poetry writing challenge - day 25

write about an event with the event name in the title

(from a random nightmare about Scott Peterson after watching some t.v. thing about murderers. one reason I don't have a t.v....)

Vendetta Day

First, we are outside under sheer cliffs
slick electric green with moss and I say, "Let's hike!"
but he is taciturn and won't leave the car.
"Why did we come here then?" I asked,
as we drove in silence
and approached Vendetta.

"I hate it here," he says. "Here we go, Here we go."
We pull into the outskirts of Vendetta.
There is a festival going on, nothing that has to do with the word
just a festival of place. He drives slowly and says
to himself so quietly, I can barely hear:
"Don't hurt her. Don't hurt her."
And he looks at me and says "He's here.
He's here." and after that makes no more sense.

I am scared, then terrified, in the plaza,
in the crowds of Vendetta when he shouts out
full of rage and madness and his clothes turn red
and he slices the neck of some random man with his pen
and the man crumples in his arms like a dishtowel.

I know it's just a nightmare because I am so frightened
I simply transport myselft to my mother's house
now, weirdly, in the deep suburbs. I say,"Don't lie to me.
I'm so sick of being lied to. Do you really live here?
How long have you lived here. Will I be okay?"

She is pale, won't look at me, folds dishtowels
and stares out at the tan houses
receding in severe perspective outside of her window
as far as could be seen. I know she doesn't live here
but I can't change it. I can't get her to look at me.

"You know the answer to all of it," she says.
"Just like - wearing his red clothes -
he will find you.
Yes. I live here.
You can see me. Here I am.
Honey.
Yes."

poetry writing challenge - day 24

write about traffic of some kind

More

I don't want to think about traffic
The freeway I hear now
- always if I think about it -
The selling of girls
The confusion of bees
The simultinaeity of searches for information
about slowing traffic, growing problems, comments, comments
and pictures of girls
to buy, rent, love, film, see, see, see, see
see, see

[to touch is too much]
[to speak: worse]

I don't want to think about proliferation,
ponzi schemes, metastasizing cells, plastic bags
stuffed with t-shirts, brought in, taken out,
pickup beds loaded with automatic weapons
or the gum of the slit poppy
image upon image
city in city out
focus in, zoom in
groping for speed or need or one moments lonely release

sometimes I want to just pull over
close my eyes and see nothing
and say nothing
ever again

poetry writing challenge - day 23

write about a regret

giving up

the phone rang
and I stood in my lonely living room
righteous and unmoving.
I listened to her voice
as it sounded
when I could hear it

she was at the gas station
at the public phone
waiting for me to call

all afternoon for me
to call

waited there

waited for a sound I wouldn't give her

waited
for a voice - my voice
a friend - me
forgiveness - mine

I didn't call
because I was right.

Should I live a thousand lifetimes
- and still in the void
that is life without her -
I will never forgive myself.

poetry writing challenge - day 22

For today's prompt, I want you to write a work-related poem. Work doesn't have to be the main feature of the poem, but I want you to "work" it in somehow.
















Painter/Hunter

Our job was to separate the cuttlefish
from the sharp rocks they clung to.
They were visible just in front of us, but they clung fiercely.
If you could just get your fingernails under their edges,
it was told, you could detach them
and, if you survived the wave
and for a month said nothing
there would be food, somehow, then for everyone.

The water was only two feet deep and more than perfectly clear:
it magnified the fins, the veins, the insides of the fish,
the fish inside that fish, and another, still, for later.

When we came to the bay to work we stepped right on them.
We cut our feet on their fins, on their veins,
on the sharp toothed stones and we bled into the water for awhile.

We settled into the water and floated above them, paddling our feet
for balance in the current.
The salt water healed our wounds and stopped our bleeding
and the current cleared our vision.
Our eyes were sharp, our nails long, our reflexes - quick.

As the water drew back, if we could just get our fingernails underneath,
then pull back, the sea could give us leverage - the cuttlefish
would release in our hand
and if we were not greedy but humble in our hunting
there would be food, somehow, then for everyone
and love and life and fish
and love
and fish inside of fish.

The day I died I was punished.
I had my fingernails - of both hands -
well under the sharp, razor edge of a one.
It held on tightly to the black and shiny rock.
The regular current pulled back and me with it.
The fish lifted half away and I heard
one chord of 40,000 years of singing.

I let go and stood and shouted out to anyone who could hear me
"It's music! The fish - it's held by music!"

and the sea sent a wave horizontally - right at me.
faster than I've ever dreamt or seen or known of
and it obliterated me and so I died - learning then
my work was just to hunt, just to paint of the hunt,
to never stand and proudly shout,
to never holler out the names and secrets
of sacred things.

poetry writing challenge - day 21

TwoferTuesday

1. Write a haiku. The haiku is not just a form but a genre of poetry. People sometimes go into writing a haiku and end up with a senryu or a faux-ku, but it's all good (and all poetry).

2. Write about the haiku. I know there are some poets (in this very group even) who are anti-form. So, I'm giving them the option to write their anti-haiku manifestos.


me: while I don't think I can top my signature Cow Haiku*, i'll revisit my undeveloped rebirth concept of yesterday. (i'm clearly missing the spirit of the haiku here. this is surely more close to a faux-ku; - a word I might find useful next time someone pisses me off)



The neighbors are saved
their dreams unchallenged thanks to
new bright green lawn paint


Haiku can't do it
Gentle leaves adrift won't make
all our dead lawns green


*it's been brought to my attention the last line should be 5 syllables. guess I'll have to revisit the cow.

...I feel so wordy now!

poetry writing challenge - day 20

write a poem about rebirth.

phoenix

i will fail here
and I will fail now
i cannot rise from the ash.
i have ash in my mouth.
ash dust in my bed.
i touch my face and paint
myself in ash.
there is no flame from which to rise.

tomorrow, maybe, the sun will set me afire
and ablaze
i will look down

trembling

transformed

poetry writing challenge - day 19

write a poem about anger.

weakness


when the neighbor boy, then my best friend,
went down the creek road with me and took
the quail's egg from the weeded nest we'd found together
in the pearl evening the evening before
(before our mother's leaned and called out from a lit door
..."Dinner!"
as I have never heard a mother do since)

he showed me the egg
mottled blue with white - like clouds
and black - like continents or distant sprays of unnamed islands
so sweet, here hold it,
touch it,
it's okay.
see?

and smashed the shell against the hot sidewalk
with what new strength he'd woken with
and chased me away with the wet, sticky, ruined thing
I thought
there are things we do
I will never
- not ever -
understand.

I am not proud I can't get angry
or stay angry long.

I feel broken and ashamed and damned by all of it.
The women, today, - murdered for being raped.

We grow ourselves this way,
augmenting ourselves by crippling,
and crying without effect,
just
it seems
as birds were meant to fly.