Poem 30: again and again

It's the last one! And it's late.

The Napowrimo prompt is to "write a poem about something that happens again and again."

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Telling My Life Stories

Each time,
the stories fade a bit,
their characters,
sorted into heroes and villains,
falling into
the same bad habits.

My listeners, numb,
nod in the wrong places,
eyes searching
the hallways and classrooms
for a way out.

But I keep talking,
and waving my hands
as if directing
oncoming traffic.

Poem 29: freewrite +

Here's the napowrimo challenge for the day:  "take one of your favorite poems and find a very specific, concrete noun in it. For example, if your favorite poem is this verse of Emily Dickinson’s, you might choose the word “stones” or “spectre.” After you’ve chosen your word, put the original poem away and spend five minutes free-writing associations – other nouns, adjectives, etc. Then use your original word and the results of your free-writing as the building blocks for a new poem."

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These kinds of assignments are always tough. What's my favorite poem?  I have many. I think I'll take this one, though, from W H Auden, which was my favorite when I was 22 (for a while): "Musee des Beaux Artes."  I'm going to concentrate on "white legs."

*

White Legs

When everyone worshipped
the tan

I had skin white as paper,
thin as

the altitude of our city,
and the boys I wanted

to like me
laughed,

said
I looked like a ghost,

glow in the dark.
Wearing that skin,

I knew
I was somehow

invisible
or extra visible

walking down
Mexico City streets,

lying in a bathing suit
on our balcony

under the eyes
of construction workers

pouring concrete
on the half finished house

on the street above me.
I gleamed

like a star,
slathered

with baby oil.
The sun

dug into me,
seared me

a deep, radiating
red.

At school,
crackling

with shame,
Roy's death

(the nova
melanoma)

like a seed
in my teenage brain,

I bore
the hot weight

as I would
any other curse.

"Hey," Scott said,
and my heart

leapt,
"you look really

ugly like that."
And his words

melted
into my cooked skin

like another
white fire.

Poem 28: Skeltonic verse

The prompts are becoming more ... prompty.

Harrumph, she says, thinking she might boot the prompt to the curb this time.

But she doesn't, because she's just the Type A person who follows all rules, no matter how dodgy.

*

Here's the prompt, in all of its unglory:

... write a poem using Skeltonic verse. Don’t worry, there are no skeletons involved. Rather, Skeltonic verse gets its name from John Skelton, a fifteenth-century English poet who pioneered the use of short stanzas with irregular meter, but two strong stresses per line (otherwise know as “dipodic” or “two-footed” verse). The lines rhyme, but there’s not a rhyme scheme per se. The poet simply rhymes against one word until he or she gets bored and moves on to another. 

Here is a good explainer of the form, from which I have borrowed this excellent example:

Dipodic What? 

Dipodic Verse
will be Terse.
Stress used just twice
to keep it nice,
short or long
a lilting song
or sounding gong
that won’t go wrong
if you adhere
to the rule here,
Now is that clear
My dear?

*

What's clear to me is that the form results in the kind of poetry that makes me a bit gaggy.

*

Dipodic Lament

Like bad weather
interrupting pleasure

or bloody feathers
on the window ledge,

a cat below the hedge,
these two beats

are not the sweet
flow of fleet

sounds, the neat
poetic meat

of an eloquent poet's
melodic show. It's

a crash bang
stomp twang

crunchy baggage,
trashy language

like a wind-blown
yolk-yellow comb

speaking flat words,
or desiccated turds

up in Spring herds,
stinking shards

exposed now in the yard
after a long, hard

melting of old
contaminated snow.

Poem 27: taste

Today's prompt asks us to write a poem that deals with the sense of taste.

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Sorrow

     "Sorrow found me when I was young/ Sorrow waited, sorrow won."
                                                          -- The National

It tastes like aspirin,
powdery and metallic,
burning the back
of your throat,

or a bottle of cheap red wine
that's sat for years,
gathering Jeepney dust,
on a hot shelf in a shabby market
7959 miles from home.

It tastes like the bent metal
of a spoon,
jammed at the back
of a crusty drawer
in the kitchen of the brick house
where you grew up.

It tastes like 4 AM
after a maze chase nightmare,
like cat hair on your pillow,
cat hair stuck
to your wet lips,
or like a dog body
you glimpse from the side of an eye,
buzzing with flies
beside the two-lane road
in spring,
or snow melt pooling
under the dead cedar
in your yard,
a drake and a mallard
paddling in its mud.

Actually, it tastes
like chlorine
from the neighborhood pool
where you sat alone
reading sexed up novels,
imagining you weren't so white
you'd turned invisible,

or like unproductive labor pains
and chronic lower back spasms.

Maybe it tastes like a cardboard kiss
from someone you know
too well,
or urban dirt
and big city concrete,

maybe even pigeon shit,
trash wind,
bus exhaust,
and salty gutters
filled with McDonalds wrappers,
cigarette butts, a child's
tiny shoe.

No. It tastes like
April rain --

bone cold,
tinged with lead and
copper and blood,
it sinks
into your skin,
and it explodes,
cracking you
into a thousand million
stinking pieces.

Poem 26: archaeology

From Napowrimo.net:  "Have you ever heard someone wonder what future archaeologists, whether human or from alien civilization, will make of us? Today, I’d like to challenge you to answer that question in poetic form, exploring a particular object or place from the point of view of some far-off, future scientist. The object or site of study could be anything from a “World’s Best Grandpa” coffee mug to a Pizza Hut, from a Pokemon poster to a cellphone."

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Dark Mirror of Desire

Many living spaces

crafted themselves 

around this 

black rectangle,

or "television," 

a viewing "screen" 

often hung -- 

as an artwork?

 -- over a defunct 

(or staged)

"fireplace."

One commentator

in the 20th century

called it 

"the electronic hearth."  

We can observe,

from ancient ruins,

how inhabitants

ringed the object

with crude furniture

(cf. "LaZboy," 

"sofa" or "couch,"

and "bean bag chair"),

as if to mimic 

ancient arenas 

devoted to 

human sacrifice

(cf. "hangings" 

in "The Middle East,"

and "football"

in the midsection

of Old Northamerica.) 

The early relational unit, 

(cf. "the nuclear family,"

"roommates")

sat around it during 

long evenings

when brainwaves,

drawn low from 

menial "workplace" calculations

(cf. repetitive mental aerobics)

recharged, 

usually by switching to 

"energy-save" mode.

Anthropologists tell us

they are close

to replicating 

3rd millennium technology

which will allow them

to "watch" 

(cf. unfiltered eyesight) 

an archive of "DVD" records

(cf. "digital video disc")

of visual and auditory information

discovered recently

in settlements dating back

to 2010, 

after excavating hundreds of feet

into the Old Northamerican desert

over what was once known 

as "Wisconsin."

Though these records are

extremely degraded,

professors at The University

of Extra Holy Healing

in New Old Northmeximerica

expect to report 

within the year 

on the contents of 

these venerable documents,

which Dr. Hooligan, Director

for the Centre of Holistic

Mind Expansion at UEHH,

has tentatively identified

as a form of 21st century propaganda 

entitled "The Apprentice."

If recovered, UEHH professors say,

these records may shed light

on the events leading to

The Great Collapse

of the beginning

of the last millennium,

and may offer insight

into the resulting 

Centuries of Darkness, 

which until now have been

inaccessible to

modern understanding.

Poem 25: small spaces

Napowrimo Prompt: "write a poem that explores a small, defined space – it could be your childhood bedroom, or the box where you keep old photos. It could be the inside of a coin purse or the recesses of an umbrella stand. Any space will do – so long as it is small, definite, and meaningful to you."

*

Closeted

Purses spill from the hooks,

mingle with tumbled shoes, boots,

bags of knitting needles and empty

cellphone boxes,

pants hang on tiered racks

shoved against the back wall

and shirts fall from hangars to

tangle with random skirts 

(flotsam from another room),

yoga jackets, blazers with

rolled sleeves, a ring bristling

with belts, more shoes

in a sagging canvas rack

shoved toes in, spilling shadows

against the four plastic drawers

filled with bunched shorts,

scarves, crocheted hats,

technological gizmos strayed

from misplaced or broken devices,

a rickety punkwood 

set of shelves

holding two more rows 

of expensive tumbled shoes,

the whole mess holding its

breath under the weight

of abandoned boxes and 

yellow magazines,

secrets 

mixed with remnants,

my life with previous lives,

unknown wearers

and future inhabitants,

the entire jostling history

pushing like epiphany

(or a strange graveyard

where the living lie down

along the dead)

against my naked body

with the weight of
all the days its taken

to get here, to stand

alone and unclothed

in front of its
open door.

Poem 24: ekphrasis and monks in the margins

Today's prompt: "Today, I challenge you to write a poem of ekphrasis — that is, a poem inspired by a work of art. But I’d also like to challenge you to base your poem on a very particular kind of art – the marginalia of medieval manuscripts. Here you’ll find some characteristic images of rabbits hunting wolves, people sitting on nests of eggs, dogs studiously reading books, and birds wearing snail shells. What can I say? It must have gotten quite boring copying out manuscripts all day, so the monks made their own fun. Hopefully, the detritus of their daydreams will inspire you as well!"


*




Yeah. I couldn't resist this image.


Riding the Dragon


In my cell
illuminated by candle,
I calligraphy Latin
[the Lord's lore],

sweating inside
burlap sleeves,
dreaming of dragons
who rise up

from itchy thickets,
green and sleek
and bearded,
flying forward

across vellum
[translucent animal skin],
and I am the dragon
inside the text.

On my back rides
the grim mother
of us all,
breasts sagging

wrinkled

and flat

[suckled for
millennia

by faceless
millions]

She is not Eve --
No, she is
Lillith,
first mother,

who wanted to be
on top
and so suffered ...

was dismembered

by our father,
flung out
of His book

into the ocean,
and transformed
into dumb,
dry land.

But here, in my
waking dream,
she flies
on my back

forever,
jaw set,
hands and womb

woven

into my strong back,
her voice
tethered to her
in a floating nut

that we will plant
on a shore
in another world
where His words

come from
a different mouth --
dragon breath,
mother's bitter milk --

and can never be

read.

Poem 23: elevensies

Our prompt for Day Twenty-Three comes to us from Gloria Gonsalves, who challenges us to write a double elevenie. What’s that? Well, an elevenie is an eleven-word poem of five lines, with each line performing a specific task in the poem. The first line is one word, a noun. The second line is two words that explain what the noun in the first line does, the third line explains where the noun is in three words, the fourth line provides further explanation in four words, and the fifth line concludes with one word that sums up the feeling or result of the first line’s noun being what it is and where it is. There are some good examples in the link above.

A double elevenie would have two stanzas of five lines each, and twenty-two words in all. It might be fun to try to write your double elevenie based on two nouns that are opposites, like sun and moon, or mountain and sea.

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This one is going to be hard.

*

My Hands Ache with It

Yarn

Knits together 

Fills the basket

With color and possibility

Expectation

Blankets

For babies

In drafty rooms

Houses chewed by debt

Love

Poem 22: Georgic in celebration of Earth Day

Prompt:

In honor of Earth Day, I’d like to challenge you to write a georgic. The original georgic poem was written by Virgil, and while it was ostensibly a practical and instructional guide regarding agricultural concerns, it also offers political commentary on the use of land in the wake of war. The georgic was revived by British poets in the eighteenth century, when the use of land was changing both due to the increased use of enlightenment farming techniques and due to political realignments such as the union of England, Scotland, and Wales. 

Your Georgic could be a simple set of instructions on how to grow or care for something, but it could also incorporate larger themes as to how land should be used (or not used), or for what purposes.

*
Arise

 As daffodils and crocus
     nose up
          from cold ground,

jeweled with
     fresh dew,
          examine

the shine and
      shudder
          of slick petals

in a waking wind,
      and add their
           invisible music,

rising
     with the worms
          to the surface

through holes
    in fertilized lawns,
         crumbling sidewalks,

to the relentless
     celebratory hum
           of the earth as it

turns
     again and again
          toward the sun.

Feel your heart's beat
      thrilling
           in that song,

the thrum of your body
      in harmony
           with all beings

everywhere,
     with the pull
          of gravity, with

joyful orbit, as you
     lean forward
          imperceptibly,

pulled up from
     thawing roots
          into expanding air,

and aaaaahhhhh
      -- the trees' sighs,
          their shivering joy
   
as they shake their
     feathered limbs
          over broken streets.

Poem 21: Overheard

Today's prompt: "write a poem that incorporates overheard speech. It could be something you’ve heard on the radio, or a phrase you remember from your childhood, even something you overheard a coworker say in the break room! Use the overheard speech as a springboard from which to launch your poem. Your poem could comment directly on the overheard phrase or simply use it as illustration or tone-setting material."

*

At a Tucson Fry's, 1995

Dave comes home
shaken.

"I was standing in line to buy
a Powerball ticket.
The woman in front of me
pushed a cart with
a two liter bottle of
off-brand vodka and
a carton of cigarettes.

A little boy ran up to her
holding a packet of pencils
and a spiral notebook.
Mom, he said, I need this
for school.

She stared down at him,
snapped
How many times I gotta tell you
we ain't got no money
for none of that
school shit?

I wanted to
give him the money
but I knew
looking at the set of her face
it wouldn't work.

She bought
10 tickets."

Poem 20: Games

Prompt : "write a poem that incorporates the vocabulary and imagery of a specific sport or game. Your poem could invoke chess or baseball, hopscotch or canasta, Monopoly or jai alai. The choice is yours!"

*

Candy Crush

For hours we inhabit 

the living-room --

she on the couch and I 

on the chaise --

tap tap tapping our iPads, 

pulling down

red and green 

and purple and yellow 

jelly beans 

and jaw breakers, 

pastilles and gum drops 

(or are those Chicklets?),

Mike & Ike shaped lozenges 

that stripe

and explode 

in patterns of threes and

fours, 

our neurons firing 

in the screens' square blazes

as if we stare 

into pale campfires,

together but

separate 

in some odd, manufactured 

forest,

far from human commerce 

or conversation. 

Mother and daughter

sharing 

the same electric space,

wordlessly

comparing scores, 

and once in a long while 

looking at each other's 

blank faces

as our five tries dry up

and the application 

loses its grip.

It's July.

Sun holds our neighborhood

in a humid hand,

squeezing,

but we're safe 

in this

refrigerated containment,

waiting to 

reload,

waiting to 

crush through

another hour 

or two,

side by side in

comfortable silence.

Poem 19: Creation Myth

Today's Napowrimo challenge: write a poem that recounts a creation myth. "It doesn’t have to be an existing creation myth, or even recount how all of creation came to be. It could be, for example, your own take on the creation of ball-point pens, or the discovery of knitting. Your myth can be as big or small as you would like, as serious or silly as you make it."

One should never use the word "silly" with me.  It's the equivalent of throwing the glove down.

But, ah.... I'm supposed to be writing a script/speech for an upcoming event next week, where I share my "life journey" with "interested" females. So maybe I can knit (yukyuk) these two things together?

Or maybe not. (See above, "silly" and "glove down.")

*

Origins of the F Bomb

God created everything from the void,

and God saw that everything was 

supremely and wondrously 

good.

Or so God thought, 

reclining above God's goodness

in blinding celestial brilliance 

on a white throne

surrounded by the achingly beautiful 

angelic host

singing in thrilling harmony 

on fluffy organza clouds,

for about five minutes. 

And then God realized

with a Godlike shudder

that shook the heavens 

that God was bored

out of God's immense mind.

Perfection, goodness?

God bent God's magnificent head

upon God's excellently sculpted right hand

and pondered the problem

of infinitely uninterrupted peace

and material prosperity

until

epiphany!

There's no story, God thought.

No tension, no drama, 

no unrequited desire.

The devil is in the details,

God thought (not without

a sly Self-satisfied smirk,

having come up with that cliche

on the Godlike fly), and so

by God!

God would have to make a few

mistakes in God's creation,

yes, yes, yes,

starting with God's masterpieces

frolicking with 100% 

innocent abandon

in God's gated garden community,

Eden.

Thus, God rubbed God's massive

hands of creation together 

with Godly glee

and decreed:

Let's f**k this s**t up.

Poem 18: Neologisms

Today's assignment is to "write a poem that incorporates neologisms. What’s that? Well, it’s a made-up word! Your neologisms could be portmanteaus (basically, a word made from combining two existing words, like “motel” coming from “motor” and “hotel”) or they could be words invented entirely for their sound. Probably the most famous example of a poem incorporating neologisms is Lewis Carroll’s Jabberwocky, but neologisms don’t have to be funny or used in the service of humor. You can use them to try to get at something that you don’t have an exact word for, or to create a sense of sound and rhythm, or simply to make the poem feel strange and unworldly."

Well, okay, then.

*

BtVS Rules

When you go out on patrol,
always carry one more stake
than you think you'll need.

If there's a shadow, there's something ooky in it;
if you think you're being watched, you are;
if you suspect you've got a bad reputation, you do --
so use it to your advantage.

Fashion is paramount,
four or five besties are to die for,
there's always time for an evil pun,
even and especially in mortal combat,
and if you think your roommate's a demon
you're probably right.

Never fall in love with a vampire.
When you do, don't sleep with him --
he'll lose his soul and go all vamptastic,
hunting you for sport, shoot you
with evil quips from the safety of his new
demonpack, all yukkityyuk and teethy
like a clangor of hyenas.

Never use a vampire for dirty sex.
When you do, he'll instantly fall smitten
and follow you wherever you go
like a drooling hellhound
neutered by schlove,
the soppydrippy Hallmark cardy version
phosphorescent with goopy nauseation.

After three minutes of the requisite sparring,
go for the killing blow, straight
to the unbeating heart --
there's nothing like the satisfaction of that
growling poofsplosion
when the panting language of the dance
vanishes into pixels, moondust, and
pastistory.

Poem 17: Nocturne

Really?  Do I have to?

"Today, I challenge you to write a nocturne. In music, a nocturne is a composition meant to be played at night, usually for piano, and with a tender and melancholy sort of sound. Your nocturne should aim to translate this sensibility into poetic form!"

*

Nocturne No. 1 in B Flat

A soft breeze 

parts fluttering curtains,

strained 

through blue moonlight,

a gasp of air 

over the sill. 

She lies half-awake 

under the cool sheet,

naked

as if newly born.

Ghosts tremble

in leafy shadows,

on the far wall -- 

her young father,

a smiling grandmother, 

and her scowling 

husband,

bullet hole in his temple 

dark,

empty.

Downstairs,

a clock chimes 

three times,

disturbing 

the liquid stillness...  

for a second

she hangs in

the strange suspension

created by the sound's

silky wake,

not sure if she's

dead or alive,

held by a powerful

force or attraction

that feels like 

a fierce love.

 

Poem 16: Letters

Today's prompt (for which I have a better frame of mind) asks us to write something in the form of a letter or correspondence: "Your poem can be in the form of a letter to a person, place, or thing, or in the form of a back-and-forth correspondence."

Challenge accepted.

*

Dear Dog:

Stop barking at the window, please.
It makes my inner ear jump and pulse -- disconcerting.
And when we go out for our frequent walks,
I'd like it if you ceased the incessant pulling,
your habit of digging in your considerable claws
(I hear there are some dog owners who
clip those talons, but I'll admit that I'm intimidated
by the thought of snapping off one of your veins,
so you're safe for the duration)
into the muddy turf so that you can reach
the latest turd on your disgusting canine wish list.
And for the love of everything holy, quit
eating crap.

I'm well aware that we're both aging. I've got gray hair
in stripes next to my sagging face,
and you've got a whiting muzzle
that you still jam into a guest's crotch
with the embarrassing vigor of a puppy.
I guess we're both late bloomers, hanging on to
spastic emotional whims with the tenacity
of teenagers.  Please. I'm begging you.
Could we manage this journey with a bit more grace?
Would it be possible to hold ourselves back
from waggish glee and slutty affection
for every passing stranger?

And while we're on the subject, I'd like to request
that you work harder to keep your emotions
from passing like electric signs
over your widening frame --
everyone can tell you despise poodles in sweaters,
that thick-bodied Rotties jogging on the ends
of stabbing choke chains
scare the shit out of you,
and that Ford F150s thrumming by
with faded Bush bumper stickers
and well-stocked gun racks
excite your prejudice
into the stratosphere.
Learn to keep that to yourself, okay?

In return, I promise to love you through thick,
thin and midnight diarrhea,
to feed you expensive kibble
and pay for your delicate digestion
700 bucks at a pop.
I promise to walk you twice a day,
to pick up your poops in rain, shine,
and blizzard conditions,
and to get up at 3 am
when you cry in your kennel.
I promise to keep you going
until your heart or lungs or kidneys
decide to stop ticking.
And I promise (cross my heart
and hope to die)
never to replace you.

Sincerely and forever,
XXXOOO
L.

Poem 15: Poem about being in the middle of something

It's nearly 9:30, Dave's back from a trip, and I just realized that I'm supposed to write a poem. What have I been doing all day? Nothing. Not writing poems, anyway.

Today we're supposed to write a poem about being in the middle of a something.

*

Middle of the Action

So I'm sitting in the cellphone lot of the airport
waiting for Dave's plane to land so I can pick him up
when I realize that I haven't written a poem,

it's nearly nine and I'm in the middle of a game of
Candy Crush, and I haven't written a poem.
I try to dictate a poem into my phone and it

just keeps typing strange things. For instance,
it doesn't want to type the word "poem." And
the way things are going right now, I can't remember

what it was it wanted to type instead. Now it's time
to get all of the family news that I've missed. We're
all in the middle of some involved stories, the endings

of which could go either way. At this point, I'm hoping
we're not headed for a climax or crisis point, and instead
are just looking at the rising tension of a scene.

Most poems end in some sort of conclusion -- perhaps
an image or some epiphany that pulls everything together,
but this one is just going to

Poem 14: Clerihew (?)

Well, this is a new one on me, folks: "Because it’s Friday, let’s keep it light and silly today, with a clerihew. This is a four line poem biographical poem that satirizes a famous person."

Only four lines?  I'll take it.

*

The Love Song of T.  Stearns Eliot

Donning olive face paint to mimic our zombie love affair,
we waltzed frantic circles in Bloomsbury drawing rooms,
spinning that golden first year of marriage -- shame passing for passion,
decades dividing Viv and me from penitent celibacy and madness.

Poem 13: Ghazal

I've always liked/disliked this form. It's deceptively difficult -- at first it might seem like a snap to generate couplets randomly, but somehow the form needs to cohere ... and mine never do, really.

Here's the prompt:

Today’s is an oldie-but-a-goody: the ghazal. The form was originally developed in Arabic and Persian poetry, but has become increasingly used in English, after being popularized by poets including Agha Shahid Ali. A ghazal is formed of couplets, each of which is its own complete statement. Both lines of the first couplet end with the same phrase or end-word, and that end-word is also repeated at the end of each couplet. If you’re really feeling inspired, you can also attempt to incorporate internal rhymes and a reference to your own name in the final couplet.

Q: Am I "really feeling inspired"? Doubtful. It's Holy Thursday, and this is what's outside my window:

Yeah. Bleah.

*

Ghazal for April 13th

Outside my window, gray clouds and damp cold press down
on budding trees -- we are all pressed down now.

Call it "the greenhouse effect" -- dig up fossil fuels,
burn them, let CO2 hover over us and press heat down.

I woke this morning hemmed in by cats at head and feet,
hot bodies like anchors on me, pressing me down.

This is how you leave home: fasten your belt, adjust
the mirrors, turn the key, put it in drive, press down on the gas.

It's a time of transition. Even as Spring is only beginning,
students look to the summer, their futures pressing down.

May all beings be happy. May all beings be free. May all
beings be safe. May all beings be well. (All beings press me down.)

I used to draw Jesus cross-eyed, confused by his own nose,
and I pressed hard on the paper with the colored pencils.

Poem 12: alliteration and assonance

The prompt today calls us to "write a poem that explicitly incorporates alliteration (the use of repeated consonant sounds) and assonance (the use of repeated vowel sounds). This doesn’t mean necessarily limiting yourself to a few consonants or vowels, although it could. Even relatively restrained alliteration and assonance can help tighten a poem, with the sounds reinforcing the sense."

My schedule today is a bit crazy -- no clear blocks on my calendar. So I'm having to squeeze poetry in like mortar between the bricks.

*

Busyness bothers me,

brick by brick filling the shallow space between here and there, now and then. I can't breathe because I seethe with expectations and responsibilities, coulds and shoulds and pleasewouldyous, while daffodils and jonquils drill up from suddenly loosened soil, bursting from bulbs, shuddering free in a sunny wind. Hunched into a winter jacket, fists in my pockets, I pass them by, traveling the same path day after day, repeating chores like mindless mantras.

Oh to be untethered, to drift down unfrozen roads along the river's gleam, while hawks and pelicans fly over me in elegant figure eights!

Poem 11: The Bop

Okay.  Today's prompt is pretty involved so I'm going to have to quote it:

... the Bop. The invention of poet Afaa Michael Weaver, the Bop is a kind of combination sonnet + song. Like a Shakespearan sonnet, it introduces, discusses, and then solves (or fails to solve) a problem. Like a song, it relies on refrains and repetition. In the basic Bop poem, a six-line stanza introduces the problem, and is followed by a one-line refrain. The next, eight-line stanza discusses and develops the problem, and is again followed by the one-line refrain. Then, another six-line stanza resolves or concludes the problem, and is again followed by the refrain. Here’s an example of a Bop poem written by Weaver, and here’s another by the poet Ravi Shankar.

*

Bop With a Refrain Taken From W. B. Yeats and a Line from The National

The blues snuffle around my innocent head,
breaking into paltry meditations, dogging
my dragging heels as I circle the block,
digging paws in by the rotting trunks
where shadows spill from the maple's maw
and creep across sodden grass. Oh I am

 weary-hearted as that hollow moon.

"Sorrow found me when I was young,"
the song sings in my head, and it did --
rooted me out of my warm bed and bumped me
downstairs, into a sulfur sooty Pittsburgh street,
where I waited for a friend to appear
from the apartments across, for sun to shine,
for a smiling father to put his hand on my
head. He didn't, it didn't, and he was dead,

as weary-hearted as that hollow moon.

Perhaps depression is my best friend,
nosing behind me room to room.
No pill will ever keep it completely away.
You are happy, you are safe, you are peaceful, 
you are well: these words can't stop its pacing.
I lie down; it licks my face. Oh, lord,

I'm weary-hearted as that hollow moon.

Poem 10: Portrait Poem

I'm going to dispense with the prompt instructions -- today they're simple. Write a portrait of someone important to you.

*

The Man Who Raised Me

After a childhood spent
listening for his anger,
looking up

through his ceilings
into the attic
where he bumped up against

himself,
after the storms
and the drinking,

after shouting in the street,
after years spent
watching him

melt into despair,
I can think of him
with something like love --

can imagine him, soft and
slim,
striding into the sunlit kitchen

where I sit at the table,
spinning out this
dream --

can hear him laugh,
deep and throaty,
tipping up on his toes,

and look up from the page
to see him
smile,

all of his life's
chaotic darkness
drained away,

filled now
with nothing
but a buoyant joy --

the simple ecstasy
of breathing
a celestial sea.

Poem 9: Nine lines

Today's Napowrimo prompt asks us to write a 9 line poem.

*

Unspoken Revelation

The house holds a man-shaped absence,
Dave states away holding down the fort
his father might have to man alone.

The animals stalk around his invisible outline,
smelling his departure soaked into his side of the bed.
One cat wants to sleep on my head.

When the alarm rings, dragging me from dreams
of an altered past, his ghost turns to me: honey,
he says, look around. This is what it's like to die.

Poem 8: Repetition

Today's prompt asks us to "write a poem that relies on repetition."

BTW, I'm feeling quite grumpy about poems at the moment, and poetry in general. I've cleaned the house. I've cleaned myself. I've done my homework. I've put my things in order (more or less). And now it's time to face the poetic music and get this done. Urgh.

*

Once Again, With Feeling

Dear poetry, there's nothing
I want so much as to quit you.
Leave you high and dry, washed
up on some far shore.

I want so much to quit you.
You're the elusive zipless fuck,
phantom lover waving from a far shore.
Better in the imagination, I'd guess,

fucking elusive, a zipless thrill
caught in the electronic cloud.
You're better in the imagination. I guess
I'm getting old and weary. I've lost

that loving feeling. The electronic cloud
crackles with your current brilliance.
I'm getting old. And weary. I've lost
the habit of hearing when you call

and your current crackles
in another reader's eyes.
When you all, I can't hear anything
but static in the leafless trees.

Another reader's eyes snap and pop
with your liquid florescence.
I'm dull here in Green Bay,
static in the leafless trees.

I'm high and dry, washed clean
of your liquid florescence.
Dear poetry, there's nothing.
it's dull in Green Bay without you.

Poem 7: Luck

Today's prompt: "write a poem about luck and fortuitousness."

*

These Twists in the Road Lead Me to You

And I feel lucky --
how wonderful that we've met.

Now you'll join the dozens
around the world

who share chapters
and pages

of my story,

friends and family
who have helped

to write it.

I am lucky.
Everywhere I go,

loving kindness finds me,
smiling, hands out, dressed

in human clothing.

Poem 6: 13 ways (again)

Here's today's prompt from Napowrimo17:

Today, I’d like to challenge you to write a poem that looks at the same thing from various points of view. The most famous poem of this type is probably Wallace Stevens’ “Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird”. You don’t need to have thirteen ways of looking at something – just a few will do!

Hm. I did this assignment back in college (sometime in the 80s ... shudder) but I'm a fan of revisiting and remashing.

*

Homage to My Literary Parents

1
The Grimm Brothers taught me
always to fill my pockets
with white stones.

2
I wanted to be easy-going
like Pooh

but was more like Piglet,
who flapped his trotters and said

"Oh dear oh dear oh dear"
while

all around him
the world melted.

2
Nancy Drew was smart,
a true queen bee
(but with a heart of gold,
sympathy for the underdog,

and girls like me);
and she drove
a bad-ass convertible.
She made her own rules.

No matter what, her father
(she had him all to herself)
loved her, even
(especially)

when she meddled.

3
"There's no place like home,"
Dorothy said, again and again,
as if to convince herself.

4
In high school,
Stephen King's apocalypse seemed
preferable.

5
I wandered the streets
of Ray Bradbury's Mexico
in dreams

where skulls grinned from shop windows
and mummies in glass cases
pressed themselves against my eyes

: a profound truth about
the nature of the universe

6
Dear Elizabeth Bennett,
cynic and critic,
who stood by drinking punch
while Darcy glowered across the room
and said,
"What the fuck is that guy's problem?"

Poem 5: In honor of Mary Oliver

Today's prompt: "In honor of Mary Oliver’s work, I’d like to challenge you to write a poem that is based in the natural world: it could be about a particular plant, animal, or a particular landscape. But it should be about a slice of the natural world that you have personally experienced and optimally, one that you have experienced often. Try to incorporate specific details while also stating why you find the chosen place or plant/animal meaningful."

*

Despite Us

Robins bathe in groups

on the tarred roof outside my office window,

fluttering and inflating

shiny feathers.

Where do they spend the winters?

Some make it south, but others

hunch down in the ancient maple, brown

as the cracked bark along its gnarled limbs.

I never see them.

They could be 

shriveled clumps of leaves,

frozen to branches.

But now they burst into song, 

huh huh huhuhuhuhuhuh,

and chew chew chew,

hopping over our brown lawns

to collect shredded twigs

and ragged leaves,

to stuff their clotted nests

into the cubbyholes on our houses.

Last year a nest appeared

in the light socket

outside our back door.

I swept it down with a broom

but it came back

again and again,

a pocket of spring, 

packed with 

two blue-

green eggs

like a fist

around promises.

Poem 4: An Enigma Wrapped in a Mystery ... or Whatever

Today's Napowrimo prompt is kind of involved. Here it is: "One of the most popular British works of classical music is Edward Elgar’s Enigma Variations. The “enigma” of the title is widely believed to be a hidden melody that is not actually played, but which is tucked somehow into the composition through counterpoint. Today I’d like you to take some inspiration from Elgar and write a poem with a secret – in other words, a poem with a word or idea or line that it isn’t expressing directly. The poem should function as a sort of riddle, but not necessarily a riddle of the “Why is a raven like a writing desk?” variety. You could choose a word, for example, “yellow,” and make everything in the poem something yellow, but never actually allude to their color. Or perhaps you could closely describe a famous physical location or person without ever mentioning what or who it actually is."

*

Feathers

Sassy, direct, she speaks
from the core of her indignation
(not indignity, never indignity)

at the way the world
revolves around injustice,
cruelty, indifference.

I met her in Arizona:
she traveled 2500 miles
to meet me,

bringing her hopes and dreams,
her love of art and poetry, her husband,
a bag of backstories

I hoped one day to share.
"Are you gay?" she asked her son,
once.

Sometimes our dreams choke us.
Sometimes our dreams rise up
like desert mirages, oases

for those dying of thirst.
Hope is feathered.
It migrates south into clouds

until spring.
Inspiration sounds like
respiration.

This year, she snapped
a few ribs.
Stories of the future

made it hard for her to breathe
through the pain.
I love her like a mother -- she is

my other mother.
Trees communicate through their roots,
create for each other

oxygen and food.
April rain beads their
cold branches:

I love you. 
I love you.
I love you.

Poem 3: elegy

Today's napowrimo prompt: "write an elegy – a poem that mourns or honors someone dead or something gone by. And I’d like to ask you to center the elegy on an unusual fact about the person or thing being mourned."

I've got lots of people who could be mourned -- grandparents, parents, friends, abstract segments of humanity inhumanly dispatched. But I'm feeling contrary. So:

*

Elegy for Circe

You arrived suspicious and reserved,
fur tangled with bitter burs
culled from a hard Arizona yard.

To enter and exit, you rang a bell,
giving the old man next door (poodle father)
a reluctant thrill. "Smart," he said,

leaning over the wire fence.
Strangers, like fellow cats, irritated
and bored you;

you hid from or ignored them,
content to lie under
the stunted orange tree

bursting its barrel,
as bird shadows flit
across your big paws.

Kitty knew to give you
a wide berth.
Dogs made you shake.

When we moved you to Michigan,
you shat in front of Lizzie's crib,
a perfect pile of disdain.

Only you made it here,
after Kitty stopped ticking,
and you lived for 3 years alone,

queen of Reed Street,
a massive gray wraith
balled on the couch.

After the kitten,
your kidneys failed.
I'll never forget you

wrapped warm as an infant
in the crook of my arm,
your faint rumble

as the vet slipped the needle in,
or how your limp leg
slipped out, after,

heavy and empty.

Poem 2: the recipe

Today's prompt is to "write a poem inspired by, or in the form of, a recipe! It can be a recipe for something real, like your grandmother’s lemon chiffon cake, or for something imaginary, like a love potion or a spell."

*

How to Knit Love from Air

Travel by bicycle to where
crones spin thread from air, leaving
behind your need to walk on

solid ground.
You will find them clustered
in the last tower of a castle

built from cloud bricks,
overlooking a bottomless chasm
of fog and mist.

Select five bundles of
the weightless thread: sunset orange,
dusk purple, dawn red,

nightshade, mid-day cream.
Find a spot to sit under a weeping
willow tree, preferably

next to a brook.
Use wood needles carved from
an ancient laurel.

Stockinette stitch will work best.
Cast on a thousand stitches
in cream; knit a row, purl a row

and change to orange
after a thousand rows.
Remember to breath deep,

bringing the air into your belly.
Imagine your beloved
as a warm glow in your chest.

Continue to work each color
a thousand rows,
changing from red to

purple to
night, until the garment
reaches the stars,

spreading out crisp
and light and cold
as the fire in your heart,

then bind off,
weaving the ends in
like figure eights.

April 1 = first day of National/Global Poetry Month, and a poem a day!

This year, I'm going to follow the optional prompts supplied by http://www.napowrimo.net/, unless I find myself so stymied that I have to punt.

Today's prompt reads: "write a Kay-Ryan-esque poem: short, tight lines, rhymes interwoven throughout, maybe an animal or two, and, if you can manage to stuff it in, a sharp little philosophical conclusion."

Yeah, and now monkeys will fly out of my butt.

*

Spring has sprung

and neighbors explode
outdoors, forced
into crisp air
from insulated
bungalows
soggy with snow/rain,

the dogs snuffling
melted leaves and bones
grown lucid with
waiting.

Green shoots
sting up from mud
like tentative fingers
from sagging graves.

We sway in
simultaneous
motion,
waves lapping
the crushed sands
of suburban shores.

I am reminded
of the earth's
relentless turning,
how it
moves away
and then toward
an inhuman sun,

and life
stuns me
with that sun's
infinite liquid.

The Moth and Storytelling

In the interests of providing my students (don't you love how I can own them with a single pronoun?) with a nudge into the wide world of the inter-webs where stories dwell upon dwell upon dwell, I've put some alternative "readings" on the syllabus. These begin with The Moth website.

(I'm also assigning The Onion, a TED talk, and a bevy of websites devoted to click-baiting college students. After all, we're studying creative writing, and I want to emphasize the creative part of the writing. Who knows, that is, what and where and how we'll be writing in 10, 20, 30 years? I never imagined, when I was a college senior, that I'd be tapping out a form of personal narrative into a book-sized computer and then, with a few clicks of buttons, pushing it out into cyberspace for you and other potential strangers and friends to read and even respond. Back then, we typed our workshop materials onto ditto forms, put them on a ditto machine, and cranked out 15 purple wet copies for the group.)

As I'm a fan of doing my own homework, I made sure to listen to the latest episode of Moth stories -- these are live events where storytellers (famous and not so) stand up in front of audiences without notes or scripts and tell a story. The Moth organizers, of course, first get you to pitch a potential story to them and then, if they decide to go with it, coach you into this live delivery.

And that's my way of telling you that, yes, you can't just get up there and wing it. The piece has been drafted, crafted, cut, rearranged, critiqued, and so on before it ever reaches the stage.  The episode I found is titled "Facing the Dark," includes three stories. John Turtturo talks about his brother's mental illness, Daniela Schiller speaks about her father's memories of the Holocaust and her own work with psychological research on memory, and Kate Braestrup describes the importance of facing death -- in person -- in her piece, "The House of Mourning." I have to confess that this last piece is the one that most touched me, perhaps because of my own baggage with dead fathers.

Often when I'm listening to The Moth Radio Hour (it's a podcast) or StoryCorps (another podcast) or Snap Judgement (ditto), I'm struck by the immediacy of a story told in its human voice, as well as by the intimacy of the form.  Instead of reading the words on the page in my own voice, at top speed, invisibly in my head, I'm using my ears to hear them, in a narrator's voice, with sound effects and pauses and (sometimes) mutual tears.

These experiences remind me that story is vital to us. It organizes the chaos of experience into sense. It makes the intangible tangible. It creates a light in the darkness. It populates the emptiness with friends.

And these oral stories also remind me where the heart of story resides: in the impulse to share our experience with others. All you need, The Moth producers remind us, is a person, a place and a problem.  Then -- boom.  Story happens, transforming teller and audience alike.

It's a powerful communion. And (in this case) it's free.

Mary Oliver is my Priestess of the Familiar

I suggested to others that they write about something they've read "outside of class" recently that has inspired or put them off. In other words, I've thrown down the gauntlet -- write about something that has elicited a strong reaction in you.

When I sat down today, my mind came up blank. I read and listen to a lot of things outside of class (podcasts, novels, short stories, textbooks, research articles, Facebook posts, tweets ... I'm getting dizzy just writing all of this down) but a lot of that just fades out of my brainpan nearly as fast as I cram it in.

Have I mentioned how hard it is to pay attention lately?  So much for all of this mindfulness training.

Okay. I'm back.

And I've got something now. I really like Mary Oliver's poetry, and a few years ago I actually bought (on Kindle) her New and Selected Poems.  Her poetry speaks to me because she's a master of the tight, concrete line, and her tone is often both wondering and severe. Her vision of nature as a repository of the divine comes the closest to my rough and incomplete vision of "god." Whenever I think about spiritual matters, I feel as if I'm trying to sketch in a very delicate mental picture with broken fat crayons. Oliver's work zings me with a kind of recognition, that low-level gut feeling of "oomph" that signals an incoming and felt truth.  She's able to evoke in me a reverence for the natural world, the world outside of "people" and their "busyness," that I can only feel through poetry. It's a merging, I think, of the intellectual with the emotional, a full body sensation of discovery/recognition that I associate with moments (very brief, like nanoseconds) of mystery and revelation,  of spiritual epiphany, blowing small holes in my atheist imagination.

She achieves this with simple and yet lush imagery, with a stark tone and direct vision. She embodies revelation in earthly things -- grass, beetles, birds. Like Whitman on a diet, she captures reverence in a snapshot of landscape.

Once I read an Oliver poem to start off a faculty meeting of some sort. I picked the poem because it transports me out of my mundane academic blah-blah and into something larger than myself. And because it has a dictatorial (pedantic?) message that I like: Be better than your own stupid self.

Here it is:

When Death Comes
               Mary Oliver

When death comes
like the hungry bear in autumn;
when death comes and takes all the bright coins from his purse

to buy me, and snaps the purse shut;
when death comes
like the measle-pox;

when death comes
like an iceberg between the shoulder blades,

I want to step through the door full of curiosity, wondering:
what is it going to be like, that cottage of darkness?

And therefore I look upon everything
as a brotherhood and a sisterhood,
and I look upon time as no more than an idea,
and I consider eternity as another possibility,

and I think of each life as a flower, as common
as a field daisy, and as singular,

and each name a comfortable music in the mouth,
tending, as all music does, toward silence,

and each body a lion of courage, and something
precious to the earth.

When it's over, I want to say: all my life
I was a bride married to amazement.
I was the bridegroom, taking the world into my arms.

When it's over, I don't want to wonder
if I have made of my life something particular, and real.
I don't want to find myself sighing and frightened,
or full of argument.

I don't want to end up having simply visited this world.

*

I finished reading this poem and a strange hush lingered in the room. The meeting's leader said something like, "Well, that was something," and muttered about death and darkness. Of course the poem was about death. Of course it was a little lecture on living fully and facing the "cottage of darkness" with amazement, with particularity and realness. Like Mary Oliver, I don't want to die as a tourist. I want to die as a native of the world, having lived -- like a field daisy -- with singularity. And I want to walk through that doorway with curiosity and wonder.

Fairy Tales and the Lonely Child

For a second blog post, I suggested to writers that they consider a significant moment in their histories as writers. Where were you? What happened? Who, if anyone, helped you in this moment? What did you learn/realize/otherwise discover?

As an instructor and even more as a parent, I'm often struck by how difficult it is to follow my own advice, or to complete my own homework. That said, here goes.

When I review my "history" as a writer, the moment that snags in my mind most often occurs in Falk School, in Pittsburgh, PA, in the first semester of my third grade year.

Okay, here I will make a confession: I can't remember, honestly, when in the year it took place. Only that my desk didn't face a window, and so the quality of light in the memory is golden, spring-like ... which could be an effect of the florescent lights, or of the corruption, in general, of any memory that is 44 years old.

So. I'm sitting at my desk, which happens to be in the aisle facing a row of carrels. I'm writing an illustrated story about Nancy Tupperware and her magical red shoes. Nancy puts on these shoes and they allow her to fly wherever she wants to fly in the world. She uses them on Christmas eve to fly to ... memory lapse ... England? ... and there she meets with animals in a manger (THE manger? Interesting/rogue religious moment in the agnostic kid's life) who can now, since it's Christmas eve, talk to her. The conversation -- its import and substance -- has been lost, though the "fact" (sorry, couldn't resist the scare quotes OR this pretentious aside) of that conversation, animals to Nancy, remains. Then, to end the story, Nancy flies up to heaven to converse with angels.

(This probably means that I was writing this in November or early December, in anticipation of Christmas.)

I am writing this story in order to share it with my friends. My best friend, Madeline Schwartz, is back now after spending second grade with her family in France. Maybe I'm writing this story in order to capture Madeline's attention, to win her back. As I color in the magnificent vibrance of Nancy's electric red shoes, I'm thinking of Madeline and her deep brown eyes, her wavy dark hair, her delicate olive skin. I want her to like this story. I want her to think it's a wonderful story, a magical tale. I want her to admire me as much as I admire her and the mysterious, fabulous "fact" of her new ability to speak French.

I can't remember if Madeline liked the story -- or if she ever read it. I do remember that after third grade we moved to Louisiana for a year and that marked the end of my friendship with Madeline. When we came back, I don't remember her in my fifth grade class. She took up ballet and I played the piano. She stayed at Falk and my parents shipped me off to the public middle school. We reconnected briefly when we were both in separate colleges, but she said, once, while going somewhere with me and my mother, "Laurie, you have the same stupid sense of humor you had in the first grade." And that I mark as the end of it all. No flying shoes, no talking animals.

Perhaps this tidbit of memory, which still has the power to shame me, survives to remind me that Nancy's magic was reserved just for me. The notion of flying, of speaking to animals and angels, of crossing barriers and expanding connection through conversation, movement, magic -- all of these are achieved through poetry and story. But especially story.

I think what I've learned, looking back on myself, hunched over my desk writing that story, drawing in Nancy and her shoes (and her billowing dress, like a mushroom umbrella in the lined sky, bobbing over the crooked manger below), lovingly laboring over those red shoes, is that I was a lonely child who found a gorgeous and busy life in books. There was nothing I enjoyed as much as losing myself to a fictional world -- fairy tales, the house at Pooh Corner, the wizard of Oz and the oddball hybrid characters (all of them infused with magic). I could forget about my desk in the walkway, my accomplished French speaking friends whose invisibility still lingers in my memory like a careful erasure, my forbidding (step)father, and the palpable feeling of uncertainty and fear that stalked me in my own house.

The story I was living at the time, my reality, was both boring and repressive. I certainly experienced joy, I won't lie. But most of that joy -- if it happened in my "real-life" narrative -- was both temporary and tenuous. The joy I experienced while reading and writing was enormous, and life-giving, and a balm to the solitary child bent over her notebook at the battered desk. It wrapped that child up in a warm sunshiny light, and allowed her to fly to far off lands, the author of her destiny and her destinations.

Reading and Writing with Anne

Hello again after a long time away.

In my course for the semester, we're reading Anne Lamott's Bird by Bird, some of us for the first time and some of us for the nth time.

I've always loved the way that I can hear Anne's voice burbling through the pages into my brain. It's as if I'm sitting across from her in a cafe, and she's filling the airspace with her wall-to-wall technicolor humor and anecdote.

Once upon a time, I wanted to be Anne -- I wanted to command that attention from readers, to have that kind of hold over an audience, to fill so much space with my mind (despite my, our, somewhat unassuming bodies). Now I just like reading, or re-reading her, and thinking about the rich and wild tumble of her metaphors as she rushes (like snowmelt) down the mountains of her own creating. Perhaps it's because I'm working on my own practices of mindfulness that I can now sit on the riverbank and simply let the wild water foam past me, instead of dipping my legs in, or feeling the urge to jump in with her and be swept away.

I do admire Anne's ability to let it all hang out -- to speak of herself and what she calls her mental illness with casual (offhand? blase'?) confidence. And I've identified with her immediate need to apologize for that move, to confess her self consciousness. Anne and I seem to want our readers to love us, warts and all, though we are convinced that we are unworthy because of the warts. We want, in other words, our readers to love us when we can't really love ourselves.

But I think I'm getting better at that -- loving myself, or at least being kind to myself -- and maybe that has something to do with the fact that I've stopped writing. Okay, no. I've stopped writing with purpose, or with the purpose of being published, and have accepted the role of teacher/coach instead. And though I have to fend off well-meaning acquaintances at cocktail parties who want me to tell them all about the great book of poetry I'm in the process of creating with lies about my poetry production (it's easier than listening to their well-meaning but aggressive pep talks), I'm beginning to be "fine" with the fact that I'm a teacher first, and a sometimes-writer second.

Maybe that falls under Anne's urgent message to us: write because we want to write, because we need to write, and not for the so-called "fame" or "fortune" that being "a published author" is supposed to bring us.