4.15.14

And out of order, too.  Damn it.  Oh, well.

Open Window

I opened the window today

and the world invited itself in,

boisterous, sound splashing

off the walls, chasing out

winter’s cotton-wrapped quiet.

Birdsong comes first, sneaking

through the screen.  The bark

of the dog three houses up

follows, chasing the ceiling fan.

An occasional car hums in, sits

in the recliner for a moment,

then wanders out again.

The neighbors across the alley

are playing mariachi polka—

the beat tangoes up my steps

and challenges my piano.  Children

and bikes flit through, small bright

birds of sound that shatter winter’s

grey residue of silence.

4.16.14

Playing catch up...it's that mid-month lag thing, right?  And a little out of the order in which my prompts rolled in, but so be it...

Egg Ruba’i

Gold for morning, green for luck,
Orange for tulips, blue for pluck,
Red for love, dipped in twice,
And purple for doors that won’t stay locked.

4.14.14

My photo prompt for today was "sky."  So I give you this poem, which is a conglomeration of several prompts: the "sky" prompt (the article I got the "borrowed" lines from is about Mars); and a couple "official" NaPoWriMo prompts dealing with "borrowing" lines from an online article, and a second one dealing with writing a poem where every line is a question. Don't judge too much...I sort of like how it turned out. :)

Borrowed Poem Q&A

Where is the sky hiding?
The search for life on Mars is now in its sixth decade
If you could travel anywhere, where would you go?
The closer we look, the more hostile the planet seems: parched and frozen in every season, its atmosphere inert and murderously thin, its surface scoured by solar winds
What is childhood but a pleasant dream?
Still, we keep going back. Like a delinquent sibling, Mars is all we’ve got
What are the chances that it will all turn out right in the end?
It was a dart flung at a dartboard twenty thousand feet away.
How can you care about something so big?
he did his best to act as if nothing were at stake.
Where did you sleep when you were a child?
True, it was a wasteland.
It was? What is it now?
The signs of life are self-erasing.
Mama, can the stars see us?
This wasn’t just a little detour
Do you remember the night we drove across Nebraska, hit Colorado at sunup?
It’s a self-eating watermelon of despair.
Have you ever seen snow by starlight alone?
the rover would swing like a pendulum as it flew
Can all things fly, if they try hard enough?
The air is so thin that the first glimmer of sun can throw it into violent convection, lofting up into towering thermals, twisting into dust devils, and collapsing back down as they cool.
The sand beneath bare feet, cooling with the evening, the tall beach grasses whispering—is all that still there now that we are not?
Lucky socks were worn
What is luck, good or bad?
ZERO margin of error
How do you tell a lesson from a mistake?
the giddy days that followed
How many stars are there, really?
born under a blue moon three weeks after
Is the moon really blue, Mama? Is it?
the cycle starts over.

The "borrowed" lines come from the article entitled "“The Martian Chroniclers:
A new era in planetary exploration.”
by Burkhard Bilger, dated April 22, 2013 and available on www.newyorker.com. 

4.13.14

I laugh

I laugh because there is nothing else to do
I laugh because you look cheap and I don’t
I laugh because it keeps me from crying
I laugh because the baby pooped in the bathtub
I laugh because this is not how I imagined it
I laugh because the snow is already gone
I laugh because a typo makes it the Big Band Theory
I laugh because my daughter asked me, “What’s a penis?”
and I don’t want to answer so I change the subject
and I laugh because I am my mother after all
and I laugh because why the hell not?
It beats the alternative.

4.12.14

Reflecting

Water spits back the sky,
making the changes it sees fit:
ripples for interest, a tree branch
for emphasis. The sky, in turn,
doesn’t give a damn—it is
itself, no more, no less. We
are not so simple. We edit
and layer—lipstick, hairspray,
brick red nail polish to match
the handbag—doctoring
the canvas of ourselves,
daring the reflection to ripple,
trying to trick our mirrors
into seeing what we
think we should be.

4.11.14

Today's poem and photo don't match in subject matter.  Maybe in color/tone...either way, here they both are.

April Snowstorm 12:38 a.m.

Woman shadow detaches
from the black mass of house
across the street, shields face
from the breath-blade of
the North Wind as she
picks her way, carefully,
down the steps, wet snow
pulling her ankles, to the
low, cold cave of her car.

4.10.14

Breakfast

Hot green sizzles up
from black earth, wearing dewdrops
like melted butter.

4.8.14

Hell yes, evil bunnies.  In keeping with my photo, today we feature an evil bunny poem. The poetry prompt was to "rewrite" an existing poem by another author. I chose a very nice little children's poem about bunnies called "This Little Bunny" that I found on an educational website for kids. There is no author listed, but you can read the original here: http://www.canteach.ca/elementary/songspoems66.html)

My bastardization:

This Little Bunny Has a Caffeine Problem

This little bunny has big sharp teeth.
This little bunny has been unleashed.
This little bunny is white as milk.
This little bunny is mad as hell,
Roaming the night and coming your way,
Snarling for coffee to start the day!



I am a bad person.

4.7.14

Asthmatic's Ode

Tight fists
grip and
twist, trachea
clipped, breath
gasped through
cocktail straws,
upright in bed
the night
a rasp
in my head.
I grasp
the little
metal can
encased
in plastic,
suck in
chemical puff--
the straws get wider,
the night grows kinder,
the fingers loosen their clench,
oxygen is flowing in. Congratulations,
Albuterol, my hero...you have done it again.

4.6.14

Out

The wind grows warm, slowly.
It blows the grays and browns
out of the garden, carries last
fall's leaves off in windy baskets to
wherever such things go.  It races snow
clouds out of sight, chases them
with blue Cadillacs of sky. It
nudges the pebbles in the garden,
saying, "Tell the dirt to tell the
tulips--it's time to make a break for it."

4.5.14

Today's prompt was to write a "golden shovel," where the end word of each line is a word from another poem, in order (see here http://www.napowrimo.net/ for a longer explanation if that doesn't do it for you).  I picked William Carlos Williams' poem "Poem" (read it here: http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/poem-as-the-cat/) as my starting poem.  My prompt word for poem and photo was "stone."  These shots were taken at the Grotto of the Redemption in West Bend, IA (one more link for the interested: http://www.westbendgrotto.com/). 

Cornfield Shrine
(Golden Shovel After William Carlos Williams’ “Poem”)

It rises out of bare spring earth, silent as
the curvy roads that lead the
way there. No gates, no admission. The Cat-
-holics don’t lock out the faithful. We climbed
the stairs to the summit, looked out over
rambling spires and statues tucked in the
cool corners, ice still sucking their ankles. At the top,
the cross and the pieta. Below, manmade caves of

hand-placed stone cup the
last of winter’s chill inside. Like a row of jamclosets,
the stations of the cross from first
to final stand in stately file, the
story told in cut-rock mosaic. To the right,
the serpent waits with Adam and Eve, before foot-

paths lead us farther down, carefully
navigating stairs wet with meltwater. Then
we find ourselves in the dim belly of the
shine, cavelike, cherub-crusted. Tucked behind
white statues, silk roses with tags. I stepped
closer to read one: written down,

prayers of "keep him safe in Iraq" recede into
the quiet strength of the stones, the
sparkle of quartz, smoothness of agate and petrified wood pit-
-ted with rainwater from millions of
years ago absorbing it all, soaking in the
wishes of the faithful, filling empty
space with hope that charges the air, flower-
s in stone and shell, marking this spot.

4.4.14

Library Lune

The librarians ask:

“Who is that woman outside,

photographing our dropbox?”

Just kidding.

Library Lune II

It eats books,

spits them out for someone

else to devour.

4.3.14

Madame Poofa's Infallible Charm for Love

Lovelorn wanderer, come this way!
Your lucky stars are bright today.
Cease your weeping, dry your eyes.
No more bosom-heaving sighs.
Is your true love blind as a fool?
Then this love charm is for you!

To guarantee your love's attention,
try this little intervention.
 Find a bridge that spans a river.
A wooden bridge is all the better.
Go at midnight, when all is still.
Wear white.  Walk backwards to the middle.

At bridge's center, drop two stones:
one your love's and one your own.
Write your names on scraps of paper.
Devour one; save one for later.
Hold your breath and count to ten.
Let it out, then count again.

Lie down faceup, feet facing south.
Put your left hand over your mouth.
Raise your right leg in the air--
on your foot, balance a pear.
Stay this way for seven minutes.
Then kick the pear into the river.

Stand up.  Prepare a peacock feather:
tie 'round it three strips of brand-new leather
each cut the length of your forearm.
(You're nearly done--finish the charm!)
With feather's end, tickle your nose.
If you sneeze, into the river it goes.

If you don't, to your pocket return it.
At sunrise, take it out and burn it.
For now, jump up and down three times.
Thank the river for its time.
Run with all your might and towards land.
Don't look down and don't look back.

If you find this ineffective,
remember that love can be subjective
to each lover's wants and needs...
in other words, no guarantees
from women in scarves with crystal balls
control what will or won't befall.

The lesson here is very plain:
child, learn to use your brain.
Wise Madame Poofa now suggests:
give your search for love a rest.
You can't rush it, so why worry?
Love will find you when it's ready.

4.2.14

Handheld

The sweet smoke of burnt offerings

is centuries gone.  No bundled reeds float

out to sea, the saltwater licking up wine and honey.

Our hands would not be that dirty, curled

parchment maps too inefficient.  The old gods

are too much effort, demand too much.  Now-a-days

things are shinier.  More compact.  Cleaned up.

We keep our gods in our pockets and purses.

We spring into action when they chime.

We perch them on our dashboards to guide us

down empty highways scraped of landmarks.

They whisper in our ears: “Turn left in 2.4 miles.”

“Merge.”  We have merged thoroughly

with our handheld gods, we have become

master of the earth and sky, simplified

everything to lines and gridwork,

put our eyes in orbit

to keep track of where we are.  Our hands

are soft and white, our screens as smooth as ice.

The new gods buzz in our pockets, always anxious

to be heard, already our masters.