Progress: Using the fake-translation exercise I mentioned in my last progress update, I wrote a short, weird poem about rhyme. Today I wrote a short, not so weird poem about integrity. And that’s 30. Just under the wire. Phew!
Mirrored at joannemerriam.com.
Running on very little sleep, so I went into epigraph mode when I saw that today’s prompt was farewell:
Nay, I Have Done, You Get No More Of Me
[pace Drayton]
Why yes, I have been spanked by the doors of rooms
I tried to depart from in a queenly huff:
it happens if you live long enough,
just as ancient dust outstays the newest brooms.
– pld
My thanks to all of you who’ve read my posts this month, and especially to those of you who have taken the time to comment and encourage! It’s back to a more sedate (~ twice-monthly) posting rate for me, but do please stop by from time to time — I’ve some poems-by-other-people to quote and other tidbits to be shared…
NaPoWriMo Inspiration: “Adolescence-II” by Rita Dove
Today’s PAD Challenge: make “Never ____” the title of a poem and then write it.
Never Tell a Witch You Haven’t Had Breakfast
For she will not believe you
when you later try to insist
you aren’t hungry at all
while your eyes keep straying
toward the bowl of hot broth
and the glass of sweet tea
and the plate of perfect morsels
all waiting for you to surrender
to the invitation you stumbled into.
– pld
NaPoWriMo Inspiration: “One Hundred Love Sonnets: XVII” by Pablo Neruda
Progress: Wrote a kind of weird little poem riffing off the Denise Levertov poem here.
Prompt for today: Find a poem in another language, a language you can pronounce but don’t know, or don’t know well. “Translate” it very loosely, based on the sounds of the words when you don’t know their meaning. For instance, the first line of Charles Baudelaire’s “Le Soleil,” “Le long du vieux faubourg, où pendent aux masures” might become “the long and old fake bird, or pendant of measures.” Do this as fast as you can without worrying about making sense. Then select any phrases you like and write a poem with them. (This prompt is one I remember from Steve Kowit’s excellent In the Palm of Your Hand: The Poet’s Portable Workshop.)
Mirrored at joannemerriam.com.
Since Peg mentioned it, I took a stab at a poem inspired by the feast-bowl.
I’m ambivalent about it, although it felt like real writing.
I stayed to play with shells
to float the leaves downstream
to find what dusk means
to an adult. The darkness twists
its hands around me
covering my every breath
with canine step or howl
the sound of wings on air
the air-shake as the tree
beside me shivers with a predator.
The moon comes up
and in the brightness I see home
until the light fills in
with teeth and claw
and opens wider, grinning, hungry,
singing that all children
taste so beautiful in flight, in fear.
NaPoWriMo Inspiration: “Introduction to Poetry” by Billy Collins
More Mongol stories come out as heterometrical lines, opening:
Take this knife.
Your mother might have known a better way,
instructed you in how to please a man,
but I am father third and will not woo again.
I’m still one behind but I am optimistic about tomorrow night.
Late
I want to go home, but I’m not yet done
with either my current can of Coke or the slides
I still plan to hammer into sequence tonight,
but my veins are fuzzy with lack of sleep,
my focus leaking every which where
except upon the topic at hand. Oh, to possess
the command of crystalline logic, the grace
of cut-glass concentration — my task
is neither Sisyphean nor any other
incarnation of impossible, and yet
as daunting as not turning around when told
not to turn around. Behind me are the shards
of shattered piggybanks, the shreds
of a lunatic’s leathers, the specks
of myself — for yes, already
I am crumbling, a tale of salt
trailing away from the very water it sought.
– pld
[Prompted both by PAD challenge – “longing” – and today’s words at Read Write Word (thanks, Joanne!). That, and I really do want to head home soon. *wrenches attention back to work*]