ANOTHER TRIPLE HEADER, MURI!

On her blog, A Different Perspective, my buddy Murisopsis laid down
a challenge for National Poetry Month: using the supplied prompts, in any order, write thirteen poems in 30 days (one poem each Monday, Wednesday, and Friday through the month of April).  The first week, I managed to nail three prompts with one poem.  It was so much fun, I decided to choose three more and try it again.

1.  Write a limerick
6.  Write a poem about dogs
9.  Write an acrostic poem using an emotion

Without further ado, here is my blissful acrostic limerick about dogs:

WALKING THE DOGS

Bold-nosed explorers are they
Lollygaggers at the odor buffet
In the grass, on a tree
Smelly poop, pungent pee
So strong I can’t pull them away

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THREE BIRDS WITH ONE POEM

On her blog, A Different Perspective, my friend Murisopsis laid down a challenge for National Poetry Month.  Hers is easier than some I’ve seen as it requires the completion of only three prompts per week, which are announced at the beginning and can be completed in any order.

MURI’S NATIONAL POETRY MONTH WRITING CHALLENGE

1. Write a limerick.
2. Write a poem about the changing seasons
3. Write a poem about angels (any kind).
4. Write a concrete (shape) poem.
5. Write a poem about signs of spring.
6. Write a poem about dogs.
7. Write a Quatern.
8. Write 4 haiku about favorite foods.
9. Write an acrostic poem using an emotion.
10. Write a Blitz poem.
11. Channel your inner Doctor (Seuss, Who, Frankenstein, Doolittle, Zhivago, McCoy… your choice)
12. Write a list poem about clothes
13. Write a poem using all of the following words: crow, sparrow, snow, chapeau, below, ginkgo, shallow, and solo.

The rules are simple.  Write 13 poems in 30 days (that comes out to one poem each Monday, Wednesday, and Friday throughout the month of April).  You may complete the prompts in any order.  Once written, post your poem on your blog and LEAVE MURI A COMMENT to let her know you have done so.  The point of the exercise is to have fun and stretch your poetic muscles.

OK, Muri, I figured I would start with the most difficult prompt, which I determined to be #13.  After I finished the poem, I realized it also fulfilled the criteria for #3 and #11.  So it may be a bit of a cheat, but here is my poem for Monday, Wednesday, and Friday of Week One:

BIRD FEEDER

The spinster next door
a disheveled old crow
pulls on her wool cap
the season’s chapeau

fills her pockets, dons
galoshes, sets off solo
trudging ‘n crunching
over late winter snow

Her size 9 footprints,
cocksure but shallow,
stop short at a bench
by a knobbled ginkgo

Birdseed is scattered
on the ground below,
one angel’s provision
for hungry sparrows

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ORDINARY, YET EXTRAORDINARY

After my dad passed away last summer, my mom consolidated his stuff and let each of us kids choose a few keepsakes.  These items reside in a special box:  an everyday zip cardigan, a necktie, a cloth handkerchief, a Craftsman wristwatch with a leather band, a pair of clip-on sunglasses, a child-sized rosary (perhaps the one he received for First Communion), a copy of the letter I sent him for Father’s Day containing a hodgepodge of childhood memories, and the eulogy I wrote and read at his funeral.  Unbeknownst to me, he had been a journaler.  In small notebooks and diaries were records of his daily activities dating back to the late 70’s.  We didn’t fight over them, but we all clamored for our share.  On days
I really missed him, I would read a few pages.  His life, though ordinary, was full of surprises.  Who knew Dad was the garbage man’s favorite customer, a closet romantic who rewired lamps and misspelled words?

One of the diaries I have is from 1986, the year I graduated from high school and went away to college.  It was interesting to read about the months right before and after I left the nest.  The following poem is a mix of summary and insights in the style of Dad’s journal pages:

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ONE LOVE POEM, MANY FORMS

In honor of Valentine’s Day, my poetry group did a writing exercise wherein each person contributed a phrase about the source of love.
A few days after the meeting, our fearless leader Steve arranged
the phrases (verbatim) into a poem which he sent to us via email:

They say that love is never lost, so why can’t I find it?
Love comes from love
Innate, hard-wired unless over-written by Fortune or Fate
a cookie pan
Love–divine–like birds, always there, even in winter
When in the midst of pouring rain, a smile warms the day

He challenged us to re-work it if we wished.  Woo-hoo!  A batch of free verse phrases crying out for structure, a form…  This sounds like a job for JustJoan!  But what form would I use?  Which one would do justice to this wide variety of ideas and images?  Naturally occurring rhymes were scarce, so I began with syllabic forms: eintou, cinquain, haiku, and diminished hexaverse.  I figured I’d hit on the right one sooner or later.
I got lucky on my first try, but kept on going.  Perhaps one of the other forms would work better.  What I found, to my surprise, is that they all worked.  Emboldened, I decided to try a couple forms with rhyme and refrain:  lai and rondelet.  With a few synonyms and a touch of creative license, these also worked.  I added an acrostic for good measure.  You guessed it, it worked.  I’d always believed that words suggested their own poetic form, but maybe verse in search of an outlet finds one in whatever form it is offered.  Without further ado, poems about love:

Eintou Septet
7 lines
Syllables 2 / 4 / 6 / 8 / 6 / 4 / 2

LOVE IS
constant
like winter birds
warm smiles on rainy days
divine, innate, subject to Fate
never lost, hard to find
on cookie pans
from love

 

Cinquain
5 lines,
Syllables 2 / 4 / 6 / 8 / 2

LOVE
Warm smiles
Birds in winter
Never lost, hard to find
Divine, Innate, on cookie pans
From Love

 

Haiku
3 lines
Syllables 5 / 7 / 5

HAIKU
Love is never lost
Found in smiles, birds, gods, the self
and on cookie pans

 

Diminished Hexaverse
5 stanzas, first stanza has 5 lines, each 5 syllables, second has 4 lines, each 4 syllables, third has 3 lines, each 3 syllables, fourth has 2 lines, each 2 syllables, fifth has 1 line, 1 syllable

LOVE

Around and within
Like birds, always there
even in winter
A smile that warms us
on a rainy day

Innate, and yet
subject to Fate
The divine yield
of cookie pans

Never lost
but sometimes
hard to find

Love is
born of

Love

 

Lai
9 lines with rhyme scheme a / a / b / a / a / b / a / a / b.
a lines have 5 syllables, b lines have 2 syllables

LOVE IS
The Divine revealed
Within us concealed
Innate
A cookie pan’s yield
A pouring-rain-shield
Smile-shaped
A Lost-Found ordeal
A spin of the wheel
of Fate

 

Rondelet
7 lines with rhyme/refrain scheme A / b / A / a / b / b / A.
Refrain (A) is 4 syllables, all other lines are 8 syllables, all lines written in dimeter

SOURCE OF LOVE
Love comes from love
and warming smiles on rainy days
Love comes from love
and cookie pans, and God above
Within us all, subject to Fate
It’s never lost but just misplaced
Love comes from love

 

Acrostic
The first letters of each line spell something related to the poem

LOVE
They say that love is never lost so
How come I can’t find it?
Even in winter it is there, like birds
Smiles that warm us in the midst
Of pouring rain. Divine. Innate.
Unless overwritten by Fortune or Fate
Really, it is borne on cookie pans
Chocolate Chip Love, Oatmeal Love
Ephemeral and yet, everlasting

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IN A MIDWEST MINUTE

Ready for a new and intriguing form?

The EINTOU SEPTET is an African-American poetry form with seven lines adhering to the following syllable count:  2 / 4 / 6 / 8 / 6 / 4 / 2.

One recent afternoon, it began to rain.  The air, chilled by a brisk north wind, dropped from just above freezing to just below in less than sixty seconds as the plummeting droplets shimmied in the chaotic current.  The result?

PRESTI-DIGI-PRECIPITATION

With the
deftness of a
magician, the wind waves
a sheet of sparkling sleet over
the rain; when he whisks it
away, ta-daaaa!
Snowflakes!

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PRECIOUS OR PRECOCIOUS?

When I was a child, I loved staying at Grandma’s house.  I packed my suitcase and lugged it up the creaky stairway to the alcove bedroom with the framed print of the alley cat whose huge eyes glowed in the dark.  Crisp morning breezes carried the sweetness of lilacs and bird song through the open window.  Grandma didn’t play with us so much as let us tag along as she did her chores.  We clamored to help gather fallen apples for a pie, knead bread, or feed laundry through her old-fashioned wringer.  She never cut us a break when we played games.
It didn’t matter if you were six or sixteen, if you misspelled a word in Scrabble, she would challenge you and you would lose your turn.  She had the patience of Job, fielding our questions all day without a trace of irritation.  When I pointed to a ceramic jar on the bathroom counter and asked what ‘Chopper Hopper’ meant, she told me choppers were teeth and a hopper was a place to keep them.  “C’mon, Grandma, you can’t put teeth in a jar!” I said, certain she was pulling my leg.  I about flipped when she opened it and showed me Grandpa’s dentures.  At bath time, I told her I didn’t want my hair shampooed; I had sounded out the words on the bottle and was convinced that a product called ‘Hurr-ible Essence’ would smell bad.  Her rosary resided in an elegant plastic box whose lid was a statuette of the Holy Family.  Across the front it said, “The family that prays together, stays together,” which
I solemnly repeated every time I retrieved it for her.  My fascination with reading everything in her house must have driven her bananas.

GRANDMA MARGARET
(Elegy in Ghazal)

Her gentle brown eyes lit up just for me, my grandma
Her hugs were warm and soft and bosomy, my grandma

She stoked the basement woodstove, did her gardening
in a proper dress and hose—always a lady, my grandma

She turned every chore into fun: chopping up vegetables,
making beds or bread, hanging out laundry, my grandma

In card and Scrabble games, she did not pander to us kids;
she played hard, made us beat her honestly, my grandma

She churned out snickerdoodles and homemade noodles
and jars of tiny pickles, as sweet as could be, my grandma

She knew a mourning dove’s cry, made snapdragons talk,
shook down fruit for us from her apple tree, my grandma

When I tossed a Nerf ball in the toilet, talked too much, or
toppled a houseplant, she never grew angry, my grandma

On her Singer, she sewed clothing and puppets and quilts,
and hundreds of pairs of mittens for charity, my grandma

She even made me a black baby doll, hair done up in braids
Provider of my first lesson in racial diversity, my grandma

Each night, she prayed for world peace and those in need,
counting Hail Marys on her worn rosary beads, my grandma

I’m fifty and childless and live in sweatpants and sneakers,
but inside, where it counts, I shall one day be my grandma

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BEAUTY AND THE ARCTIC BEAST

As the Polar Vortex blew through the northern US and Canada, it did lots of ugly things.  Furnaces struggled, unable to keep pace with the chill. Car batteries gave up the ghost. Intrepid outdoorsmen got frost-bite and ass bruises.  But it also delivered the season’s fluffiest snow, air-brushing it into nooks and crannies in impressive drifts, swirls, and arcs.  One screen on our bay window, raised in autumn and forgotten, was hovering at half-mast when the storm hit.

The poem is a VERS BEAUCOUP; click on link for the rules of the form.

POLAR VORTEX SAND ART

By Winter’s hand, sparkling bands of flurries land
in a grand curve between the window and screen,
surreal scene, framed but fleeting, fast-retreating
snow tears greeting the low-slung rays of midday

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WELCOME TO THE 50+ CLUB

Remember all those years you sat at the Kiddie Table,
wishing you were old enough to join the adults?
Well, here’s a list poem of what you were missing.
(Don’t forget to request your 10% AARP discount!)

THE OVER-FIFTY MENU

Whine choices:
My Back Hurts
My Knees Hurt
My Feet Hurt

Complimentary Reading Glasses

Appetizer:  Lactaid or Rolaid

Entrée:  Extra-Virgin Colonoscopy

Side:  Mashed Boobs

Vegetable:  Nighttime Pees

Dessert:  Dental Crumble

After-dinner drink:  Flu Shot

(Is it too late to go back to the Kiddie Table?)

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I THINK, THEREFORE I HAVE CANCER

At the direction of my endocrinologist, I scheduled a couple tests to make sure my thyroid cancer is still in check.  My labs were OK.  This week, I went to Radiology for an ultrasound, then Nuclear Medicine for a whole body PET scan.  The ultrasound required no special prep.  The instructions for the PET seemed fairly routine until the last few sentences.  I was distressed by the prospect of sitting around for an hour with nothing to read.  Then I was told I musn’t “think too hard.”   After the administration of the fluorosine glucose, I needed to keep
the ol’ gray matter at rest until the scanning process was complete.  PET scans locate cancers by mapping out areas of increased glucose uptake.  Because cancer cells multiply faster than normal cells, they require more glucose.  As do brains when they’re in use, meaning that rumination by the patient could potentially skew the results.  Tell me, how is a person supposed to “not think” while she lies under a scanner waiting for her fate to be decided?  So much the worse if she’s a writer whose mind churns endlessly, chasing metaphors, counting syllables, and wondering why humor rhymes with something as un-funny as a tumor.

The following poem is a VERS BEAUCOUP, French for “many rhymes.” Each four-line stanza adheres to this scheme of internal and enjambed rhyme: a-a-a / a-b-b / b-c-c / c-d-d.

  

NO READING OR THINKING WHILE THE RIDE IS IN MOTION

Nuclear Med Man schedules my PET scan, explains the plan:
OK, ma’am, fast for six hours prior, wear comfortable attire
It also requires avoidance of brain stimulation as cogitation
could be mistaken by the scanner and read as brain cancer.

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RAI SNG THE POE TRY BAR SKY HGH!

Poets think differently than other people.  They see possibilities everywhere.  I have used as the basis of my own pieces:  80 common clichés, idioms, lists, random phrases from books, lines from rejection letters I’ve received, even a page from Consumer Reports magazine with the non-poem words blacked out.  I’ve done a poem shaped like a bathing suit.  A poem in the style of a Psalm.  A recipe poem.  Acrostic, Anagrammatic, Epitaphic, Palindromic, ABCDarian and more.  But this guy blew me away.  The following clip from New York Times Magazine contains samples from Nasser Hussain’s new book, SKY WRI TEI NGS, poetry comprised entirely of airport codes.  You know, those three-letter designation codes (LAX, JFK, etc) they fasten to your checked luggage so it ends up (hopefully) at the same destination you do.  The author compares a poem made from airport codes to “a model of the human genome built out of Legos.”

Last week, crapping Christmas logs and caganers in Nativity scenes in Catalonia, this week, airport code poetry.  Every week, a new beehive puzzle to share with my sister.  Alas, my NYT’s subscription has come
to an end — the price quadruples after 12 weeks at the “teaser” rate.

SOL ONG NYK TMS
TEN BKS FOR THE
SUN DAY PAP RIS
TOO FKN XPN SVE

(Any resemblance of these letter groups to actual airport codes is completely coincidental.)

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