life-changing moment
thinking thinking thinking
bee wasp bee
fly
flea itch itch
thinking butterfly thinking
Ouch! Wha..?
There’s an apple on my head!
Where’d that come from?
What do I want with an apple?
thinking thinking thinking
bee fly butterfly itch
what was I thinking?
crunch toss flea itch
in brief
whose car that is
I think I know
his wife is in the city, though,
and will not see him
stopping here
to catch an hour with a
therapist
2 november
- In the land of the blind, the one-eyed man is king.
[In regione caecorum rex est luscus.] - Desiderius Erasmus, Adagia (III, IV, 96)
You say: Stupid is as Stupid does
Sometimes Stupid’s what’s needed. I say.
Smart outsmarts itself, trying to fool,
making off with more than smart can own.
Bring me yon pot of pretties,
he said, and I’ll gie ye a pennie.
Smart would take the pretties
and old man keep his pennie. Foolish me,
I did the chore and told him keep his money.
He did, but gave me his wallet instead,
flat as the top of a baker’s head,
but not averse to granting wishes.- For today’s prompt, use an epigraph to kickstart your poem. That is, use a quotation. You can use a favorite of your own, or if you’re having trouble thinking of one, I’ve provided a few below. To format an epigraph poem, a poet places the quotation between the title and the body of the poem, while also giving credit to the source of the quotation.
Example quotations:
- “Our homes are on our backs and don’t forget it,” -Molly Peacock
- “Always forgive your enemies–nothing annoys them so much.” -Oscar Wilde
- “Every noble work is at first impossible.” -Thomas Carlyle
- “Behind every great man is a woman rolling her eyes.” -Jim Carrey
- “A friend doesn’t go on a diet because you are fat.” -Erma Bombeck
1 november
You asked some time ago for an explanation.
I have dithered over writing, hesitating only
because I know full well how you will react. Call it proactive cringing
if you want. Whatever makes you…I almost said makes you happy,
and isn’t that a laugh? I send you a fortune,
a king’s fortune, and you…Well, no matter. I left to see the world.
Now I have seen it, and the world has seen your foolish daughter,
and given her what you will never give. Love.
Mam, it was me, Stupid, that saved the world.
I am sorry about the cow.
- Write a procrastination poem, or as I like to call it a “I’ll get to it tomorrow” poem. Or…
- Write a proactive poem, or the old “I’ll get to it today” poem.
Grimm Ballet
On the Origins of Class Warfare in Traditional German Folk Tale
Princesses.
Twelvefold,
every night, dance.
And every morning–holes.
And it’s the cobbler gets the damns
for giving them paper soles.
But they must be feather-light for romance,
the dozen flighty scolds.
Anger the cobblers: we’ll shoe you to prance
properly. On your toes.
Response
Thinking about those dark ladies and mysterious love objects…
(to the “inside out” of the prompt)
Response
if i were trouble and you
were a dog
my internal vowels
would be strewn over two fields, my
b would be hung
about with l like long sausage.
the buzzards
would eat my r
and sip tea from my disturbed
appendix
while you rest your chin on crossed paws,
making sonnets about my bloody scent
We Write Poems Prompt #72 better inside out
Shame is the starting point for this prompt. Shame is often a strongly felt emotion. But shame in itself is also a useless state of being, restoring nothing that might have been damaged, and is at root a self-centered point of view. Most of its energy comes out of our not wanting it to be revealed. However this prompt is not “about” shame, but rather how it might be addressed in a manner that expresses and releases the experience. How you address and discover this process within a poem is the real challenge of this prompt.
Fortune, cookie
treasure
the eyes that smile above the rim
fortune
holds you in two hands
wealth
is in the fearless heart
prosperity
is upright, knowing how to bend
He just woke up
He Just Woke Up
He has gotten out his pipe
and the same pouch of tobacco
he opened last time the change of weather caught him
in this mood. He’s gone philosophical, and tweedy,
and talks about the virtue
of real pens, thinks he may start a journal,
something he could turn to book form someday,
wonders where he put the matches;
and the ash tray, did that go to Goodwill?
Dew on the spider web;
he was standing on the porch this morning, pipe unlit,
and nodding at the neighbor on the corner.
He thinks the worst may be over.
Maybe he’ll start walking again.
too,
too,
Jennifer, Jenny,
plain as a window pane, Jen
sighed at her weight
and tucked a sachet
in the sash at her waist
a coy addition,
a small ornament, but,
like the little wave in her hair
and the absence of guilt
in her mist-pale eyes, frowned on
by her grandparents and straight-laced sects.
On another plane,
a gin-swizzled jinn sighs
over fish. In the marble pool
beside her, gilt-scaled koi sashay
through bending lily stems to spawn.
Such a waste, to be over-sexed here.
A pain to wait for a lover her size,
with armament. To sire a jinn. And wit.
To make her grandparents waive their objections.
asphalt beach
Bicycle Girls
We were wild summer girls
and didn’t know it.
Our mothers knew, and tried
to trap us
keep it from us
save us from ourselves.
It was ten years before I learned how wild I was.
But feral boys
began to teach you
when fall came.
On the Beach
I drove the beach at Daytona one Spring.
It was like a carousel,
Sue and I riding the rearing Mustang
around the long circuit:
Atlantic on the left hand, turn,
Atlantic to the right.
Coming back was drier, and chancier.
A Thunderbird drifted into the soft sand. Boys.
We avoided that pitfall,
but recognized the danger of desire.
Ellie just Ellie 