NaPoWriMo begins!

I've taken the poem-a-day pledge for National Poetry Month over at readwritepoem, and this is my first of 30 poems. Today's prompt asked us to shuffle song titles from our ipods or CD players and use the titles to make a poem. Well, the title idea wasn't working for me today, but I think I stayed true to the spirit of the prompt. I randomly sampled lyrics from a single CD in my car stereo and incorporated them into my poem. The CD is "Woman of the World-Celtic." Song lyrics are italicized...


Framed

Can you recall the day we married, Oh!
We were beautiful, we were
Those children in the portrait
Hanging on our wall
Smiling out at Us Now
We were them then--
Silver winged, poised to fly
Across a landscape
Of blissful trusting and unknowing
Did anyone warn them?
That love is never easy
It's a stream running up
A mountain
It's not waves of romance
Washing away
The sober land
But it can be years
Of waiting
For the wheel to turn
And pulling
The roots of
A seemingly dying tree
And pretending not to care
Who wears the crown
Did anyone warn them?
No! Those framed children
Had no ears
They didn't want them
They saw summer sunsets
And asked for more
Believing they deserved them,
Believing that love
Was the great Because
They can't believe
That we forgot.

Lag time--don't go away!

I must confess my plate has been quite full
So little time for pen or poetry
My writing life's experienced a lull
Not much figurative activity

But come back soon, stick with me yet a while
Soon comes the month of national poetry
And I will post a ditty ev'ry day
Though it might be the very death of me

Oh, to meet such a glorious, happy end
As sharing poetry each day with friends!

I promise not to give you 30 days of tortured iambic pentameter, though!

Thirty years

Sometimes being nine was hard
But when I saw your beige van—
My chariot—in our driveway
Nine was right where I wanted to be
And everything about you
Was just right:
Your white shoes
Your white belt
Your Old Spice
Your pink shirt
Your Frank Sinatra eight tracks

But most of all
It was your way of announcing
My entrance:
“This is my granddaughter”
With an implied
With whom I am well pleased
And your way of proclaiming,
Affirming my desires:
“Give her whatever she wants”
She deserves whatever she wants

You were the one
Who thought I was perfect
And deserved donuts for dinner
And to stay up past Johnny Carson
And to dip my French fries
In whatever I wanted
“You’re Number One,”
You would whisper
“No one else is.
No one else could be.”
It was just you and just me.

A few years ago
Thirty-nine was really, really hard
And I mourned the possibility
Of your van in my driveway
And felt deeply, truly sorry
For myself
But then I ruined the moment
By looking at your picture
And then looking in the mirror
And seeing the lines of holy obligation
Running over your face
And then mine
“This is my granddaughter,”
You whispered.
Now get up off the floor and start acting like it.

This was in response to readwritepoem's prompt #117.

Perhaps

Perhaps it is just
A remembering
Of our birth
The warmth of dark waters
Their tides pushing out and drawing back
And then the breach
The departure
The severing
From what tethered us
To the womb
Or to the earth

Perhaps the folly
Is the focus
On the when
The chronic need for timepieces
The turning back and forth of anxious pages
The distraction
The cleaving
To the notion that
Death comes later
And birth was then

Readwritepoem prompt 116 gave us this compelling image by h. koppdelaney to work with.

A little haiku about the hubby's latest creation...

Sculpting the Metal's Edge

What Is

Last week's readwritepoem prompt gave me a lot to think about, as it asked me to consider what I believe and what I do not believe. It was quite an experience for me, and I think I will actually have several short poems as a result of the exercises. Here is the first:

I am the Little Spokane
Forced to flow and push
My cold waters against
Unforgiving shoulders of land
And He is the colorless Winter Grass
Who consents to the flattening
Of snow and mud and lays
Himself down alongside me
And remains.
And rustles hoarsely in
My watery ears:
I know, I know…

Wound

Hello to anybody who might still be popping in to this blog to check for new poems. I've had a lot on my plate lately, and this blog has been a bit lost in the shuffle. However, I am remembering that the more I write, the better I feel...So, I hope to have much more to offer in the near future!

The wound loves the knife
More than stitches
One made her
The others saved her
Her affections are
Torn but then
She can’t deny
Her origins
Or the reason
She was born