Month: April 2018

Day 29 – Salix

/ Just Barry / 1 Comment
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Photo by Stephen Leonardi on Unsplash

Salix

I know the bottom too well. The path beyond my garden, birthed:
I fear it greatly.
It is my birthright: my inheritance.

It is the formless darkness,
Its frustrating absence,
For its expanse outpaces sunlight’s nourishment.

I’ve loved in the dark.
By both touch and muscle-memory
Coarse: I burrow deeper, suckling at your earth.

Or suckling at another’s red clay, urgently,
For when a heart is formed, I follow it to fruition,
Blending, blending.

What nectar you know of that sounds so sweet?
Feel stamen’s stamina, and be healed.
Rooting in fruitless void: finding succulent flesh.

Sunrise finds us intertwined by audacity.
Clinging to sap and stem;
Elongated, deciduous, draping, reaching for more.

Flailing about, numerous cat-o-nines, self-flogged,
Beaten by breezy beauty
We stir the scent of the now: whispering wishes.

Morning light chases darkness: she lurks behind me,
Elusive in plain sight.
Her emptiness mocks me. Or compels me to seek fullness.

I am drunk. I am drunk.
And yet parched, I thirst still, knowing not what I seek.
Your dreams are not mine, yet I still drink of them.

You course through me, I whisper for more.
The breeze carries my voice
Finding nature’s comfort, some mingle with my plea.

Many are just as fearful as me
Or they inhabit their lie;
Ignoring their murmurs of soul’s torment via ripened flesh.

Seasons birth, die, rebirth.
I am rooted, and yet propelled irrevocably towards rot
Is my senescence driving my urgency?

It is the newly-formed heart I chase.
Not the intercrossed sowing
So wondrous in its embrace of fleeting fullness.

From my bones, sketch in charcoal
He cheated the abyss. His flaws, a numerous, loving greed.
He loved. He loved. He loved.
***

Written for NaPoWriMo Day 29 prompt:

Today, we’d like to challenge you to write a poem based on the Plath Poetry Project’s calendar. Simply pick a poem from the calendar, and then write a poem that responds or engages with your chosen Plath poem in some way.

This one was rather intimidating. While I respect and emulate the greats like Poe, Wild, Hemmingway, Langston Hughes and even Chicago greats like Carl Sandburg and Gwendolyn Brooks, I have always feared Sylvia Plath. She was a unique genius, and emulating her work is a lot like trying to describe the void. I’d much rather look away.

Anyway, the poem I chose was Elm (the April 19 entry), and as I feared, It kind of sucked me in, chewed me up, and spit me out. I didn’t even have time to write my day 30 poem.

Oh well, there’s always tomorrow…

Day 28 – Postcard in Praise of My One-Time Online Secret Girlfriend

/ Just Barry / 4 Comments
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Photo by Dan Gold on Unsplash

Postcard in Praise of My One-Time Online Secret Girlfriend

Why are you here? Why am I? Why are we? Even though we’re both evenly among our peers in our late twenties, this feels… odd. Oddly uncomfortable and weirdly familiar in keeping welcome company. You seem to be enjoying this bass-boosted noise even less than me, if that were ever a possibility. You say nothing as you gallantly support the nightclub wall with your back, your face screwed into a question mark. You’re puzzled by how different I am IRL than online. You’re with your girls and I’m with my homie, but I spot in your eyes, a symmetry. Or is it synergy? It’s a mystery, but I can see that you too wish it were just you and me. I have poor self-esteem, so I don’t take these vibes lightly when they come to be. You speak softly, drowned-out by the club cacophony, yet I feel your words settle next to me. I won’t forget how you let me hold your hand gratefully, us both grateful no one else could see.
***

Written for NaPoWriMo Day 28 prompt: “draft a prose poem in the form/style of a postcard.”

OK, so perhaps I would need two postcards.

Day 27 – Skeptic Reading

/ Just Barry / Leave a comment
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Three of Pentacles, Image source

Skeptic Reading

My tarot reading,
if you believe in such things,
drew Three of Pentacles.

Or is it The Three of Pentacles?

The eternal skeptic,
I know not of how tarot cards
prefer to be addressed,
or if they even perceive mockery.

Three, (or The Three)
apparently
signifies skilled labor
or fashioning with your hands,
be it trade, craft, or artistry.

It seems that even fate herself,
an unforgiving, mysterious mistress
conspires to compel me
to continue to create.

If you believe in such things.
***

Written for NaPoWriMo Day 27 prompt:

…we challenge you to pick a card (any card) from this online guide to the tarot, and then to write a poem inspired either by the card or by the images or ideas that are associated with it.

 

Day 26 – The Best Part of Spring

/ Just Barry / 1 Comment
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Photo by Eutah Mizushima on Unsplash

The Best Part of Spring

Aquatic percussion,
natural rhythm
on my roof.

Silvery sheen refracting,
dimming daylight,
bowing grass, flower,
each saturated bough.

Atmospheric condensation
hits green earth, hue deepening
unlocking renewal fragrance;
it smells of joy and tastes of life.

And if you’ve never
felt raindrops on your face, well,
don’t just sit here
waiting for the description;

get up, right now, and
go stand out in the spring rain.
***

Written for NaPoWriMo Day 26 prompt:

write a poem that includes images that engage all five senses. Try to be as concrete and exact as possible with the “feel” of what the poem invites the reader to see, smell, touch, taste and hear.

Day 25 – Important Read-Me File: Caring for Your Barry

/ Just Barry / 4 Comments
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Photo by Samuel Scrimshaw on Unsplash

Important Read-Me File: Caring for Your Barry

You’ve decided
to care for a Barry!

You’ve made a unique
and challenging choice,
for not all Barrys are alike,
and this Barry in particular
has some particularly odd bugs,

or as Barry likes to call them,
“features”.

Here are some helpful guidelines
to keep your Barry operational
while minimizing withering glares,
mopey brooding,

and angry muttering
of rude things
under his breath.

Caution: depressed
and highly flammable.

Do not enjoy around
children or pets.

Or other people.

Do not mix with bourbon,
unless you’re eager to learn
the unvarnished truth about him,
yourself, and
that girl he’s secretly crushing on.

Can be rendered inert,
philosophical,
deeply meta,
and rather giggly
if combined with marijuana.

He may also refer to marijuana
as “jazz cigarettes” because
he just heard that squares
called them that in the 60’s
and he can’t stop giggling about it.

It is highly likely that your Barry
is under the influence of
jazz cigarettes at the moment of
creating this third-person,
self-referential missive.

If your Barry wants to tell you
about the path beyond his garden,
do not interrupt him
or tell him you heard this story before.

This can lead to resentful muttering.

But the most important warning:
just be kind – not just to Barry,
but to everyone you encounter
–  because none of this matters
if I’m right and we only live once,

but if I’m right and we only live once,
nothing could be more important than
leading and leaving with kindness.

Thank you for caring for your Barry
no back-sies!
***

Written for NaPoWriMo Day 25 prompt: “write a poem that takes the form of a warning label . . . for yourself!”

(Full-disclosure: My new job and surviving on three hours of sleep per night had me shuttering the doors early on NaPoWriMo, but one of my most respected poetry friends kicked me in the butt. She said I have poems to write, and so I guess I have a few back-payments to make.)

Day 24 – Elegy of Beloved Disputes

/ Just Barry / 1 Comment
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View from my livingroom  window. (Ignore the trash bins and the ugly Hooptie. It’s my son’s fault they’re in the picture.) 

Elegy of Beloved Disputes

The path beyond my garden
leads to my favorite tree,
bursting with flowers that
remind me of you and

it occurs to me that
you would’ve marveled at
my sweet-scented tree if you
were still alive to smell it.

The sudden reminder of
your absence steals a breath
or two from me, and then
I laugh at the absurdity.

Asthma took your laugh
from me permanently.
It is an affliction
of the lungs, you see?

Had you lived long enough to
fill your lungs with my
beloved tree,

you’d have sided with Wifey,
demanding its removal.

I don’t like confrontation,
but I’d like to think I would
have enjoyed that argument.
***

Every morning on report card day, from kindergarten to third grade, momma would sing this song to me while I was eating my cereal. It was hilarious. It was terrifying. I fucking loved it. 

Written for NaPoWriMo Day 24 prompt:

Today, we’d like to challenge you to write an elegy – a poem typically written in honor or memory of someone dead. But we’d like to challenge you to write an elegy that has a hopefulness to it. Need inspiration? You might look at W.H. Auden’s elegy for Yeats, which ends on a note suggesting that the great poet’s work will live on, inspiring others in years to come. Or perhaps this elegy by Mary Jo Bang, where the sadness is shot through with a sense of forgiveness on both sides.

I’ve written elegies for both parents, and both of my grandmothers passed away last year, so I wasn’t exactly eager for this prompt. Still, I couldn’t resist the challenge of adding some hopefulness to a poem about loss. Best to keep it short though.

Day 23 – Bowling Green Sixteen

/ Just Barry / 2 Comments
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Photo by Daniel Sandvik on Unsplash

Bowling Green Sixteen

The path beyond my garden
is no place for strangers
heat exchanged; your
clear and presently dangerous
slanderous, your vandal-savage rush
gamblers score scandals, ravenous

the monster you fear is me
stalking through ravines
turn back, I disappear; you see
flocking crows and smoke screens
resolve broke so flee the scene
dissolve, choke, no histamine
can help you breathe or intervene
with shadow’s verbal mescaline

I’m the spark unseen;
your heart pumps gasoline
need a match? I don’t mean
to make routine so Byzantine
but I’ll render you to nothing
like massacring Bowling Green
and I will stay between
harmonic mean of unforeseen

not sending sixteen
from aquamarine to twilight
but I can vent my spleen
with Listerine despite fright
***

R.I.P. Craig Mack

Written for NaPoWriMo Day 23 prompt:

Kate Greenstreet’s poetry is spare, but gives a very palpable sense of being spoken aloud – it reads like spoken language sounds. In our interview with her, she underscores this, stating that “when you hear it, you write it down.” Today, we challenge you to honor this idea with a poem based in sound. The poem, for example, could incorporate overheard language. Perhaps it could incorporate a song lyric in some way, or language from something often heard spoken aloud (a prayer, a pledge, the Girl Scout motto). Or you could use a regional or local phrase from your hometown that you don’t hear elsewhere, e.g. “that boy won’t amount to a pinch.”

I didn’t really know what to do with this one, as I’m almost always aware of how my poems sound. With that in mind, I went back to my roots and tried penning a sixteen-bar hip-hop-esque freestyle, referencing the fictional Bowling Green Massacre.

I’m not entirely happy with the results, but I’m finally caught-up with the prompts, so I call it a net-win.

Day 22 – Myth of Stillness

/ Just Barry / 1 Comment

Myth of Stillness

The path beyond my garden
belies the lies unlearned in time

as if the stars cannot
rearrange themselves in the sky
for us; as if

they, you and I,
all known things
aren’t in constant states of motion,
learning and unlearning.

Stars coalesce, are born,
then die and scatter,
its matter mingling with matter
from other dead stars,
coalescing into newer,
denser stars,

the cycle renewed in timelines
beyond our real-time observation.

Our sun is at least
a second-generation star
in this manner,
and the world of me and you
thrives on its energy.

This is how you and I came to be,

and yes, we are
but sentient star remnants
in constant motion.

That’s how you and I
came to coalesce.

It takes four years
for the light of the next
nearest star to reach
the solar system of
me and you.

The twinkle we shared when we first met
began its journey way back when
you and I were still clinging to
dying systems separately, orbiting
resentment and dysfunctionality
until implosion.

And yet for that random twinkle to mingle
with the twinkle in our locked eyes that night

as we danced to Earth, Wind & Fire,
the elements conspiring us to groove together,
shifting constellations of past lives,

don’t you dare tell me that me and you
didn’t move the stars themselves to
make this fusion happen.
***

Written for NaPoWriMo Day 22 prompt:

I’ve found this one rather useful in trying to ‘surprise’ myself into writing something I wouldn’t have come up with otherwise. Today, I’d like you to take one of the following statements of something impossible, and then write a poem in which the impossible thing happens:

The sun can’t rise in the west.

A circle can’t have corners.

Pigs can’t fly.

The clock can’t strike thirteen.

The stars cannot rearrange themselves in the sky.

A mouse can’t eat an elephant.

Happy writing!

I feel like I cheated a bit, as the stars are in constant motion, but this motion is mostly beyond our limited powers of perception, but hey, it counts.

Day 21 – Nemesis Shrugged

/ Just Barry / 2 Comments
Alfred_Rethel_002

By Alfred Rethel – 1. The Yorck Project: 10.000 Meisterwerke der Malerei. DVD-ROM, 2002. ISBN 3936122202. Distributed by DIRECTMEDIA Publishing GmbH.2. The Hermitage, St. Petersburg, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=158201

Nemesis Shrugged

The path beyond my garden exists,
even now, effortlessly balanced,
but carefully curated in a manner
most pleasing to me, Nemesis,
goddess of what mortals believe
to be divine retribution.

I know not where they came up with
this idea of my being
righteous and wrathful,
but I saw no reason to correct this
erroneous persona.

I am only concerned with
my garden’s natural equilibrium.

And nothing more than that.

But lo came a haughty disruption
in the form of a man called Narcissus
by the wind’s echo;
a man so enraptured by his own beauty
that his self-indulgent joy caused
both mortal and immortal suffering.

Another mortal, mortally wounded
by vain, callous, unrequited love,
prayed to me to teach the man a lesson
for all the pain he caused,
and I was inclined to grant this wish,

not as retribution,
for man’s suffering
is of no concern of mine,

but to restore the effortless balance
lost by one man contemplating
his exquisiteness at expense
of other’s souls.

I came across this princely man
at the heights of his self-enrapture,
gazing upon his own reflection
in one of my garden pools.

Indeed, he was the most beautiful man
I’d ever encountered,
but I am immortal, and immune
to his superficial, secular charms.

As I positioned myself,
readied to deliver My Judgement,
the vain fool lost his footing,
fell into the pond,
and drowned.

Word spread among mortals
that I caused him to fall in love
with his own reflection,
but that is beyond my powers.

His own nature was the source
of many of nature’s problems,
and verily, it provided
its own solution.

Nature is self-sufficient in that way.

As my garden’s balance righted itself,
and humanity also learned
a timeless lesson,

I saw no reason
to correct this erroneous tale.
***

Written for NaPoWriMo Day 21 prompt:

And now for our (optional) prompt. In her interview, Brim provides us with several suggestions for generative writing exercises, and we’d like to challenge to today to tackle her third one, which is based in the myth of Narcissus. After reading the myth, try writing a poem that plays with the myth in some way. For example, you could imagine that imagine the water is speaking to you, the narcissus flower. Or you could write a poem in which the narcissus berates the Kardashians for stealing their neurosis. Or a poem that comments on the narcissism of our time, i.e. beauty and body obsession, etc.

Full-disclosure: Recently, I already wrote a Narcissus-themed poem, called Echo’s Lament. I almost skipped this prompt, when I thought of this other angle from the perspective of the goddess Nemesis. After writing this one, I’m glad I didn’t skip this prompt. 🙂

Day 20 – Two-Part Harmony

/ Just Barry / 2 Comments
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Photo by yousef alfuhigi on Unsplash

Two-Part Harmony

The path beyond my garden leads
to worlds beneath blanket of sky
a verse of footfall’s lullaby
I walk the mist where breeze recedes

Her breath lifts wings of butterfly
the path beyond my garden leads
to shores where she heeds by her deeds
I add my verse as battle cry

Our voices foil and amplify
a duet on the winds and reeds
the path beyond my garden leads
to where our songs reunify

Melody sparks the Pleiades
starlight won’t sing a sad goodbye
she croons with me as we pass by
the path beyond my garden leads
***

Written for NaPoWriMo Day 20 prompt:

Our prompt for the day (optional as always) takes its cue from Notley’s rebelliousness, and asks you to write a poem that involves rebellion in some way. The speaker or subject of the poem could defy a rule or stricture that’s been placed on them, or the poem could begin by obeying a rule and then proceed to break it (for example, a poem that starts out in iambic pentameter, and then breaks into sprawling, unmetered lines). Or if you tend to write funny poems, you could rebel against yourself, and write something serious (or vice versa). Whatever approach you take, your poem hopefully will open a path beyond the standard, hum-drum ruts that every poet sometimes falls into.

Ironically, I’ve done so much free-verse in the past month that the most rebellious thing I could do right now is to actually stick with a form verbatim, and perhaps incorporate a rhyme scheme too. I used the quatern form and added an “abba-baab” rhyme scheme to enhance my little “rebellion”.

I first saw the quatern on Shannon’s blog post, located here. I told you I’d give it a shot, Shannon!