17

For today’s prompt, write a poem that reveals something. Maybe it’s something physical (like light revealing an intruder or pulling back a sheet to reveal a new car). Or maybe it’s something psychological, emotional, or spiritual. Today’s the day to reveal.

Cathedra


lt has become something to me
little chair


little
little


too small to sit in
too small to pull up to a table
- if there is one, I don't know.


The little chair floats in my head somewhere
recognizable thing that I suppose says


you have lived and have a place 
or 
there is time to sit
or 
you say 'chair'
- is this what you mean?


Here it is.
Little chair
The word derived from cathedra
Like to sit down
and rest before the divine
and see what one sees
within
and without.

16

For today’s prompt, take the phrase “Once Upon a (Blank),” replace the blank with a word or phrase, make the new phrase the title of your poem, and then, write your poem. Example titles could include: “Once Upon a Time,” “Once Upon a Moon,” or “Once Upon a Stage Accepting the Nobel Prize in Literature.” Hey, a poet can dream, right?


god.  these are lame this time around.


Once Upon a Time


There was a house that split in half
in the middle of its floor
and the middle of its tree


It hovered like that
for awhile
as if made from imagination
as if past could disconnect
right in the middle like that
from present
as if waiting for someone
who knew
how to pull the ceiling
back down
how to match up the walls
how to live
like normal people do
on Tuesdays and Sundays
in the dark and in the light,
their world around them
like all that is safe
and ordinary
and right.

Day 14

For today’s prompt, write a deadly and dangerous poem. Or you could write just a deadly poem. Or you could write a just dangerous poem. Feel free to poem on the wild side today!


too tired to catch up well, but trying.  knockin em out.  hopefully i'll be able to focus more on the second half of these.


Turbulence


I remember her saying she would like to drown.
I remember me saying I would like to freeze to death.
I remember this at 30,000 feet above the Canadian Alps.
as the plane bucks and dips and my drink flies upward.
I clutch onto material things.  I find Gods to pray to.
Everywhere.  All of them.
I see her face float past me by the window, her blonde hair
curling, drifting. 


I see them finding me.
The forest behind me burns and makes the snow orange.
My lips are purple, translucent.
I am beautiful.
My eyes, iridescent, stare ahead as if
at the black raven that lifts 
from a winter-laden branch
and glides
like eternity
through the snowscape
in the morning
that has come
again.

Day 9 - way out of order. ah well. what are ya gonna do?

For today’s prompt, take the phrase “(blank) or (blank),” replace the blanks with a word or phrase, make the new phrase the title of your poem, and then, write your poem. Example titles could be: “This or that,” “Dogs or cats,” “Go my way or the highway,” “To poem or not to poem,” etc.

Sooner or Later

The pomegranate will break open
on its own or shrivel
Seed by red and juicy bleeding seed
will dry, dim
be not worth bothering with
Winter will come
and the blood will course blue
through veins transparent
whispering
a name
or what might sound like
a name
or what might sound like
a sound
or what might sound like
more than just
blood
thinning
slowing

It will be alright.
You've been alone

forever.

Not every seed
gets tasted.

Day 12 - dreadful

For today’s prompt, write an excess poem. In today’s culture, there seems to be an excess of excess–even with the state of economy. From an excess of advertisements and political posturing to an excess of electronic gadgets and debt, there’s an excessive number of ways to attack today’s prompt.

Neo Baroque


I begin to see
the architecture of the script
like a fractal
feeding back into itself
all parts of the self
a variation of one's theme
how we like it now
the excess of the self
in a world flown to fantasy
subdivided into world's 
within worlds
and all the collassal self
all like the self
each level of the psyche
heightened lights and darks 
tuned
pure
embellish
make tense
but echo
be
another me

and another
as long as you
are I

moving
and hopefully
rising
from a darkness
swirling like a tempest
of self

15

For today’s prompt, you have two options:

1. Write a love poem.
2. Write an anti-love poem.

[not feeling very thrilled with these prompts.  nothing interesting results]
String

I learned the Circle of 5ths.

I didn't learn the Circle of 4ths.

I thought there would be time for that.

For music, cooking.  To know what to say about

him in a poem,

him of the muddy feet

in a now green picture

leaping the Oregon Dunes

and my heart

for a day.

No.

Stay stranger then.

Blend into everyone.

I forget

how I felt as how I felt 

could not yet

breathe on its own. 

listened to

actually 

listened to

a perfect conversation 

stays as type and fades

like one single photo 

from a perfect day

left out

to bleach and curl

and mean: then. gone

We interrupt this faltering Poetry Challenge...

my view during breakfast:

where my studio will be. ... will see inside my space in 53 minutes. (c'mon, c'mon!)   I feel like I'm about to meet my spouse (for the next month).  Maybe I did die in that terrifying flight here.  I appear to be in Artist's Heaven.

Day 13

Good morning! Today is World Kindness Day. As a result…

The prompt for today is to write a kind poem. My interpretation of this prompt is that the poem should either be kind or somehow involve kindness in it–one way or the other. I suppose the poem could also involve cruelty–as long as there is some form of kindness somewhere. But if you feel the need to stretch the prompt, go for it.  

Kindness, was it
to be so brave, to answer, even now:
"I'm good."

Kindness it seems
to be so brave.

To have lost everything

even the use of the curled hand

and that hand's love and lover

and the legs that would bend and stand

and kneel before the water garden

you - beautiful long-haired man

with your beautiful long-haired man 

in your wild world 

the delta breeze once forever stirring.

He gone now

and the work, the working,

the plants, the planting,

the spinning, and spooling

the wine, the french,

the speaking, the saying

who is in this picture,

who in that

who is beautiful

who is kind

who is not

who can cook

The brain though fine

Though words won't form, a bit,

enough, "I'm good!"

Yes, you are.

Your every breath, kind.

And how you think of each, 

A kindness to me 

to teach me, to show me

the rare and sterling core 

of courage.

Day 11

-5 

Today is 11/11/11, so today’s prompt is to write a poem involving math and/or numbers (I realize the higher you go in math the more abstract it gets). Anyway, have fun poeming today, because we won’t get to all meet up here again on 11/11/11 for another 100 years.

Day 1 of 33

Pretty damn fancy!

I'll try to catch up on this stuff soon.  tomorrow. I see my studio tomorrow.  I hope it's nice... My roommate is from Auckland, sweet as a button.  So far, so good.

I'm so far behind.  I'm just going to publish this week's anticipated temperatures for now in c's and f's.

-2° -9°

-6° -13° -

-6° -13°

-2° -9°  

pool 72°  

steam room 104°  

it's snowing most beautifully now.

(there is an 11 in beautifu11y)

voila!

Day 10.

For today’s prompt, write a different perspective poem. There are a few ways a poet can tackle this one. First, write a poem from a different physical perspective–like from the top of a building or at the bottom of a hole or in the trunk of a car. Another possibility is to write from a different person’s (or animal’s or object’s) perspective–a tactic that has interesting results in fiction (think Grendel or Wicked). If you have an even different perspective on this than me, feel free to roll with it.

"The body is both transcendent and immanent. It is the "third term" between subject and object. I know that transcendent things exist because I can touch them, see them, hear them. But most importantly, I never know things in their totality, but always from an embodied perspective. Because I am a body, I can only see things from a certain perspective, and yet, because I am a body, I can also experience the thing as being more than that partial perspective. The thing exists "in itself" because it resists my knowing it with total certainty." Merleau-Ponty.

A fascination with "house."
Four walls are enough
because four walls are too many.


I can't run around it fast enough.
I see one side (and maybe or maybe not the life inside,
and what dimension there is that - into past and breadth of self
a person there, perhaps, sitting?)


Or I see two sides,
and am on my way
one way or the other.
Not fast enough.
I can see three if I am already
lifted, lifted so I can see more.


Even so, seeing hundreds of houses, stretching
the length of the delta
(and then, no, not the lives inside -
and what dimension there, of multitudes
of wants and habits, sweaters and tables, 
apples and bottles and butter and tears,
backs of drawers where secrets are hidden?)
I cannot see the fourth surfaces even then,
nor the fifth,
nor the sixth.


Not fast enough. 
I can not get around the house, simple house,
small, fast enough to swallow it,
in my perception, whole, as it is.


Only light is that fast.
And space there before light
and where there is no light.


You are allowed to see
- see the house that stands there, real - 
but never all, never the side you just left
or go to now or leave to the haze of atmosphere.


In this denial are things.  All things.


Picasso tried to help us see all dimensions at once.
But he lied.
And he knew it.


We still look at one side of a painting
and its important falsehood.
But it is the back of the painting 
that makes it real,
that makes it hard to get,
a work of genius,
hard to understand.