For today's prompt, write a poem with a hole in it. The hole could be referenced in the poem, which could be about subjects such as hitting a golf ball in the hole, punching a hole in the wall, or even visiting a hole in the wall bar. Of course, with everyone flexing their concrete poetry skills lately, I'm sure at least a few poets might take a stab at writing a poem with an actual hole in the middle (maybe a doughnut-shaped poem?). Another possibility is to write a poem with a hole in its logic, but I'm sure you can find any number of loop-holes for attacking this prompt.
:


It is not a poem
if it doesn't have a hole in it
or around it
If one can walk from end to end
and not possibly pass
like a neutrino
through the membrane of one's own skin
into a dimension
in which thought
words arranged arrive
underneath one
like a lucky stretching bridge
between the cells dividing
or between the stars extending
a place as true as any other

pass
with just the right amount of fear
not understanding,
even at that size,
what the space is that surrounds

we do know
there is a hole in that too

that even light
cannot survive

boy. i'm just too busy for this right now. ... 20

For today's prompt, write a "what's wrong or right" poem. As with any of these prompts, there are many ways to come at this one. However, since I'm in a hurry to hit the road, my mind is completely blanking on all of them. So, whether it's right or wrong--wrong or right--I'm just gonna get down to poeming. Have a great unsupervised day!

It's so hard to tell what is right or wrong
when the heart and its tendrils of effort and need
- the self putting itself forward to love and be loved -
entwine around the hand that would turn the key or wave goodbye or
shake in searing blame

how dare you scare me like this?
how dare you?

the child dreams of her own death now
and scans the room for scarves that can become ropes
construction paper scissors that are no way pointed enough
to cut right cleanly from wrong
that old repeated wrong
- somehow hard to tell from right (a heart
searching to understand another's walk in darkness)

the policeman
separated them
mother from child
right and wrong forever braided into a sheath around the heart
that grows regardless,
cramped, contorted

the tendrils of that heart wrap around
as roots wrap around those bones
that - right or wrong now -
will always be bones

understanding does nothing
trauma abides
takes new form
and threatens
to abandon form

how unfairly
how just plain wrong

18

For today's prompt, write a lost & found poem. I suppose you could focus on either what's lost or what's found--or both. Or you could focus on how things change after something lost. Or after something is found. Or...I'm starting to lose my train of thought. I'm sure you've probably got the idea.


I put my fingers right there.

Don't they go right there?

It is wrong. It is lost. I start
in the wrong place and don't know where to
go or how that could be I have been here
so many times before.

I put my fingers.

No.

I have lost it. I never fully knew it
but what I knew
I don't know
I don't know
even what it was

I know where I was
in college
in the room on the fourth floor
where groups would make dinner
and after
late
later
I would come in and the piano would be there
and i knew that run of Beethoven

not the whole song.

It comes back to me now
the rocking bass hand on what
the C

Go.
You've found it.
Play it.
Play it like you are losing your hearing
and need to hear it
through the floorboards,

trembling

For today's prompt, take the phrase "Tell me why (blank)," replace the blank with a word or phrase, make the new phrase the title of your poem, and then, write the poem. Possible titles could include: "Tell me why 1+1=2," "Tell me why I'm wrong," "Tell me why my hand always gets stuck in the Pringle's container," etc. Get silly; get serious; get poeming!

Tell Me Why

There are these distances
millenia sometimes
continents often - tu me manque
il neige
or three thousand miles of fields and gas stations
or cities
just cities intervening
too far, too awkward
a space longer than a movie
with a beginning, middle and end
that ends well or badly
or neighborhoods
there is that one
that one is not this one
a freeway bends between

or just houses
three, fourteen
twenty eight fifty
divisions of walls
enough to never know if the lights are on or off
in any case one has nothing to do
with the other

or the distance between one side of the bed
or another
vast, like a continent

sometimes
i don't know why

there is no proximity

tell me why there are these distances

16

It's a two-for-Tuesday prompt today. Here are the prompts:

1. Write a stacking poem. The poem could be about stacking objects. Or it could be about stacking ideas, stacking the deck, stacking the odds against something happening, etc.
2. Write an unstacking poem. Just the opposite of the first prompt. Unstack objects or tear down the obstacles stacked in your way, etc.

I like people who stack rocks
Who occupy themselves with the tools at hand
To spend the afternoon making something
that could not have been
without them

I like coming across stacked rocks
and thinking of someone's fingers
holding the top and slippery rock
from exact opposite sides

whatever that knowing is
that says, Let go now

Now is perfect

15

For today's prompt, write a "just when you thought it was safe" poem. For instance, write a poem about the dangers of going off a diet just after hitting your goal weight, entering the water after it appears the killer shark has been caught (Jaws anyone?), or whatever else could offer a sneaky bit of danger. Of course, with only 15 days of poeming left, it's safe to assume you're going to finish this challenge--or is it?


Just When You thought it was Safe


To admit your age
Your place in life
the done, the undone
to settle in
wear glasses and sweaters

You wake up
like colt dropped four feet into this world
and your weak and trembling bones

stand right up under you
and tell you:
soon
- bolt!

14

For today's prompt, write a crossroads poem. This could be a poem about a physical, mental, or emotional intersection. For instance, graduating college or getting a divorce often leaves people at a crossroads. Or finishing a ginormous project at work. Or even starting a poem. After all, that blank page (or screen) offers so many new possibilities.


"If you want to learn how to make songs yourself, you take your guitar and your go to where the road crosses that way, where a crossroads is. Get there be sure to get there just a little ' fore 12 that night so you know you'll be there. You have your guitar and be playing a piece there by yourself…A big black man will walk up there and take your guitar and he'll tune it. And then he'll play a piece and hand it back to you. That's the way I learned to play anything I want."

Tommy Johnson

What would it be like?
I've done this, but in the daylight,
not right before midnight

Stopped in the middle of a dirt road
(Van Gogh country)
like some animal
paying no mind to possible traffic
but kneeling down, recreating
the typical cypress lined landscapes of Arles
in branches, rocks

Someone would drive over it soon enough
But then I had that spirit
I could taste cadmium on my tongue
Knew the color of rain
oil in the rain
the madness of crows
startled from a corn field
caught in violent daubing gestures
or darker pebbles

But what if
Now

Maybe my crossroads is not in France
Maybe in Lodi somewhere
or right up the street.

I'll wait until just before midnight
stand under the streetlights
create a little picture
in the black heart of the intersection

and I'll see the shiny shoes first

He'll take my hand and drag it across the pavement
It will bleed out image
(just like Jimeny Cricket painting an entire swamp scene
in an S shaped swipe)

And on my little road
where I live
under the flashing lights
Wait. Stop. Go.

I would issue all the sunsets Van Gogh saw from his little cell
all the sunrises I've seen from mine
the locket of my heart would fall open
and spill pictures
of every moment of grace and pain
every plate laid before me
candles lit
touch, traveling
fields flying past
my fingers would burn
from this love

I would go with him then I guess
and not feel anything
but the movement of color
and the satisfaction
of a decent trade