For today’s prompt, I want you to take the phrase “Should (blank),” replace the blank with a word or phrase, make that the title of your poem, and write your poem. Examples could be “Should I Buy This Outfit,” “Should You Leave Before I Buy This Outfit,” or “Should This Outfit Be in the Title? You Don’t Even Know What This Outfit Looks Like Anyway.” The Clash even wrote a song to this prompt (okay, they didn’t write a song to this prompt, but their song fits this prompt) called, “Should I Stay or Should I Go?“

should love
___drop from up above
(like apples) unexpected
and unaskedfor (as a puppy)
open up your heart
(like flowers), open
without will but in its season
love will come or not
no matter love’s like money
(unanticipated) open up
and grasp it (freely)
should love
drop

For today’s prompt, I want you to pick a plant (any plant), make that the title of your poem, and write a poem. Pretty simple. (Or is it?) Most people, including myself, immediately think of plants as organic creatures, but, of course, “plants” can also be places of employment or spies or…as you can see, there’s always room for breaking outside the lines.

Well, I did answer the prompt .  But I don’t like the poem any more than the plant, so why did I write it.  Hell if I know, but I like this one better, on an oddly similar theme, and it does have a plant inside.

today november’s warm with leaves and ladybugs

a tickle on my neck I brush and crush
a red and spotted lady beetle
soon they will be clustering and cloistering
dropping from the ceiling into soup
and wandering among the potted plants
like tourists from tokyo or mars
but now the scent like fig leaves
on my fingers reminds me to be
careful as my feet disturb the earth

rwp build a poem mini-challenge #5

I’ve got to say that I fell in love with this line when that random generator spat it out.  It makes me think of Shaker hymns and art songs and, of course, lullabies.  It has been in the back of my mind through the series of poems, and for a change I like what came out.  I hope you do, too.

Rest somewhere sweet and listen

Morning rests inside the darkness.
Sorrow comes where sorrow will.
Mourning is no cure for loving.
Stars unseen are with you still.
Starlight rests inside the morning.

Rest.  Work will still be here tomorrow.  close your eyes, relax your hand
rest gives the body time for healing      slow your breathing, deep and easy
rest frees the mind to create its order     open your will and give it leave
rest is the grace note within creation       feel the echos in your dream

somewhere is a dream and a promise unconditional
somewhere like utopia is not a place at all
somewhere is the heart’s dissatisfaction in a word
somewhere admits to hope and breathes a wish

sweet:  molecular reactions send electrons racing tripping goldberg circuits zipping waking braincells to exclaiming
sweet!   the balance in alignment, spot on the bat, basket unvibrating, uncomplicated kiss, dream, clear and carrying note
sweet, you are loved and you are cherished
sweet surprises expectations

listen (my children and you) carefully (tinkerbell) unvoiced (an angel got his wings) utterances
listen to the rose within the buzzing, the wave in its gathering
listen to the distance in the train to the engine in the singing to the highway on the rain
listen to the world turning juicy as a peach, humming like a mother, clear and sweet and loving

close your eyes and slow your breathing            stars unseen are with you still

morning rests behind your sorrow            somewhere is a dream to fill

grace surprises  expectations              listen, rest, and somewhere sweet

liked the guitar and with a thirst

We got lost one night outside of Crossville, three girls in an old convertible
no spare tire, when the radio hit static, engine light winked on.
out on this tar blacktop road, not hardly two lanes anywhere
and not a sign of anything in sight,  just our headlights on the road.
We wound up at this roadhouse, white cinder blocks and black paint trim,
the smell inside was old stale beer and french fry grease from last July.
We meant to get directions and get out of there
but there was this kid not fourteen up on a stage
about six inches high, a barstool and a drum machine
and a silvertone guitar, flannel plaid and jeans with cuffs,
and singing Jimmie Rodgers like a pro.  Now Sarah is a fool
for Jimmie Rodgers. Kim and me, we liked the guitar kid, and with a thirst
for beer decided we might just as well sit down and stay a while
and listen to the kid.  Sarah got directions while Kim and I bought beer
and I went back to get some of those fries,
and just about a dozen bikers strolled in looking mean and we got nervous.  I mean nervous.

But what we have here
is a little something
about the nature of
perception.
When what you see
is what you expect to see,
nothing more makes sense.
You need to see what’s there.
We saw trouble wearing dirty red bandanas denim vests and studded leather.
Owner just saw some money coming in on Tuesday night, and that kid
playing Jimmie Rogers saw his dad
and grinned
that’s all

mini-challenge, make a poem out of five.  I don’t know that this works well, or even at all, and would really appreciate feedback.

For today’s prompt, I want you to write a poem with (or about) someone (or something) covered. A person could be covered with a blanket or blanketed with darkness. Something could be covered by water or earth or anything you can think, I guess. Or you could write a poem about how you “have it covered,” I suppose.

Mini-challenge DIY Kit Poem #4

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Moonshine Tunes

covered all in creekslime
and smelling like the guts of worms, dead fish, and honeysuckle
later we would find ourselves the hosts
to countless tiny ticks
too small to find until they’d gorged themselves
and swollen large as mustard seeds.
stay aways, not run aways
we were wild and fearless
singing moonshine tunes like nursery rhymes
and camels and fatimas out of world war one
we trailed anachronisms
in the wind behind our bikes
like disney girls without a problem
out of reach of common sense.
in another summer I would know
why you played with such ferocity

For today’s prompt, I want you to write a growth poem. This could be psychological or emotional growth, physical growth, or however you’d like to take it. Maybe your poem is about growing hair or growing hungry or growing impatient or…

.

Myths grow feet

Myths saunter through our lives
as effortlessly as Hercules
could rip your check in half and say
your money’s no good here or Pecos Bill
could spin a three day novel
out of tumbleweeds and moonshine
They walk among us in disguise Medusa’s
masked and pixellated but she’s there
and stoning the unwary from a screen
Dragons dress innocuous and sell insurance
beside oracles in Farmers overalls
and naked cupids wag their butts in
the colored shadows where boy bands
wear chastity like bucks wear horns
Doe eyed divas sacrifice themselves
to blood-lust soulmates with a joy
akin to Minos busty bull maids
And beneath my fingers daily
little myths grow and walk off
were the ancients as bemused
to watch their creations disappear
or did they see them strolling
out the door to make their lives
and progeny that I see daily
in the grocery store and all while
wonder at the whereabouts of my
small creat-ures, baby aphrodites
and bastets, and if they’ll dare
to show their faces and come
tail-dragging home.

(my great-uncle was a horse trader. said he never sold a horse that wasn’t bought before he said a word)

as damp  then peach-scented us

Odds
are in your favor
missie if you buy this car you won’t be sorry true she’s got some miles on her but she ’s got plenty more you had your own mechanic look her over? I would hope my daughter’d do the same thing or my mother, bless her, she’s a stubborn woman  Well you never know about a timing chain that’s the truth just like he said this model has been known to have a problem there and there’s no warning signs to tip you off and it does cost a bit you have to haul the engine out to take a look and if you’re looking might as well just go ahead and put a new one in          pro-actively although she might not give you one minute’s trouble but that’s why we let you take her for a test drive, isn’t it
She’s a honey and you sure looked good
together but I tell you what
you’ll pay a little more up front
buthow about this little baby
just got her on the lot
she’s still a little damp
inside from detailing
as pretty as a peach
and just as sweet
Take her out
Imagine

top down wind and Mose Allison exhaling cool irony nowhere I got to be no just flat blue highway and night smelling baking bread and coffee soft leather seats and smooth responsive powerful and ripe as peaches headlights picking out the lines stars blurring mine we us

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Second work of the 5-part mini challenge and in my case some thoughts on truth and lies

As it is November, and I am less-than-more writing a novel for NaNoWrimo, I’m using my poetry challenges to give some dimension to my pretty bad prose.  This, then, locates itself in the Scofflaw Square universe.

having difficulties with conflict in my writing (understatement),  I don’t think that I’ve really gotten the whole of the rwp prompt for this week (99, 99, 99), a really juicy one, which is:

a poem that tells a narrowly focused story — a “scene” — without telling the story. Instead, convey the essence of the scene through your description of the world in which it takes place and the “characters” (who don’t have to be human or even “alive”) that inhabit it

Summoned to a Lady’s Rooms

he stepped into a dimness dressed for winters ruled
by kings and queens of bone and dust now memory
a parlor wearing wealth in saturating dyes, dense
to hold an ember’s warmth through nights without
a whispered hope of summer fire, heat wrapped
in velvet and in silk against a life of white, black,
of a cutting blue. steel and ice. venous ravenous.

his mother’s mother’s womenkin lived in such rooms
this seemed to be the memory of one
excised and held inside a globe of glass and oil
outside its time and green sea miles from home
like cedar sandalwood grotesques disguised as rests
for long pens blown of peacock glass and thimbles
hewn from knucklebones of mermen, a curiosity

a sweating waterglass beside an open book
a trace of wet dog odor mixed with lime and rum
a flash flood of profanity from the connecting room
declared this souvenir a living home

For today’s prompt, I want you to take the phrase “Maybe (blank),” replace the (blank) with a word or phrase, and write a poem using that new phrase as your title. Some example titles: “Maybe we really did need a bigger boat,” “Maybe next time you’ll listen to me,” “Maybe never,” “Maybe baby,” and so on.

Mini-challenge build a poem in five parts

May be truth
should wear a label
hang a sign around its neck
and give us leave
to waste our time on more important puzzles
(Hamlet was a fool to care)
May be the night has fooled your eyes, you see gray recollections shades
(see fire curl in spectrum
as an autumn leaf
from stem through crackling veins
to erose edges purple)
You may be but mad as foxes and to one wind only
(lean on the wind and fall
it holds no more than smoke
and molecules of memory)
May be you’re trapped in solving amber questions where the only answer’s mad
(you have no boy’s excuse
to murder daisies making sport of madness)
You may be ragged in your reason
six of one to half a dozen
(or sharp as fractured glass
a liar eight to maybe)

liar eight to maybe
but to Jack and his freemasons
a build away turned it on
moonshine tales.
as damp then peach-scented us
rest somewhere sweet and listened
a drunk talked, liked the guitar and with a thirst
naming and hunting a girl— August hair
teller– silk templar man lover fiddling his love heart,
nails his tall stars of might
fingers knife
He cared enough
went father he her women
young Saint black inch
Or truth son rooftop cajun blue-eyed as the pare knights,.
heads danced a break there where one stumbled
and Kerouac Pete illuminati, liar,
alone. was with nobody