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April Poem-A-Day Challenge 2009 Tracking Tool
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briarcat
2009-04-01
bewhyyAT NOSPAMmail dot com
Entries: 1 April PAD Challenge: Day 1
(Show/Hide Prompt)
For today’s prompt, I want you to write an origin poem. It can be the origin of a word, person, plant, idea, etc. Have fun with it.
(Note: Through this challenge, please feel free to use the prompt as a springboard to being creative. There is no right or wrong way to interpret the prompts–so take them in any direction you want.)
NOTHING TO CHANCE
My Mama
always used to tell me
The ending of a thing is inherent in its beginning.
It’s true.
Chekhov’s gun
Act One.
Of course, Aunt Mill
Says Mama’s full of bull.
But then she says that
A lot.
Contrarian,
Uncle Buck calls her.
Middle child.
briarcat
2009-04-02
bewhyyAT NOSPAMmail dot com
Entries: 1 April PAD Challenge: Day 2
(Show/Hide Prompt)
Today, I want you to write an outsider poem. You can be the outsider; someone else can be the outsider; or it can even be an animal or inanimate object that’s the outsider. As usual, get creative with the prompt and don’t be afraid to stretch the limits.
NEIGHBORS
When we moved in, the house downhill from us was vacant.
The lady died, they said, the month before.
On our south side
The eighty-year-old barber kept his wife the best he could.
She’d grown “childish”.
Bessie.
Twenty-seven years, and I remember the name of a woman I never saw.
The couple that used to live on the corner:
He was whittled down and down and down,
Losing digits limbs and sight to diabetes.
Ambulances took him to his doctors,
Ambulances came and stabilized him.
A stubborn man.
After the ambulance came for him that last time,
She left to live with a daughter.
In Florida, I think.
We never talked all that much.
The house was auctioned once they cleaned it up.
Three years ago, Eleanor across the street moved.
Her mother needed her.
Dad has Alzheimer’s, she said.
Eleanor’s old brick has Tudor styling now.
Looks nicely done.
And next door where the two old ladies lived–librarians–
The boy dug up the three-story magnolia and built a deck
With a chininea.
The new couple has a baby and a toddler.
Two dogs.
They built a nice fence around the back yard.
Brick and cedar.
She walks the dogs and the babies every day it’s nice.
A purposeful walker.
We nodded once. I was getting the mail.
briarcat
2009-04-03
b dot ellenyoungAT NOSPAMmail dot com
Entries: 1 2 April PAD Challenge: Day 3
(Show/Hide Prompt)
Today’s prompt: Take the phrase “The problem with (blank)” and replace the “(blank)” with a word or phrase. Make this the title of your poem and then write a poem to fit with or juxtapose against that title. For instance, you could have poems with the titles of “The problem with government,” “The problem with advanced mathematics,” or “The problem with bipolar penguins.” You know the drill: have fun, be creative. (You’re all already doing such an amazing job that Tammy and I are trying to figure out logistical ways of getting the poems down to 5-a-day for the guest judges. Keep it up!)
The Problem with the Past
Is it
Immutable?
The Problem With Dreams
I woke, dazed as Dorothy.
to the same dim room
I saw this morning,
dull flowered curtains drawn to ward light,
worn clothing piled by clean
gray hairs drifting from beneath the chest.
The cats are shedding.
You are shedding.
I am shedding
dreams as I shuffle down the hall.
I had a dream.
“I had a dream,” I say out loud,
testing sound cement for memory.
“I had a dream.”
The still air in the hallway waits to hear.
But the air here
__was not in the dream.
that air was different
and it made me feel different
and I noticed that, but
__I thought it was the way the light
__cascaded from the ten thousand rocks
__ pool beside my feet.
This still air was not in my dream, you were,
I want to tell you you were in my dream.
You were there and said
“this reminds me…”
You were there, but different as a platypus or phalarope.
You never finished.
Reminds you. What?
You aren’t in the abatoir.
(I slaughter words, you said, and laughed.
and I laughed, too.
We played that way. You built a desk of two filing cabinets and
a hollowcore door. Called your typewriter hummingbird.)
You aren’t in the abatoir, but you left your scent behind.
I want to tell you you were in my dream.
I leave a thumbprint in the dust for you to find some day,
And I wonder
if I ever noticed dust in dreams.
briarcat
2009-04-04
b dot ellenyoungAT NOSPAMmail dot com
Entries: 1 April PAD Challenge: Day 4
(Show/Hide Prompt)
For today’s prompt, I want you to pick an animal; make that animal the title of your poem; then, write a poem. You could be very general with your animal title (“Bees” or “Lion”) or specific (“Flipper” or “Lassie”). You could even be very silly with something like “Tony, the Tiger,” I guess (that tiger on the cereal box).
FOX
In nineteen fifty one the night
is cold
moonlit
and scented with hickory smoke.
Inside
beneath one hanging bulb
beside the searing woodstove
surrounded by tan golden sheetrock walls
on a patch of dull tan flower linoleum
One settee with a satin pillow from Hawaii
One rocker, oak, with split oak seat
One rocker, maple, planed by hand
Two ladder chairs and two slat back
One chrome tube with red seat pad
Quilt frame, pinned and basted quilt
Singer treddle, iron lace black and gilt
A fox cub
A burlap sack
A shotgun
A child
briarcat
2009-04-05
b dot ellenyoungAT NOSPAMmail dot com
Entries: 1 April PAD Challenge: Day 5
(Show/Hide Prompt)
For today’s prompt, I want you to write a poem about a landmark. It can be a famous landmark (like Mount Rushmore or the Sphinx) or a little more subdued (like the town water tower or an interesting sign).
I want to say thanks for this challenge. Haven’t written poetry for some years, and I’d forgotten the fun.
LANDMARK
Gold.
The manuscript in my lap
describes, describes, describes describes
the torques and rings and tangled massive chains
with rare gems studding every face of every thing.
Riches beyond riches
And here–the map.
Detailing every step
and every angled turn
and every cryptic mark
and how scratched into stone or notched in bark.
Perfectly simple.
A prize I could win
with ease
if the writer had mentioned
where to
begin.
briarcat
2009-04-06
b dot ellenyoungAT NOSPAMmail dot com
Entries: 1 April PAD Challenge: Day 6
(Show/Hide Prompt)
For today’s poem, I want you to write a poem about something missing. It can be about an actual physical object or something you just can’t put your finger on (like “love” or “the spirit of Christmas” or something).
Pandora
loosed the evils on the world.
She was so created that
no other course could be.
Hope, they say,
was saved.
I wonder.
The evils are free.
Hope,
nowhere to be seen.
briarcat
2009-04-07
b dot ellenyoungAT NOSPAMmail dot com
Entries: 1 2 April PAD Challenge: Day 7
(Show/Hide Prompt)
Prompt #1: I want you to write a clean poem. Take this however you wish. Clean language, clean subject matter, or cleaning the dishes. Of course, some twisted few will automatically link “cleaning” with hired hitmen. That’s okay, as long as your poem is somehow linked to clean.
Prompt #2: I want you to write a dirty poem. Take all that stuff I wrote in the first prompt and twist it upside down. The opposite of clean is dirty; so, do what ya gotta do to produce a dirty poem. (Gosh, I hope this challenge doesn’t get too messy as a result.)
April Fresh
Dogwood Winter, no question.
Last night’s storm
Washed Nashville free of yellow pollen
Then whipped away to
Launder Carolina.
Now the dogwoods
Sparkle,
Dried by crisp Canadian air.
#2
Secret:
When I was younger–
Eleven, or ten–
I cut the dirty words out of my mother’s dictionary.
I cut them out with big, black kitchen shears.
It was hard:
The paper was thin, and each page had two columns
Like the Bible.
Words, pronunciations, definitions.
All things genital, secondary.
Scatalogical slivers, translucent in the light.
I put my words in a dimestore white envelope
And hid them in a hollow tree
On Hogan Road.
briarcat
2009-04-08
b dot ellenyoungAT NOSPAMmail dot com
Entries: 1 2 April PAD Challenge: Day 8
(Show/Hide Prompt)
For today’s prompt, I want you to write a poem about either a specific routine or routines in general. Maybe something related to taking out the trash each week or washing the dishes every night–or something more bizarre (yet still a routine).
Bounce Back
Now the madness is over
Order returns.
The brackets creased my schedule
Bouncing havoc wrinkled my routines.
Now the madness is over
Order returns.
And again Jon Stewart triumphs over news
Monday through Friday at ten pm.
Now the madness is over
Order returns.
1)J. Alvey’s Cancer Daze knocked me flat
2) How could I have made such a dumb mistake?
Corrected routine is M-Thurs
Bounce Back
Now the madness is over
Order returns.
The brackets creased my schedule
Bouncing havoc wrinkled my routines.
Now the madness is over
Order returns.
And again Jon Stewart triumphs over news
Monday through Thursday at ten pm.
Now the madness is over
Order returns.
briarcat
2009-04-09
b dot ellenyoungAT NOSPAMmail dot com
Entries: 1 April PAD Challenge: Day 9
(Show/Hide Prompt)
For today’s prompt, I want you write a poem about a memory. The memory can be good or bad. The memory can be a blend of several memories. I suppose it could even be a memory that you’re not sure you remember correctly. Take your time finding a good one (or good ones).
I remember
being four ties onto the railroad bridge
I remember
how far away the road seemed
I remember
thinking that sounds like a train.
briarcat
2009-04-10
b dot ellenyoungAT NOSPAMmail dot com
Entries: 1 April PAD Challenge: Day 10
(Show/Hide Prompt)
For today’s prompt, I want you to write a poem about Friday. Do you like Fridays? Despise Fridays? Of course, you can also write about something that happened on a Friday–or write an ode to Fridays. Or, as you know, I’m all for seeing you attack this from an angle I haven’t thought of yet.
Tomorrow I’ll do better. The weather really threw me for a loop.
FRIDAY
Friday almost Saturday.
We had storms.
And catfish.
Home cooking joints in Nashville all
Serve fish on Fridays.
But no wine.
Don’t expect us to make sense:
Baptists.
briarcat
2009-04-11
b dot ellenyoungAT NOSPAMmail dot com
Entries: 1 April PAD Challenge: Day 11
(Show/Hide Prompt)
For today’s prompt, I want you to write a poem about an object (or objects). Though you don’t have to confine yourself to straight up description, I do want you to focus on object and/or make it a central piece of your poem. One of the more famous poems of contemporary literature does this wonderfully in William Carlos Williams’ “The Red Wheelbarrow.”
There is a picture on the wall in my living room.
A print
My brother gave me one year for Christmas.
The Nashville Parthenon
In its own once upon a time.
You don’t know about the Parthenon?
There are those who believe ours is better than the real thing,
Not being all in pieces.
But we have no Acropolis for our display,
Only a sort of berm to raise Athena’s temple
Over Lake Watauga.
You know the Clampets’ concrete pond? About that size.
It was one of the wonders of the ancient world, the Parthenon.
Ours, too.
Built for the state centennial an exact to size replica
In plaster.
After the war that didn’t end them all, it was rebuilt
In concrete. Tiny brown river pebbles in the lime matrix give it that golden look.
For years, there was a Christmas gift to us beside the Parthenon.
What began as a manger, some shepherds and magi
Grew
Until it outstripped the length of the building behind it.
Palm trees and camels and donkeys and sheep
White hollow statues of some composit on wire forms,
With blue stripes for shadows.
It looked a little stark in the daylight.
The print shows that.
And the positional silliness.
But not the time that followed every night.
When the sky darkened, the lights came up and the carols began.
All evening the lights changed blue to green to reddish pink, and the music played and the people walked from one end to the other in the cold.
This is what the picture is of:
The pagan greek building
and the christian display
and the magic of music and night.
briarcat
2009-04-12
b dot ellenyoungAT NOSPAMmail dot com
Entries: 1 April PAD Challenge: Day 12
(Show/Hide Prompt)
For today’s prompt, I want you to take the phrase “So we decided to (blank)” and fill in the blank. Make that your title and write a poem. Some possibilities include “So we decided to plant a tree” or “So we decided to burn a hole in the sky.”
And so we decided
I was old enough to be counted adult
when they asked.
I could have stayed.
Earth, as they said, was dying.
But it wasn’t going anywhere.
Not, as they said, anytime soon.
Do you have what it takes?
They put it that way.
Fill in the blanks and make the question your own before you answer.
And what does it take
Takes second place to the unvoiced:
For what?
I thought I knew.
Leaving home was only leaving trouble.
Air had grown foul
Water, scarce.
Everywhere was bloody murder.
Cold or hot,
From rage or greed or hate or fear.
And I thought: I will be in a better place.
We all thought we would be going to a better place.
To a new world.
To a chance.
To hope.
To something, anything.
And so we decided
To accept their offer.
briarcat
2009-04-13
b dot ellenyoungAT NOSPAMmail dot com
Entries: 1 2 April PAD Challenge: Day 13
(Show/Hide Prompt)
For today’s prompt, I want you to write a poem that incorporates a hobby (either yours or someone else’s). That’s right: Now is the perfect opportunity to write about your comic collection or your scrapbooking activities. And for the purposes of this challenge, I also think activities such as fishing, running, bowling, photography, birding, and gardening count as hobbies.
I did wonder when I looked at 2 or 3AM if the poems were napping or something. Here again:
Confession of a Serial Hobbiest
I do not do well at things requiring work,
requiring sweat and concentration,
and with no reward but the satisfaction of the
job well done.
[When other girls' mothers were teaching them the proper way to make a home,
and the attendant virtues of planning, order, and method
mine
played endless games of crazyeights with me to see who had to do the dishes.]
I like to play cards.
I like to read.
(Although I am told that it is not possible, I do believe that there is a possibility of having come into this light
reading.)
In high school, I was the short fat girl (with glasses) who wrote poetry.
(There was another, similar, girl; it’s not as if we were a club or something, though.)
Won a contest with a poem,
like a blue-ribbon squash.
Briefly,
in college,
I took up
acting.
Bit parts.
And for one gloriously filthy summer I leaned at a kick wheel and threw pots and
imagined doing that forever:
being a bare-footed backtothelander
digging my own clay
kicking my wheel
making babies and pots.
After that, I tried my hand at men.
As with my pots, there frequently was damage from the heat.
Until I found one pre-fired,
with some interesting patterns where the inclusions had been burned away, but his
warping fit with mine and we’ve been pot and lid for almost thirty years.
And in that time,
with a shelf of books–or one and a half–
to show for every change of interest,
Camping, cooking, canoeing, photography,
and identification of wildflowers and weeds.
There were gardening trials with vegetables,
and a separate set of years with herbs,
and the fig tree decade which overlapped
The Disasterous Quilting Experiment
(that left me with shelves of boxes
of varicolored fabrics and not so much as a wall-hanging to show).
And the beads. My dragon hoard of shiny things.
Lately,
I seem to be hoarding words again.
Wrote a novel in a month (snicker),
and now,
poems.
#2 Fascination
This challenge has been fascinating
One thing I’ve come to see:
There’s nothing half so intresting to me as
Me.
briarcat
2009-04-14
b dot ellenyoungAT NOSPAMmail dot com
Entries: 1 April PAD Challenge: Day 14
(Show/Hide Prompt)
First prompt: Write a love poem.
Second prompt: Write an anti-love poem.
Simple as that.
#1 Pro
Between Springtime lust
and Winter’s slow sweet friendship–
Life teaches us Love.
#2 Anti?
Love don’t flaunt itself like no pouty pigeon
So, says Christian, Love is not puffed up.
And I says, Ha!
Just lookat there.
Because of you.
It’s too much Charity and not enough
Rut.
Cupid’s gone to pot, gone soft
As a pile of canned whip cream.
You say there’s not enough of love in the world.
I says, too much.
And he’s a mess.
briarcat
2009-04-15
b dot ellenyoungAT NOSPAMmail dot com
Entries: 1 2 April PAD Challenge: Day 15
(Show/Hide Prompt)
For today’s prompt, I want you to take the title of a poem you especially like (by another poet) and change it. Then, with this new altered title, I want you to write a poem. An example would be to take William Carlos Williams’ “The Red Wheelbarrow” and change it to “The Red Volkswagon.” Or take Frank O’Hara’s “Why I Am Not a Painter” and change it to “Why I Am Not a Penguin.” You get the idea, right? (Note: Your altered poem does NOT have to follow the same style as the original poet, though you can try if you wish.)
COMMUNICATION in October
“set foot
That second
In the still sleeping town and set forth”
Good move, Rose, to pass on the party.
Things did get out of hand
Again.
I hope we didn’t bother you too much with the noise. In our defense, you were invited, and we did save a whole bottle of that red you like. And Danny will replace your mailbox.
Come by when you get in and you can have the wine. 
skinnymike666@yahoo.
Sweet Missus Rose congratulations
Again
On your winnings of 1,000,000,000,000 million English pounds in Nairobi lottery franaise. Your friends in God are glad to blessed to shair your joy and we will be giving you the secret number when you answer this mailing.
Brother Prince Ignatius@guidesandgodsends55564@sify.
Rose Aunt Janet called my house
Again
Looking for you.
She says you must have moved
Again
Because the person who answers your phone says wrong number.
Again and again.
Rose, you should not do that to Aunt Janet. She is only a little confused.
And don’t complain. You know that they will take away her phone privileges
Again.
Brother911Bob@Comcast.
Rose please say it is your parrot I found on my porch. I don’t remember yours looking quite like this. But who else in the neighborhood could lose a parrot
Again?
And Rose? If it is not yours,
WHAT DO I DO?!!!!!!!
kimmie_marie2@hotmail.
I tried your cellphone, sweetheart, but it kept rolling over
Again.
you really must take off your calls regularly.
Did you know you have left your back door open
Again.
I noticed when I was walking Cockroach this morning in the alley behind your house because there is no traffic you know. And Cockroach wanted to visit with Poopsie.
I can go back and close it for you if you want.
I would have, but after what you said
The last time…
Call me when you get this I’ll be on my cell. Mother@home.
It seems most of you have worked with the structure of your poems. Makes me feel a little like a cheat for having just jumped off from Poem in October. So I thought I would TRY just a little closer twist on one. From Donne
GO and watch the super star,
Get the clearing house’s loot,
Know what next year’s brackets are,
Or who gets the Idol boot.
Teach me lap steel’s proper stringing,
And to keep my phone from ringing,
And send
My friend
Whole to her pleasures once again.
briarcat
2009-04-16
b dot ellenyoungAT NOSPAMmail dot com
Entries: 1 April PAD Challenge: Day 16
(Show/Hide Prompt)
For today’s prompt, I want you to pick a color, make that the title of your poem, and write a poem that is inspired by that color.
___hardest one yet for me
Red
For a while I was a South Park character.
Built myself online
At a German site.
Took stacks of pixels
And recombined them
According to code
And became Red.
She wore ruby shades that she peered over with a look akin to exasperation.
Her hair was the same hue, but with more saturation.
I sent Red out into the world.
While my depression and I stayed home and watched TV.
Red inserted herself into stolen Flickr photos
From strangers’ vacations.
Red went to China. Greece. The Grand Canyon.
But she seemed uncomfortable with reality.
Art changed all that.
The last I saw of her was peering from the shadows at the Hopper Nighthawks,
Disappearing like the cheshire cat with ruby eyes.
briarcat
2009-04-17
b dot ellenyoungAT NOSPAMmail dot com
Entries: 1 2 3 April PAD Challenge: Day 17
(Show/Hide Prompt)
For today’s prompt, I want you to write a poem with the following title: “All I want is (blank),” where you fill in the blank with a word or phrase of your choosing. Some example titles, then, could be: “All I want is to eat fried chicken”; “All I want is world peace”; “All I want is for everyone to tell me I’m beautiful”; or “All I want is a handful of quarters.”
All I want is the magical, mystical, wonderful do-over
All time–
So goes the theory–is a tree
In-finite of ramefication.
A scar, bud, stub, twig, limb, or trunk
For every variation.
I’d like to try a branch where I
Am stirring, and not shaken.
(I think I’d like to try again)
All I want is to get it right
Chaos, Trickster, Murphy’s Law.
I’ve read too many tales.
Give me a wish,
and my mind goes straight to what can go wrong.
So, I refuse to choose, not
and have my good will mocked.
Still.
It might be wise
to consider that Life can be
unpredictably
Good.
All I want is a Beer
Not that I’m supposed to have alcohol. Not that it ever stopped me before.
But things have changed.
The old med made me lose words. I could not stand that.
They would be back there, those words, somewhere, in corners.
Recognizable when heard or seen, but in hiding.
I worked around that for a while and no one noticed, because I was good with synonyms, and with rephrasing myself in mid-sentence.
It had the effect of one striving for precision.
But that grew old.
I changed my style and asked for help.
Knowing the right word, the only one that would work,
I would ask for it.
I would give the definition, and some times the first letter or last.
And sometimes where it fit in the dictionary.
And I could give you the shape of the word,
Make a sentence with a hole to plug the right one into.
A hole in the sentence and tears of frustration.
When there were too many holes and too many tears,
Although I was well-controlled on my old med,
The golden goal,
They put me on this new one
Which doesn’t hide my words
But makes anything with bubbles taste like pewter.
briarcat
2009-04-18
b dot ellenyoungAT NOSPAMmail dot com
Entries: 1 2 April PAD Challenge: Day 18
(Show/Hide Prompt)
For today’s prompt, I want you to write a poem with an interaction of some sort. The interaction does NOT have to be between people, though it can. For instance, you could write about the interaction between a bee and a flower; or an owl and a field mouse. Or just write about a traffic cop getting into an argument with a speeder. Just as long as there is some sort of interaction going on.
The Sunday morning light is warm.
Front porch. The Times and coffee cups for three.
Sam has the Book Review.
The sport section is open on the table, and its pages
are moving slightly in the breeze.
Richard has set aside the crossword, and is explaining.
The birds are singing and Calliope is listening to the birds.
Richard might be the breeze ruffling the paper.
Sam chuckles, as if to himself, that low laugh he uses the way a surgeon uses
a scalpel,
the way a juggler uses knives.
It is a rich laugh, bitter chocolate, and captures the attention like cascading blades.
Richard pauses, annoyed.
“What’s funny?”
“Something I remembered. Something Callie said.”
Calliope crashes down from the tree and the song.
She shudders inside.
“Who, me?
“Have I become amusing now?”
She hides her dread beneath banter,
And waits for the words that will chill the sunlight and still the birds.
FRIEND
__INVITE
You want to be my friend?
Then take back those words you used for me
in seventh grade.
You don’t remember?
I do.
You want to be my friend?
Invite me to one of those parties
every one of our ninth grade classmates
talked about.
I’d settle for the junior prom,
a covert note in class,
a valentine.
A hello in the hall.
You want to be my friend?
__IGNORE
briarcat
2009-04-19
b dot ellenyoungAT NOSPAMmail dot com
Entries: 1 2 April PAD Challenge: Day 19
(Show/Hide Prompt)
Perhaps appropriately, today’s prompt is to write an angry poem. That is, a poem about someone or something that gets angry. Could be a person, animal, or even them there angry clouds. As usual, I’m excited to see which unexpected directions y’all take with this prompt.
Oops. Accidentally posted this on yesterday.
FRIEND
__INVITE
You want to be my friend?
Then take back those words you used for me
in seventh grade.
You don’t remember?
I do.
You want to be my friend?
Invite me to one of those parties
every one of our ninth grade classmates
talked about.
I’d settle for the junior prom,
a covert note in class,
a valentine.
A hello in the hall.
You want to be my friend?
__IGNORE
The other one made me feel….bletch.
Angry Wren
Small
Busy body
Nosy, noisy pest.
Brown and plain and irritating.
Alice was angry
And better at protecting children
Than a pack of german shepherds.
She will be missed.
briarcat
2009-04-20
b dot ellenyoungAT NOSPAMmail dot com
Entries: 1 April PAD Challenge: Day 20
(Show/Hide Prompt)
For today’s prompt, I want you to write a poem of rebirth. There are many different types of rebirth available, including the changing of the seasons, the beginning of the day, religious or spiritual rebirth, a reconfirmation of good in people, re-learning how to love, etc. So think on it a bit, and create a stellar rebirth poem.
Rebirth
Your words deliver me
into a creation
beyond your world or mine
from which I am reborn
with new eyes.
briarcat
2009-04-21
b dot ellenyoungAT NOSPAMmail dot com
Entries: 1 2 3 April PAD Challenge: Day 21
(Show/Hide Prompt)
We’re now 3 weeks into April! And to celebrate, we get a 2-for-Tuesday prompt. Hurrah!
Here are the two prompts for the day (you only need to choose one, unless you’re all about pushing yourself to the limit):
1. Write a haiku. The haiku is not just a form but a genre of poetry. (Click here to read more about the haiku.) People sometimes go into writing a haiku and end up with a senryu or a faux-ku, but it’s all good (and all poetry).
2. Write about the haiku. I know there are some poets (in this very group even) who are anti-form. So, I’m giving them the option to write their anti-haiku manifestos. Of course, if you pay attention to this 2nd prompt, it doesn’t need to be anti-haiku; your poem could be questioning or even praising the haiku. Or something.
Hi-can’t/Haiku
I considered taking the simple way.
I can, forgodsake, count. And I can be
Spare.
Not absolutely every single word
Needs polysyllabic modification
For Clarity
And fine brush strokes do paint so neatly.
But it’s spring. Just look outside:
Nature’s in hypersexual Overdrive
And everything’s blooming chaos.
She’s got the air full of prickly sperm
And seeds,already– the roofs are spinning with maple whirligigs.
Wanton androgyne, she’s got me thinking slutty thoughts
And wanting to plant things.
Or just sit in the sunshine and listen to the birds the storm dropped
From some far-southern flock. Cockaded aliens.
Romantic robber-bandits with masks and songs.
How can you write haiku in spring?
Who feels elegant
When foreign birds sing concerts
With the rutting wrens?”
Typo. No closing quotes
What did that thing mean?
Is she telling me I can’t
Correct my mistakes?
briarcat
2009-04-22
b dot ellenyoungAT NOSPAMmail dot com
Entries: 1 2 April PAD Challenge: Day 22
(Show/Hide Prompt)
For today’s prompt, I want you to write a work-related poem. Work doesn’t have to be the main feature of the poem, but I want you to “work” it in somehow. And remember: There are different types of work. Of course, there are the activities that gain you fortune and fame (or not), but then, there’s also housework, exercise, volunteering, etc. I’m sure you’ll “work” it out.
April is the coolest month
I know it’s impolitic, not too smart
of me to call this play.
But tell me truly this is not a lark,
kiss in the dark,
a walk in the park.
The writing is the sexy part.
The work begins in May.
It might just
It might work:
Change the label and old is new.
I see the house behind the pawn shop,
The little rental that is cyclically destroyed-refreshed-destroyed,
Is reincarnated commercial,
And begs to be a sweet boutique.
It might work:
To call the sleepless hours
A meditation,
And remove the tenants of worry and fear.
I could bring in some structure,
And call the night my office.
briarcat
2009-04-23
b dot ellenyoungAT NOSPAMmail dot com
Entries: 1 2 April PAD Challenge: Day 23
(Show/Hide Prompt)
For today’s prompt, I want you to write a poem of regret. Get creative with this one, but there should be some form of regret either expressed or hinted at (even if ever so slightly). You do NOT have to use the word “regret” in the poem, though it’s fine if you do.
The Lady Rues the Day
Shoulda, Woulda, Coulda
Ought! Ought! Ought!
Shoulda, Woulda, Coulda
Ought! Ought! Ought!
Shoulda, Woulda, Coulda
Ought! Ought! Ought!
Yea! Team!
Fight!
The Problem of Leaving
She noticed,
Only because of the road’s name:
Golightly Pike.
Exit Here Golightly Pike.
Yes, the broken girl beneath the movie star
Would have come from such a place,
Such a no place
With its small steep hills sloughing off thin grass
To show its poor dirt.
Poor dirt, poor people, she thought.
Poor Amber and Kristi and April
Poor Brandy, poor Brittney,
Rachelle I’d leave too.
I’d get out of here, fast,
She thought, glancing down
to where the narrow gray road crabbed its way
through the narrow crease between two hills,
shadowed by a narrow, rocky creek.
I’d get out of here, too.
And the highway swept her past the crown
Of the hill and down
In one smooth progression
To another exit
For Golightly Pike.
briarcat
2009-04-24
b dot ellenyoungAT NOSPAMmail dot com
Entries: 1 2 April PAD Challenge: Day 24
(Show/Hide Prompt)
For today’s prompt, I want you to write a travel-related poem. It can be human travel, the migration of swallows, the trafficking of drugs, etc. Some sort of movement from point A to point B.
There is no road from A to B
They sit alongside, never touching,
Whatever the case.
If there is yearning between them,
It does not show
Even in the cursive
Kerning keeps them moated from each other.
I seem to be thinking in impossibilities…
COMPROMISE
You would think that they might meet
Halfway.
No one would be satisfied.
Still, from the center,
Each could see the other’s
Side.
But it seems the journey
Toward minds meeting
Has a Silk Road share of perils:
Bad climate for compromise, ambushes, harsh terraine.
Too much baggage.
To reach the center there are chasms to cross.
Deep chasms.
And the bridges are the flimsy, swinging kind–
with loose planks.
And the paths toward understanding
Have more switchbacks than a grand canyon donkey trail.
There are loose pebbles underfoot,
Roots,
And gnats.
The smallest things can be the hardest to deal with.
The road to compromise is not short,
It is not easy,
And it is most certainly not paved
In smooth and mellow gold.
It’s rough.
And the closer to the goal, the rougher.
And the more obvious the mathematical truth
That the final hair of difference
Can be split infinitely.
briarcat
2009-04-25
b dot ellenyoungAT NOSPAMmail dot com
Entries: 1 April PAD Challenge: Day 25
(Show/Hide Prompt)
For today’s prompt, I want you to pick an event; make that event the title of your poem; and then write a poem. Think birthday. Think holiday. Think whatever.
The Country Music Marathon (and 1/2 Marathon)
thirty thousand plus.
about a mile and a half from my house
thirty plus thousand people are still running,
although the kenyan has long since finished.
that’s a lot of people.
I’ve lived in cities with less.
can you imagine
some small town,
hiking up its outskirts
and taking a run through the park?
briarcat
2009-04-26
b dot ellenyoungAT NOSPAMmail dot com
Entries: 1 2 April PAD Challenge: Day 26
(Show/Hide Prompt)
For today’s prompt, I want you to write a poem involving miscommunication. It can be miscommunication between two people or misinterpretation of some sort. I will leave it up to you guys to deal with it however you want.
Foul Pythonic Spammer
Wrapping my words in trash and sending them back warped.
Stuff it.
I do not want
Your pornographic picture penile
power point enlargement
flower power oriental
teenage girls and boys
clubs spades
I heart infinitum.
It was a poem I posted,
you mindless
anti-mantra
generator.
A poem.
And your scurvy links
will not direct me to
the orchard, my dream.
Where lines and rows and files and rows
of spun sugar trees
to bud bloom blow
burst with swelling pink shell crosses
apple rose rose of peach and rose of pear.
I want to know if my imagining is true:
Does the wind drive petal blizzards?
Does it pile the blossom fragments
into shoals and banks of pearl and pink?
Can I make a man of flowers?
Or pack them into missiles of mock war?
And stuffed down collars,
Do they then dissolve into apple-scented love?
Miscommunication Poem #2: god is a disco ball
I am fond of metaphor.
I don’t do well at bald description
and fact
and abstraction.
(It is a fact, though not exactly so, that I limped through philosophy
and only managed logic
because of the metaphoric nature
of Venn Diagrams.)
So:
Some time ago
(it was probably the seventies, considering)
I concluded that a metaphor for god
could be
an enormously
enormous
mirrored disco ball.
Because, or so it seemed to me,
god is everything–but mostly what we see is ourselves
reflected.
I see now that my metaphor is flawed.
God is actually a mirrored disco ball
inside a mirrored sphere.
inside god.
briarcat
2009-04-27
b dot ellenyoungAT NOSPAMmail dot com
Entries: 1 April PAD Challenge: Day 27
(Show/Hide Prompt)
For today’s prompt, I want you to write a poem of longing. You or someone (or something) else should be pining for someone or something. Maybe a cat is longing to get outside the house. Maybe a teenager is longing to get away from his or her small town. And, of course, there’s always the longing poem of love.
Well, maybe this time I can get it right.
Cold Orange Crush
This about longing:
It would have been July.
In July, the heat’s a new thing still,
intense and strong.
There’s a rightness of heat and July.
It would have been July.
The two-lane blacktop crumbles at the edge
where cars pull off the road
and into the gravel lot.
The tar bubbles trap ants and the black goo sticks to your bare feet,
and the dusty rocks in the parking lot are hot from the sun,
and sharp.
And I scrunch my toes against the heat, and hop across the hot dust and rocks between the car and the store,
and I have one thing in mind:
I want an Orange Crush.
I have been thinking about that brown bottle
for it must have been an hour.
Someplace on the other side of Hohenwald
I saw a sign.
I’ve been wanting one ever since.
That sweet orange taste in the brown bottle
that fits my hand.
I have been tasting that in my mind for miles.
That’s the thing about longing.
I could just see that red cooler
full of bottles of all shapes and sizes waiting
in the cold, cold metal-smelling water,
and I could already hear the nickle clunk
and slide its way down to the coin bin to land with all its cousins, and hear the thunk of the catch releasing the cooler’s lid,
and the clining of the bottles bumping into one another.
I could already feel the cold water dripping from the bottle
and running down my hand
while I pry off the cap.
I had that drink half finished before I ever got there.
That’s the thing about longing.
When I pushed open that screen door to Dotson’s
and stepped onto that cool concrete
and caught the smell of boloney coming from the back
and tobacco from the front,
I was ready for my Orange Crush.
This was going to be good.
I knew it would be good.
And then I saw the Tom’s rack.
The red wire rack,
with the clear, crinkling plastic packages
full of peanuts.
Peanuts sparkling with salt.
It was then the truth came over me.
I knew then what I really wanted,
really needed
was a bag of peanuts
and a Coke.
That’s the thing about longing.
___For anyone who doesn’t know of the practice, there is something incomparable about the combination of salty peanuts carefully sleeved into cold Coke or RC. Somehow Pepsi won’t do.
briarcat
2009-04-28
b dot ellenyoungAT NOSPAMmail dot com
Entries: 1 2 3 April PAD Challenge: Day 28
(Show/Hide Prompt)
For today’s prompt, I want you to write a sestina. (Click here to find out the rules for sestinas.) So start figuring out your 6 end words and get writing.
But wait! Today is Tuesday, so you have one other option. You can write a poem about the sestina (your love, hate, frustration with, etc.).
Whether you decide to write a sestina or write about sestinas, remember to have fun. We’re almost done!
You, sir, are an evil man.
more later.
Sestina?
The Nymph Refrains
I am not bright.
Not bright enough for you, Lucifer. The sun
will not stop in the heaven
at my command, nor will the blue
sea turn to gold
for me. I cannot dance on air.
You want a magic air,
Lucifer, one for transmuting straw and gold,
And I cannot for all your bright
and cruel beauty, sing down the sun.
Apples will grow blue
before I sing that song, or god will step down from Heaven.
I want the heaven
of your bright
regard. The blue
vaulting sky knows you are air
to me, and sun,
and more by far than gold.
But I could lose the sun,
Lucifer. And lose all promises of heaven,
If I cannot ignore your gold
and honeyed words. And even god can see your bright
sweet whisperings turn air
to mead and strip the sky of blue.
If ever suitor blew
hot and hotter, it is you, with your air
of I care not, and the heat of the sun
in your hands. You burn gold
with your most glancing touch, and give lie to heaven
making midnight bright.
You cannot, trickster, have what gold
is mine by right. My tunes belong to blue
day and sunlit air.
The gift of heaven,
and none of yours. You can not steal from me, Bright
Star, to quench the sun.
I have no spelling air to call the sun,
to wrench the gold from day and steal the light of heaven.
My soul, I cannot write blue songs. I am not bright enough.
Well,
I did it.
(not so well)
Are there cookies now?
briarcat
2009-04-29
b dot ellenyoungAT NOSPAMmail dot com
Entries: 1 2 April PAD Challenge: Day 29
(Show/Hide Prompt)
For today’s prompt, I want you to title your poems “Never (blank)” with you filling in the blank with a word or phrase. Then, write a poem based off your title, which could be “Never look both ways when crossing the street” or “Never blush in public” or “Never ever” or “Never write a poem with the word never in the title.” You get the idea, right?
NEVER, EVER
You can get your words to live by
From the anchor on the news.
You can learn a funny story
From the man who’s selling shoes.
You can parlay grannie’s teaching
Into money in the bank.
You can get your daily Sartre
From a bum who hustles crank.
You can get your cautionaries
Out of Aesop and his tales,
And the shalt-nots in the Bible
Give advice that never fails.
There’s poetry in coffee pots,
A world of truth in booze
But don’t never, never ever
Pay attention to the blues.
Never Exhibit Foolish Consistency
Never exhibit a foolish consistency.
There is a place for hobgoblins,
and hobbyhorses, as well.
Foolishly exhibited, they tend to become
rather mainstream and ordinary.
The secreted consistency,
now there is a true monster.
briarcat
2009-04-30
b dot ellenyoungAT NOSPAMmail dot com
Entries: 1 2 April PAD Challenge: Day 30
(Show/Hide Prompt)
For today’s prompt, I want you to write a farewell poem. After all, we are saying farewell to another wonderful National Poetry Month. Say farewell to this month; say farewell to a vacation spot; say farewell to a bad relationship; say farewell to work; say farewell to school; say farewell to saying farewell even. Hopefully, I won’t be saying farewell to you; please stay in touch and let me know of your successes as we keep poeming toward the horizon.
Farewell the Magic
The tale is done.
Applause.
The players bow farewell.
Do you grieve that magic dies
When the house lights rise?
Close your eyes and see.
The players bid farewell
To the magic
Leaving in you.
Now I know how many poets it takes to change a lightbulb…
