Rather than encouraging minimalism, today we challenge you to write a poem of over-the-top compliments. Pick a person, place, or thing you love, and praise it in the most effusive way you can. Go for broke with metaphors, similes, and more. Need a little inspiration? Perhaps you’ll find it in the lyrics of Cole Porter’s “You’re The Top.” (Scroll down at the link for the lyrics and an annotated explanation of them).
This is another one I feel like I do way too much, so I went the other way with it, tapping into my emotional flatline (which sadly, can feel all too real at times).
Look, we could spin ourselves in circles falsely claiming that you or I drew first blood. I mean,
not one to quibble – it was clearly you, though you may indeed erroneously disagree – but it don’t matter no more.
Sure, you had the prettiest grey eyes I’d ever seen, and yeah, I meant that shit, and yeah it was corny as fuck, but well,
have you ever heard an empty cup speak-up, looking for something or someone to fill them with purpose?
I didn’t think it would lead to nothing, and was stunned when it did.
We had fun though, didn’t we? Playing hooky some Thursdays, laughing at shitty movies, disappearing off the grid
into our own private world at a different random Econo Lodge each time looking to not form any traceable patterns.
You had your men on the side, and I had my whole thing going on, but I wasn’t tripping about what this was or where we were.
You said it first, remember? And maybe you thought you meant it, but at the time, I repeated it only because I was naked and afraid of the repercussions of silence.
After allowing time to reflect and to see the whole elephant, I realized that I do care. I care.
But that’s no longer enough, is it?
And I swear to God I never knew I’d meet someone like her after meeting you.
She and I are just synched in ways your sense of surface tensions can’t possibly imagine.
What you and I had was fun, wasn’t it?
And I don’t understand a thing about soulmates, but my mind, heart, soul, whatever gut or animal-instinct you can conjure;
all of them unanimously tell me that I’d be a fool to ever let her walk out of my life,
so… you know…
I didn’t mean to steal your joy, but I’m dropping all pretense for her and only her.
Do you get it?
Try to understand; remember the way you say you felt when you fell for me?
You loved me, even as you were still loving on those other dudes, right? Even as you will be tomorrow, right?
Well, I met her, and everything I am has led me to the moment where nothing else matters except for my pulse synching with hers.
I loved you. I did. I still do. But I can never let her go. ***
There’s a pithy phrase attributed to T.S. Eliot: “Good poets borrow; great poets steal.” (He actually said something a bit different, and phrased it a bit more pompously – after all, this is T.S. Eliot we’re talking about). Nonetheless, our optional prompt for today (developed by Rachel McKibbens, who is well-known for her imaginative and inspiring prompts) plays on the idea of stealing. Today, I challenge you to write a non-apology for the things you’ve stolen. Maybe it’s something as small as your sister’s hairbrush (or maybe it was your sister’s boyfriend!) Regardless, I hope this sly prompt generates some provocative verse for you.
Oh, thank God! I was afraid that this might be one of those Erasure – found poetry prompts that I suck at find so frustrating. Thank goodness it’s just a prompt about good-old stealing! Yay for stealing!
(U.S. Navy photo by Mass Communication Specialist 2nd Class Jeffry A. Willadsen/Released)
Blue Snow (For Brooklyn)
Like petals falling from our view Your loss now added to our snow Compassion bright as any blue Like petals falling from our view Our spring, a timeless deja-vu We wait our turns to fall below Like petals falling from our view Your loss now added to our snow ***
For today’s prompt (optional, as always), I’d like to challenge you to write a triolet. These eight-line poems involve repeating lines and a tight rhyme scheme. The repetitions and rhymes can lend themselves to humorous poems, as well as to poems expressing dramatic or sorrowful moods. And sometimes the repetitions can be used in deceptive ways, by splitting the words in a given line into different sentences, and making subtle changes, as in this powerful triolet by Sandra McPherson.
Years ago, I was addicted to writing triolets, so this was a welcome blast from the past.
It was also a good way to honor the passing of a shipmate I served with on the USS Ingraham from 95 until 98. Ronnell “Brooklyn” Warren passed away on March 30. Dude had a photographic memory and knew my full name, date-of-birth, birthplace, and social security number even twenty years later, which should’ve been somewhat alarming, but he was just so damned kind-hearted, and it reflected well upon his character that it never even occurred to him to use his superpowers for nefarious means.
Quite frankly, Ronnie was the kindest, sweetest man I have even known. He was also a poet with an optimistic voice.
He always had a kind word for everyone. He was one of the few people in my life whose positive attitude made me want to step-up and just be better to get on his level. Hell, I think he loved the 90’s Chicago Bulls more than I did! I heard that he went quickly and unexpectedly, from a heart attack, but I don’t know the details.
It made me think about how we will all soon be parting from one another.
I’ve never dealt with this type of loss well; I tend to stuff it down where the feelings can’t hurt me anymore. And though we hadn’t spoken or kept in touch since our ship’s decommissioning ceremony, this is a most unkind cut that will take some time to stuff down.
Ron, your passing over was most unwelcome news. I’ll drink one for you. We have the watch, shipmate.
Our optional prompt for the day is based on the concept of the language of flowers. Have you ever heard, for example, that yellow roses stand for friendship, white roses for innocence, and red roses for love? Well, there are as many potential meanings for flowers as there are flowers. The Victorians were particularly ga-ga for giving each other bouquets that were essentially decoder-rings of meaning. For today, I challenge you to write a poem in which one or more flowers take on specific meanings. And if you’re having trouble getting started, why not take a gander at this glossary of flower meanings? (You can find a plain-text version here). Feel free to make use of these existing meanings, or make up your own.
I found out retroactively that the white lily is associated with purity and is often used as a funeral flower. Also, in Buddhism, tiger lilies represent the virtues of mercy and compassion. Make of that what you will.
Stargazers symbolize lots of stuff. Google it for yourself. This blog poem about flowers is over!
Three-hundred, ninety years ago, as millions of Central and West Africans traveled involuntarily towards bondage across the vast Atlantic in irons, light began its unimaginable journey of hundreds of trillions of miles from an undiscovered star-system where iron vapor condensed, raining down from a night sky of a planet twice the size of our King Jupiter that none yet on our good earth knew existed, the faint light finally reaching our astronomers last month.
News travels fast it seems, but I guess for some, not fast enough. ***
over time, trauma is a thief of joy two fingers of bourbon mug the mugger spring oozed into her room nonchalantly embracing us with equanimity her voice cooing we shouldn’t do this now her lips tasting of why haven’t we yet the fire in her almond eyes read mine we chose the same musk-knotted adventure music was jealous of our harmony you introduced me to Martin Gore and I didn’t get him, but through you, I did I’m jealous I missed your London punk scene and all the parts that broke you apart we were both trauma and broken things we been runnin’, done ran, till we bumped heads finding joy in tending each other’s shards I lived to cut myself open on you seducing you into seducing me say I won’t rise to meet your velvet taunt your tongue had already run us through I marked you as mine when your teeth pierced me by the thinnest skin of goddess sinew we loved, clear-eyed in the blackest of night as the box-springs sang je t’aime, je t’aime you took my life each time I surrendered only to find your dear Eeyore renewed I’ll re-steal this joy, returning to us delightful, bottled beautiful struggle thus was the elixir of our short spring ***
NaPoWriMo Day 5: “Twenty Little Poetry Projects,”developed by Jim Simmerman.The challenge is to use/do all of the list below in the same poem, or as many as possible. This was extremely challenging, but also super engaging. I kicked off my shoes, threw out the punctuation, meditated on a topic that frequents my thoughts, (I was born a dirty old man. Sorry/not sorry) and started tinkering. I fudged some of the criteria, but I honored the spirit of all twenty requirements.
Here they are:
Begin the poem with a metaphor.
Say something specific but utterly preposterous.
Use at least one image for each of the five senses, either in succession or scattered randomly throughout the poem.
Use one example of synesthesia (mixing the senses).
Use the proper name of a person and the proper name of a place.
Contradict something you said earlier in the poem.
Change direction or digress from the last thing you said.
Use a word (slang?) you’ve never seen in a poem.
Use an example of false cause-effect logic.
Use a piece of talk you’ve actually heard (preferably in dialect and/or which you don’t understand).
Create a metaphor using the following construction: “The (adjective) (concrete noun) of (abstract noun) . . .”
Use an image in such a way as to reverse its usual associative qualities.
Make the persona or character in the poem do something he or she could not do in “real life.”
Refer to yourself by nickname and in the third person.
Write in the future tense, such that part of the poem seems to be a prediction.
Modify a noun with an unlikely adjective.
Make a declarative assertion that sounds convincing but that finally makes no sense.
Use a phrase from a language other than English.
Make a non-human object say or do something human (personification).
Close the poem with a vivid image that makes no statement, but that “echoes” an image from earlier in the poem.
“True intimacy is a state in which nothing exists between two people; no space, no inhibitions and no lies.” – Ranata Suzuki
Have you ever had pure intimacy?
Not to be confused with lingering,
humid summer passion,
it is timid, pallid winter sun
kissing ice crystals with fleeting beauty,
arriving at low angles on high latitudes,
vulnerable, rarely intense enough
to accompany morning tea,
breaking fast after breakfast as lovers
franticly throw open south-facing curtains
capturing as much tenuous warmth
as time and nature allows.
Ever leaned into a winter sunset?
It ignites frosty edges of clouds,
embracing with fiery shadows,
but then it is barely there,
gone in a ghostly cirrus whisper,
leaving Mercury in retrograde as lovers
shrouded in twilight wonder
if it ever existed at all.
***
I have loved romantically
while being oblivious to its depths,
confined to the surface,
grasping at facades of
who I wanted to be
and who I wanted to
completely consume me,
growing mystified by
its brittleness
and inevitable indigestion.
I have loved, by sticking my head
inside an alligator’s mouth on a dare.
I have loved the greener grass
and the path untraveled
until detours revealed illusory scope
and textures tricking optics
into grasping curves
bent into ripened shapes
by light’s deception; I have loved
but a figment of her living ghost.
I have loved an imagination
and watched it slain by her reality.
I have loved deep
into the core elements of another
swiftly and inexplicably,
with the instant shock
of total immersion into
freezing waters,
slowing until bonds arrest us
in an exquisite insanity,
tricking the brain
into seeing love and attachment
as one and the same,
which renders all into ashes.
I have loved at first sight
and it seared my retinas.
I have loved
despite my best efforts not to love,
which, in essence, means that I have failed
at both loving and not loving
nearly simultaneously.
I believe therefore
we call it “falling in love”,
for no sane person
would willingly choose
this brand of nonsense,
steering directly into it
as one who wishes to be warm
plots a course directly into the sun.
I have loved over time against my will
and it was wonderfully traumatic.
I’ve flipped
the game
on its head
countless times;
each time,
my game piece
lands inside
the gator’s mouth.
I now love, knowing
its tremendous highs and incalculable lows,
the capricious nature of reciprocation
and whimsically fickle access to action
to fully experience and share,
fully aware that I wield little power
over the gambit,
only my position on the board
of an ultimately unsolvable game.
I now love with a full heart, knowing
that though I often experience bliss
and wield love to lift her
to fleeting triumphs with me,
ultimately I can never win,
and even as we run out of moves,
as we retire or surrender to fate
and, inevitably, as we
begin to lose each other,
the game will continue.
I now love,
not as a matter of choice or dare,
not with purpose nor design on winning;
I now love without purpose
because I see little purpose in not loving,
and also, aimless, purposeless love
is just love for love’s sake.
Hephaestus’ Waste & Cosmic Rubble 