a profound distaste
for school, education and
even learning in general.
And Remember, don’t panic.

Redirection

April 28, 2010 • • 6 Comments

Words drip
from dictionary
lips—

challenges
& curses

stain the classroom
carpet.

OK, then.

Let’s mop these
words up off
the ground

turn them into
something

you can use.

Navajo Country, 1996

April 27, 2010 • • 20 Comments

Cars were rare along the highway
On that day of dusty miles.
You came up a ridge behind us to
Observe our passing.
Through the rearview, we watched you
Emerge, then fade back into the desert.

—

This is a response to Read Write Poems’ NaPoWriMo #27: Let Someone Else Take the Lead wherein Carolee invites writers to do an acrostic poem. I’ve never done one before, but figured I would need a short word for today and so I went with coyote, a favorite animal that I’ve heard far more often than seen. This poem is about the first time I saw one.

Though I’ve missed a few days of posting due to internet issues, I’ve been writing and back-posting what I wrote those days here and at a gnarled oak.

Galveston, Last Summer

April 26, 2010 • • 5 Comments

Early Sunday morning,
we sat on the seawall

watching a laughing gull
eat a fish. There wasn’t

much happening, just the
gulf falling and rising

with the sea’s slow breathing
between hurricanes,

porpoises jumping over
waves, pelicans floating

above the shore and that
gull working on his fish

while glancing upward at
a sky filled with thieves.

I’ll Race the Fiercest Gulls

April 22, 2010 • • 15 Comments

How much time could you borrow to put off
the moment when you’ll go tomorrow?

The sound of earthquakes will reverberate
across saffron-tinged plateaus tomorrow.

Despite the coming squall, will the sky still
fill with pepper-colored crows tomorrow?

Through dizzying emporiums, I’ll hunt
the rare rust-colored rose tomorrow.

I’ll row this boat and race the fiercest gulls
across the Gulf of Mexico tomorrow.

I’ll grind my glass and polish brass to see
as far as Galileo tomorrow.

In tendrils of light across the night, I’ll
write my name to guide you home tomorrow.

—

Another attempt at writing a ghazal, this time using the words in the wordle prompt (NaPoWriMo #22) with an interesting set of words provided by Catherine. I used all of them except flinch.

One of the things I’ve been doing during NaPoWriMo is experimenting with forms I’ve rarely (or never) attempted and my favorite, thus far, is the ghazal. I first read ghazals in Sarah J. Sloat’s excellent chapbook In the Voice of a Minor Saint (Tilt Press, 2009) and was immediately struck by the form. You can read some of her fine ghazals at Linebreak and Eclectica (the one at Linebreak appears in the chapbook).

I only know of the form what I’ve read in wikipedia and deduced from studying Sloat’s poems and a few others I’ve found here and there, but when NaPoWriMo is over, I’ll probably try to learn more since it’s a form I find quite compelling.

Greenish

April 22, 2010 • • Leave a comment

I write with a pencil
that used to be blue jeans,
a pen that once, was
trash.

Coiled light bulbs everywhere
whitewash coal,
fluoresce the dim glow
of self-satisfaction.

Is there any way to go
green? To be clean
and live lightly?

To go past saving money
(the only green that
gets anyone talking)?

—

This is a response to Robert Lee Brewer’s NaPoWriMo Earth Day prompt at Poetic Asides.

I think increasing awareness of our collective footprint and impact on the planet is a good thing, and I think it’s good for us to do our part and think about the impact of our actions (and our plastic and toxic junk) on the planet, but I often wish there was more concern for environmental protection beyond the ways in which we can now possibly profit from it. I don’t need to be able to cash in on something to make it worth saving. Maybe I’m funny that way.

You know what else is funny? The word bulb. I never really thought about it until I started working on this poem. I don’t know why, but the word makes me smile.

Looking for Flaws, Hoping to Find Some

April 21, 2010 • • 11 Comments

A student once asked for
something interesting to read.
Something good.
Something you can feel, she said.
Something honest.
Something real.

I asked what that would be like.

There would be misspelled words,
she said, a few bad sentences.
Not sufficient to interfere
with the story, mind you,
but an honest flaw or error
here or there so you’d know
it wasn’t perfect,
wasn’t meant to be.

Just enough to get a glimpse
of the true imperfect person
behind the artifice.

—

Today’s NaPoWriMo prompt from Read Write Poem (#21: Perfectly Flawed) provided by Kristen McHenry asks us to consider the idea of perfection. It’s an interesting prompt that reminded me of a conversation I had with a student in one of my sophomore English classes a few years back. Further thoughts about perfection in literature were sparked by an interesting post, poetry by concession, at slow reads, which is very much worth checking out and probably influenced this poem.

The Desert Years

April 19, 2010 • • 4 Comments

We drew maps showing river deltas,
our path predicted by the contours
of our fingerprints, and we followed
our spirals forever away from home.

Where there was water once,
we marked those places on the maps
and gave them names from dreams.

We camped beneath aircraft carriers,
marooned a hundred miles inland,
and spent nights watching our flames

flicker and dance
like tortured acrobats

laughing us to sleep
against the rusted hulks
of ruined navies.

In the mornings, we watched
the sky for clouds or crows
and threw rocks at the sun.

The rains never came.
We moved on.

—

This began as a response to Read Write Poem’s NaPoWriMo prompt # 17: Something Elemental provided by Neil Reid.