NaPoWriMo, Day 13
It's day 13, and I have 11 poems. I didn't write a poem yesterday because I wrote several short poems the day before, and today so far has been consumed by teaching; I'm hopeful, though, of doing a little writing this evening. How are others doing?
I am writing something every day, sometimes a revision, sometimes notes for something new, sometimes a first draft... hurray I am no longer afraid of the start of writing that - it wont BE anything... that I cant do anything today... Worth the struggle. Here is a Haiku style piece. :
ReplyDeletefresh cherry blossom
in my garden's third year
and I am sixty.
5/04/2011
Joanne Limburg
ReplyDeleteManaged one a day so far, some very short, others towards a book of children's poetry I'm writing. Here's one that's neither, slightly the worse for formatting - and haste:
You Ask Me Why
Somewhere, more a notion than a place,
an angel squats, a cosmic civil servant
of great power, who never shows his face.
His function is to pick up excrement
in handfuls from the trough in front of him,
and then, with supernatural strength, to fling it
over his shoulder, so that it flies at random
through creation, till something takes a hit.
It doesn’t matter what you do, or think,
it’s just a case of where you are and when:
some never find out what it means to stink,
most punters need a sluicing now and then,
still others get a shit-shower every day,
and that’s just how it’s always been, OK?
I ran out of steam after producing these two on Sunday. They are even less prepossessing than the previous attempts - so I'm presenting them as In Progress , to at least show myself I'm still trying - and I hope I will feel my way into tightening them up in due course. The first, being about a jazz trio (albeit with an ever-changing line-up) uses 3- or 6- word lines as a slight structural discipline. Will try again in the morning to continue the self-portrait series.
ReplyDeleteGIUFFRE, BROOKMEYER, JIM HALL
A valve trombone can also do
the tailgate thing –
and as I write I see
a group in tight black bombazine
suits and inconspicuous
bowler hats they would I believe
call derby
entertaining
on unpolished brass
genteel white ladies
in a teagarden –
but in Brookmeyer’s hands the instrument
plays smooth as an alto saxophone
The Train and the River running
side by side. The green country
sound of guitar dreams lyrical into
damp shade and lush grass stalks.
“BOTH SIDES - ALL THE SIDES”
a 5-day self-portrait
Day 1
He wanted to be a vagabond,
a swashbuckler, not care
if the hairbrush went in the butter
in the frypan on the shelf, paint
big rangy abstracts, hitch his way
off to Bolivia, to the Pyrenees:
instead he went for security, sat
for thirty years in a job, saw himself
a little grey man in a grey suit
and an invisible pre-sixties bowler hat.
Hey Carrie, recently discovered your site. Specifically, the post with 30 new writing prompts! Just for kicks, thought I would share the first-fruits ;]
ReplyDelete(This is the first prompt...10 words from page 29 of the nearest book.)
Nervous. Selfish. Aim. Saturday. Nonsensical. Flight. Failures.
She'll tell you what's nonsensical,
flight. One flies through the air,
the result of nervous selfish aim
and the other failures to a waiting
stream, wings helpless this Saturday.
Another of those (triumphs, decade, darker, problem, godlike, break/staff, so-called, bound,crow, mark)
ReplyDeletePOCKET GUIDE
In the darker place near my heart
I’ll take a crow bound with raffia
to keep him still but not quiet
on my bumpkin explorations.
A decade should suffice to break him in:
imagine the feeling of godlike triumph
when the so-called problem of his struggles
will be overcome and I can walk the city streets,
him perched wing-free, a hoarse but docile filial
on my ebony staff calling out landmarks.