PAD 16 - The Last ____

For today’s prompt, take the phrase “The Last (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 could include: “The Last Cookie,” “The Last Roll of Toilet Paper,” “The Lasting Impression,” “The Last Word,” and/or “The Last Starfighter.”

The Last Camellia

They fall like open hands

and float for a time

waterlily-like.

To the fish, below,

perhaps for a time

the camellias are lit up

pink setting suns.

They fall, so many,

so many open hands

and float

in their full color

so many setting suns

and then

they brown and sink and turn 

to muck

and cloud the water

and obscure the fish

and clog the system

with the end of Spring.

The last camellia falls

like an open hand

and floats in full color

under the bluest sky

ever.

It has been the most perfect day.

PAD 15 - Dream

For today’s prompt, write a dream poem. The poem can be a remembered dream. Or it could be a dream about the future (like getting out and about without worry again). Of course, some dreams are good, but there are nightmares too. So let’s get dreamy with our poems today. After all, Blondie said it best: “Dreaming is free.”


Forgotten Dream


I was wearing her wedding dress
but it wasn't the real one - 
this had a red overlay.
I looked good.
It was fine.

I was going to marry my ex-boyfriend's brother.
I don't know why.

If someone asks me
if I dream in color
if there is an atmosphere

then yes

I wanted to take a picture in the dream
of that green horizon
so vivid
the sky, blue but darkening,
someone walking away
no one important
but - a perfect composition - 
a lithe figure reflected in the creek
or in the mud or sludge

sparkles

I am out of work
I am wearing a wedding dress, red,
but hide it for now in a peasant's coat.

I am leaning into the wind 
which funnels through the verdant valley
and am suddenly lifted
too high up now
where I can see all the areas of the
(now forgotten)
dreamscape, like a board game

there, where they wouldn't pay for me to 
take the meeting in Australia

there, where again, I am about to marry 
my ex-boyfriend's brother

all the bicycle deflate at once and fall over
the hills roll away - kelly green

he still loves me
and is listening to the ceremony
from behind the door

I interrupt the start of the service
and go to him

and am younger.

I dream in color
of landscape
of wind
of love

of lift
of story
and of things that just happen.

PAD 14 - form

We’re two weeks into the challenge now, and our second “Two-for-Tuesday” prompt falls on the 14th, which gets me thinking about sonnets.

For today’s prompt:

1. Write a form poem (here are 100 poetic forms to choose from) and/or…
2. Write an anti-form poem. I get it; some people don’t like forms.

Erasure Poems. Like blackout poems, but without the markers.

intricately intertwined by our own making

resurgence, clutching fears

connections, real.

emerging people overwhelmingly

refocus

on the root of destruction

exacting a pound of flesh,

unwilling to change.

PAD 13 - Purpose

Write a purpose poem.

Purpose

Today, again,

I'll stare at the space between

my heart and the window.

Perhaps like an animal

whose cage door has been left open

whose keeper waits for a bolt

into god-given freedoms

I'll stare and wonder

who am I 

if I am no longer not enough

if I am no longer unqualified

or overqualified

if I am neither desirable or even

undesirable

a bubble in the foam

water in water

all the marks are washed away from 

the field

all the nets

taken away

What is my purpose here

if I can only do what I love

only

only

because I love it.

What to do with a ball

when there is no game.