For today's prompt, I want you to pick a plant (any plant), make that the title of your poem, and write a poem. Pretty simple. (Or is it?) Most people, including myself, immediately think of plants as organic creatures, but, of course, "plants" can also be places of employment or spies or...as you can see, there's always room for breaking outside the lines.

Righteous

i will plant my feet
because you won't budge

i will not speak
because you won't speak

I will not miss you
because you won't budge
and you won't speak
and you are wrong

I will show you

I will plant myself here
I will not grow
I will not budge
I will not thrive
or bend or sing
because you

are wrong.

For today's prompt, I want you to write a poem with (or about) someone (or something) covered. A person could be covered with a blanket or blanketed with darkness. Something could be covered by water or earth or anything you can think, I guess. Or you could write a poem about how you "have it covered," I suppose.

first try: not posted: too personal. will see what happens if I just write.



Cover

little Johnny-Jump-Ups in between the grasses

tempered glass lid steamed. dropped.

bath water sea salt slipped under

book spine. its giving, forgotten.

water then skin

skin then sheet

sheet then blankets three and warming

cover me

the island where he swam to shore

Snow and Moon - the sisters

shadow on the road. fast.

water then skin

skin then sheet then blankets

dark

a brown velvet hand opens my

box of sleep or private silver sea

November Chapbook Thingy - Day 5

For today's prompt, I want you to write a growth poem. This could be psychological or emotional growth, physical growth, or however you'd like to take it. Maybe your poem is about growing hair or growing hungry or growing impatient or...


It started as a way across,
perhaps to a someone, a rich-soiled field,
an opening to sunlight or a place for the giant fire.
The intelligence to cut through. To head directly.
The weeds cleared, the way, by use, made smooth, the bigger rocks rolled away the smaller trampled flat by laden animals working widened a network spokes joining so unending a way across too fast too steep too rough too cold across to what he has and a way to take it how easily his women break and their hair their hair smells different deeper then faster faster load heave all they have how strange they are sightlines followed with wet pavement dry the lily no longer opening at the edge of view and the peaceful too all moving blur fast past the green briefer and briefer the mating sounds of smaller things unheared the rising whisper of our restlessness the music of the world and

it grows.

cement fills in between its arms and freezes into a stage for the reaching and losing of our individual desires the reaching is what matters

November Poetry Thingy - Day 4

For today's prompt, I want you to take the phrase "Maybe (blank)," replace the (blank) with a word or phrase, and write a poem using that new phrase as your title. Some example titles: "Maybe we really did need a bigger boat," "Maybe next time you'll listen to me," "Maybe never," "Maybe baby," and so on.


Maybe Him

I say, "familiar"
as he moves by in the dream
and notices me just long enough to pretend
to agree

It is a giant art walk.
It is Stephan Sagemeister.
He doesn't know I know he has 'a name'.
There is attraction but I lose him, or he me, quickly.

I break art.
I walk backwards.
Everywhere I go, I lose shoes.
One boot falls down a drain pipe
Its mate forever now without.
I go to fish it out with a high pump
that falls and one sandal after it.

All the pairs, one after another are separated.
Still, the 'familiar' man,
now a critic,
is coming towards me again.

Cinderella feigning performance art:
I climb down into the gutter
to fetch the mates.

November Chapbook Challenge - Day 3

Prompt #1: Write a positive poem. Like how great writing a poem a day through November is.
or
Prompt #2: Write a negative poem. Like how un-great technological hiccups in November are.


Appriate for my day. just can't decide how i feel.

um. okay. be positive. oh boy. easy enough in life.
harder with the pen.


The Writer

Was it Virginia Woolf? Yes, I think.
Or one of the Bronté girls, at the beginning of a movie
about one of the Bronté girls. Or "Mrs. Dalloway."
I have forgotten. The whole thing.

But the first shot stays. It was my gratitude, my privilege, my memory and luck:
the hem of a velvet dress
dragging on the ground, revealed purple by the moonlight.
The singing of crickets.
A long shot of the writer from behind staring
from the cover of night into the house, thinking .. what?,
where guests held their glasses up
illuminated from the centerpiece
from the warmed house, from the blessing
of being together.

Laughter escapes through the side door.

Perfection.
The company of air, the vision of company,
the presence of looking,
the water in the inner ear
trembled to the cricket song
- come to me -
and words in the mind forming, aiming at the hardest task:

what do you see?
what blessings are you over
and over again
given?

Don't take your eyes off your fortune.
Don't stir in the wet grass.
Rub the edge of your words together
until they sing out
and fall in time with all the rest.

Prompt - Day 2

For today’s prompt, I want you to write a poem in which you look at something from a different angle. For instance, a chef could go out to eat at a restaurant where he’s not the chef, or a short person can look at the world from the vantage point of a tall person (maybe with the help of stilts or a stool or something). The predator could become the prey. The photographer could become the photographed. And so on and so forth.



Long Island Thrift

i am inside the drawer
the left one at the top of the dresser
the wooden dresser where the girls kept their scissors and loose tiddly winks and crayons
all the games done being played
dried playdo face and messy mixing cup
and so here a spare church key, a spare car key
- essential tools for getting out
flutter-covered in construction paper with a pumpkin shape cut out
through which i see the living room ceiling
no one peeking in

i am crumpled near the back of the drawer
with back of the drawer fallen out
or taken out and it is like an elevator shaft from here down and down behind drawer and drawer
behind addresses, stamps, and addresses changed, invitations, checkers
stuck together and capless pens
behind place settings and plastic fruit,
behind writing, serious and clear
down in blackness
to the bottom where the tucked bottles rattle again
as the dresser is finally disturbed from its place
(a necklace sparkles there underneath - oh there!)
the dresser lifted (by who?) and emptied (where am I now?) and driven
somewhere else
to contain and organize
a brand new story.

cleaned.
scent of old wood.
antique.

November Poetry Writing Challenge - Day One

aargh. the site was down all day (and I was out of town all day - but still it's THEIR fault). don't know if I can do this. KB, you must CHALLENGE me to accept the challenge.

I now have ten TEN minutes.

For today’s prompt, I want you to write a poem in which you (or something) enters something new. Sound abstract? Some examples: Write a poem in which you travel somewhere new. Or try some new exercise. Or diet. Or hair stylist. Or, well, I’m think you get the idea. And remember: It doesn’t have to be about you. You could, I suppose, write a poem about an insect entering a new phase of development. Or a plant being introduced to a new environment. And so on.


At first it is like gauze over my eyes
then a sheet, something, over my face
growing thicker, stickier

Heavy, heavy the white light comes through
more and more yellow
shapes rounded, made indistinct.

wrapped close my ears now
wrapped and my name
if that is what was said
comes to me muffled
impossible to respond to
surely

i cannot push forward.
i'm enveloped, bound close.
did i make this thing?

my patience twitches
and now, worse,
with me here
pressing against me like love
with an urgency flickering like
love i have these small
and bent-back
velvet-edged
wings.