NaPoWriMo: 30 and About Damn Time

I’m staring at the keyboard. Not a whole lot of thinking happening. Two writing projects end today. Tomorrow. Tomorrow I shall feel odd, sad, maybe a little lost. Then, I’ll remember, You’re all still there!

No prompt. My mind wouldn’t consent to thinking about even a simple acrostic, maybe a haiku. I shall link to Miz Q for the final time. I have enjoyed having her corner during this month.

Dear God! Look
at the time…

I mean,

Dear God,

The day is closing fast
and I have no poem, no
thought. My mind —
that most elusive of things —
wanders and blanks, blanks
and dreams, wanders.

Elizabeth wrote to The Poem
Fairy, and Brenda pulled
a Hail Mary haiku — well,
so did I, thanks to Cati
and Picasso — This time,
I thought I had better
go straight to you.

Grant me no serenity,
please, not yet, but ideas
hard and bright.

Yours Faithfully,

m

I shall see you Thursday for Your Poetics Serendipity; Friday for the roundup of the week’s prompts; and next Tuesday for a Shake it Out prompt. You do not know how I have missed writing that at the end of each post.

I shall also announce the winners of the Poetry Giveaway on Thursday.

Happy writing, everyone.

 

NaPoWriMo: I Have a Line on 29

I know: I’m early. Such is the working of the poetic brain. Miz Q’s prompt asks for a change of name [a something I ignored] and a wish from the newly named person. The third name to pop into my head was Cassandra (I have no idea) and I was off.

Greek Tragedy Past and Present

Cassandra’s foresight
her curse, no one believed her.
Epic tragedy.

Not for the first time, Cassandra wished her parents
had named her Anne, or Jane, or even Rainbow. No
one asked about names like Rainbow, any more. Instead,
they named her after some British thriller disaster
movie (even if it did star Martin Sheen, much younger
and dishier). People always asked. Epic tragedy.

 

NaPoWriMo: Almost Late With 28

I was waiting for inspiration… and waiting… I have had to resort to my wrote it a couple of days ago from something Hannah G said poem. I was holding onto it for emergencies like jelly brain. Thank you, Hannah :-).

Dissect an image
capture its essence in words
pin it to a poem.

 

NaPoWriMo: Selling 27

I had altogether too much fun with Miz Q’s prompt to write a poem to do with some aspect of salesmanship. My auto-pilot brain leapt to the spam box that comes with my blog, a place where I go for a laugh before deleting. I remixed some of the pitches and, because they are different pitches, separated them by margin alignment. Poetic? mmm…; a laugh? yes.

 

NaPoWriMo: Erasing 26

Posting later than usual. I’ll leave a link at Miz Q’s. The NaPoWriMo site asks for an erasure, today. I have never done an erasure, but I have just spent a month with a group of highly creative people who have. NaPoWriMo suggests Ginsberg’s Howl as a source text, among others.

I looked at Howl with some trepidation and then my eyes began to see the path. I would like to dedicate the erasure to my fellow Pulitzer Remixers (this includes you Jenni Baker!), for the help, the support, the camaraderie, and the shared experience. Some of the lines seem particularly apt to how our brains must feel as we crawl towards the finish. The phrase ‘my generation’ is as close as I can find for us.

 

 

NaPoWriMo: Yes, She’s Alive @ 25

Five, people, five more poems. If we write a couplet a day we can do it. I’m an English teacher, so I’m not going to pre-cheer. We English teachers know all about Fate.

I have a strange, rather long, definitely whimsical ‘poem’. If I were to try and hang this on someone’s prompt, this is closest to Poets & Writers: Write a letter to a landscape or scene you pass through today.

Did you know that the San Francisco fog has a twitter stream: @KarlTheFog? So does Ocean Beach, the Golden Gate Bridge, and the SF Bay Tide. I have remixed [I warned you it would be a while before weaning is successful, if ever] a few of their tweets and blended them into a conversation.

When the Elements Meet & Tweet

Ocean Beach: There’s a poetic beauty to a couple
picnicking in the dunes in 20mph winds.

To the couple slow dancing in the shallows
to the sound of the breaking waves:
that’s what I’m talking about.

SF fog: April fog brings May fog. [Remember]
That time we skipped May and fast forwarded to June.

SF Bay Tide: Welcome back, @KarlTheFog!
Good to see you, buddy.

SF fog: It’s “Take Your Fog to Work Day”
so I’m hanging out with Mom. Except
she’s retired so we’re watching
reruns of “Empty Nest.”

(SF Bay Tide: I visited him at low tide. @KarlTheFog
was hanging out beyond @GGBridge, being aloof. )

SF fog: I just ate the Marina. It tastes
like golf clubs & sorority t-shirts.
Santa Cruz tastes delicious.

Ocean Beach: Look: Driftwood that looks
remarkably similar to the state of Nevada.
Still waiting for driftwood that looks like Jesus.

There are a lot of people playing football
very poorly on the beach right now.

SF Bay Tide: Tide predictions for SF:
Ebb, surge, ebb, surge. Surge if it’s time
to surge, ebb if it’s time to ebb,
and know the difference. ‘Know when
to hold them, know when to fold them…’

SF fog: I always felt different from
the other clouds I grew up with.

SF Bay Tide:I’m feeling a bit low, but
that’s all right. It’s only natural.

How did you celebrate #earthday?
I ebbed and surged as I have for millennia.

Ocean Beach: There are giant dudes with kilts
and beards throwing heavy objects around the beach.

Oh: You’ve discovered my greatest weakness:
sea glass.

SF fog: @you You’ve spent the day bragging
about the heat but now you’re sweating
profusely in your apartment? I’m SO sorry.

Yesterday you got sunburned.
Tonight you’re sleeping under 3 blankets.
Welcome to San Francisco.

Ocean Beach: The Marines do an amphibious
landing at the beach, and then the fog and wind
come back. Thanks, Military Industrial Complex.

SF Bay Tide: @Waves_SF: @SFBayTide
I’ll give you a shove back to the far
corners of the bay! :D” // Wheeeee!!!!

SF fog:And that concludes summer in San
Francisco. See you again in October.

You know, Nancy always knew
she wanted to be a hurricane.

 

NaPoWriMo: Close the Door with 24

I know, I’m back to the rhyming. Bear with me: one week left.

Dear New Readers: I have noticed several joining us this month and you may be wondering if I present a poem for you every day. No, I don’t, except this April, to find out what it feels like to participate in April’s Poem a Day madness, so I don’t have to do it again, but can say with authority that participants are nuts [we will not bring up the other poem-a-day project I am undertaking at the same time — later]. I usually write three blog posts a week. If you check March, you’ll see the style of things. May’s a-coming.

Today’s prompt, from Poets & Writers, is what I have spent the last three months doing [my other project], finding poems in a novel, by remixing. I broadened things from a page to a few chapters, when I found someone nice enough to have pulled out chunks of text, already. My source text is Love in the Time of Cholera by Gabriel Garcia Marquez. I am placing my link at Miz Q’s place. She asks for a wordle; this is a cousin, a phrasel [yes, I made it up].

poem withdrawn for editing

 

NaPoWriMo: Glee With 23

Miz Q asks for a quatern or a cascade, or both [both!]. You will notice right away, I am sure, that mine resembles neither. I love anything that involves a repeating line, but got too wrapped up in a cascade that’s going to take me a week or two. So… Earth Day. At least, earth.

I took a poem I like but with which I have no luck with editors. I figured, What the heck. Into the cut up machine it goes. The result is fun. In fact, I may take some of the new images and use them in the original.

 

Pulled for revision.

 

 

NaPoWriMo: 22 and Getting Desperate

When I start looking thoughtfully at written poems and wondering how they might work if I revise them, I’m in trouble. I backtracked to a prompt Miz Q gave us earlier in the month. That day, naturally, I found three prompts I could write to.

The prompt is one of Miz Q’s ‘quickly, now’ adjuncts and asks us to find two words that can be used as either noun or verb; two words that can be noun or adjective. Write a long line using two of the words. Write a companion line with that pair in their other role. I got carried away. I found several pairs I wanted to play with. The poem doesn’t go anywhere, but I had a blast verbing and nouning, possibly adjectiving and adverbing.

Asleep she wore her sin like a wake trailing,
fear pulling her down, doubting
so that even her heart-ache became a doubt,
ached in ways that broke all rules.

Awake, she balanced need against aim,
a balance requiring she rule in favour
of sinning — love is such an ephemeral story,
his story, her story, no story.

She bared her soul, floated in the heated
cauldron of emotion, the heat of sin.

What’s the connection to today’s prompt, you ask? Bah! I’m so over that.

 

NaPoWriMo: 19 Plums

Miz Q has another fun prompt, gentle on the april-brain: A “wish you were here” postcard poem. Other than a slight panic when I realised I would have to employ technology to get what I wanted [abated by Miz Q who rushed into action and found a low pressure route], things seemed to go well.

I might have fought with the metre were it any month but April. As it is, I’m happy to have something that vaguely follows Williams.

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