Ask your mom.
Life is not a struggle. It’s a wiggle.
It could be better, but it’s good enough
Sometimes you just need to lay on the floor.
Ask your mom.
Day 13’s NaPoWriMo prompt is to write a poem from those little slips we find in fortune cookies . Loved this prompt! Each line here is from a fortune cookie image search 🙂
i
The Happiness Project
Swing Swagger Drape
A Hundred Daffodils
ii
You’re Wearing That?
The Audacity of Hope
iii
Plain and Simple:
If I Had My Life To Live Over
I Would Pick More Daisies
Off Camera
NaPoWriMo Day 10: My suggested prompt was used for everyone today! Stack ’em up and write Book Spine Poetry, hopefully from books on your book shelves.
My three poems include titles from: Gretchen Rubins’s The Happiness Project, Jane Slicer-Smith’s knitting pattern book Swing Swagger Drape, Jane Kenyon’s White Daffodils; You’re Wearing That? by Deborah Tannen and Barack Obama’s The Audacity of Hope; and the third one includes Sue Bender’s Plain and Simple, If I Had My Life to Live Over I Would Pick More Daisies edited by Sandra Haldeman Martz, and Ted Koppel’s Off Camera. Happy Sunday!
Cuz you kazoo,
he slaps spoons
and I wuv to whistle.
Musical melody makers
we pat upon pans,
yodel-lodel-lustily.
Silly songsters three!
Click here to see and hear spoon playing! De, tending the bar at dVerse, asked us to write a Sevenling: two stanzas and a final line. Each of the two stanzas must contain something of threes. Decided to take the playful side today!
Hybrid sunflowers
big time flower power.
Fast growing giant Kong,
Bashful Lemon Queen,
bold eye catching.
Ms. Mars, uncommonly gorgeous.
Elf, compact charmer
and Little Becka too.
Madly floriferous Candy,
Strawberry Blonde, Frilly
and Crimson Blaze,
dazzle with sensuous high definition.
Sunny Bunch, Honey Bears
precious beauties,
incredible lovable faces.
All flummoxed on your easel,
sowed one quarter inch deep
in oil, denied full sun,
borders and beds.
Your fame, their demise.
Written for Day 6 NaPoWriMo, using day five’s prompt: Create a poem using words from a seed catalogue. This is from Burpee’s 2016 catalogue, pages for sunflowers. All words, including title, are exactly as written in Burpee’s except for those italicized. Kong, Bashful, Lemon Queen, Ms. Mars, Elf, Little Becka, Candy, Strawberry Blonde, Frilly, Crimson Blaze, Sunny Bunch, and Honey Bears are all hybrid sunflower varieties. I do love the Found Poetry genre. Photo: from beautiful Cape Cod’s Provincetown, several years ago.
[With apologies to Mother Goose]
Little Miss Muffet determined to stay
plots on her tuffet as bravely she sits
needles in hand she prepares now to play,
two legs to eight, but rapier in wits.
Nursery rhyme loser? A girl who has fits?
Web spun over years into dark comedy.
Finger pricked in the snatch, spider flits
flails, then falls. Arthropodic tragedy.
Silken threads become elegant to the eye
blood dots cloth as she doth smart
needles weave and suddenly stop with spasm cry.
Game over. Venomous to the heart.
Curds and whey topple, she utters a moan
dead heat with spider, they lie on the stone.
Written for dVerse Poet’s Pub with Gayle tending bar. We’re asked to write a Bouts-Rimes which is French for Rymed Ends. This form began in the 17th century as a rhyming game. Gayle’s challenge: use the following fourteen words in the order presented: stay, sits, play, wits, fits, comedy, flits, tragedy, eye, smart, cry, heart, moan, stone. These words were borrowed from a sonnet by Edmund Spenser. These words, in this order, must be the end line rhymes. For me, another poetry sudoku!
The real Nursery Rhyme:
BY MOTHER GOOSE
Little Miss Muffet
Sat on a tuffet,
Eating her curds and whey;
Along came a spider,
Who sat down beside her,
And frightened Miss Muffet away.
Drones.
Little mechanical beasties
shall not be my demise!
Flashing metal, whirs and spins,
winds whoosh. Just concentrate!
Umbrella steady, point toes left.
Nose bleeding, dress in shreds
whirling blades too close again.
Children waiting. Parents chafing.
Magic wearing thin.
Umbrella soon to be
my rain-only accessory.
With apologies to Mary Poppins. Motivated by Dverse Poets Pub prompt: create a Persona Poem. Decided to take the “light” approach today — a little humor to hopefully make you smile.
He sat upright
surrounded by canes, walkers
tv guides, checkerboard games,
and the people that accompany them
in a place like this.
He waited patiently
for the last strands of that age-old song,
some high pitched warblers
hunched over the tinny piano
pulled out for occasions like this.
Balloons hovered above his head
as candles dripped life-time moments
onto fondant flowers.
Festive paper plates too thin
for the thick slab he desired.
And so I asked the centenarian
for the secret of his longevity.
Well sonny, I always say,
close your eyes to dream.
Just make sure you open them wide
to watch where you step.
the more I like
flat shoes
bare wrists
shaving less
and short lists
and the more I know
the importance of
bran
elevators
family
and short lists
and the more I am thankful
for every day
with you
and the absence of
lists
photo credit: Juan Croatto
AND a Happy New Year to all!
with apologies to Will Shakespeare
So many footlights burned out
spotlight jarred askew
curtains removed, scrim gone
proscenium arch stands stark.
Program says Act Three,
audience hushed, anticipates tragedy.
Director expects me, in shrouded black,
to slump upon the floor.
The script be damned.
Bulges revealed in sequined leotard,
fish net stockings over varicose veins.
Audience gasps at tapping frenzy
shuffles, wings, and Rockette highs.
Grinning, laughing, I finally decide,
this coda shall end.
And in the pit, the timpani booms
as I exit like a flying dervish
to joyous applause.
Please mouth the words
so we can win.
She did. They did.
And she never, ever
sang again.
lillian the home poet 