Today is Poetry Wednesday at The Write Prompts, and the assigned form is haiku. I decided I could manage haiku this morning — just seventeen syllables (if you disregard the finer points of the form, which I did.)
the winter wind howls
down the valley as it leaves
toothmarks on my neck
Posted in Poetry
Tagged prompted poetry, The Write Prompts, writing practice, writing prompts
This may be more of an echo than a riff, as much of the wording matches that of the poem that inspired it, Roxi St. Clair’s “Pushing Up Daisies.” Please visit her site to read her original poem. I give Roxi full credit for the word choice here; I merely tinkered with the arrangement. I especially love her use of the word “ogham.”
Daisies
I lie beneath the weather
beaten and faded
with each season passing nobody
knows me but I
know every time footsteps sound
above my joy
trembles with yearning for this
glimpse of presence
enclosed my spirit loses
the meaning of its blossoming
in this dark place as roots
till the soil I no longer stir
to mimic life
on rainy days you can smell the wet
earth where I live when clouds sob
tears of spring and butterflies
spread sail upon the breeze
I remember the Milky Way
aglow in the heavens and Heaven
too a place that aches with meeting
and parting you can lose
time in a place like that for we dance
briefly on the edge of life like water
drops on the tip of a leaf
but here roots grow die shrivel root
again like fingers marking
the passage of time in oghams
of earth and bone I read in solitude
seasons of seed sprout
bud blossom for you to pluck
their beauty and carry
me through the years
I found this while flipping back through my journal. It seemed particularly apt for All Saints Day/The Day of the Dead, when people of various cultures celebrate the blessed memory of those who have gone before.
Dream life of the dead
what dreams dog the dead
in their eternal sleep?
for even those cut off
by dismembering violence
rest in the end
the dead are not uneasy
but in the imagination of the living
whose envy cannot bear
the thought of such abiding
peace
if the dead stir, they merely telegraph
their dreams in cryptic twitches
and inscrutable murmurs, as sleeping
dogs before the hearth
of a winter’s night
Posted in Poetry
Tagged All Saints Day, Day of the Dead, dreams, poetry practice, prompted poetry, writing practice
As best I can tell, the text for this spam comment was about the spectacularly awful sci-fi/horror flick Maximum Overdrive. I have no idea what language the review was originally written in, but it may well have been auto-translated twice: first out of English into another language and then back again into English. The results are almost as interesting as the film, and mercifully much shorter.
Movie review
caught in the tail of your comet
for a short time all machines have grown
self-aware far from the kingdom
this has bloodstream and guts
ancient American action and grit
at its best
Posted in Poetry
Tagged auto-translation, Maximum Overdrive, spam poetry, writing practice
This is a compost poem because it rose to the top of my mind from I-don’t-know-where. Somewhere, sometime, I heard someone talk about poetry being the product of consistent work rather than the result of accidental inspiration. This is not to say that accidental inspiration can’t be used in a poet’s consistent work, but accident is a pretty poor basis for anything, even a hobby, let alone a career or vocation.
Daily grind
poetry is not lightning
a spinal jolt of plasma that splits open
mind to the sky in random
rare serendipity
poetry is laundry
worn piles that tumble over
and over made fresh by infinite
tedious cycles
Posted in Poetry
Tagged composted poetry, laundry, lightning, poetry practice, writing practice
Poet and photographer Sarah Monagle posted this beautiful photo of a dahlia in response to The Daily Post’s weekly photo challenge, which was “saturated.” Inspired by Sarah’s interpretation — a prompt within a prompt — I penned the following:
The queen of late summer
with a regal nod she drips
living flame from the velvet
tips of her curved corona
Posted in Poetry
Tagged dahlia, photo prompts, prompted poetry, Sarah Monagle, The Daily Post, Weekly Photo Challenge
The following appeared in my spam filter exactly as you see it except for a couple corrections to spelling and capitalization. The line and stanza breaks are also original, as is the title. It’s not particularly good, but the line breaks and some of the syntax suggested poetry to me. Since this kind of thing is auto-generated, it makes me wonder if there’s a spambot out there somewhere developing a poetic sensibility of sorts…
Brilliant Some Ideas
Not to scare you but you already contain chemicals within your very DNA that’ll
illuminate
under the right circumstances and you’d perish terribly without
them. It is termed phosphorus. Additionally you contain
an exploding material and a very deadly gasoline.
That could be sodium and chlorine. Together they make salt.
Which can be what helps to keep you hydrated and helps electrical signals in your system (naturally too much of something can eliminate you) and you’ve however other more terrifying substances in you
also.
Low-voltage outdoor lighting methods are inexpensive to work,
easy to install, safe and movable. Outside lighting additionally deters
crime, and makes jogging through your garden safer during the night.
You have taken out all of the stops to generate your
property and seem first-rate. So why let that hard work vanish at nightfall when,
with a flick off the transition and some smartly put
landscape lights, you can roll-back the night and set it all on display?
Completed right, landscape lighting makes the top of everything you have got by highlighting your home’s architectural functions and drawing
attention to revered plantings and trees.
Posted in Poetry
Tagged artificial intelligence, found poetry, spam, spam poetry, spambot
Shawn has provided another photo prompt this week: Sky over Barceloneta Beach. I was surprised at how quickly I thought of something in response. Maybe I’m starting to get the hang of this writing thing…
Etch A Sketch
the wide blue screen plots certain
journeys — destinations and departures
scrawled in vapor trail
some expand to dissipate into
nothingness while others contract
to invisibility — in the end
all vanish
Posted in Poetry
Tagged Barceloneta Beach, Etch A Sketch, photo prompts, prompted poetry, Shawn L. Bird, writing practice, writing prompts
I’ve been playing with spam lately; I find the auto-translated stuff a great source of amusement and inspiration. The wonky syntax and near-psychedelic word juxtapositions light up all kinds of brain activity. Sometimes I take whole chunks and try to punctuate them so they make some kind of sense in English; other times I lift choice bits from here and there and combine them to see what happens. Here’s my favorite poem from this morning’s work:
Forests of Puget Sound
On a great treelined side freeway, a sanctioned handsome conical
specimen with simple roots and sagging, greygreen sharp needles
matured with regard to wet, detailed mud.
Always those already established Northwest mystics (to find
a reasonably sultry painting of them) have been a far more spectral
only no less helpful presence.
We simply come across your wife’s perception openly
once, many years after the scandal.
Posted in Poetry
Tagged fir tree, forests, found poetry, mystics, Pacific Northwest, Puget Sound, spam poetry, writing practice
I missed the deadline for submitting this poem to be part of the weekly collection of blog posts at Write on Edge, but decided to post it on my blog anyway. The prompt was a photo and a Sylvia Plath quote; click here to see both.
Inclination to equinox
summer light slowly tilts
toward autumn not yet born
canning jars suspended on fence
pickets collect slow-witted flies
who rattle in blue-green heat until spent
then drop out to lie
dazed and dusty by the road
(22sep13 update: I changed the title of the poem from “Toward the equinox.” I just realized I use the word “toward” in the second line, and that kind of repetition doesn’t work in a poem this short. Just goes to show how difficult — i.e. impossible — it is to edit your own work. Hire an editor, people!)
Posted in Poetry
Tagged prompted poetry, Sylvia Plath, Write at the Merge, Write on Edge, writing practice
The Daily Compost 