we interupt this writing challenge

to give a nod to a guy who is REALLY taking poetry month seriously:

http://abcnews.go.com/video/playerIndex?id=7343614

poetry writing challenge - day 18

For today's prompt, I want you to write a poem with an interaction of some sort. The interaction does NOT have to be between people, though it can. For instance, you could write about the interaction between a bee and a flower; or an owl and a field mouse. Or just write about a traffic cop getting into an argument with a speeder. Just as long as there is some sort of interaction going on.

Conversation

One day the visible and the invisible
were next to eachother for awhile
on a stoop on 72nd Street.

The visible said to the invisible: "C'mon.
Don't be like that.
Be like me!"

And the invisible said:

poetry writing challenge - day 17

For today's prompt, I want you to write a poem with the following title: "All I want is (blank)," where you fill in the blank with a word or phrase of your choosing.

all i want is

all i want is
to know all i want

all i want is to want
all i know

i want
all
to know all
to want i
to know is
to know i

all i want
is to be all you know
all you want

i want you to know
all i
all i know
all i want

i know you
i want you
that is all i want

all i want is
you to know all i want
all i want is to want
all you know, all you want to know,
all you know to want,
all you want to want,
all you give up on knowing
on wanting

i want
all
to know all

i know you
i want you
that is all i want

poetry writing challenge - day 16

write about a color.

bah! ...but okay.



White

It is I who drop my eyes
I who leave without a sound
I become the next
I erase the page

white and whiter still

don't say my name

or do.
I cannot hear you now.

poetry writing challenge - day 15

For today's prompt, I want you to take the title of a poem you especially like (by another poet) and change it. Then, with this new altered title, I want you to write a poem. An example would be to take William Carlos Williams' "The Red Wheelbarrow" and change it to "The Red Volkswagon." Or take Frank O'Hara's "Why I Am Not a Painter" and change it to "Why I Am Not a Penguin." You get the idea, right? (Note: Your altered poem does NOT have to follow the same style as the original poet, though you can try if you wish.)


Okay - my favorite poem ever:

The House Was Quiet and The World Was Calm

The house was quiet and the world was calm.
The reader became the book; and summer night
Was like the conscious being of the book.

The house was quiet and the world was calm.
The words were spoken as if there was no book,
Except that the reader leaned above the page,
Wanted to lean, wanted much most to be
The scholar to whom the book is true, to whom
The summer night is like a perfection of thought.

The house was quiet because it had to be.
The quiet was part of the meaning, part of the mind:
The access of perfection to the page.

And the world was calm. The truth in a calm world,
In which there is no other meaning, itself
Is calm, itself is summer and night, itself
Is the reader leaning late and reading there.





A completely perfect thing. And now to ruin it.

––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––

The Street Was Empty and the Sky Was Dark

The street was empty and the sky was dark
The walker became the steps; and lit houses
Were as the other world outside the steps.

The street was empty and the sky was dark
The trees were standing as if they awaited her
Except the walker wanted not yet to arrive
wanted much most to be
the traveler to whom her steps were new, to whom
The lit houses were like a promise of future home.

The street was empty because it had to be
The emptiness was part of the yearning, part of the blood
The hole around which the heart compressed.

And the sky was dark. The newness in a dark world
In which there is no other thing new, itself
Is dark, itself is light and corners and trees, itself
Is the walker stepping late and turning there.

poetry writing challenge - day 14

two-fer-tuesday: write a love poem and an anti-love poem


In love
I have two more eyes
That travel where my body doesn’t go
That fill with light
and sudden flashes of color around curves and bends
I haven’t taken

In despair of love
I have two more eyes
That travel not over my body
That fill with light
that bends around the sudden flash curves of another
I am not

poetry writing challenge - day 13

Write about a hobby.

Really?
Oh geez. I’ll have to make one up.


Stealing

I take the best frosting flowers off birthday cakes
Wrap them in cellophane and put them in my pocket

I steal nickels from the man with the tin cup
And dance moves from the nimble

I swap price tags in drug stores and pay for the cheaper,
pocketing lip gloss with the other hand.

I am reprehensible, but good at it.

I steal looks and ideas
When I come home, I have to go around the back.

If I opened my front door
Everything would come pouring out:

Opnions, mostly, that aren’t mine.
Anecdotes from a life I never lived.
Stacks of pre-owned, once-worn dreams.

poetry writing challenge - day 12

For today's prompt, I want you to take the phrase "So we decided to (blank)" and fill in the blank. Make that your title and write a poem. Some possibilities include "So we decided to plant a tree" or "So we decided to burn a hole in the sky."


So we decided to head south

So we decided to head south
once for lunch in Panama
once down an amazon tributary in a hollowed out tree trunk
(though she was then 75 and couldn't swim)

Once we decided to head south
for the masks and the music
for the other grandmothers who (with what fingers remained)
lit the fireworks
right in the center of town
while everyone scattered
climbing over one another for dear life
with missiles flying overhead

Today we decided to head south
south
south and more south
keeping the impossible expanse of the Pacific
over our right shoulders
having a new conversation about
the perfect murder.
Complicated.

We decided to head further south and talk about
her mother's yellow wedding dress, trust, dairy farming,
jicama, Thoreau, and the surprising fates of grade school classmates.

We could drive to Cape Horn
and still be the best of friends.

poetry writing challenge - day 11

write about an object

Alchemy


the perfect skipping stone was
- as all perfect things are -
waiting for me

seven steps ahead on the beach
indicated by an arrow of molten, retreating sea

it is precisely round and smooth
and on its surface half onxy black
half paynes grey (the color of the sky now)
with a rip of ultramarine dividing them
(the color of the sky then)

I find it on the silver beach
the same beach on which i played
ceaselessly as a girl
writing love notes to the clouds with my toes
blessing my pets with sea kelp
leaping over the frothy part of the thinning
finishing waves
both feet together
just so

around then i learned my craft
I'd wait for the last gold to spill
from the sun and with my complete
commitment
to love
would gather some lowly sand and
toss it into the broad avenue of gold

I made it gold.
That's what alchemists do.

Once I threw in a rock, said a prayer for it
and for me, that I would see it again and today
there it is,
waiting for me

smaller, smaller by far
and ground down

not able to make a big splash now
but still something to not walk past maybe

though thirty some years of wave and drag
and wave and drag and storm and still
and bash and break
and clink and slide
have made it smaller
diminished
much less full of promise
so

the last piece of my youth.
mine to greet and hold
I tell it things I cannot say aloud
and speak as childhood disguised as a rock would understand
and hear as someone who hears back from her best self
kept in a thin, wet stone

I get in my rock skipper stance

The sun sets silver, spills itself towards me
(always towards me! I am blessed!) The cool
grey rippled with davy's grey, curling back into
steel blue, blue,zinc, titanium white on the crash
then retreating, stilling becoming flat and blue grey
this time - like all perfect times - is waiting, glistening

:the surface for its stone


throw
ah ah ah ah ah ah -six! (not bad!)

and just like that

meaning

changes
completely
into six
silver
circles