Family of four, both mother, father gone now. Their love still lives on in the way their children love. Circle of love unending.
A Tanka written for Tuesday Poetics atdVerse, the virtual pub for poets around the globe. Kim asks us to write a poem using the title Where Does Love Go and answer the question within the poem.
Love me some spring! In my steps on this morning’s walk in bursting magnolia trees mama goose fluffing her nest forsythias smiling bright and ruffled waving daffodils. Love me some Spring!
NAPOWRIMO Day 15. Prompt: Write about love in some other way than romantic.
Photos actually from my walk yesterday along the Charles river. And I should add, Happy Birthday #18 to Rika!
power and magic and lilt and creativity and rhythm and feelings and making sense with words. Rhyme scheme, haiku, free verse and so much more.
WTF? NGL. Will the flying thumbs of today have the patience to spell it all out? I’m just asking, will poetry survive? FAWC, I’m SMH and wondering. You may be BWL, but this is FR. SRSLY, PLZ tell me how to write a sonnet, create a rhythmic flow or express my POV using this shorthand chicanery? IKR? Maybe like Basho, there’s an enterprising new poet waiting in the wings who will add RIZZ to this new language. Teach us oldsters to translate. PAW. I’m watching. I’ve got TFW something new is on the horizon and the actual problem is, I’m just really over the hill.
TRANSLATION
What the fuck? Not gonna lie. Will the flying thumbs of today have the patience to spell it all out? I’m just asking, will poetry survive? For anyone who cares, I’m shaking my head and wondering. You may be bursting with laughter, but this is for real. Seriously, please tell me how to write a sonnet, create a rhythmic flow or express my point of view using this shorthand chicanery? I know right? Maybe like Basho, there’s an enterprising new poet waiting in the wings who will add charisma and charm to this new language. Teach us oldsters to translate. Parents are watching. I’m watching. I’ve got that feeling when something new is on the horizon and the actual problem is, I’m just really over the hill.
NAPOWRIMO Day 14. Prompt todayis to “write a poem that bridges (whether smoothly or not) the seeming divide between poetry and technological advances.” AI image generated on Bing Create.
She stood on the Trader’s Block. Men walked by and stopped to examine her. Many with whips in their hands. Some more gentlemanly with canes. Either way. They stopped and stared. Demanded she open her mouth; forced her to do so. Were her teeth in good shape? They all wanted a healthy robust woman to work in their fields. They didn’t know she could read. She’d seen the poster on display. Slaves for Sale Today. That horrible publication. Is the auction of the mind included with the auction of the body? For her, it will never be so. She can read. She can think. She can read the stars. She will not be long with whomever buys her today. She will try to escape again and this time she will succeed.
It’s Prosery Monday at dVerse, the virtual pub for poets around the globe.
Today, we’re asked to write a piece of prose (144 words or less) that includes the line “Publication is the auction of the mind” from Emily Dickinson’s poem Publication – is the Auction. We can change the punctuation of the line, but we may not change the order of the words. Emily Dickinson lived in the time of slavery. She was not an activist on the subject however, the subject was actually or metaphorically a subject of some of her poems.
We were two third-grade girls who often roamed through a nearby overgrown plot of land. In our minds, the vast Old West. That mound of dirt about half-way in? Boot Hill where we’d tether our steeds. We were certain the Lone Ranger rode these parts. We’d gallop many a mile in those days. We’d capture bad guys with unholstered guns using only one index finger and thumb. After a long day of protecting Dodge City, when the sun was about to set we’d adjust our cowboy hats and mosey on home to Martin Avenue in Waukegan, Illinois.
NAPOWRIMO Day 13. Prompt: Write a poem about a cherished landscape. It could be your grandmother’s backyard, your schoolyard basketball court, or a tiny stip of woods near the railroad tracks. At some point in the poem, include language or phrasing that would be unusual in normal spoken speech – like a rhyme or syntax that feels old fashioned or high-tone (“mosey on home”).
True story from my childhood days. I have no idea what ever became of Mary Alyce. AI image made from Bing Create.
“He went to sea in a thimble of poetry.” Opening line in the poem Poet Warning, by Jim Harrison.
Wynken, Blyken and Nod my childhood friends, lived in the well-turned pages of mother’s Child Craft Poetry Book. So many friends who made me smile. The Old Lady who lived in a shoe, Miss Muffet sitting primly on her tuffet, Old King Cole and Jack Sprat too.
We laughed about the crazy cow who jumped over the moon. I lived in those pages then, where no one yelled at anyone. Sitting on mother’s lap I’d hug my yellow teddy-bear smeared with mother’s lipstick, so at least, it always smiled at me.
When mama took out that book I knew she’d take me to magical places. And for those moments her love for me was real and clear. So calm, so comforting, so warm, so fun, so motherly, in those make-believe lands.
And here I am, decades later near to being an octogenarian, wondering why I write poetry. I’d forgotten this side of her, so many other memories crowding in. I live by the words, “no regrets” always have and always will. So I am thankful to remember this other side of who she was.
NAPOWRIMO Day 12. Prompt:Write a poem that recounts a memory of a beloved relative and something they did that echoes through your thoughts today.
Image from an illustration in the book, which I still have. Published in 1947, the year I was born.
As if struck by lightning or a slow moving deluge, watching life’s last curtain call aches like hell.
Grief envelops like low-lying overcast sky. Why is the air so thick? So heavy without you. How can I still feel your embrace? Death takes so much more than life.
That biblical allusion, the Valley of Death. More like a chasm with unending depth.
NAPOWRIMO Day 10. Prompt: Write your own meditation of grief. Try using Brock’s form (from his poem “Goodbye”) as the “container” for your poem: a few short stanzas, wtih a middle section in which a question is repeated with different answers given.
I believe this is us forever dear, painted image on a neighbor’s wall. We hold hands in permanence, street artist’s portrait of love. His rendition, always young. No furrowed brows from worries, no age spots upon our arms. He sees us somewhat oddly though, large heads upon small bodies. But we do lean in, faces touching, projecting forever togetherness. Feet dangle above his painted ground, hovering above reality’s sidewalk. He’s placed us in suspension here. . . and I can imagine, my love, this was us so many years ago. How did he know?
Written for Open Link Night at dVerse, the virtual pub for poets around the globe. I’m hosting today, and folks are invited to post one poem of their choosing, no required format, topic, or length. OR they may post to the optional prompt I provide which includes three photos of street art I saw in Valparaiso, Chile some years ago. The one above was one of my favorites.
AN INVITATION TO YOU:I’m also hosting our LIVE session (audio and video) on Saturday, April 11, from 10 to 11 AM EST. Please consider joining us! You may read aloud a poem of your choosing, or just come to sit in and listen! We are indeed a global group with folks from Australia, Trinidad Tobago, Kenya, the UK, Pakistan, Sweden, and across the US often in attendance. The more the merrier! If you’d like to join us, go to https://dversepoets.com on Saturday a few minutes before 10 AM EST, and click on the link provided there.
I stand tall and proud. Yellow petals round my face mirror my namesake. I sway in summer breezes, turning always to the sun.
NAPOWRIMO, Day 9.Prompt is to write a poem in the voice of an animal or plant. Photo taken some years ago in Provincetown, on the very tip of Cape Cod.
Tanka:a Japanese poetic form with 5 lines in the following syllabic pattern: 5-7-5-7-7. Some say it’s a Haiku that has more to say!
lillian the home poet 