well, oops.

okay.  so I'm only ten days behind.  ... out of thirty.
- solid.
seems to happen every time.
so my poem-a-day-challenge turns out to be tenpoemsaday every ten days.
-oof.
ah well.  just one more opportunity for self-forgiveness.
~mwah!

11 - Animal

For today’s prompt, write an animal poem. A poem that is either about an animal, involves an animal, or is from an animal’s perspective. Your choice.

My fish, Sheryl, is taking a long time to die.
She has been growing more pale
and has positioned herself under the pond waterfall
where she just stays.
Her tumor hasn't grown
but my friend said he noticed
"a far away look in her eyes."

I've noticed that too.

Is that suffering?
Is this long drift into death suffering?
Is it more merciful to have him
cut her head off as he said was best

or, under the bubbles there,
in the morning or day or night
is there something of this
tiny living
that should be fought for
for as long as it can be fought for

a small current under the body
that is good
that is hers
that is life.

8 Submerged

Submerged

This dream interests me.

I am skiing, a bit carefully
turning a lot to not wipe out

but the snow quality changes
to slush, slows

so I can set a more direct line
and I do

head straight
down, with confident, cut curves

I know my people
are watching, noticing my new confidence

but the quality of the slush changes
is melting and I am skiing

into water and, as would happen,
as it turns to water I sink

fast
and my boots an my clothes and my skis

pull me down fast and I know
I must

get rid of all that is dragging me down
quickly and I do

I take off my boots and the skis sink
with them and I know

that is not all I must hold on
and I hold on to a thresher

that is there
unmoving

both these things need to happen
and do and two

corpses, bloated
float by me and I drift

near them carried downstream
and grab onto a corner of the lodge

where I can rest
and know I have done things okay

but I can't call
because my phone was wet

all was submerged
I can only hope that those

above me on the hill, or the hill-river
or the river

figured out what I did
and saved themselves

just in time.

7

For today’s prompt, write a simmer down poem. This could be a poem about cooking, about calming down, about taking it easy. You get to simmer down in your own way.


Would you relax?

There is still a future
There is

How do you know
There is

There is still a future
There is

You know this
because dying doesn't happen right away

You need to earn it
You need to fall apart

To fall apart
Takes time

There is time
Relax

There is time
For everything to be different

6

For today’s prompt, write a “we’re being watched” poem. Humankind has really created a bunch of, umm, interesting things over the past 150 years or so. Some of it has helped save lives; some of it has helped destroy them; and some of it has helped spy on them, whether through phone taps, infrared vision, drones, online hacking, or surveillance cameras. Write a poem that touches on such things.

Turn


That side of your face
that angle

you,
clearly you

deciding which
candy bar
which
candy
which
chocolate

you

clearly you
in this moment

where love can be something else
almost is

which

which love
(you turn towards the camera, then away)

which moment
that will get you to the next
and then next
that will get you through the night

In the camera
you are serious
so serious
as if you had never been loved
very serious and then you are out

of frame

5

For today’s prompt, write a festive poem. It doesn’t matter the occasion, and the festivities can just be the backdrop for the poem. Remember that even a sinister story like Poe’s “The Cask of Amontillado” happened during a carnival time. So no matter the mood, write with festivities in mind.

A Festive Poem

On this night there was so much I missed
- being pushed,
like the stuffing of a sandwich!
in a folded mattress on wheels
down a hill!

all those mattresses, folded, on wheels, flying down a hill, such fun!
Laughter!

Smoking in public

Being thin

Skinny dipping, thin

Being engaged, thin and engaged - in public

And, cutting in the bathroom
cutting something

or

barely being able to get the cork back onto the whiskey bottle
trying how many times or --did I miss that?, well

I missed the orgy

I missed the meteors

I missed the dawn

as I was asleep
had gone to sleep

took care of my need to sleep
and in this way

my youth slipped by
and some, not all,
of my hurt

was never available to me.

Day 4 - Once Upon a ...

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. Possible titles might include: “Once Upon a Time,” “Once Upon a Pedestal,” or “Once Upon a Diet.” As usual, have fun with it.


Once Upon

my table
was a book
I have since forgotten

and in that book
some writing,
a phrase without break or comma, 
that turned
like on a lathe

and carved 
into my mind
- a shape, an echo, a landscape
treasured into sympathetic sleep
and into waking
 - not alone

somehow

how

a phrase I recognized
as not my own
but from a soul

I'd never meet 


the writer
might be dead now
might be heavy and drinking milk
might be shopping or recovering
or ash
might be petting a loyal dog

and wondering
if her life of turning words
- of punctuating
her own way 
had meaning
echoed
mattered

Day 3 - United Divided

For today’s prompt, we’ve actually got a 2-for-Tuesday prompt. You can pick one prompt to follow, do both separately, or combine into one prompt. Your choice.

1. Write a United Poem.
2. Write a Divided Poem.

United/Divided

And in the time it takes
for the yellow of a rain-fallen leaf
to communicate to me
- yellow
- leaf
- today
- right now
- wet
- folded
- has rained
the movement of myself
through the sheen of the morning
to the window
- there is no change
all is just
aspect of butter yellow
emanating through space
and morning
and breath
indivisible.

And in the time it takes
for the self to say
- self
- separate
- here
- not leaf
- not rain
- standing
- storied
the yellow
of the rain-fallen leaf
becomes other
as if
one of us was here first
one of us belongs here
more
one of us - as matter -
matters more.

Day 2 - Surrender poem

For today’s prompt, write a surrender poem. A person can surrender to the authorities or a mob, but people can also surrender to a feeling or to music. Or leftover Halloween candy (at least, “my friend” has had that problem). I hope you surrender to your poetic impulse.

Backwards Ocho

Two tango lessons in

and the lesson is - surrender.

Feel, resist, surrender.

This is easier

when I shut my eyes

and become, in myself

one thing, not a swirl

of impulses - darting, not a storm

of sensations - uncollected, but a body,

a female body 

directed, backwards

offered moments

to flourish - quickly - 

here

then surrender.

November Poem A Day

Time to start another poem-a-day challenge. Let’s get this party started! 

For today’s prompt, write a day after poem. For instance, today is the day after Halloween in our house, but the poem could be the day after any event. Maybe it’s the day after a wonderful event, or it could be the day after a horrible event. I hope to see you the day after writing today’s poem.

The Mornings After

Sweeter the parties themselves

- the mornings after

walking in the garden

late, in a robe, with coffee

a table still flecked with food from a feast

some soggy crackers

and bottles with one swallow left or none

and candles that had melted on to the patio

had been blown out - suddenly in the middle of the set

when the flame caught a paper plate 

and sprung to life in a scare

 - the wax now looking like a gladiola

dropped from Titania's loose bouquet

as she went off

late late

to sleep in the hammock

between the eucalyptus

music, laughter still in her ears

the moon lighting her all night long as if 

the glow came from within

as if from the love of family and friends.

When she woke, she would see

that was so and the soft cracker

on her tongue

was the blessing

ongoing.

Which Willow?

Which Willow?


That willow,  of course.  Made of all the blue pencils in the box
- of which there were five.

Done over several days and nights
when days and nights were spent this way
- could be spent this way -
and were.

Her pointillist willow
- made of Ultramarine for the full rich body
strand after strand, like braids made of particles,
and Paynes Gray
(spelled with an 'a')- there
where the branches scraped, in dots, unsure or tender,
against the Cerulean dotted grass.
Sky Blue, I think it was called, for the highlights,
the top, arching leaves where the sky blue moon hit it
in a dour Navy dotted sky.

And that was all
All the blues there were

Enough to make the gentle eyelets of the willow
bend, shimmering, towards earth
- some negotiable, dotted plane
that couldn't last
because the paper
was pulp, colored - baby blue.
Meant to be brief, outgrown,
and was.

And that was all.
All the blues there were.
Enough to speak of gifts
and time enough to let them speak
in dots, in blues
- just five.

That was all we had.
That was enough
for that willow, dabbled
- delicately -
there
and then.

In the dream

Maybe a fifth collection: In the Dream


To write of a dream at the end of a whole complicated day is maybe a bit unfortunate.  Has all but the meaning boiled off.?
Or just all of it - but the mammoth.

I can't forget about him.  The pure unbelievability of the size of that one breath that all day has puffed my hair back, on and off.


We (who?) are walking in a thin ravine, complicated at the opening end with something like rocks, giant forms.

I realize the form I was standing on, had hopped onto like a bolder in a ravine was the forward foot of a mammoth - not wooly, but like a giant (giant!) elephant, laying there, filling the ravine - dead. Unmoving.  Huge and dead.  So sad, now that we knew what it was.
But somehow I could sense his awareness.  I mentioned it, I forgot how, or to whom - something like: "He can sense us.  He knows.   He is alive."
and then, after a long quiet time,  the breath from the beast, altering my world.  Soon after the whole terrain that he was lumbered up and stood, towering, and he was escorted then by a golden lion, magic with magic, towards me as I had stepped back into the forgotten new bit of my dream.

Later - many details about Rebecca and her house in France. I saw every room.  (I'm excited to hear about that Friday!) It is a bit too rustic and lonesome and humble than I am ready for.  I could draw the room in its every cup.  But I didn't want the place.  It seemed to be just a room in the middle of a building.  There was an old man with a shovel outside. And the little town she walks - up through another ravine- to a place to dance.

And there, or nearby, a visit to the room of a student I am very worried about.  One of my absolute favorite students who seems so, is so, troublesomely ill and in the dream I was IN his own worry. There were very specific shapes and colors and dynamics to it: blue brown indistinct shapes, some string or ropes within that.  Something sexual, not between us, but in his thinking, but that was not the point. The experience was like being empathetic about all we can't really be empathetic about - what it FEELS like in someone else's mind, the solitude of our burdens and all our hours alone with them.

Ten Years

Goodnight, Snapper.
I'll see you in my heart in the morning.

note

note to self: erasure

So okay

Thought I could do the poem a day and wrap up the art show at the same time.
Wasn't happening.  Perhaps I'll aim to finish now, though the challenge is long-since over and all the runners ahead of me have rounded the final corner.  No matter.
I'm trying to fend off the post-partum thing that seems inevitable with having a show... now I guess I can do nothing all day instead of painting until my feet call the game.  But doing nothing has never been my particular gift.

Well, I should be happy.  At least the paintings are up and there wasn't any major catastrophe in setting up the show.












I am happy with the catalog.
Happy Juliet was there.  That dear girl.

Day 5. not much

For today’s prompt, write a vegetable poem. I once wrote a poem titled “Tomatoes,” and that would count. If you want to write a poem about a specific vegetable, go for it. If you want to write a poem that just has a vegetable mixed in somewhere, go for it. If you want to praise or curse vegetables, go for it. If you want to play with the idea of vegetables, including a vegetable mental state, couch “potato,” and so on–well, you know, go for it.

oh brother.
I was hoping to drive this a certain direction.  I guess I'd have to write my own damn prompts.

yeah.  um.
i love cabbage.
i know that now.
but I don't want to write about it.

gonna get on with my day.

Day 4 - Departure Poem

Nap

I have to get away.
Not for long.
But I have to get away

Or I will walk into a truck
just by accident
Or say things I mean
or try to button my zipper

I need to lie down
to have my fingers vanish from me
and, as they do,
erase my brow
my sides
some name
I had.

A field opens up,
leads away, wind stirred, in all directions.

This, at last, is me.

PAD 2 - Spring

For today’s prompt, write a secret poem. The poem itself could be a secret, or it could be about keeping secrets or, I suppose, not keeping them. Or maybe it’s about a top secret project, or the poem is a riddle with some sort of secret meaning. Or, well, I’ll let you figure out how best to poem secretively.



How can it be a secret
when my heart shouts for you
rings my ears for you

Does your name not peal across great spaces?

You don't look up
but I know you know.

I want you to know.

I want to slip
a yellow, baby chick
into your warm hands

it: trembling of its own newness
trembling more
to be in the cup
of your gentle hold

what's next

to be considered
by you
who would feel
the little form turning

the scared heartbeat
tapping against your own precious living

Poem a day • April 2015 • Day One

Though I am busier that shite ... gonna try it.  
Will try to wrangle these in a certain direction.
Will see if it works.




For today’s prompt, write a resistance poem. There are many forms of resistance, including militant resistance, resistance to new ideas, the resistance in exercise, and maybe even a little resistance to starting a new project. I hope you don’t resist the urge to write a poem today.



There is only resistance 
where there is intention, will, effort.

And then the force denying:
the wheel, the cap, the relationship stuck
the white of the page,
the cloying hours of the afternoon
the decades of habit that make your eyes 
look at your eyes in the mirror
and look away in disappointment.

But not today.
Resistance has been surrounded on all sides
by perseverance which, sharing the will, eases the will

forced effort let's go
push back let's go

and writing about love
now and spring 
and time
time left

and love
spills 
down the page