April Poem A Day Challenge Day 30

Poetic Asides: For today's prompt, write a letting go poem. The poem could be about letting go of a relationship; it could be about letting go of anger; it could be about letting go of a tree branch; or it could even be about, yes, letting go of this April challenge. There are so many things we can let go.

A good prompt to end the month on. It's loose enough to interpret many ways. My poem is more or less about letting go of the past. It was more complicated than it sounds, because it needed a preface of sorts built into the poem, so that the actually letting go would have more impact, and so the reader could understand just what was lost and what was gained by the action.

The difficulty is in letting the poem tell the story without attempting to direct it too much, which sounds weird, but I've learned not to apply a heavy hand, or else the poem rebels. Rebellious poems turn into horses with hard mouths, they don't listen, they toss their heads a great deal and generally make any journey less than pleasant. So I bridle my poems with a hackamore, giving up some control for the comfort of the ridden. The poem has the illusion of being free, while I retain some directional ability.

A roundabout way of saying don't overwork it, but at the same time, give it some guidelines. Here are three 'letting go' (or not being able to let go) poems to round out the month.



This Was Once a Love Poem
by Jane Hirshfield

This was once a love poem,
before its haunches thickened, its breath grew short,
before it found itself sitting,
perplexed and a little embarrassed,
on the fender of a parked car,
while many people passed by without turning their heads.

It remembers itself dressing as if for a great engagement.
It remembers choosing these shoes,
this scarf or tie.

Once, it drank beer for breakfast,
drifted its feet
in a river side by side with the feet of another.

Once it pretended shyness, then grew truly shy,
dropping its head so the hair would fall forward,
so the eyes would not be seen.

IT spoke with passion of history, of art.
It was lovely then, this poem.
Under its chin, no fold of skin softened.
Behind the knees, no pad of yellow fat.
What it knew in the morning it still believed at nightfall.
An unconjured confidence lifted its eyebrows, its cheeks.

The longing has not diminished.
Still it understands. It is time to consider a cat,
the cultivation of African violets or flowering cactus.

Yes, it decides:
Many miniature cacti, in blue and red painted pots.
When it finds itself disquieted
by the pure and unfamiliar silence of its new life,
it will touch them—one, then another—
with a single finger outstretched like a tiny flame.



Lot's Wife
by Anna Akhmatova

And the just man trailed God's shining agent,
over a black mountain, in his giant track,
while a restless voice kept harrying his woman:
"It's not too late, you can still look back

at the red towers of your native Sodom,
the square where once you sang, the spinning-shed,
at the empty windows set in the tall house
where sons and daughters blessed your marriage-bed."

A single glance: a sudden dart of pain
stitching her eyes before she made a sound . . .
Her body flaked into transparent salt,
and her swift legs rooted to the ground.

Who will grieve for this woman? Does she not seem
too insignificant for our concern?
Yet in my heart I never will deny her,
who suffered death because she chose to turn.



Going Home
by Wislawa Szymborska

He came home. Said nothing.
It was clear, though, that something had gone wrong.
He lay down fully dressed.
Pulled the blanket over his head.
Tucked up his knees.
He's nearly forty, but not at the moment.
He exists just as he did inside his mother's womb,
clad in seven walls of skin, in sheltered darkness.
Tomorrow he'll give a lecture
on homeostasis in metagalactic cosmonautics.
For now, though, he has curled up and gone to sleep.


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April Poem A Day Challenge Day 29

My least favorite of phrases coupled with my least favorite of prompts, the title phrase poem. Talk about an uphill battle. "And suddenly, I lost interest…" is the only phrase that came immediately to mind. But I was determined not to accept defeat so close to the end of the month.

Poetic Asides: For today's prompt, I want you to take the phrase "And Suddenly (blank)," replace the blank with a word or phrase, make the new phrase the title of your poem, and then, write the poem. Some examples: "And suddenly we were lost," "And suddenly over," "And suddenly banana," "And suddenly sudden," "And suddenly the poem I was writing turned into a killer robot," etc.

"And suddenly" feels gimmicky, which is probably why I had a hard time with it. Also, the word suddenly, in poetry, represents a failure to communicate urgency properly to me. It feels sloppy.

Okay, initial kicking and screaming over, I venture forth into actually writing a poem.

"And Suddenly Episcopalian"
"And Suddenly The Chicken Crossed The Road"
"And Suddenly Pancakes"
"And Suddenly Priscilla Remembered A Previous Engagement"
"And Suddenly Time Lurched Sidewards"

Yes, I overachieved and wrote several very short, pretty silly poems that are mostly title. That's one way of pushing yourself past a prompt you don't like. Refuse to take it seriously. For the record, "And Suddenly Pancakes" was a direct quote from the Muse. I imagine it was meant to be a blistering rebuttal on the current state of proper nutrition for Muses in general and one in specific, but instead the poem turned left and hid itself under a waterfall of maple syrup. Or it was just a reminder to eat at IHOP next time I'm in Casper. . .



Lost in the Forest
by Amy Gerstler

I’d given up hope. Hadn’t eaten in three
days. Resigned to being wolf meat ...
when, unbelievably, I found myself in
a clearing. Two goats with bells
round their necks stared at me:
their pupils like coin slots
in piggy banks. I could have gotten
the truth out of those two,
if goats spoke. I saw leeks
and radishes planted in rows;
wash billowing on a clothesline ...
and the innocuous-looking cottage
in the woods with its lapping tongue
of a welcome mat slurped me in.

In the kitchen, a woman so old her sex
is barely discernible pours a glass
of fraudulent milk. I’m so hungry
my hand shakes. But what is this liquid?
“Drink up, sweetheart,” she says,
and as I wipe the white mustache
off with the back of my hand:
“Atta girl.” Have I stumbled
into the clutches of St. Somebody?
Who can tell. “You’ll find I prevail here
in my own little kingdom,” she says as
she leads me upstairs—her bony grip
on my arm a proclamation of ownership,
as though I've always been hers.




Gretel
by Ron Koertge

said she didn't know anything about ovens
so the witch crawled in to show her
and Bam! went the big door.

The she strolled out to the shed where
her brother was fattening, knocked down
a wall and lifted him high in the air.

Not long after the adventure in the forest
Gretal married so she could live happily.
Her husband was soft as Hansel. Her
husband liked to eat. He like to see
her in the oven with the pies and cakes.

Ever after was the size of a kitchen.
Gretel remembered when times were better.
She laughed out loud when the witch
popped like a weenie.

"Gretel! Stop fooling around and fix
my dinner."

"There's something wrong with this oven,"
she says, her eyes bright as treasure.
"Can you come here a minute?"




Writing in the Afterlife
by Billy Collins

I imagined the atmosphere would be clear,
shot with pristine light,
not this sulphurous haze,
the air ionized as before a thunderstorm.

Many have pictured a river here,
but no one mentioned all the boats,
their benches crowded with naked passengers,
each bent over a writing tablet.

I knew I would not always be a child
with a model train and a model tunnel,
and I knew I would not live forever,
jumping all day through the hoop of myself.

I had heard about the journey to the other side
and the clink of the final coin
in the leather purse of the man holding the oar,
but how could anyone have guessed

that as soon as we arrived
we would be asked to describe this place
and to include as much detail as possible—
not just the water, he insists,

rather the oily, fathomless, rat-happy water,
not simply the shackles, but the rusty,
iron, ankle-shredding shackles—
and that our next assignment would be

to jot down, off the tops of our heads,
our thoughts and feelings about being dead,
not really an assignment,
the man rotating the oar keeps telling us—

think of it more as an exercise, he groans,
think of writing as a process,
a never-ending, infernal process,
and now the boats have become jammed together,

bow against stern, stern locked to bow,
and not a thing is moving, only our diligent pens.


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April Poem A Day Challenge Day 28

I feel like one of those prisoners keeping a secret diary.

"Day 28. I was forced to contemplate the end of the line today. My captor claims I will be released in two days, but time has ceased to have the meaning it once had. I see an endless array of poetic feet marching before me, kicking me to produce more and more. The Guard Muse seems sympathetic, tossing me crumbs when no one is looking. I notched another day in the wall of my cell and buckled down to producing what the Warden demanded. doG only knows what hideous prompt awaits to torture me tomorrow. . . "

Poetic Asides: For today's prompt, write an end of the line poem. Maybe the narrator of your poem is at the end of his or her line. Other possible lines that have an end: assembly lines, phone lines, power lines, rail lines, graph lines, dotted lines, waiting lines, lines of poetry, etc.

My poem today kind of dovetailed off of yesterday's hopeless prompt, it was a poem of despair that refused to take itself seriously, mocking me at every turn. The dangers of attempting to shoehorn your poem into something pre-envisioned. I forced it to a conclusion, then wrote another about what waits out West when the train tracks run out in the middle of nowhere. Then I wrote a little piece that needs a lot more work on 'lines' as in genealogical lines. So I may get three poems from this, or I may get none. Or I may mash all three poems together into one giant FrankenPoem. I have the power.

A few end of the line poems.



Medusa
by Louise Bogan

I had come to the house, in a cave of trees,
Facing a sheer sky.
Everything moved,—a bell hung ready to strike,
Sun and reflection wheeled by.

When the bare eyes were before me
And the hissing hair,
Held up at a window, seen through a door.
The stiff bald eyes, the serpents on the forehead
Formed in the air.

This is a dead scene forever now.
Nothing will ever stir.
The end will never brighten it more than this,
Nor the rain blur.

The water will always fall, and will not fall,
And the tipped bell make no sound.
The grass will always be growing for hay
Deep on the ground.

And I shall stand here like a shadow
Under the great balanced day,
My eyes on the yellow dust, that was lifting in the wind,
And does not drift away.




The day my mother died
by Marge Piercy

I seldom have premonitions of death.
That day opened like any
ordinary can of tomatoes.

The alarm drilled into my ear.
The cats stirred and one leapt off.
The scent of coffee slipped into my head

like a lover into my arms and I sighed,
drew the curtains and examined
the face of the day.

I remember no dreams of loss.
No dark angel rustled ominous wings
or whispered gravely.

I was caught by surprise
like the trout that takes the fly
and I gasped in the fatal air.

You were gone suddenly as a sound
fading in the coil of the ear
no trace, no print, no ash

just the emptiness of stilled air.
My hunger feeds on itself.
My hands are stretched out

to grasp and find only their
own weight bearing them down
toward the dark cold earth.



Stars
by Marjorie Pickthall

Now in the West the slender moon lies low,
And now Orion glimmers through the trees,
Clearing the earth with even pace and slow,
And now the stately-moving Pleiades,
In that soft infinite darkness overhead
Hang jewel-wise upon a silver thread.

And all the lonelier stars that have their place,
Calm lamps within the distant southern sky,
And planet-dust upon the edge of space,
Look down upon the fretful world, and I
Look up to outer vastness unafraid
And see the stars which sang when earth was made.



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April Poem A Day Challenge Day 27

Poetic Asides: Wow! After today, we'll be a mere three days from the end of this challenge. Today is a two for Tuesday prompt, so you've got two options:
1. Write a hopeful poem.
2. Write a hopeless poem.

Hey, it's opposites day again, where the prompts are diametrically opposed to one another. At least in theory. I see hopeful and hopeless not as flip sides of a coin, but angles to each other. The change from hopeful to hopeless can hinge on margins as thin as Prozac.

I meant to write one of each poem, but the poem had other ideas. It is a hopeful poem with undertones of hopelessness. Kind of like one of those puppies you kick that keeps coming back to be petted, tail wagging. Hey, I've never been able to properly channel Sylvia Plath.

Somehow my poem came out titled "Hopefulless". That's not where it will stay (I don't think) But we'll see. Three hopeful/hopeless poems to take in, two by my unchanneled Sylvia and one by Kim Addonizio, who I'm starting to like more and more.


Denouement
by Sylvia Plath

The telegram says you have gone away
And left our bankrupt circus on its town;
There is nothing more for me to say.

The maestro gives the singing birds their pay
And they buy tickets for the tropic zone;
The telegram says you have gone away.

The clever wolly dogs have had their day
They shoot the dice for one remaining bone;
There is nothing more for me to say.

The lion and the tigers turn to clay
And Jumbo sadly trumpets into stone;
The telegram says you have gone away.

The morbid cobra's wits have run astray;
He rents his poisons out by telegram;
There is nothing more for me to say.

The colored tenst all topple in the bay;
The magic sawdust writes: address unknown.
The telegram says you have gone away;
There is nothing more for me to say.




What Do Women Want?
by Kim Addonizio

I want a red dress.
I want it flimsy and cheap,
I want it too tight, I want to wear it
until someone tears it off me.
I want it sleeveless and backless,
this dress, so no one has to guess
what’s underneath. I want to walk down
the street past Thrifty’s and the hardware store
with all those keys glittering in the window,
past Mr. and Mrs. Wong selling day-old
donuts in their café, past the Guerra brothers
slinging pigs from the truck and onto the dolly,
hoisting the slick snouts over their shoulders.
I want to walk like I’m the only
woman on earth and I can have my pick.
I want that red dress bad.
I want it to confirm
your worst fears about me,
to show you how little I care about you
or anything except what
I want. When I find it, I’ll pull that garment
from its hanger like I’m choosing a body
to carry me into this world, through
the birth-cries and the love-cries too,
and I’ll wear it like bones, like skin,
it’ll be the goddamned
dress they bury me in.



Insomniac
by Sylvia Plath

The night is only a sort of carbon paper,
Blueblack, with the much-poked periods of stars
Letting in the light, peephole after peephole ---
A bonewhite light, like death, behind all things.
Under the eyes of the stars and the moon's rictus
He suffers his desert pillow, sleeplessness
Stretching its fine, irritating sand in all directions.

Over and over the old, granular movie
Exposes embarrassments--the mizzling days
Of childhood and adolescence, sticky with dreams,
Parental faces on tall stalks, alternately stern and tearful,
A garden of buggy rose that made him cry.
His forehead is bumpy as a sack of rocks.
Memories jostle each other for face-room like obsolete film stars.

He is immune to pills: red, purple, blue ---
How they lit the tedium of the protracted evening!
Those sugary planets whose influence won for him
A life baptized in no-life for a while,
And the sweet, drugged waking of a forgetful baby.
Now the pills are worn-out and silly, like classical gods.
Their poppy-sleepy colors do him no good.

His head is a little interior of grey mirrors.
Each gesture flees immediately down an alley
Of diminishing perspectives, and its significance
Drains like water out the hole at the far end.
He lives without privacy in a lidless room,
The bald slots of his eyes stiffened wide-open
On the incessant heat-lightning flicker of situations.

Nightlong, in the granite yard, invisible cats
Have been howling like women, or damaged instruments.
Already he can feel daylight, his white disease,
Creeping up with her hatful of trivial repetitions.
The city is a map of cheerful twitters now,
And everywhere people, eyes mica-silver and blank,
Are riding to work in rows, as if recently brainwashed.


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April Poem A Day Challenge Day 26

An out of left field prompt. I admit when I first read it, I despaired of finding anything to write about. The Muse chortled.

Poetic Asides: For today's prompt, write a "more than 5 times" poem. Of course, I'll let you decide what that means. Maybe you'll write a poem about something the narrator does more times than preferable; maybe you'll write a deja vu poem; or maybe you'll just write the same line and/or stanza more than 5 times. I just know that multiple poets recently said the "More than 5 times" subject line would make a great prompt, so I'm listening to the group. Have at it!

I wasn't sure how literally to take this prompt, and toyed with a repetition poem like Robert did. Interestingly, the minute I started writing the poem, it dictated how it wanted to be formed.

Five stanzas of five lines each for the technical, the subject matter is a bit more subtle. Although the poem's title is "Things I Never Told You" there isn't any reference to those things until the end. The majority of the poem is taken up with the things I did tell the anonymous 'you', roughly… five things if you dig through all the posturing and deflection.

As always, I wrote the poem, went back through it a few times to make sure it says what I want it to say, and then saved it for later editing. It's funny how later on when I pull it out and look, I'll find things I didn't realize I put in there, meanings, Freudian slips, all kinds of interesting word play. Some will stay, others will get toned down or built up.

Three poems by poets you may not know. Find the theme...




What the Angels Left
by Marie Howe

At first, the scissors seemed perfectly harmless.
They lay on the kitchen table in the blue light.

Then I began to notice them all over the house,
at night in the pantry, or filling up bowls in the cellar

where there should have been apples. They appeared under rugs,
lumpy places where one would usually settle before the fire,

or suddenly shining in the sink at the bottom of soupy water.
Once, I found a pair in the garden, stuck in turned dirt

among the new bulbs, and one night, under my pillow,
I felt something like a cool long tooth and pulled them out

to lie next to me in the dark. Soon after that I began
to collect them, filling boxes, old shopping bags,

every suitcase I owned. I grew slightly uncomfortable
when company came. What if someone noticed them

when looking for forks or replacing dried dishes? I longed
to throw them out, but how could I get rid of something

that felt oddly like grace? It occurred to me finally
that I was meant to use them, and I resisted a growing compulsion

to cut my hair, although in moments of great distraction,
I thought it was my eyes they wanted, or my soft belly

—exhausted, in winter, I laid them out on the lawn.
The snow fell quite as usual, without any apparent hesitation

or discomfort. In spring, as expected, they were gone.
In their place, a slight metallic smell, and the dear muddy earth.


The Kitchen Shears Speak
by Christianne Balk

This division must end.
Again I'm forced to amputate
the chicken's limb; slit the joint,
clip the heart, snip wing from back,

strip fat from flesh, separate
everything from itself. I'm used,
thrown down by unknown hands,
by cowards who can't bear to do

the constant severing. Open and close!
Open and close. I work and never tell.
Though mostly made of mouth, I have no voice,
no legs. My arms are bent, immobile

pinions gripped by strangers. I fear
the grudge things must hold.
I slice rose from bush, skin from muscle,
head from carrot, root from lettuce,

tail from fish. I break the bone.
What if they join against me,
uncouple me, throw away one-half,
or hide my slashed eye? Or worse,

what if I never die? What I fear
most is being caught, then rusted rigid,
punished like a prehistoric
bird, fossilized, and changed

into a winged lizard, trapped while clawing
air, stuck in stone with open beak.



The Cabbage
by Ruth Stone


You have rented an apartment.
You come to this enclosure with physical relief,
your heavy body climbing the stairs in the dark,
the hall bulb burned out, the landlord
of Greek extraction and possibly a fatalist.
In the apartment leaning against one wall,
your daughter's painting of a large frilled cabbage
against a dark sky with pinpoints of stars.
The eager vegetable, opening itself
as if to eat the air, or speak in cabbage
language of the meanings within meanings;
while the points of stars hide their massive
violence in the dark upper half of the painting.
You can live with this.


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April Poem A Day Challenge Day 25

Poetic Asides: For today's prompt, write a poem inspired by a song. Be sure to include the song and artist (if known) with your poem, so that we can all make our own mix CDs to write poetry.

Hey, a cool prompt. Although I was paralyzed by indecision for a while. So many songs. I finally narrowed it down to some of my favorites, Bruce Cockburn, David Gray, Iron and Wine, and Vienna Teng. One thing they all have in common is some uncommon lyrical ability. I love the way they play with words, tweak meaning and generally make you look at something in a different way. Anyone who can use "Idolatry of Ideology" in a song and make it work is okay by me.

I stole from Bruce, I stole from David, I stole from Sam Beam, filched from Vienna... then there's The Offspring and Linkin Park, but we're not going to go there right now, although they provide their own brand of inspiration.

Some lyric excerpts to mull over, and the Playlist for as many of them as I could find for you to listen to.

Call it Democracy
by Bruce Cockburn

Sinister cynical instrument
Who makes the gun into a sacrament --
The only response to the deification
Of tyranny by so-called "developed" nations'
Idolatry of ideology...

Northern Lights
by Bruce Cockburn

Mirrors are showing the day's last glow
As we're spit out into the jigsaw flow
Ahead where there should be the thickness of night
Stars are pinned on a shimmering curtain of light
Sky full of rippling cliffs and chasms
That shine like signs on the road to heaven...

Drought
by Vienna Teng

Summer move forward and stitch me the fabric of fall
Wrap life in the brilliance of death to humble us all
How sweet is the day
I'm craving a darkness
As I sit tucked away with my back to the wall

And the taste of dried-up hopes in my mouth
And the landscape of merry and desperate drought
How much longer dear angels
Let winterlight come
And spread your white sheets over my empty house...

Nothing Without You
by Vienna Teng

It's the quiet night that breaks me.
I cannot stand the sight of this familiar place.
It's the quiet night that breaks me, like a dozen papercuts that only I can trace.
All my books are lying useless now, all my maps will only show me how to lose my way...

Breathe
by David Gray

You feel your in too deep
So offer up some chrome
And drop it in the tin
Slither back within
Your crenulated wealth
Your educated self
Your family in rude health
And all the joy it brings
Aren't we forgetting something?
Feet out on the ledge
Feet out on the ledge
Breathe, Breathe, Breathe, Breathe…

And in the heat of noon
Finds you like some dog
You're propped up in a field
Medically sealed
Scratching at the wind shield

And howling at the glass
At anyone might walk past
Were you not aware?...

Full Steam
by David Gray

All our lives we’ve dreamed about it
Just to find that it was never real
This sure ain’t no great Valhalla
Coming closer each turn of the wheel
Forlorn， adrift on seas of beige
In this our Golden Age
Even in our darkest hour
Never thought that it could get so bad
Bullied， suckered， pimped and patronised
Every day your tawdry little lives
So loose your head
And step within
The silence deafening
Now you saw it coming
And I saw it coming
We all saw it coming
But we still bought it

Harder
by David Gray

Can’t recall the moment when the doubt ripped your face
or put my finger on quite when the fog took your place
We’ve been beating on it 'til we’re black and blue
Just what good exactly is it gonna do?
Always so much harder, so much harder when you have to try
Could we at least agree upon the size and the shape?
The relative dimensions that the lie ought to take
For your delectation a scenario
Taken so much further than it needs to go
Always so much harder, always so much...

Such Great Heights
by Iron & Wine

I am thinking it's a sign
That the freckles in our eyes
Are mirror images and when we kiss
They're perfectly aligned

And I have to speculate
That God himself did make us
Into corresponding shapes
Like puzzle pieces from the clay...

Serpent Charmer
by Iron & Wine

There's a woman here with a broken record player
And a dusty compass off to map the country's new behavior
Strange words that we hold on back into the river
Brave boys in the empty coats of men

There's a kitchen timer, distractions and reminders
That the rolly-pollies slowly crawling across your family's china
Strange words that we hold on back into the river
Dead dogs only want to live again

There's a serpent charmer, pair of shoes and wander
Speeding ticket, you're not leaving that last land of slaughter
Strange words that we hold on back into the river
Good girls come and kick you in the shin

There's a hopeful hunter with a hapless sense of wonder
And a million claw marks on the rock he hid his money under
Strange words that we hold on back into the river
And made men only want to live again...

The Trapeze Swinger
by Iron & Wine

Please remember me, happily
By the rosebush laughing
With bruises on my chin, the time when
We counted every black car passing

Your house beneath the hill and up until
Someone caught us in the kitchen
With maps, a mountain range, a piggy bank
A vision too removed to mention

But please remember me, fondly
I heard from someone you're still pretty
And then they went on to say that the Pearly Gates
Had some eloquent graffiti

Like 'We'll meet again' and 'Fuck the man'
And 'Tell my mother not to worry'
And angels with their great handshakes
But always done in such a hurry...


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April Poem A Day Challenge Day 24

Poetic Asides: For today's prompt, write an evening poem. My initial thought is that this poem would somehow involve the night, but upon further reflection, I guess it could be about evening things up or something.

Evening is a broad enough topic to encompass a whole bunch of things. I did the usual pondering on weirder topics, but came back to nature. Wyoming evenings offer up spectacular sunsets, honking geese, chattering redwings, pesky killdeer, and if you're far enough out from town, owls, coyote, and the occasional wolf song.

If that wasn't enough, the view provides plenty of poetry fodder. As we slide towards night, the stars pop out, planets, the moon when it's around can hang large in the sky. To the west the remnants of the sun cling to the peaks of the Big Horn Mountains, to the east, dark deep enough to hurt. On a clear night, out away from the regular world, you can see the Milky Way-millions and millions of stars swathed in a line.

So I did a nature poem, of sorts. I tried to leave Orion out of it, but it wasn't to be. And then there was another poem, about sinking into the sea in the evening, watching as the light above changed colors and vanished.

A nice change of pace from the usual. Here are three 'evening' poems for you to ponder – Gary Snyder, Mary Oliver, and William Stafford.


Rolling In At Twilight
by Gary Snyder

Rolling in at twilight – Newport Oregon –
cool of september ocean air, I
saw Phil Whalen with a load of groceries
walking through a dirt lot full
of logging trucks, cats
and skidders

looking at the ground.

I yelld as the bus wheeld by
but he kept looking down.
ten minutes later with my books and pack
knockt at his door

"Thought you might be on that bus"
he said, and
showed me all the food.




The Journey
by Mary Oliver


One day you finally knew
what you had to do, and began,
though the voices around you
kept shouting
their bad advice--
though the whole house
began to tremble
and you felt the old tug
at your ankles.
"Mend my life!"
each voice cried.
But you didn't stop.
You knew what you had to do,
though the wind pried
with its stiff fingers
at the very foundations,
though their melancholy
was terrible.
It was already late
enough, and a wild night,
and the road full of fallen
branches and stones.
But little by little,
as you left their voices behind,
the stars began to burn
through the sheets of clouds,
and there was a new voice
which you slowly
recognized as your own,
that kept you company
as you strode deeper and deeper
into the world,
determined to do
the only thing you could do--
determined to save
the only life you could save.



Traveling through the Dark
by William Stafford

Traveling through the dark I found a deer
dead on the edge of the Wilson River road.
It is usually best to roll them into the canyon:
that road is narrow; to swerve might make more dead.

By glow of the tail-light I stumbled back of the car
and stood by the heap, a doe, a recent killing;
she had stiffened already, almost cold.
I dragged her off; she was large in the belly.

My fingers touching her side brought me the reason--
her side was warm; her fawn lay there waiting,
alive, still, never to be born.
Beside that mountain road I hesitated.

The car aimed ahead its lowered parking lights;
under the hood purred the steady engine.
I stood in the glare of the warm exhaust turning red;
around our group I could hear the wilderness listen.

I thought hard for us all--my only swerving--,
then pushed her over the edge into the river.


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April Poem A Day Challenge Day 23

Poetic Asides: For today's prompt, write an exhausted poem. The poem can be a first person account of your own exhaustion, or it can describe the exhaustion of someone (or something) else. Heck, I guess it even could be about exhaust, huh?

This was a bit of a different prompt. I ran through the ideas about physical exhaustion and didn't come up with a whole lot I wanted to work with. Mental exhaustion and the accompanying hallucinations and psychosis? Excellent! Nothing like a poem about imaginary people, freaky music and weird smells to make the Muse rub his hands with glee.

Too bad my poem didn't actually turn out like that. Well, not as much as the Muse would have liked it to. It was more about burnout and the slow, almost unnoticed descent into exhaustion that can accompany mental fatigue. You know, the sneaky, insidious doubts that force their way into your mind, eat your lunch, put their feet up on your mental coffee table, and refuse to surrender the remote.

Here are a few poems kinda sorta related to the topic. Wilfred Owen, Amy Lowell, and Anne Sexton - an odd trio for sure, but I think they would all have sat around the table with a shot and a beer and had a good discussion on exhaustion.



Mental Cases
by Wilfred Owen

Who are these? Why sit they here in twilight?
Wherefore rock they, purgatorial shadows,
Drooping tongues from jaws that slob their relish,
Baring teeth that leer like skulls' tongues wicked?
Stroke on stroke of pain, -- but what slow panic,
Gouged these chasms round their fretted sockets?
Ever from their hair and through their hand palms
Misery swelters. Surely we have perished
Sleeping, and walk hell; but who these hellish?

-- These are men whose minds the Dead have ravished.
Memory fingers in their hair of murders,
Multitudinous murders they once witnessed.
Wading sloughs of flesh these helpless wander,
Treading blood from lungs that had loved laughter.
Always they must see these things and hear them,
Batter of guns and shatter of flying muscles,
Carnage incomparable and human squander
Rucked too thick for these men's extrication.

Therefore still their eyeballs shrink tormented
Back into their brains, because on their sense
Sunlight seems a bloodsmear; night comes blood-black;
Dawn breaks open like a wound that bleeds afresh
-- Thus their heads wear this hilarious, hideous,
Awful falseness of set-smiling corpses.
-- Thus their hands are plucking at each other;
Picking at the rope-knouts of their scourging;
Snatching after us who smote them, brother,
Pawing us who dealt them war and madness.




Fatigue
by Amy Lowell

Stupefy my heart to every day's monotony,
Seal up my eyes, I would not look so far,
Chasten my steps to peaceful regularity,
Bow down my head lest I behold a star.
Fill my days with work, a thousand calm necessities
Leaving no moment to consecrate to hope,
Girdle my thoughts within the dull circumferences
Of facts which form the actual in one short hour's scope.

Give me dreamless sleep, and loose night's power over me,
Shut my ears to sounds only tumultuous then,
Bid Fancy slumber, and steal away its potency,
Or Nature wakes and strives to live again.

Let each day pass, well ordered in its usefulness,
Unlit by sunshine, unscarred by storm;
Dower me with strength and curb all foolish eagerness --
The law exacts obedience. Instruct, I will conform.




The Starry Night
by Anne Sexton

That does not keep me from having a terrible need of - shall I say the word - religion. Then I go out at night to paint the stars.
- Vincent Van Gogh in a letter to his brother


The town does not exist
except where one black-haired tree slips
up like a drowned woman into the hot sky.
The town is silent. The night boils with eleven stars.
Oh starry night! This is how
I want to die.

It moves. They are all alive.
Even the moon bulges in its orange irons
to push children, like a god, from its eye.
The old unseen serpent swallows up the stars.
Oh starry starry night! This is how
I want to die:

into that rushing beast of the night,
sucked up by that great dragon, to split
from my life with no flag,
no belly,
no cry.


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April Poem A Day Challenge Day 22

I should have seen it coming. I try to avoid thinking about whatever media induced "Day" is coming up, with all its accompanying hype and hoopla. The day when specific groups try and browbeat me into believing and acting the way they do, for "the children", "the country", or 'the planet". (no pressure) Refuse to hop on the bandwagon carrying your 90 pound recyclable tuba and receive prompt accusations of Not Caring about the earth. I prefer to spread my actions out over 365 days instead of just one, and what I reuse and my weekly purchasing choices are my own business, thank you. Okay, rant over.

Poetic Asides: For today's prompt, write an Earth poem. You can decide what an Earth poem is. Maybe it's a poem about the planet; maybe it's actually the lowercase earth (a gardening or burial poem?); maybe it's just a poem that happens on (or to) Earth; maybe it's even written in the voice of extraterrestrials (that might be fun). No matter how you decide to roll with it, have a very poetic Earth Day!

I actually took this prompt and ran with it (okay, ran away at first). I just didn't take it in the direction that was probably expected. Earth to me meant ground, and ground meant grounded, as unable to fly. So my poem became "Grounded", and the quest for flight by someone who is fascinated by flying things, but kind of afraid of heights.

I wrote the poem in a sort of stream of consciousness process, so it appeared as more of a prose poem. I broke it into lines, which luckily for me, seem to occur at regular intervals. The stanza breaks are a bit trickier, and I will probably leave those for later revisions. Another good thing is that I already know the basic principles of flight, so I didn't have to go research them, break my flow, they slid naturally into my poem.

The tricky part will be deciding which of the two themes that emerged is the right one for the poem. One has a more psychological, or self-analytical bent to it. The danger in choosing that path is perhaps bending the poem to the theme, even if it doesn't entirely fit. I will probably try and retain both themes, one overt, the other underlying, and try to weave them together so they compliment each other rather than compete. This is where I shelve the poem until after this month is over, to let it breathe before I try that balancing act, because the poem, reduced, reused, recycled is usually better than the poem, fresh plucked. Something like that.

A few poems to ponder. My earth poem, courtesy of Ruth Stone, A commentary on Spring by Edna St. Vincent Millay, and a poem by Constance Urdang for traveling about on Earth Day. Or so I see it.


In the Next Galaxy
by Ruth Stone

Things will be different.
No one will lose their sight,
their hearing, their gallbladder.
It will be all Catskills with brand
new wrap-around verandas.
The idea of Hitler will not
have vibrated yet.
While back here,
they are still cleaning out
pockets of wrinkled
Nazis hiding in Argentina.
But in the next galaxy,
certain planets will have true
blue skies and drinking water.



Spring
by Edna St. Vincent Millay

To what purpose, April, do you return again?
Beauty is not enough.
You can no longer quiet me with the redness
Of little leaves opening stickily.
I know what I know.
The sun is hot on my neck as I observe
The spikes of the crocus.
The smell of the earth is good.
It is apparent that there is no death.
But what does that signify?
Not only under ground are the brains of men
Eaten by maggots.
Life in itself
Is nothing,
An empty cup, a flight of uncarpeted stairs.
It is not enough that yearly, down this hill,
April
Comes like an idiot, babbling and strewing flowers.



The Luggage
by Constance Urdang

Travel is a vanishing act
Only to those who are left behind.
What the traveler knows
Is that he accompanies himself,
Unwieldy baggage that can’t be checked,
Stolen, or lost, or mistaken.
So one took, past outposts of empire,
“Calmly as if in the British Museum,”
Not only her Victorian skirts,
Starched shirtwaists, and umbrella, but her faith
In the civilizing mission of women,
Her backaches and insomnia, her innocent valor;
Another, friend of witch-doctors,
Living on native chop,
Trading tobacco and hooks for fish and fetishes,
Heralded her astonishing arrival
Under shivering stars
By calling, “It’s only me!” A third,
Intent on savage customs, and to demonstrate
That a woman could travel as easily as a man,
Carried a handkerchief damp with wifely tears
And only once permitted a tribal chieftain
To stroke her long, golden hair.



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April Poem A Day Challenge Day 21

Yikes! Another fill in the blank prompt.

Poetic Asides: For today's prompt, take the phrase "According to (blank)," replace the blank with a word or phrase, make the new phrase the title of your poem, and then, write the poem. Example titles might be: "According to Bob," "According to these instructions," "According to the government," "According to the sun," etc.

Didn't get a whole lot of inspiration from this one. The Muse rolled his eyes and vanished in a puff of chocolate-scented powder. So, lacking other ideas, I wrote, "According To Me", which seemed very appropriate, including the line - I'm not everything I'm cracked up to be – which I think was Muse inspired, because doG forbid I get the least bit cocky, or the Muse will put me in my place.

So the poem became a cynical rant about how the part of me that has a mighty high opinion of itself is constantly being sniped at by the part of me that loathes and despises such arrogance. Nothing like some good old internal conflict to keep the blood... er, poetic juices flowing.

Here are three poems that fall into my "According To Me" file. Marge Piercy, who is an old favorite of mine, and Young Smith, a recent discovery. Smith only appears to have one poetry book out, but from what I've read of his work in poetry reviews, it's enough to make me want to go forth and buy his book, something that doesn't happen too often.


Dislocation
by Marge Piercy


It happens in an instant.
My grandma used to say
someone is walking on your grave.

It's that moment when your life
is suddenly strange to you
as someone else's coat

you have slipped on at a party
by accident, and it is far
too big or too tight for you.

Your life feels awkward, ill
fitting. You remember why you
came into this kitchen, but you

feel you don't belong here.
It scares you in a remote
numb way. You fear that you—

whatever you means, this mind,
this entity stuck into a name
like mercury dropped into water—

have lost the ability to enter your
self, a key that no longer works.
Perhaps you will be locked

out here forever peering in
at your body, if that self is really
what you are. If you are at all.

"Dislocation" by Marge Piercy from The Crooked Inheritance. © Alfred A. Knopf, 2006.




She Considers the Dimensions of Her Soul
by Young Smith

The shape of her soul is a square.
She knows this to be the case
because she often feels its corners
pressing sharp against the bone
just under her shoulder blades
and across the wings of her hips.
At one time, when she was younger,
she had hoped that it might be a cube,
but the years have worked to dispel
this illusion of space, so that now
she understands: it is a simple plane,
a shape with surface, but no volume—
a window without a building, an eye
without a mind.
---------------Of course, this square
does not appear on x-rays, and often,
weeks may pass when she forgets
that it exists. When she does think
to consider its purpose in her life,
she can say only that it aches with
a single mystery, for whose answer
she has long ago given up the search—
since its question is a word whose name
can never quite be asked. This yearning,
she has concluded, is the only function
of the square, repeated again and again
in each of its four matching angles,
until, with time, she is persuaded
anew that what it frames has no
interest in ever making her happy.




Beneath the Waves
by Young Smith


On the streetcar one evening, I met a fat little man
with a face full of warts where his beard should have been.
He was interested in the mysteries of deep ocean vents,

where, he said, there are life forms found nowhere else
on the planet. Great clusters of tube worms, for example,
waving in the dark, many of them over six feet in length!

You could find pale spider crabs there and giant white clams,
carpets of starfish, clouds of blind shrimp. Until recently,
he said, before the lamps of the submarines found their way

at last to those fields of chimneys, not a single photon of light
had ever brushed the black trenches where they lay.
The little man showed me photographs in a large book

on the subject, and as I studied his pictures, I came to see how,
as he put it, alone in bed late at night, one might find a peculiar
comfort in this landscape with no use for eyes.


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April Poem A Day Challenge Day 20

Poetic Asides: Today is a two for Tuesday prompt. Here are the two options:

1. Write a looking back poem. There are a few ways to tackle this one, I guess. The narrator could be reflecting on the past or literally looking back (like over his or her shoulder).

2. Write a poem that doesn't look back. This poem would be kind of the opposite, I suppose. Narrator who refuses to look back or who is literally looking forward (or I suppose another option even is that the narrator is blind or something).

Two'fer's are definitely interesting, although they are usually opposites. Black-white, Love-AntiLove, Up-down. AKA Tuesday bipolar poems. Since I like to take the prompt and turn it all around, shake it upside down to see what falls out, opposites aren't too unusual for me. Then the question becomes, how to reflect on the past without becoming maudlin or too introspective. If it's a look back at a personal past, how to keep the reader engaged with something they shouldn't really have an interest in.

For some reason the idea of looking back over your shoulder is kind of intriguing. What if your head became stuck that way, and you could only walk forward but look backward? What would that kind of poem look like? How would it be to be a horse wearing blinders, never to see life outside a narrow field of vision? What if every morning you were required to forget the previous day, and carry on as if it never happened – a la Groundhog Day, but with your knowledge and cooperation. Could someone do this? Would it be a Buddhist world filled with living in the present moment? Is it even possible?

These are the thoughts that bounce through my head when thinking on a prompt – well, at least the thoughts I'm willing to put down in black and white. As for writing a poem that doesn't look back I wrote one that never ended, a phoenix poem if you will, about regrets devoured and the failure to break the cycle that keeps my protagonist stuck. Not in mud, but in the shards of previously devoured bones... yeah, some days are like that.

Here are two poems to ponder. What do they say about looking forward—and looking back?



Personal Helicon
by Seamus Heaney

As a child, they could not keep me from wells
And old pumps with buckets and windlasses.
I loved the dark drop, the trapped sky, the smells
Of waterweed, fungus and dank moss.

One, in a brickyard, with a rotted board top.
I savoured the rich crash when a bucket
Plummeted down at the end of a rope.
So deep you saw no reflection in it.

A shallow one under a dry stone ditch
Fructified like any aquarium.
When you dragged out long roots from the soft mulch
A white face hovered over the bottom.

Others had echoes, gave back your own call
With a clean new music in it. And one
Was scaresome, for there, out of ferns and tall
Foxgloves, a rat slapped across my reflection.

Now, to pry into roots, to finger slime,
To stare, big-eyed Narcissus, into some spring
Is beneath all adult dignity. I rhyme
To see myself, to set the darkness echoing.



Exposed on the cliffs of the heart
by Rainer Maria Rilke

Exposed on the cliffs of the heart. Look, how tiny down there,
look: the last village of words and, higher,
(but how tiny) still one last
farmhouse of feeling. Can you see it?
Exposed on the cliffs of the heart. Stoneground
under your hands. Even here, though,
something can bloom; on a silent cliff-edge
an unknowing plant blooms, singing, into the air.
But the one who knows? Ah, he began to know
and is quiet now, exposed on the cliffs of the heart.
While, with their full awareness,
many sure-footed mountain animals pass
or linger. And the great sheltered birds flies, slowly
circling, around the peak's pure denial. - But
without a shelter, here on the cliffs of the heart...



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April Poem A Day Challenge Day 19

Poetic Asides: For today's prompt, write a poem about somebody and be sure to include the person's name in the title of your poem (no reason to hide the person's identity here). Write a poem about Abraham Lincoln, Emily Dickinson, Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi, your next door neighbor, your child, or the person standing behind you. I guess you could even technically write a poem about yourself (just make sure you include your name in the title).

Now this was a different prompt, and a fun one. I had a harder time narrowing things down than I thought. Who to choose? So many people. I finally settled on doing two poems. The first was on Amelia Earhart (remember the flight fascination thing?), her thoughts (through my interpretation) about flying across the Atlantic Ocean in the night, alone.

The second poem is about my friend, Linda, and the curious circumstances around our initial meeting at the formation of an artist's group. Her first words to me were the opening line to my poem. "You aren't from around here, are you?" If we lived in the Old Wild West, those might have been an invitation to trouble, but since it was the New Modern Mild West, they were an invitation to a long friendship.

I've had a series of poems planned for a while, all of them about people of the past who were influential to me growing up. Not family, but the mythical and larger-than-life people I read about – of who Amelia Earhart was one.

Diane Arbus, Louise Nevelson, Hildegard of Bingen, Margaret Mead, Rachel Carson, Joan of Arc, Deborah Sampson, Mary Casatt, Beatrix Potter, Indira Ghandi, Jane Goodall, Margaret Bourke-White, Grace Hopper. . . to name a few. Hmm, I better get writing. Haven't even touched on ancient women or the men.

In the meantime, keeping with the prompt, here are two different takes on Persephone, by two different poets.


Persephone, Falling
by Rita Dove

One narcissus among the ordinary beautiful
flowers, one unlike all the others! She pulled,
stooped to pull harder—
when, sprung out of the earth
on his glittering terrible
carriage, he claimed his due.
It is finished. No one heard her.
No one! She had strayed from the herd.

(Remember: go straight to school.
This is important, stop fooling around!
Don't answer to strangers. Stick
with your playmates. Keep your eyes down.)
This is how easily the pit
opens. This is how one foot sinks into the ground.

"Persephone, Falling", from Mother Love by Rita Dove. Copyright © 1995 by Rita Dove.



Persephone the Wanderer
by Louise Glück

In the first version, Persephone
is taken from her mother
and the goddess of the earth
punishes the earth—this is
consistent with what we know of human behavior,

that human beings take profound satisfaction
in doing harm, particularly
unconscious harm:

we may call this
negative creation.

Persephone's initial
sojourn in hell continues to be
pawed over by scholars who dispute
the sensations of the virgin:

did she cooperate in her rape,
or was she drugged, violated against her will,
as happens so often now to modern girls.

As is well known, the return of the beloved
does not correct
the loss of the beloved: Persephone

returns home
stained with red juice like
a character in Hawthorne—

I am not certain I will
keep this word: is earth
"home" to Persephone? Is she at home, conceivably,
in the bed of the god? Is she
at home nowhere? Is she
a born wanderer, in other words
an existential
replica of her own mother, less
hamstrung by ideas of causality?

You are allowed to like
no one, you know. The characters
are not people.
They are aspects of a dilemma or conflict.

Three parts: just as the soul is divided,
ego, superego, id. Likewise

the three levels of the known world,
a kind of diagram that separates
heaven from earth from hell.

You must ask yourself:
where is it snowing?

White of forgetfulness,
of desecration—

It is snowing on earth; the cold wind says

Persephone is having sex in hell.
Unlike the rest of us, she doesn't know
what winter is, only that
she is what causes it.

She is lying in the bed of Hades.
What is in her mind?
Is she afraid? Has something
blotted out the idea
of mind?

She does know the earth
is run by mothers, this much
is certain. She also knows
she is not what is called
a girl any longer. Regarding
incarceration, she believes

she has been a prisoner since she has been a daughter.

The terrible reunions in store for her
will take up the rest of her life.
When the passion for expiation
is chronic, fierce, you do not choose
the way you live. You do not live;
you are not allowed to die.

You drift between earth and death
which seem, finally,
strangely alike. Scholars tell us

that there is no point in knowing what you want
when the forces contending over you
could kill you.

White of forgetfulness,
white of safety—

They say
there is a rift in the human soul
which was not constructed to belong
entirely to life. Earth

asks us to deny this rift, a threat
disguised as suggestion—
as we have seen
in the tale of Persephone
which should be read

as an argument between the mother and the lover—
the daughter is just meat.

When death confronts her, she has never seen
the meadow without the daisies.
Suddenly she is no longer
singing her maidenly songs
about her mother's
beauty and fecundity. Where
the rift is, the break is.

Song of the earth,
song of the mythic vision of eternal life—

My soul
shattered with the strain
of trying to belong to earth—

What will you do,
when it is your turn in the field with the god?

"Persephone the Wanderer" from Averno by Louise Glück. Copyright © 2006 by Louise Glück.


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April Poem A Day Challenge Day 18

Oh, just when we were on a roll, along comes another title poem prompt to slow me down.

Poetic Asides: For today's prompt, take the phrase "To (blank)," replace the blank with a word or phrase, make the new phrase the title of your poem, and then, write the poem. Some examples: "To the left, to the left," "To write or not to write," "To Kill a Hummingbird," "To the Doghouse," etc. There are so many possibilities.

There may be many possibilities, but I wasn't finding them. "To..." implies an action, a direction, some sort of orderly process of events. "To Infinity, and Beyond", "To Die Another Day" "To Hell and Back", not to mention other movie titles and catch phrases. As soon as I brain dumped those, other familiar phrases started arising. "Too Many Cooks Spoil The Broth". Oops, that was a Too, not a To. Strike that.

Appeals to the Muse went unanswered. Finally, I just started writing something. And came up with a poem titled: To Make Something Out Of Nothing. Pretty appropriate.

I wasn't entirely happy with it, so I wrote another poem, and decided to tack a To title on later. "To The West, Out Of The Sun, Rode The Stranger" is what evolved. It's not quite the John Wayne poem you think it is, but hey, I'm out west, the sun is setting, and I'm pretty strange, so there you go.

Here is a "Two" picture, (As in two geese seen on a walk) and a poem by Argentinean poet Jorge Luis Borges.


The Other Tiger
by Jorge Luis Borges

A tiger comes to mind. The twilight here
Exalts the vast and busy Library
And seems to set the bookshelves back in gloom;
Innocent, ruthless, bloodstained, sleek
It wanders through its forest and its day
Printing a track along the muddy banks
Of sluggish streams whose names it does not know
(In its world there are no names or past
Or time to come, only the vivid now)
And makes its way across wild distances
Sniffing the braided labyrinth of smells
And in the wind picking the smell of dawn
And tantalizing scent of grazing deer;
Among the bamboo's slanting stripes I glimpse
The tiger's stripes and sense the bony frame
Under the splendid, quivering cover of skin.
Curving oceans and the planet's wastes keep us
Apart in vain; from here in a house far off
In South America I dream of you,
Track you, O tiger of the Ganges' banks.

It strikes me now as evening fills my soul
That the tiger addressed in my poem
Is a shadowy beast, a tiger of symbols
And scraps picked up at random out of books,
A string of labored tropes that have no life,
And not the fated tiger, the deadly jewel
That under sun or stars or changing moon
Goes on in Bengal or Sumatra fulfilling
Its rounds of love and indolence and death.
To the tiger of symbols I hold opposed
The one that's real, the one whose blood runs hot
As it cuts down a herd of buffaloes,
And that today, this August third, nineteen
Fifty-nine, throws its shadow on the grass;
But by the act of giving it a name,
By trying to fix the limits of its world,
It becomes a fiction not a living beast,
Not a tiger out roaming the wilds of earth.

We'll hunt for a third tiger now, but like
The others this one too will be a form
Of what I dream, a structure of words, and not
The flesh and one tiger that beyond all myths
Paces the earth. I know these things quite well,
Yet nonetheless some force keeps driving me
In this vague, unreasonable, and ancient quest,
And I go on pursuing through the hours
Another tiger, the beast not found in verse.


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April Poem A Day Challenge Day 17

Since I write quite a few science poems, this was a good prompt for me.

Poetic Asides: For today's prompt, write a science poem. Science encompasses a lot, so your poem doesn't have to be scientific to still be a science poem. For instance, you could have a poem titled something like "The Science of Love," and then examine a relationship. Voila! A science poem! Of course, it'll be interesting to see how many poets talk about volcanoes and single cell organisms, not to mention finding out how many "mad scientists" are out there.

After looking through what I've written in the past I'd say they fall into a few specific categories – physics, astronomy, psychology, and biology. Most of my poems hinge on psychological ideas, but the lure of physics is strong. Since I don't really understand it, writing poetry about it helps. Same with biology.

Back in junior high I wanted to be an ornithologist. I still love birds - and flying. I've been fascinated by flight as long as I can remember, so if it has wings, organic, wooden or metallic, I'm interested. Also space, moving through it, what's out there, all that jazz. I've written about my fascination with a certain star formation before, and sure enough, I had to write another poem about Orion, a "Constellation Preoccupation".

I also wrote a cognitive psychology poem that was rather short and pointed, and then the Muse decided to gift me with a few more ideas, so now I have a nice trio of science type poems thanks to the prompt, including one that explores "The Theory of Everything." So much in science to write about. It is a nice contrast to the historical, mythological, theological poems I've written of late. Of course, now and then, science and religion cross paths in a poem. The results are usually interesting, and not entirely what I expected. The Muse likes to keep me guessing.

Another poem trio to match my just written poem trio, a bit of old and a bit of new.



Telescope
by Louise Glück


There is a moment after you move your eye away
when you forget where you are
because you've been living, it seems,
somewhere else, in the silence of the night sky.

You've been stopped being here in the world
You're in a different place
a place where human life has no meaning.

You're not a creature in a body.
You exist as the stars exist,
participating in their stillness, their immensity.

Then you're in the world again.
An night, on a cold hill,
taking the telescope apart.

You realize afterward
not that the image is false
but the relation is false.

You see again how far away
each thing is from every other thing.




Peace On Earth
by William Carlos Williams

The Archer is wake!
The Swan is flying!
Gold against blue
An Arrow is lying.
There is hunting in heaven--
Sleep safe till to-morrow.

The Bears are abroad!
The Eagle is screaming!
Gold against blue
Their eyes are gleaming!
Sleep!
Sleep safe till to-morrow.

The Sisters lie
With their arms intertwining;
Gold against blue
Their hair is shining!
The Serpent writhes!
Orion is listening!
Gold against blue
His sword is glistening!
Sleep!
There is hunting in heaven--
Sleep safe till to-morrow.



Germs
by Walt Whitman

Forms, qualities, lives, humanity, language, thoughts,
The ones known, and the ones unknown, the ones on the stars,
The stars themselves, some shaped, others unshaped,
Wonders as of those countries, the soil, trees, cities, inhabitants,
whatever they may be,
Splendid suns, the moons and rings, the countless combinations and effects,
Such-like, and as good as such-like, visible here or anywhere, stand
provided for a handful of space, which I extend my arm and
half enclose with my hand,
That containing the start of each and all, the virtue, the germs of all.


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April Poem A Day Challenge Day 16

Just when I thought I would be bored by the prompts, along comes one that spun a poem from me immediately. It wasn't the poem I planned, but hey, you take what you get.

Poetic Asides: Maybe it's a little too close to tax day, but today's prompt is to write a death poem. You can write about a specific death or consider death as an idea. In the tradition of Emily Dickinson (and other poets), you could even address Death as an entity. Or you can surprise us with a different spin on the subject.

My poem ended up being about I woman I knew who knew she was going to die, and planned for her death – obsessively and down to the last detail. I suppose it was her way of taking some control over what was uncontrollable, but the depth of specificity she delved into was a little frightening. She not only planned for her death, but the things that happened afterward.

The attempt to control from beyond the grave was a novel concept for me. I suppose it is no different than the artists and poets who want to leave something behind, something for people to remember them by when they are gone. Something that says "I was here! Don't forget!" I can sympathize with that.

Here are a trio of poems by Emily Dickinson, (but not her most 'famous' one – "Because I Could Not Stop For Death"). Maybe it was the era she lived in that gave her such an interesting perspective. Emily Dickinson wrote many poems on death, where Death is a character, a persona, a companion rather than something to be feared. As usual, her punctuation and slant rhymes make you stop and think. "What is she really saying here?"

LXXV

IT was not death, for I stood up,
And all the dead lie down;
It was not night, for all the bells
Put out their tongues, for noon.

It was not frost, for on my flesh
I felt siroccos crawl,—
Nor fire, for just my marble feet
Could keep a chancel cool.

And yet it tasted like them all;
The figures I have seen
Set orderly, for burial,
Reminded me of mine,

As if my life were shaven
And fitted to a frame,
And could not breathe without a key;
And ’t was like midnight, some,

When everything that ticked has stopped,
And space stares, all around,
Or grisly frosts, first autumn morns,
Repeal the beating ground. 20

But most like chaos,—stopless, cool,—
Without a chance or spar,
Or even a report of land
To justify despair.



LIII

DEATH sets a thing significant
The eye had hurried by,
Except a perished creature
Entreat us tenderly

To ponder little workmanships
In crayon or in wool,
With “This was last her fingers did,”
Industrious until

The thimble weighed too heavy,
The stitches stopped themselves,
And then ’t was put among the dust
Upon the closet shelves.

A book I have, a friend gave,
Whose pencil, here and there,
Had notched the place that pleased him,—
At rest his fingers are.

Now, when I read, I read not,
For interrupting tears
Obliterate the etchings
Too costly for repairs.



XXV

THERE is a solitude of space,
A solitude of sea,
A solitude of death, but these
Society shall be,
Compared with that profounder site,
That polar privacy,
A Soul admitted to Itself:
Finite Infinity.


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April Poem A Day Challenge Day 15

Am I running out of poetic steam? Another prompt that did not jog anything loose from my brain. At least not immediately.

Poetic Asides: For today's prompt, write a deadline poem. You can interpret what a deadline poem is however you wish. Maybe it's a poem that laments the idea of deadlines. Maybe it's a poem about someone intentionally missing them or who never has problems with them (I wish I were that person). Regardless of how you take it, remember that you have until tomorrow before another prompt will be posted. Consider that your poetic deadline.

I had to wrestle with this one. I finally settled on working with my pet peeve – which is probably why the poem didn't want to emerge. Who wants to write about a problem most people don't have? How to put it into terms others could understand.

I hate deadlines.

I love deadlines.

That about covers it. I'm disorganized, forgetful, have trouble getting started on tasks, have trouble finishing the task in a timely manner. I procrastinate, lose time and generally wait until the deadline is looming over my head like some gigantic wave in the Perfect Storm. It isn't until I feel the splash of the water that I buckle down and produce like crazy, go into hyperfocus mode, make decisions, finish projects off, and generally meet the deadline. I love it when I'm done, hate it when I'm in the middle of the race. After each barely met deadline I swear I won't let it happen again, sometimes I even get a project off early. . . and then slip back into old habits.

Writing a poem about deadlines reminded me how much I hate those feelings. So in that way, it was a good prompt. Hopefully I tapped into some of that emotion for the poem. I'm even going to get this post up before midnight. I met my self-imposed deadline of write the dang poem, don't try and edit it tonight, and get the post up before I turn into a pumpkin. Mission accomplished.

Hey, look, I have lots of time left, two hours or so. I bet I could write another poem before the midnight deadline. . . Right after I play tug with the Corgis, answer some email, and put the dishes away.

Lots of time. . .



In keeping with the goal to bring you at least some poetry here today, one of my favorite "attention deficit" poems by an author from my alma mater.



I Know a Man

by Robert Creeley


As I sd to my
friend, because I am
always talking,—John, I

sd, which was not his
name, the darkness sur-
rounds us, what

can we do against
it, or else, shall we &
why not, buy a goddamn big car,

drive, he sd, for
christ’s sake, look
out where yr going.


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April Poem A Day Challenge Day 14

For some reason I couldn't wrap my head around this prompt. I think I dislike the blank word + word = title – write a poem about it formula. I'm not very inspired by that method, despite my previous rumblings about the benefits of restrictions. Or maybe I'm afraid I'll channel the TV program Lost, and start mumbling about how the island isn't done with me yet.

Poetic Asides: For today's prompt, take the phrase "(blank) Island," replace the blank with a word or phrase, make the new phrase the title of your poem, and then, write the poem. You could do a well-known island, such as "Treasure Island," "Ellis Island," or "Total Drama Island." Or you could make up the name of an island. Or you could even have a long drawn out title, such as "You'll never get me on an island" or "If I were on a deserted island."

I thought on this one all day, turning ideas around in my head, and finally carping at the Muse for being no help. In return, I was gifted with this pearl of wisdom from the Muse, who quoted John Donne's Meditation XVII at me.

"All mankind is of one author, and is one volume; when one man dies, one chapter is not torn out of the book, but translated into a better language; and every chapter must be so translated...As therefore the bell that rings to a sermon, calls not upon the preacher only, but upon the congregation to come: so this bell calls us all: but how much more me, who am brought so near the door by this sickness....No man is an island, entire of itself...any man's death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind; and therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee."

After I sulked and whined a while, (but it's been 'done'! – the muse smacked me upside the head and said get to work - so I did.) I came up with a poem that talks about how in fact, a women can be an island, what brings them to that point, and that while mankind may be interconnected, sometimes womenkind is not. While Donne asserts no one man can exist on his own, cut off from all the rest of society; i.e. there are no human islands, Brewer asserts that some can and do exist on their own, not necessarily by choice, but islanded by fear.

Tolling bells, water metaphors, the engineering of sandcastles. . . just another day at the poetic office. Maybe I didn't hate the prompt as much as I thought.

The best I can tie it into the TV show Lost, and how I felt writing my piece, is with this poem by Donne. (You fellow Losties think of the Black Rock.)


A Burnt Ship
by John Donne


Out of a fired ship, which by no way
But drowning could be rescued from the flame,
Some men leap'd forth, and ever as they came
Near the foes' ships, did by their shot decay;
So all were lost, which in the ship were found,
They in the sea being burnt, they in the burnt ship drown'd.






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April Poem A Day Challenge Day 13

"Every poem I write is a love poem." Maybe a strange statement for me to make, but a true one.

From Poetic Asides: Here are today's two prompts:
1. Write a love poem.
2. Write an anti-love poem.

For this prompt I wrote one 'love' poem, and two 'anti-love' poems. The anti poems were not necessarily against love or a lover, but a lament about the difficulties of sifting through all the baggage surrounding the idea of love and maybe stumbling on the actual thing.

I think to write a good love poem you need to forge an emotional connection with the reader, give them something they can identify with – the excitement of first love, rhythm of comfortable love, bewilderment of failed love. It's easy to be cruel and unkind, especially to yourself, far harder to tap honest love and shove it forth into the light for all to see. Even anti-love was love at one time.

Since National Poetry Month is all about expanding poetic horizons, I have two poems and two poets for you today, both of which I reread and continually find new meaning in their work. For either poet, what seems simple at first look is not, what starts out appearing complex, is really quite simple.

What are some of your favorite love poems, that do not appear that way initially?

The first of my favorite 'love' poems comes from a Christian Mystic, Meister Eckhart. The second is by Robert Penn Warren, and does not seem to be a love poem at all.

But that's the way I see it.

The Hope of Loving
by Meister Eckhart


What keeps us alive, what allows us to endure?
I think it is the hope of loving,
or being loved.

I heard a fable once about the sun going on a journey
to find its source, and how the moon wept
without her lover’s
warm gaze.

We weep when light does not reach our hearts. We wither
like fields if someone close
does not rain their
kindness
upon
us.


*****

Trying to Tell You Something
by Robert Penn Warren

All things lean at you, and some are
Trying to tell you something, though of some

The heart is too full for speech. On a hill, the oak,
Immense, older than Jamestown or God, splitting

With its own weight at the great inverted
Crotch, air-spread and ice-hung, ringed with iron

Like barrel-hoops, only heavier, massive rods
Running through and bolted, and higher, the cables,

Which in summer are hidden by green leaves—the oak,
It is trying to tell you something. It wants,

In its fullness of years, to describe to you
What happens on a December night when

It stands alone in a world of whiteness. The moon is full.
You can hear the stars crackle in their high brightness.

It is ten below zero, and the iron
Of hoops and reinforcement rods is continuing to contract.

There is the rhythm of a slow throb, like pain. The wind,
Northwest, is steady, and in the wind, the cables,

In a thin-honed and disinfectant purity, like
A dentist’s drill, sing. They sing

Of truth, and its beauty. The oak
Wants to declare this to you, so that you

Will not be unprepared when, some December night,
You stand on a hill, in a world of whiteness, and

Stare into the crackling absoluteness of the sky. The oak
Wants to tell you because, at that moment,

In your own head, the cables will sing
With a thin-honed and disinfectant purity,

And no one can predict the consequences.



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April Poem A Day Challenge Day 12

Poetic Asides: For today's prompt, pick a city, make that the title of your poem, and write a poem. Your poem can praise or belittle the city. Your poem could be about the city or about the people of the city. Your poem could even have seemingly nothing to do with the city. But the simple act of picking a city will set the mood (to a certain degree), so choose wisely.

This was a fairly easy and fun prompt for me. I had the city in mind instantly. Siena. I spent time there in college, going to the University of Siena (Università degli Studi di Siena) in Italy, where I majored in Art History, of course. It was wonderful to live amid all the art, tour the churches and museums, practically live art history every day, and be able to jump on a train and run up to Amsterdam to see the Van Gogh Museum, or pop over to France for the Louvre.

I liked this prompt because it never occurred to me before to tackle things this way. I have the idea in my mind to do a poem for each city I have lived in – there's about 20. It could be fun to do. The prompt is also wide open in how to approach the city poem. I think it still needs to give the feel for the city so people can live vicariously.

I have one Siena poem done, and another roughed out, because you can't think about Siena without remembering the Palio and the colorful parade of contrade. (sort of city subdivisions, but way more involved) I belonged to the Valdimontone (Ram) contrada at the time. The display of colorful banners, parades, feasts, and fierce dedication to their horse for the big Palio was inspiring. The Palio is sort of a galloping train wreck of a horse race that careens around the city square. It has to be seen to be believed, experienced to get under your skin for life.
So now I'm curious.

What city moves you to poetry?


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April Poem A Day Challenge Day 11

Poetic Asides: For today's prompt, take the phrase "The Last (blank)," replace the blank with a word or phrase, make that the title of your poem, and then, write the poem. Some examples: "The Last Train," "The Last Kiss," "The Last Time I'll Give Directions to a Complete Stranger," "The Last Dance," etc.

Nothing exciting for today. Had to readjust my mind to stop thinking in clichés when I read the prompt, because it immediately latched on to every well known "Last" phrase I've ever known or heard of. That's the danger of being constantly bombarded by information – tv, radio, outdoor advertising, Internet, text messages, Twitter and all the rest.

You just can't remember where you heard something, and many times you think it was your idea, but later come to find out you read/heard/saw it somewhere, and it burrowed into your subconscious not to rear its ugly head until the most opportune time.

To outwit it, I chose to write a simple story poem. "The Last Attempt", about a woman's efforts to gain the attentions of a man she is interested in, and what causes her finally to give up. It came out a bit more sarcastic than I intended, but there is no arguing with the muse at times.

Because it was so nice and warm today, lulling Wyomingites into the mistaken idea winter's over, here's a poem about spring, from Gerard Manley Hopkins, who is, in my opinion, a highly underrated poet. I like the way he plays with words and rhythm, and the images he can conjure up. It almost makes me want to try my hand at sonnets again.

Almost.




Spring
by Gerard Manley Hopkins


NOTHING is so beautiful as spring—
When weeds, in wheels, shoot long and lovely and lush;
Thrush’s eggs look little low heavens, and thrush
Through the echoing timber does so rinse and wring
The ear, it strikes like lightnings to hear him sing;
The glassy peartree leaves and blooms, they brush
The descending blue; that blue is all in a rush
With richness; the racing lambs too have fair their fling.

What is all this juice and all this joy?
A strain of the earth’s sweet being in the beginning
In Eden garden.—Have, get, before it cloy,
Before it cloud, Christ, lord, and sour with sinning,
Innocent mind and Mayday in girl and boy,
Most, O maid’s child, thy choice and worthy the winning.


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