Centerline keeper
Breath my air
Inhale, share
Mutual dreamer
Centerline keeper
Move in close
Feel repose
Outer gate-sweeper, brace you
Centerline keeper
Closer still
Overfill
Tender will-seeker
And you want this?
I know I do
Centerline keeper
Nose to ear
Hush your fear
Uncommitted leaner
Centerline keeper
Concentric girds
Say the words
Sensitive feeler, face you
And do you want this?
I know I do
Limerence
Is it
Limerence?
Is it
Only
Limerence?
Is it
Only
Opening us to
Loss of contact?
Ignorance
Was it
Lonely
Opening to
Mutual attract?
Limerence
Do you want this?
Can we will this?
I can feel the sun
In the curve of your smile
And I want the day to grow longer
And I can see the fun
In the swerve of your style
And all I want to say,
You know, is to conjure
Cupid, Aphrodite, Eros,
Frigga, Hathor, Juno,
Flora, Sabine, Persephone,
And the whole damn team
And the whole damn team
Just to make you say
You share the same space
And feel the same way
Are you inspired by the way
I admire your existence?
Do you require further sway
Towards desire or assistance?
Are we both liars who display
A misfire of consistence?
Renewed, I aspire to today
Rising higher, void of distance
Limerence
Is it
Limerence?
Is it
Only
Limerence?
Is it
Only
Opening us to
Loss of contact?
Is it ignorance?
Was it
Lonely
Opening to
Mutual attract?
Limerence
Do you want this?
Can we will this?
The path beyond the garden
Beyond what I thought I knew
Beyond a life filled with
Dewdrops alive with you
When I relied on a new
Love supplied by you
Beg your pardon
Beg your smile to rise higher still
A spring rain brings a tap
On my windowsill
It brings pain and sappy need
To say the words with a greater will
The season of renewal
Where the flowers grow
And the lovebirds sing
Where my heart didn’t know
What our world would bring
And the sun didn’t show
The clouds gathering
Fate may be cruel
But I’ll face it with a truth
That belies the fear
Can’t replace what a
Youthful heart supplies to steer
Our airspace closed with
A soothing baptized revere
It would be foolish to build a life
On a starry night shared in the throes
Of what we know is obsession
Is it?
And it would be a sin against nature
To win you on surface-level physics,
Playing Loki to discretion
Only
Is it?
When did this spin out of our control
And grow, filling its own chasm?
When did we spin and invent
Our enlightening phantasm?
Lonely
Was it
Formed when we were born
At the event horizon of an orgasm?
When did we spin out of control
And grow into this unwieldly thing?
When did we begin? Was it
The beginning of spring?
***
Written for NaPoWriMo Day 30 prompt:
…write a poem that engages with a strange and fascinating fact. It could be an odd piece of history, an unusual bit of art trivia, or something just plain weird. While I cannot vouch for the actual accuracy of any of the facts presented at the links above (or any other facts you might use as inspiration!), I can tell you that there are definitely some poetic ideas here, just waiting for someone to use them.
The strange and fascinating fact I used is that the fighting style Wing Chun literally translates to Spring Chant or Eternal Spring.
Sorry for the late ending. I’ve been really busting my hump at work and haven’t had much time to write. But I’ve been tinkering with this one off and on for a while.
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.
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.”
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.)
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.
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.
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.
***
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.
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!
Hephaestus’ Waste & Cosmic Rubble 