Day: April 23, 2018

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.