22

For today’s prompt, write a release poem. Maybe somebody’s being released from prison or a contract. Maybe a person is signing a release form. There’s emotional and physical release. Animals capturing and releasing other animals. Trees releasing leaves in autumn. And so on. ***** Get your poetry published! Learn how to get your poetry...


The gate is open
and you don't run.

The gate is open.
Run!

Run!
but you don't.

Dumb animal.
You stay.

You could go.
You stay.

And would be beaten.
Would be left.

Would be forgotten.
That's what happens where you stay.

But. you are not beaten
You wait.

You wait.
And no one brings you harm.

The gate is open.
There is no one even to forget you.

If the gate closes,
it closes.

You are there
still - still.

Still
still.

21

For today’s prompt, pick a direction on the compass, make it the title of your poem, and write that poem. North, South, West, and East are easy directions. Then, there’s Southwest, Northeast, and so on. Then, there are the directions that are completely invented.


East, then, I guess.


East then.
It was to be north.
So far north you couldn't believe.
I couldn't believe.
Why, even?

And then it was
straight into the dark, molten center of the earth
and I held my mother's hand there
in the Trauma ICU as we, miraculously,
kept living through
the night
but the girl
- Heather -
behind the curtain did not,
even though all her family was there,
certainly all of them, their bodies
making lumps in the curtain, their conversation
at three and at four thirty keeping us awake or alive.

And then, we are all alive,
okay, for a time,
okay, so
too late to go North.
I go east.
She now, therefore, is west.
We both, at this moment, still live.
And everyday I can consider--
do I paint my way back  to the center of the
earth or of to the center of the sky or
do I go west, or east,
north or south
or do I just
breathe
and hear the wind
and have no way of knowing
what direction it comes from?

Sometimes it seems evident
that I will die next.

20

For today’s prompt, take the phrase “I’ll Never (blank),” replace the blank with a word or phrase, make the new phrase the title of your poem, and then, write the new poem. Possible titles include: “I’ll Never Write an Excuse Poem,” “I’ll Never Go to Disney World,” “I’ll Never Tell a Lie,” or “I’ll...



It drifts so far away now.
Where is it?
I try to paint this - how I hide
in a pile of leaves and can smell them
can smell them like it is now
but as soon as I say now
a vortex pulls fast away and
there is a little image
tiny and upside down
and I can't smell the leaves
anymore
and then I can
and then I can go inside
and then I can be how I was
before I really even had an ego
and I could lay in a bed
covered in a quilt we'd made together
of fabric scraps we'd ripped apart together
and I will never
pull together that black and yellow material
or that paisley material
or that soft burgundy bit
into a circle that could be made into a blanket
that could cover a girl because
I am on the long end of the reverse telescope
and the past
isn't even a foreign country

the past
has sloughed away from my skin
a hundred times

who am I
that even remembers?

19

 For today’s prompt, write an excuse poem. 

An excuse poem.  Good place to start.  Four days late again...


Why is it not good enough?
What you meant?
How you meant to be
- to them?
To buy the ranch
as we talked about
holding hands, when her arm went straight up to mine
on the day we got away, far away from the city and
the inkblack hallway of their childhoods.

We kicked leaves and dreamed
How we might have a horse
How it would be calmer
lighter, safer
How we would learn together to start again.
How I would love them all
as my own
as I did
as I meant to

As I meant to

I pray
there is some other invisible possible universe
drifting near enough
for my skin to sense it
so I can believe

that I meant to save them
that I had the option

In this place
I am there for them
have been ever since,
close and funny and familiar,
as they grow and I forget sometimes
that they are not mine

when
they cut paper animals
out of colored paper
with too long legs
I am there and I know how to make
them stand strong

and that makes me happy
and I forget everything else.
and need nothing but for that
to be true

for them to be safe
because of me.

18 I can only conclude that I like being behind

but why....

It’s a Tuesday, which means we’ve got two prompts today: Write a sweet poem. Write a sour poem. ***** Running out of Time for a Chance at $1,000! Writer’s Digest has extended the deadline to their Writer’s Digest Poetry Awards competition to November 21. As you may have guessed from the bold statement above,...

Sweet

This is how I like it.
I would be most comfortable
really
just loving
just loving the little puffy chested songbirds
or the black horse
with his hooves
wet in the morning grass.


Sour

But there are so many kinds of betrayals.
So many ways to be dumped
left
by the side of the road
with just that damn horse - oblivious!
and that perky fucking bird.  shh!

17

For today’s prompt, write an afflicted poem. Someone or something that is afflicted is someone or something that is in a troubled, injured, or humbled state. Or distressed to the point of constant suffering and anguish. In other words, the perfect poem for a Monday, right? ***** Running out of Time for a Chance...


It is minor but familiar
as I ask myself, "Now what?
What's bugging you now?"

And if I have time
I make a list.

This morning it took me a drive of
twenty miles to get through the list,
not to think of ways to manage
or deny or tamp down but just to list.

Minor things, minor
but I won't tell you a single one of them

except that he ...
and she not me
and the other he ...
and she ..
and not me
oh, he, not mine, never
and another they they
they? oy ve
and another I don't even know her she
and many he's and the nature
of our nature and the failure throughout
of love
throughout

and me and another giant question mark
something about 
the rest of my life
with one answer
or others
but one
at least
I know

as I wander the surface
of the world
always
alone

always trying to learn to love


at least
myself




[geez... this sure is a crybaby set.  I guess if this is a chapbook it is about solitude and maybe, moreover, lonesomeness.  not even feeling lonely but, yeah, sure am alone a lot though).  yep.

16

2014 November PAD Chapbook Challenge: Day 16

By: Robert Lee Brewer | November 16, 2014 | Comments 53

For today’s prompt, write an explanatory poem. Back when I took dozens of creative writing courses in college, the mantra was, “Show, don’t tell.” Well, today’s prompt is sort of different–in a way–in that it’s a tell poem, or explaining poem, though how and what you explain may vary a great deal. ***** Submit...

15 didn't speak to me.

leaving it out.

this one. 

.   gonna take a bath first.

How to Pro...

(maybe I'll just leave this just cuz ) 

17

For today’s prompt, write an afflicted poem. Someone or something that is afflicted is someone or something that is in a troubled, injured, or humbled state. Or distressed to the point of constant suffering and anguish. In other words, the perfect poem for a Monday, right? ***** Running out of Time for a Chance...

1