NAPOWRIMO-2021-NATIONAL POETRY-WRITING-MONTH.

For the Month of April will be writing poem a day using the daily Prompts from http://www.napowrimo.net .


=======================================================
=======================================================

And welcome to our last Challenge of the month!
See you again next year for more NaPoWriMo.

Day 30

Prompt -This prompt challenges you to write a poem in the form of a series of directions describing how a person should get to a particular place. It could be a real place, like your local park, or an imaginary or unreal place, like “the bottom of your heart,” or “where missing socks go.” Fill your poem with sensory details, and make them as wild or intimate as you like.

——————————–
This Beating Heart

Roll back the years
Through rainbow’d tears
Ten must pass
Twenty & thirty
Stop 48 long steps ago
Sunny that day!
Somehow it was safe
Understood this race
Ahh tender 11
Nose in books
Writing furiously
Dreamin’ of a big city
World that waited
Far, far away
Look close her face!
Day dreaming futures
Possibilities past here
Here
Where the pain was
Free
Just for an afternoon
All was right
Small bright light
A inner certainity
Key had turned
Lock set free
To know that girl
To know me now
Still her we see
Guarding a child’s dream
Of peace, safety
Serenity

– k



——————————–
Pizza

Round, the round cutting board,
left at the grader,
past the rain of falling cheese,
along under mozzarella showers,
right, clockwise, down stepping stones of black olives
spiralling into centre,
crossing a sea of red.
Waves ladled in of tomato sauce,
buoying pepperoni surfboards circle, counter.
moving sausage bits bob, Mushrooms add a flair,
Diving down to the center crust

Drilling into dry Flour,
beyond billowing measurement of yeast,
well past wetting of water,
sagacious pinching of salt,
over drizzling of olive oil.

Across, sprinkling of corn meal,
bellow to stop from getting stuck.

Slide, onto hot stone

This is the way to build a hunger
and how to stop it at the end of the day.
Slice by slice, is the best way.


– W.B.




=======================================================
=======================================================
Day 29

Prompt-This one is called “in the window.” Imagine a window looking into a place or onto a particular scene. It could be your childhood neighbor’s workshop, or a window looking into an alien spaceship. Maybe a window looking into a witch’s gingerbread cottage, or Lord Nelson’s cabin aboard the H.M.S. Victory. What do you see? What’s going on?

————————————–
‘Shhh Quiet’

Libraries hold keys
Books,magazines & dvd’s
Computers to use with ease
For learning addicts:
Those of eternal curiousity
Like me
Yearning I stare
Shake & pull
Locked doors
Signs of closure pasted
Such inside knowledge
Impatiently wasted
Let me in!
Longingly I see
All I love just there..
So far away but so near
Separated by just
Inches of glass
Oh woe!
Oh dear!
I come by everyday
Searchingly look within
May it open soon
These hallowed doors
Once more to pass!

– k





————————————–
In the window

Rounded corners, flawless metal frame, frames.
Inside unfinished to save weight,
Silver and black, alloys and composites.

Row on row of darkened blinking lights,
Round bank of indicator dials, indicating past plights.

Billowing white, between lines of stitching, padding,
Not a thing out of place.

Three seats, harness hanging from,
The red tint hangs over everything,
streaming in,
Highlighting handholds, foot pegs, now unused.

Waiting for return,
Fuelled and set to burn.
The towering rocket waits,

For the red planet, closer to earth to turn.
From an alien gravity to churn.

Closed hatch, radio silent…
having come to study secrets, uncover new things to learn.

The rocket, back to the weightlessness of space,
neat wires and tethers everywhere lace,
waiting, empty, the black void across to pace.

Waiting to get in the window to launch, away from the Red base.


– W.B.





=======================================================
=======================================================
Day 28

Prompt – to write a poem that poses a series of questions. The questions could be a mix of the serious (“What is the meaning of life?”) and humorous (“What’s the deal with cats knocking things off tables?”), the interruptive (“Could you repeat that?”) and the conversational (“Are those peanuts? Can I have some?”). You can choose to answer them – or just let the questions keep building up, creating a poem that asks the reader to come up with their own answer(s).

——————————————
Dandy Lions


Seeds
What is water?
How does a drop of H20
Begin
Magic messages
That open sealed skins
Minute ‘eggs’ of creation
Cliffside
City sidewalk cracks
Through slits in plastic tubs?
Rise flowers & fruits
Trees & shrubs
Oh! Barren tundra!
Oases unto desert
Up, up toward our sun
Living beings
Each so rare
So beautiful!
Rise & grow
How is this possible?
This miracle of life itself
Just how?
I’d like to know!

– k






——————————————
Questions, Answers?, a three ring circus of

Inward questions clown around until answered?
No one knows for sure how many hippos can dance on the head of a pin?

Curiosity wonders how many clowns can fit in a sub-sub-compact car?
Irritation at why there are so many Questions?
Rationalization, how can it be so hard to find the answer key?
Culmination of a journey , and how many miles must you walk alone?
Utter disbelief is welcome?
Still terrors excite and enthral?

Laughing When you feel the moment, do you realize?
In sitting in the crowd, Where stands the moment?
Forever is just slightly less that a drumroll?
Everything here is childish?

Quixotic things become you?
Unrealistic moments surround you?
Euphoric reflexes surprise?
Strange countenances gnaw at you?
Transitional pulls claw at your heals?
Indigo emotions draw closer or farther away?
Onion layers like feelings, to cut through?
Nominal perceptions find you?
Sentient moments unfold before?

Do you know the answers?
Oh so many questions under the big top?
The circus of life, is there a safety net?

Everyone wants to run away to join?
Vagabonds find the best short cuts?
Ever now and again, you can go home again?
Rome the highlands between shows?
Yield to no fear, grab the swinging bar?
Wonderment knows no age?
Houses of mirrors have but one exit?
Err on the side of caution when given a whip and a chair?
Ride the Elephant standing tall?
Escape the shackles of life, This way to the Great Ingress …?


– W.B


=======================================================
=======================================================
Day 27

Prompt – I’d like to challenge you to write a poem inspired by an entry from the Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows .. The entries are very vivid – maybe too vivid! But perhaps one of the sorrows will strike a chord with you, or even get you thinking about defining an in-between, minor, haunting feeling that you have, and that does not yet have a name.

————————————-
Hold the Sprinkles

Dip’t like vanilla into chocolate
Ice cream
I scream
At birth, since the beginning
All natural colour covered
Melting smears reality
Originality lost forever
Only I know
I am not this beige
Swirling mess
Seek clarity but alas
I know paro works here
Life crystal clear to others
Straight and true lines
While I wipe & wipe
Until the bones
Of I,
This used up
Soggy & bent
Waffle cone
Endure as:
All that remain

– k

pâro
n. the feeling that no matter what you do is always somehow wrong—as if there’s some obvious way forward that everybody else can see but you, each of them leaning back in their chair and calling out helpfully, “colder, colder, colder…”


————————————-
Star-scape

Snap, snap

The dark sky breaks around me,
Flowing outward on,
only intensifying.

Be any less so,
again same essence here shows,
Photo, turned on side.

vemödalen, degrassé…

The unindexed archive of the universe,
floats overhead.
at first I thought it sorrowful,
unoriginal and bleak.
But you have to look hard and long,
not just have a peek.

For the universe is vast,
of interest to peak.
Even is all you ever see is the same snapshot,
it is still ever changing around me.

While close, the photo is of the far away,
but I change the frame, night by night,
day by day.

Snap, snap.
My little light into the universe,
flash, into infinity.
For someone else to capture,
far out there, under a different time or sky.

– W.B.

vemödalen – n. the fear that everything has already been done.
vemödalen – n. the frustration of photographing something amazing when thousands of identical photos already exist—the same sunset, the same waterfall, the same curve of a hip, the same closeup of an eye—which can turn a unique subject into something hollow and pulpy and cheap, like a mass-produced piece of furniture you happen to have assembled yourself.

degrassé
adj. entranced and unsettled by the vastness of the universe, experienced in a jolt of recognition that the night sky is not just a wallpaper but a deeply foreign ocean whose currents are steadily carrying off all other castaways, who share our predicament but are already well out of earshot—worlds and stars who would’ve been lost entirely except for the scrap of light they were able to fling out into the dark, a message in a bottle that’s only just now washing up in the Earth’s atmosphere, an invitation to a party that already ended a million years ago.




=======================================================
=======================================================
Day 26

Prompt.- I’d like to challenge you to write a parody. Besides being fun, writing parodies can be a great way to hone your poetic skills – particularly your sense of rhyme and sound, as you try to mimic the form of an existing poem while changing the content. Just find a poem – or a song – that has always annoyed you, and write an altered, silly version of it. Or, alternatively, find a poem with a very particular rhyme scheme or form, and use that scheme/form as the basis for a poem that mocks something else.

————————————————-
Un-day, Un-day

Un-Day, Un-Day
So bland to see
Un-day half way’. It was all so nothing that I could see
Oh un-day near half way, un-day all day’ couldn’t possibly be
that un-day all day’ you could still be near to see
Un-day, Un-day, can you truly want to stay
un-day, un-day, no time should it turn out to play
oh un-day near half way’ no forming of anything that could be
on un-day, un-day, no how could there be to leave or take me
Another other day, another other day
Another other day, Another other day of the week is weak, ohh.
But whatever un-day undone, whatever un-day undoes
But whatever un-day undoes, you can fine me for lying all of the time
Un-day, un-day
Oh no good you see
Un-day, near halfway’. it wasn’t all of anything too see
But un-day near half way, un-day wouldn’t plea
that un-day later, you could still be far from glee
not another day, not another day
Not another way, every other day of the week is fine. Mahh
What whenever Un-day comes, but what ever un-day un-does
But whatever Unday un-does, you can fine me for trying some of the time
Un-Day, Un-Day
Can’t dust that un-day
Un-day, Un-day
It must just turn away
Ohhh, un-day, un-day
Don’t say its a stray
Un-day, un-day
from the week to stray
Doh, un-day, un-day
Whoa un-day, Done-day

But then, would you rather a Monday, Monday?…


– W.B.


=======================================================
=======================================================

Day 25

Prompt – write an “occasional” poem. What’s that? Well, it’s a poem suited to, or written for, a particular occasion. The poem you write can be for an occasion in the past or the future, one important to you and your family (a wedding, a birth) or for an occasion in the public eye (the Olympics, perhaps?).

——————————————
Woof

Feel like SPCA dog today
Unwanted, cast away life
Grown cold, old
Decades wild & alone
Live now only
Hopes of natural dying
& peace ever after
Mute & tired of trying
Leash dangles on ground
No caring hand found
Trapped in wire cage
A beaten down pup
Cannot break out of..

– k




——————————————
New couch day

An ode to old, Crumbs, Bottle caps and Loose change,
all the things found when cushions rearranged.

Found in an alley, balanced of two rear feet,
against a fence, woven, the colour of wheat.

Perchance to start again, Clean slate,
shopping find by chance, a stoke of fate.

Delivered to deliver us from worn arm rest,
Lumpy left side and rightly rough back at best.

Unwrapped, and set,
the old we should forget.

and yet…
so long since we first met.

Striking pattern of grey,
waiting for someone on to lay.

I weep for wheat,
as around grey I sweep.

New couch of grey renews the room,
all the visitors for it seemed to swoon.

But I have yet to be convinced of it,
Not even sure on it I wish to sit.

The long day,
but to it, I still by night, have not found my way.

Old couch, new couch,
by, I crouch.

Change comes today,
But I still wish I had not sent the old one away….

Though I am slowly starting to warm to grey.
We do love old, and new things, for different reason, you have to say.

– W.B.


=======================================================
=======================================================
Day 24

Prompt = Find a factual article about an animal. A Wikipedia article or something from National Geographic would do nicely – just make sure it repeats the name of the animal a lot. Now, go back through the text and replace the name of the animal with something else – it could be something very abstract, like “sadness” or “my heart,” or something more concrete, like “the streetlight outside my window that won’t stop blinking.” You should wind up with some very funny and even touching combinations, which you can then rearrange and edit into a poem.

——————————————
Cariboo (Porcpine Herd)

Brief
Flowering tundra
Cat next door
Artic summer
Migration, eons old
Travelling 170,000
Cat next door
Strong but vulnerable
Among predatory wolves
Bears
Buzzing insect hordes
Wild & free
Prices they pay
You see
The cat next door
Dreams to be
Out of this dusty city

– k


——————————————
How would you feel when the circus circled the world.

Even if you were to look hard and make lots of noise,
you would most likely not see the most prevalent tree-dwelling mammal in poise,
in Central and South America’s rain forests. The roaming antithesis remains still and hidden.

The rain forest is a tropical ecosystem characterized by constancy of conditions.
The sun rises at 6 am and sets at 6 pm,
Afternoon rains fall daily throughout most of the year,
Even as the circus minds to come near.

The air is humid and warm. The temperature varies little,
as they set up the big top in the middle

It is dark in the rain forest. Little light penetrates to the forest floor,
unseen, yet there is a circus of emotion, you can simply not ignore.

The uniformity of light, warmth and moisture,
in intensity and rhythm mark the rain forest.
And it is hard to imagine a rain forest dweller that embodies
this quality of constancy more than the ambivalence.

From meters below, the angst is sometimes described,
as looking like a clump of decomposing leaves or a lichen-covered bough, imbibed.

The vanity’s hair is long and shaggy, yet strangely soft,
Especially during the wettest times of year to accost.
The Envy is tinted green from the algae,
which soaks up water like a sponge, to thrive on its pedigree.

Since the progress moves very slowly, and makes few noises,
it blends into the crowns of the rain forest trees.
It took researchers many years,
to discover that up to 700 tears,
may inhabit one square kilometre of rain forest.

The uninterruptible Laughter spends essentially its whole life in the trees,
hangs from branches by means of its long, sturdy claws, by degrees,
or sits nestled in the forks of tree branches, in lees.

Instead of having a part on the mid-back,
with the hair running towards the belly,
the Humor’s fervour has a part on the mid-belly,
and the hardy belly laugh that runs toward the back.

The depreciation moves slowly through the big top of forest canopy
from a few, to rarely a few hundred feet in twenty-four hours.
Vagabonds were found to move during seven to ten hours of the twenty-four-hour day.
The remaining time jugglers are asleep or inactive.
Resting is the term often used to describe the Mimes’s inactive periods,
but this isn’t a Clown-appropriate expression,
From what activity is the ringmaster resting?

The curtain in the big top is soon to be cresting,
Crew, like Sloths, in the back resting.


– W.B.


=======================================================
=======================================================
Day 23

Prompt = Today, I’d like to challenge you to write a poem that responds, in some way, to another. This could be as simple as using a line or image from another poem as a jumping-off point, or it could be a more formal poetic response to the argument or ideas raised in another poem. You might use a favorite (or least favorite poem) as the source for your response.

————————————————-
Buying the Green Eye

Theres a parking lot just north of Khatmandu
full of tourists with crowbars, just into town
a plaque paid for by a broken hearted woman about Mad Carew
next to an eyeless yellow gaze, the path goes down

Known as Mad Carew point, just off Khatmandu
and all manner of trinkets they feel inclined to sell
of noble past pranks
and wholly worshiped by the banks
and the board of truism as well

They loved it all along
with numbers and sales strong
a popular spot to come for all
a line up ahead of twenty-one
and movement had stopped as soon as it begun
yet one and all were here, having a ball.

What trinket would you have of ol’ mad Carew
hat,, shirt or maybe a badge of the squad
there were so many, many choices to thumb through
and then there was nothing, but the green eye of the yellow God.

So few left, but still there was a chance
as many others were after their cigars
Playing cards close to my chest, I failed to smile
and just tried to bluff them for little while
acting like I didn’t want it, even rated at five stars.

Yet all too soon on them it did dawn
my subterfuge away torn
across my face it was read
and the price went up straight away
from what it had been all day
much to my eternal dread.

My wallet opened at last, to see if my card would go through
and then they gave me a nod
my poor green eye slipped into pocket, from ol’ Mad Carew
Made in Taiwan, little green eye of the god.

poor copy of Trademarked Carew
a slightly flawed one too
but the excitement had been met
it was just exhilarating enough, being here alone
I wanted all I could get.

Still heady from the effects at its height
could this go on into the night
How would I sleep when I got back to the room
Or bring myself to cross the barrack square
after breathing all of that dreamy air
I was over the moon

The shops and parking lot to cross back through
the gem in my pocketed hand wet and slippery as I trod
past the bust of Mac Carew
Twas now the ʻVengeance’ of commerce of the Little Yellow God.

Theres a full parking lot just north of Khatmandu
full of tourists just into town
and a plaque paid for by a broken hearted woman about Mad Carew
next to an eyeless yellow gaze where the path goes down.



– W.B.


=======================================================
=======================================================
Day 22
Prompt Today I’d like to challenge you to write a poem that invokes a specific object as a symbol of a particular time, era, or place.

—————————————————-
100,000+ people
Showed up, rose up
Gathered to talk
Peacefully walked
Burrard Street Bridge
Arriving Sunset Beach
Scholars with small tents
Doctors w/o borders
Hari Krishna made free food
Until appetites were spent
Raging Grannies
Sang anti war songs
Peaceniks everywhere
‘1-2-3-4 We don’t want
Nuclear War
5-6-7-8
We don’t want to radiate’

I was proud to be there
Tho war still rages
Everywhere

– k

Vancouver 1980’s
Peace March


—————————————————-
Extracted

In the pit,
cut out, discarded,
the very seed of the matter,
interest is only of the rest.

this is where we sit,
good and bad parted,
pros and cons to smatter,
to lesser and best.

To excess, submit,
pit of truth away carted,
in repetitive patter,
puts to the test.

Discard, seedy pulp and grit
eyes for a perfect one darted
over the bruised, dented and tattered
seeking one to in, invest.

The world lives in a fit,
of false ideas started,
and of truths battered,
where the middle ground is but a pest.

But thank twice before you throw out the seed,
or there may not be another indeed.


– W.B.


=======================================================
=======================================================
Day 21
Prompt. Have you ever heard or read the nursery rhyme, ““ There was a man of double deed It’s quite creepy! A lot of its effectiveness can be traced back to how, after the first couplet, the lines all begin with the same two phrases (either “When the . . .” or “Twas like,”). The way that these phrases resolve gets more and more bizarre over the course of the poem, giving it a headlong, inevitable feeling.

Today, I’d like to challenge you to write a poem that, like this one, uses lines that have a repetitive set-up.

———————————————
Wave, in cresting, flowing over.

In cresting wave, tide surges
Flowing over, surges across the sand
In cresting sand, builds castles
Flowing over, Castles fill the whole beach
In cresting beach into villages
Flowing over villages of sand castles filled with people
In cresting people mill the streets
Flowing over streets with traffic
In cresting traffic people move to suburbs
Flowing over suburbs leads to vacationers
In cresting vacationers throng to shorelines
Flowing over shorelines in a tide
In cresting tide in a midday peak
Flowing over peak, a ceaseless wave,

– W.B.


=======================================================
=======================================================Day 20

Prompt for the day is to write a sijo. This is a traditional Korean poetic form. Like the haiku, it has three lines, but the lines are much longer. Typically, they are 14-16 syllables, and optimally each line will consist of two parts – like two sentences, or a sentence of two clauses divided by a comma. In terms of overall structure, a sijo functions like an abbreviated sonnet, in that the first line sets up an inquiry or discussion, the second line continues the discussion, and the third line resolves it with a “twist” or surprise. For more on the sijo, check out the primer here and a long list of examples in English, here

————————————————–
‘SALE – Today Only’

Warranty extension needed but seldom purchased,
planned obsolesence nowadays built right in

Puddles under both fridge and washing machine,
power turned off in fear of electrocution at home

Trash pile grows steadily far from profiting share holders,
landfills like mountains rise busily each night


– k


————————————————–
The Boat


Cresting waves unset sails billow,
bow wake cuts white waves cast aside

Damp teak deck under hot sun,
rolls on heeling slant traveling on

overboard washes spent water,
red wine stain on deck flows to sea.


– W.B.

=======================================================
=======================================================
Day 19

Prompt I’d like to challenge you to write a humorous rant. In this poem, you may excoriate to your heart’s content all the things that get on your nerves.
For inspiration, perhaps you might look to this list of Shakespearean insults .. Or, for all of you who grew up on cartoons from the 1980s, perhaps this compendium of Skeletor’s Best Insults might provide some insight.


—————————————-
Harumph!

Thick tined forks
Like ‘Really”?”!
Must stab to pierce
Arm muscles fierce
To use them!
-Get forked!

Teflon gives ill
Made with 8 strand binder
Which never leaves us
In fact,kills!
*Just a reminder:
-A margarine tub
For your corporate
Shareholders burial!

BC Low Income ‘Housing’
Snoops & fusses
NOTHING allowed!
In our car ports
All curtains white!
No frisbee or balls
No pets!
-May all your owned homes
Flood in the night!

Bah..I am so bad at funny insults!
What can ya do? Day 19
All i got so I am entering you!

– k


—————————————
Just

Just unjust.
‘Easy open, just tear along the dotted line’,
Just unjust,
‘Easy open, just peal apart here’,
Just unjust,
just un-openable.

Pull here,
push there,
no mater the force, it just tears,
resealable indeed.
It never works, though there is certainly the need,
unjust, it just won’t properly open,
nor re-close.
All this packing, who knows,
a designers vengeance on the world bestowed,
of great intellect that leaked out at the bottom where it out bowed.


– W.B.


=======================================================
=======================================================
Day 18

Prompt – challenges us to write a poem based on the title of one of the chapters from Susan G. Wooldridge’s Poemcrazy: Freeing Your Life with Words. The book’s table of contents can be viewed using Amazon’s “Look inside” feature. If none of the 60 rather wonderful chapter titles here inspire you, perhaps a chapter title from a favorite book would do?

—————————————–
We walked


Side by side
Hand in hand into dusk
Stopped just a moment
Gazed our sun down
Stars appeared horizen
Moon just a sliver
Just happy
Silence together
Balmy chatter soon again
Life was free that hour
Paid our dues
Now we collect
Our fullest selves
&
Rainbows
&
Rocks smooth skimmed
Across cool waters
Step by baby step
Together

– k


——————————————
Sleeping hippos

Zillabrando, Makahanaha, Tiffani Ann Walloby,
I name them as I see,
Gilliano swims by in glee,
wild hippopotamus, roaming free,
Ithotycromo stomps,
Kaley-yooho Chomps,
Pitancy’s thundering hooves flee.

Under the watchful eye of Tiffani Ann Walloby,
grasslands as far as the eye can see,
roaming the planes in glee,
wind blow tide billows in a dust sea,
hippos herd everywhere,
yet not to be seen of a hair,
nor a single decree.

There are no wild hippos,
No thundering hooves,
no grasslands as far as the eye can see.

Only dreams, only dreams,
by thundering means,
no hippo heard as far as the eye can see.
But the names still reside inside me…
of dreams, of dreams,
of hippopotamuses, I have never seen.
Naming wild hippos,
taming sleeping hippos,
framing running dreams.

– W.B.


=======================================================
=======================================================
Day 17

Prompt. – Today, I’d like to challenge you to stop fighting the moon. Lean in. Accept the moon. The moon just wants what’s best for you and your poems. So yes – write a poem that is about, or that involves, the moon.


————————————————
Im’machinations


Self cleaning rover!
‘Opportunity’ we sent over
Inches of dust
Swept clean away
Off, under?
No wind, so ever left
In wonder
Flag that billowed
Astronauts stay pillowed
Deadly
Van Allen belt
Thro, yes through
No worry
Aluminum rocket skins
Fancy space suits
On moon ships
Will protect you
Opollo 1969’72
Houston repeats:
All systems Go!
Earth’s desert so similar!
Underwater moon scapes
Bubbles in photo’s
Shadow alignments
Just wrong
Moon conspiracies!
& Flat Earth
Serious or mirth’ed?
Eavesdropped at the fence
Arguing youth
Search for truth..
So this poem
Day 17
Hence

– k


————————————————
Keyhole

Locked up in the blue sky,
Blocked by crescent shadow,
Chalked into sharp white ark.

Talked to of a dark side,
Stalked by refracting sun,
Frocked by hovering clouds.

Clocked across darkening sky,
Rocked by impacts, footprints,
Mocked by gravities pull.

Pocked in craters open,
Docked, trapped, into orbit,
Hawked, tide surging across.

Unlocked at its zenith, full sphere released, the moon hovers overhead, tumbled free of safes tumblers, safely in the black of inky night blotting out the black in powerful reflection of the suns rays back, Drawing its way across the sky. A shifting keyhole, ready to unlock the sky, key to the oceans tides, and a piece of cosmic ground, that never made it to be formed as part of the Earth. Turning around us, unlocking dreams, unlocking stories, unlocking imagination. An empty room that we dream to enter, to visit, barren of anything… locked away, but just locked just out of reach every night. Waxing and waning away, across night, across day in its plight. To peep through the keyhole into the mysteries of the universe beyond, and its freehold.


– W.B.


=======================================================
=======================================================
Day 16

Prompt = The rather silly form called Skeltonic, or tumbling, verse. In this form, there’s no specific number of syllables per line, but each line should be short, and should aim to have two or three stressed syllables. And the lines should rhyme. You just rhyme the same sound until you get tired of it, and then move on to another sound.

Skeltonic verse is a fun way to get some words on the page without racking your brains for deep meaning. It’s a form that lends itself particularly well to poems for children, satirical verse, and just plain nonsense.


—————————————-

Push & Pull’d

Thyroid tug
Slipped rug
Compatibility glove
Gift from above?
Aligned immunity hub?
Cupid’s sharp, quick shove
Or the Devil’s rub?
Already love!
Sings the white dove
1st sight, Guv.

Auric field
Both kneel’d
One heart we wield
Truth becomes shield
This light we yield
Cracked & peeled
2 fish reeled
Heart anew guild
Today, today we build
Suddenly filled

Soul mate
Somehow ‘we’ rate
Examining traits
Soon or late
Give n take
Spade or rake
Together now Mate!
Destiny or fate
100 1st dates
Unlock consciousnesses gate
Both wraiths

Those good hearts of forever

– k





—————————————–


Sci Fi’s evils weeder

Take me to your leader
the endless repeater
reptillian alien feeder
crazy half plant spore seeder
galactic charter cheater
planetary balance to teeter
tipping readings meter
inner hull breached by beater
a five handed metal eater
giant hovering skeeter
awaiting universal translator greeter
bartering something unknown by the litre
Purple yet smelling faintly of cedar
until out finally to peter
its claws slowly it would whetter
the intergalactic weeder

sun
run
spun
ton

by ton, wanting to exterminate
with no intention of being late
or in anyway fourth or fifth rate
head to patronizingly pate
grinning all the while, to grate
bound to fail, its fate
only able to blow up freight
scraping its armour plate
using the others as bait
in wait,
ambush behind obvious create
blinded by unrelenting hate
postponed until a later date
sequel, by critics to berate
again they just had to state
take me to your leader, no debate
the plot done, patience not a trait
it is not hard to keep it all straight
they really just are not all that great
in one ear out the other it does skate
evil sci fi killing machines failure to integrate
leaves them wholly unable to conglomerate
and us unsympathetic to the whole bad guy slate.

– W.B.


=======================================================
=======================================================
Day 15
Prompt = Think about a small habit you picked up from one of your parents, and then to write a piece that explores an early memory of your parent engaged in that habit, before shifting into writing about yourself engaging in the same habit.

———————————————-
Scallop’d

Peel & slice potatoes
Onions,chop n dice
(no crying please!)
Great,
I mean grate
Some fresh cheddar
Add tablesppons of flour
Dots of real butter
Scald milk
Stove element turned
Just to boiling power
Then layer,layer,layer
Big roasting pan
Into oven with small prayer
Divine smells
From oven for hours
This was one
Of her super powers

I helped her prepare
Huge cassaroles
Comfort food
That fed our souls
(tummies too)
Then when I left home
I cooked that too!

– k



———————————————-
Here

Habits of habitat are hard to half habituate,
Haggling held to hold halation here.

Hear all the little things you pickup along the way,
Haul of traits, in pauses that makes you wait.

How held hearth holds heat,
However haltingly.

Hitherto comes and goes,
Had what was and what one knows.

Heliotrope highlights heady headwaters,
home holds headstrong headwinds.

Hearty heath hedges.

Held In a garden of corn,
Have later tomatoes,
Here in still of corms, the tiny flowers bloom still.

Height hews helically,
Heist hefty hyalite heirdom.
Here,
Here holds the seed.

Hyaloid hands hold home,
However hybrid, hypothetical

Hoary, hardened hands
Hobby hoes herein

Here,
Here holds the wintery outline of a garden
Holding on for the next spring….

– W.B.


=======================================================
=======================================================
Day 14

And last but not least, our (optional) prompt for the day. Today, I’d like to challenge you to write a poem that delves into the meaning of your first or last name.

——————————————-
Pure One!

Hah!
One laughs
Covered in your violence
Silence
World’s dirt
Since birth
Kept N.I.M.B.Y. ‘ed
Buried deep
Can’t move at all
Or your Teeth
Carried your secrets..
Young body owned
By others
Tiny sufferers
Blank smiling zombie
Decades sick
Stumbling
My soul lit
Smallest burning light
Shadowless footsteps
Should have named me
Gretal!
For how deep
Been tested my metal!
Where’s my medal!
Life is war
From 1st breath
Walk with death
Hand in hand
Born into wrong time
Place
Abomidition
Our Human Race
Criminal were those
Demands
Such abuse
At your hands
Yeah
Strong name
Cute little girl
Such trouble awaits
Her future unfurled
Like a nightmare.


– k

Meaning:pure. Katherine draws its power from a saint martyred in Alexandria known in Greek as Aikaterine; the Greek word “katharos” means “pure.” This regal name has been in use since the third century and has evolved into many forms in different countries, from Katarina to Kathleen and Kaitlin.


——————————————-
Your name here


In every space, line, pop up
I feel I am stuck
What is it all to mean now

if continually rewrote
does it fast erode
drained of meaning, devoid form

I am of a mind that I am me you see,
feeling no need to be copied or re-signed.
I have resigned to just being me,
Fleeting forms and storms pass,
and I again feel me at last.

I can sign anything, and still be me.
Signed, sealed, and delivered forms,
now what meaning has all that.
Doppelgangers are no doubt also accomplished forgers.


– W.B.


=======================================================
=======================================================

Day 13

Prompt -This one is short and sweet: write a poem in the form of a news article you wish would come out tomorrow.

————————————————————
FREE THERAPY!

Extra, extra
Read all about it
Canada has decided
To FUND free therapy!
Recognizing value
Healthy populace
Thousands of quality
Trauama informed
Counsellors
Standing by NOW!

Predictions of
Lower crime rate
Violence way down
Less penal
Institutionalization
Higher school grades
Lowered domestic violence
Huge cut in addictions

Millions diverted
From war schemes!
Into health & healing!

Sweeping reports
Coming in..
Country by country
Free mental health care
For the people!

You read it
Here 1st folks!
Underdog Daily News

– k


———————————————————–
Pop!

This just in, popcorn trees explodes in heatwave.
just about an hour after noon
The buttery yellow flower blooms fell, the ground in pale yellow to pave
All the kernel like buds blew up, having had no one to properly prune
White inflated forms flew from the tree, then to the ground to cave
Mixing with the yellow flowers there strewn
Light buttery scent, a pang of hunger gave
Churned by a crosswind though bare branches that did croon
Shovelled up into large paper leaf bags, to save
Hurried to home, to the movie just as it started with a short cartoon.
and handfuls of popcorn over to rave.

– W.B.

=======================================================
=======================================================
Day 12

Prompt – “Past and Future.” This prompt challenges you to write a poem using at least one word/concept/idea from each of two specialty dictionaries: Lempriere’s Classical Dictionary and the Historical Dictionary of Science Fiction ..

————————————–
Low Tide 2091


Unbound to flesh
1st drifted coreward
Summersaulting
Freedom exhaulting
Deep dive into our
Milky Way’s
Mysterious black hole..
That region of spacetime
Where gravity is theorized
To be so strong!
Nothing escapes
But I will!
All personal
Mud & meteorology
Left back ‘Home’
No longer
Dirt or bone
Look, just breautiful..
Us
Rainbows refractions
Everywhere!
Souls glistening
Sparkling like crashing
Waves
Push particles
Quantum miniscule so tiny
Terra forming
Distant ‘also worlds’
Takes consciousness
Willingness to work
Like a mirage
In a ice chip
Rest a blink
A eon
But then always
Come back to you!

– k


—————————————
Unobtainium, Tellurian Ostia


Sitting at the mouth, flowed by the river of Tiber.
Under the shadow of the tower,
a symbolic port of commerce of ancient Rome,
shifting by the day, as the sun moved across,
two moons sat low in the sky,
over Ostia to fly.

The Tellurian delegation was again late,
it always seemed a part of their history and fate,
no wonder they never managed to manage to obtain any unobtainium to date.

Even in this age, bureaucracy was still largely untamed,
controlling the planetary weather had proven far simpler gamed.
So many opportunities to set the future had already passed.
Just as the sands had once drowned the port,
the slowness of the hourglass, away plugged,
slowed negotiations, as away at they tried to sort.
for a future large share of unobtainium home to be lugged.

– W.B.

Ostia –an ancient city and harbour which was situated on the western coast of Italy at the mouth of the River Tiber. It was the first colony founded by ancient Rome and was a major port and commercial centre.

Tellurian –a native or inhabitant of Earth

Unobtainium –a hypothetical substance that would be highly desirable but is unrealized or unobtainable; a notional substance with exceptional or ideal properties

=======================================================
=======================================================

Day 11

Prompt -Today, I’d like to challenge you to write a two-part poem, in the form of an exchange of letters.

The first stanza (or part) should be in the form of a letter that you write either to yourself or to a famous fictional or historical person.

The second part should be the letter you receive in response.

These can be as short or long as you like, in the form of prose poems, or with line breaks – and of course, the subject matter of the letters is totally up to you.

——————————————————-
In a Gazebo by the Sea

Do you remember that gazebo by the sea, cantilevered out over the rocks
carved into the landscape like all the initials into its soft grained railing blocks.
Perched in the middle of nowhere
So many promises there did you swear
Do you remember hiding out there from the wind in its lee
The storm of life eroding away the shore, your screaming at the wind in a plea

Step by step down to the last drop down to the shore
just above high tide mark, the power of the sea was something you could not ignore
nor they, as the last steps off it would have tore
recall what you did implore
standing in the middle of the storms immense lore…

\\\\\\\\\

Read, replied, signed, I sealed it up again in envelope white and stark

I look upon this tattered envelope, worn postmark,
of this letter sent so long ago on a lark
How do you think I would ever forget
that tatty old gazebo, where land and sea met.

Last I was there, its tall peaked roof long ago fell to the rocks below
but the stairs still perch at the shore, as in and out the tides still go
now calm, the tide low
A gentler pace of life, restful, slow

Frenetic foaming sea, I cower in the lee no longer
Like the storm I have grown stronger
life around me does not anymore monger

Phases of human nature that come to be
I know now that I am free
No mater the state of things, land or sea, I alway have the air of me.


– W.B.


=======================================================
=======================================================Day 10

Prompt It’s called “ Junk Drawer Song ” and comes to us from the poet Hoa Nguyen.

First, find a song with which you are familiar – it could be a favorite song of yours, or one that just evokes memories of your past. Listen to the song and take notes as you do, without overthinking it or worrying about your notes making sense.
Next, rifle through the objects in your junk drawer – or wherever you keep loose odds and ends that don’t have a place otherwise. On a separate page from your song-notes page, write about the objects in the drawer, for as long as you care to.
Now, bring your two pages of notes together and write a poem that weaves together your ideas and observations from both pages.

——————————————————–
The Sound of silence:

Hello, paint pots
My old friends
Table top
In creeps
Once more
Major upend
Brushes,tacks
Glue & safety pins
ALL call out
I wish to talk
With you!
Again
Orange bag, neighbor
Hath sent cheezies
Dust above
Breath too deep
Get the wheezies!
All a vision of madness
Tho my heart but see’s
Gladness
Possibilities rise from
Dusty seeds
To grow this mess
Takes creativity
Indeed
To me -art
You-wrecked train
Unique answers
Give forth our brains
Life does remain
Within this
Riot
Of silence

– k


——————————————————–
Closed openings in the opening of a drawer.


Past life shelters in an old drawer,
the forgotten soundtrack to days of past glory.
Unneeded items that you feel a need to keep
Melancholy of items slowly shuffled into it, and then to the back to sit.

The slow intro of the opening drawer that you always ignore
familiar faces of unneeded things with no tomorrow
No tomorrow.
Worn out things from places you will not go back to again
Then no one knew, no one knew, that the old calculator would not be needed anymore,
A compass of no arcs or circles that will not give direction,
An old voice recorder that don’t listen to you any longer,
Its batteries removed, the connection cord mislaid.

To sit and listen, waiting. very nervous, wondering if they would ever leave the drawer again.
The old first aid kit in the broken green box
Held together by elastic band, wrapped twice around

Its a very very mad world….

Enlarge on your world,
But keep all the past,…
past over, left over, pieces locked away in a drawer.

– W.B.


=======================================================
=======================================================

Day 09

Our Prompt for the day is to write a poem in the form of a “to-do list.” The fun of this prompt is to make it the “to-do list” of an unusual person or character.

————————————————–

We:

Ginger root
&
Golden Seal
Datura
Garlic
To dry & peel
Mixt, mixt
Cauldron heavy
Iron pot
A cat to sit there
Some picturesque spot
Walk me path!
Seek I do
Small warm cabin
Misty woods
A long full cloak, Yes!
Deepest purple
Jewelry too
Branches for the fire
Grinder (electric Thank You!)
Nahuatl Peyotl
Candles that all night
Burn
Wizened, lovely
Old Crone
A dropt’ list
Rise sisters
Brothers
I do insist!
Off to forest,
Marsh ,
Sea
Plains
Collect,collect
Ancient Plant Medicines
To heal us all
Once again!
Together

– K

————————————————-
Do too
Do to

Oh what to do, what to do, what to do….

From the desk of WWW {The Wicked Witch of the West, malevolent ruler of Winkie Country}

TO DO
-Get dog
-Urgent!! -Fix roof leak!
-Get Dorothy to surrender. Surrender Dorothy Surrender!
-Get back at Academy Awards people for giving Best Picture to Gone with the Wind.
-Get silver shoes… Or perhaps Ruby…
-Buy more winged monkey food
-Buy OZ Shower curtain for Birthday
-Lunch with WW of the East,
-Renew subscription to the Emerald City Times

Oh its all such slog,
dealing with the overly meek,
Getting an appointment with the pointed hat mender,
Finding small shoes for the thin shinned.
Flying housed going by all spinning and cube-y,
uncouth animals that are overly rude.
Getting home before the suns last ray,
Munchkins cleaning their plate of the last piece of the feast,

What a world, what a wold, what a world…
as melting crooked nose curled, as the echoes fade out in rhymes

– W.B.


=======================================================
=======================================================

Day 08


And last but not least, our (optional) prompt. I call this one “Return to Spoon River,” after Edgar Lee Masters’ eminently creepy 1915 book Spoon River Anthology . The book consists of well over 100 poetic monologues, each spoken by a person buried in the cemetery of the fictional town of Spoon River, Illinois.

Today, I’d like to challenge you to read a few of the poems from Spoon River Anthology, and then write your own poem in the form of a monologue delivered by someone who is dead.


—————————————————————————————
Ohh Death

Again, again
Last gentle breath
Expelled
Spirit soar’d
Released
Look there!
Just at horizon
Cloud with a rainbow
Bird in full flight
Butterfly in mass
Following tradewinds
Thro windy night
Past all seas
This pass of me
Ashes to ashes
Dust to dust
Embraced eternal souls
Life so full of love
Amid harm here
Even as I leave
I dream
If I can return
I will
I must

– K

—————————————————————————————

Kipper Knoll

I always found life a little fishy,
coming from an area of low tide, if you will, of Spoon river to reside.
A writer of more years than I would care to count,
so many things seen, too many to accurately account.
But over those years, looking through my dirty window at the street,
I saw all the little things that fell right at my feet.
Step by step, booking time, I wrote.
Of fishy characters and plots, in layers to coat.
Of all of all of this, I made sure I left just this one little wish,
and rewrote my whole life, my whole life posthumously out to dish.
All but one little nugget of truth, sure to be missed.
I lived the script, of the rest I was wholly tightlipped,
a fiction left to be of great of extol…
The life of Kipper Knoll.
I leave you to wonder, and wander of Spoon river’s hills that roll,
and all of the fishy stories and bull.

– W.B.

=======================================================
=======================================================
Day 07

Prompt- There are many different poetic forms. Some have specific line counts, syllable counts, stresses, rhymes, or a mix-and-match of the above. Of the poetic forms that are based on syllable counts, probably the most well-known – to English speakers, at least – is the Japanese form called the haiku. But there are many other syllable-based forms. Today, I’d like to challenge you to pick from two of them – the shadorma, and the Fib.

The shadorma is a six-line, 26-syllable poem (or a stanza – you can write a poem that is made of multiple shadorma stanzas). The syllable count by line is 3/5/3/3/7/5. So, like the haiku, the lines are relatively short.

Our second syllabic form is the Fib is a six-line form. But now, the syllable count is based off the Fibonacci sequence of 1/1/2/3/5/8. You can link multiple Fibs together into a multi-stanza poem, or even start going backwards after your first six lines, with syllable counts of 8/5/3/2/1/1.

——————————————–
We were love
Stardust ‘s own pure hearts
Love was us
Pouring out through in
Mere mortals wide arms outstretched
Swallowing moons whole

You
Your
Smiling face
Such earthly joy
How dear each dimple
Eyes that shined like stars brought so near

– K

——————————————–
Egale

Soaring flight
banking around cloud
dropping wing
pulling tight
angles back towards water
to cross the shoreline.

Caught in light
of strobing sun proud
out to sing
in its might.
Beaches the oceans blotter
below, over pine.

Shadows plight,
across echoes loud,
of something,
soaring kite,
across sand dunes to totter,
of talons sharp tine .

– W.B.

=======================================================
=======================================================Day 06

Prompt. Go to a book you love. Find a short line that strikes you. Make that line the title of your poem. Write a poem inspired by the line. Then, after you’ve finished, change the title completely.


———————————————
OchRED Hands

Beautiful flowers
There…outside
Sunlight & good days
Clear running rivers
Just waiting
Turn, turn around
Crawl for freedom
Don’t let this cave
Entomb you
Sips of nectar overwhelm
Those 1st needing just water
Roses have thorns
Slim hand reaching
Out of such darkness
Emerge dirt covered
Alien
Even cleaned up
Strange to each other
So strange
To each other

– k

———————————————
Posed to Bloom

The rose holds its pose, but is best seen from front or sides,
its back hides among thorns, and under leaves
budding it opens its beauty into the world
but how to hold its still in a breeze

All around a churning, gusting wind billows and across rides
natural beauty of its splitting petals cleaves
twisted in deep reds inward it swirled
holding its forward pose to please

Does anyone take photos of the backside of a rose, or seas at low tides,
naturally nature regardlessly, in its self, believes,
inward its confidence tightly curled,
opening up just slightly to tease.

– W.B.


=======================================================
=======================================================Day 05

Prompt – I call this one “The Shapes a Bright Container Can Contain,” after this poem by Theodore Roethke, which I adored in high school – and can still recite!

This prompt challenges you to find a poem, and then write a new poem that has the shape of the original, and in which every line starts with the first letter of the corresponding line in the original poem. If I used Roethke’s poem as my model, for example, the first line would start with “I,” the second line with “W,” and the third line with “A.” And I would try to make all my lines neither super-short nor overlong, but have about ten syllables. I would also have my poem take the form of four, seven-line stanzas.

——————————————

Unicorns Ahead

Softly, they ran on by
Long multi-coloured manes
Flowing like dance
Perfect counter gait
Each step, Oh!
Music of their equine selves
Standing,I, bewildered
Smiling
Just aware
Day dreamed
Perhaps shape shifted
Here,Hear!
Wide eyed
Mid-herd
Far seeing such
Plains I did not know
Prairies, purple
Velvet blue
Flat & shimmering
THUMP THUMP THUMP
Hooves fell
But then more slowly
Giant but gentle
One steadily approached
One
It seemed maybe
I already knew!?
At least reminded me
Of you
A/wake or A/sleep?
Real or imagined I,
Nuzzled by warm breath
Love peering thro
Huge caring green eyes
Deep into mine
Greeting Yes, Welcome
Shared dimensions
Love’s promise
Coming through!
I believe in Unicorns
Forever
Do you?
A Blessing!

-K

“What is a group of unicorns called?” is a pretty popular quiz question with an absolutely magical and unexpected out-of-box style of answer. According to DoYouKnowStuff and Quora, a group of unicorns is called a blessing.
Blessing of Unicorns!

——————————————
A Hard Run

I crossed the raging river, The wooden deck under foot,
I didn’t look back at all, railing solid and deck stayed put.

As by I flew from bank to bank pushing on my way across,
As content as I could be, for hardly any time loss.

Moving through the country side, stride by stride in fluid gait
Ahead to the next waypoint ahead more road lay in wait.

I push on, the end in sight if only inside my mind,
No obstacles allowed in form, or of any sort or kind.

Between me and my goal there must be nothing to intrude
As I run hard through the pain in beautiful countryside

-W.B.

=======================================================
=======================================================

Day 04

Prompt. Poetry often takes us to strange places – to feelings and actions that are hard to express except through the medium of a poem. To the “liminal,” in other words – a place or sensation that exists at or on both sides of a boundary or threshold, neither one thing or the other, but something betwixt and between.

In honor of the always-becoming nature of poetry, I challenge you today to select a photograph from the perpetually disconcerting @SpaceLiminalBot , and write a poem inspired by one of these odd, in-transition spaces.
——————————————————–


Soul
Quantum snow
BOOM this our astral
Skies fell that day
Soft, glittering
All unique & none the same
Imperfection within every centre
How we hung on..
Sparkling
Together..
To melt , become bound
Swirl
Swept into a sea
Sweet choir of angels
Looked out my window
Just what did I see?

– k

——————————————————–

Threshold


When the night comes,
in the shadow of a tree.

Dim transitions one can trip over,
Last flickering candle light cast,
framed, from a lone window.

Again repeated at the dawn, if in reverse.
The first rays of daylight broach.

The underdeveloped colours,
the insubstantial status of fading things…
whether fading in,… or out.

Stopping, or starting, the un-startling effect,
happing so gradually for the senses to collect,
so effortlessly to project
fade in, fade out, the twilight landscape in-set.

The world flattens, the sky joins into the ground…
as inky blackness descends all around.
Until dawn, and again the lightening of the sky and birds start to sound,
Solitary blues take to flight, as the sky overhead again mounds.

But between there is transition that creeps
as most everything else still sleeps
un-vibrant, un-contained
and far too easily disdained.

I can hardly see it myself I have to say,
this odd twilight that happens well after the end of the day,
happening just after you realize that the light is starting to go away…
and darkness across the threshold starts to lay.

-W.B.


=======================================================
=======================================================

Day 03 NaPoWriMo 2021

Prompt. -Today, I’d like to challenge you to make a “Personal Universal Deck,” and then to write a poem using it. Basically, you will need 50 index cards or small pieces of paper, and on them, you will write 100 words (one on the front and one on the back of each card/paper)

Don’t agonize over your word choices. Making the deck should be fun and revealing, as you generate words that sound “good” to you. The fact that the words are mainly divided among the five senses should be helpful in selecting words that you like the sound of, and that have some meaning personal to you.

Once you have your deck put together, shuffle it a few times. Now select a card or two, and use them as the basis for a new poem.


——————————–
Chalk

Limestone, crumbled
Reformed
Weighted,crushed algae,shells
Minute marine of old
A memory
Dream of falling
Softly
Slow, slow zig zagging
Descent
Adding layer after
Eons long gone
Then whoosh
So urgently bold
Earth quake shifts
Sea bed up-rising
Continent sharp lifts
Into existance
How white the cliffs
Of Dover

– k

———————————-
At the window

Sat at the window, the street an arms length away
People probably rushing home, passed, at the end, another long day

The musty smelling motel room
the worn, outdated furniture, the smallness managing to cocoon

Sitting off in the distance, along, another world away sat the sea
Its water had an almost pearlescent quality

I waited
being still here, I hated

Still, I knew you were not coming,
we were through, as my heart again started drumming

My excused were running thin though
but I convinced myself ‘Just little longer’ I would wait at the window….

– W.B.

=======================================================
=======================================================

Day 02 NaPoWriMo 2021

Today’s prompt. In the world of well-known poems, maybe there’s no gem quite so hoary as Robert Frost’s “The Road Not Taken.” Today, I’d like to challenge you to write a poem about your own road not taken – about a choice of yours that has “made all the difference,” and what might have happened had you made a different choice.

——————————————

Path

Was there ever one?
Might I have
Stepped off
At birth?
Crawled the wrong
Direction?
Missed a turn?
Were unicorns & fairies
Just right..
Over there?
Fate & destiny
Karma & synchronicity
Madness & mystery
Death & energy
Crunch…
Another Rain Forest
Forward step
Taken
Always wondering
Deep
Curiousity
For what..
Will be

Next 2 C

– k

——————————————
Unturned


Shhhhhh

Is there something at the corner…

Shhhh, there is something around the corner

Shhh, the world can turn in a moment

Shhh, The world can change in a moment
The world can change momentum

Shhh, The quiet comes, momentous
The moment slows, as pondering quickens

There was something around the corner
I went straight on, perhaps never fully to know

what around the corner there was into to go…
looking back, there is nothing to be seen off to the sides

No one will ever know
only I, of what, in passing, I glanced off to see what there did bide

Now, there is just a quiet emptiness there
The space I left empty, gone on, it sits, around the corner, bare of despair

That I left, for the straight path to disrepair.
Only occasionally in passing, my pair of eyes over fondly to stare
for just a moment until I remember, there is nothing today any longer there.

– W.B.

=======================================================
=======================================================

Day 01 NaPoWriMo
Prompt (optional, as always)! Sometimes, writing poetry is a matter of getting outside of your own head, and learning to see the world in a new way. To an extent, you have to “derange” yourself – make the world strange, and see it as a stranger might. To help you do that, I’d like to challenge you to write a poem inspired by this animated version of “Seductive Fantasy” by Sun Ra and his Arkestra.


—————————–

Croak

Froggish
Dry mouthed mid sleep
Mid night
Woke gasping as if
Kissed by pool side
Princesses
Check myself
Hand to chest
Hip, face
Am I
Transformed?
Wet with pond sweat?
Deep darkness
I listen
Ahh still one
Of our human race
Slow waking dream
Slips away
Of
Her dreamt soft kiss
No trace

– k

—————————–
A world runs around me,
Turned inside out.

The pressure of a kazoo counters the flow of light into spectra.
The more I focus on anything, the more it shudders and shifts away into something new.
The old shutters, churns, pans, reforms into another inclined plane,
burst forth, Reforms from the strain,
tilts, the pinball rolls off, there are no rules.

These are the mirror of other others dreams that play out onto insides of my eye lids
Transition unheard sights and unseen sound into tactile numbness.
Minutia of transplanted dreams, distorted brainwaves made of a different wave length,
tinted by another’s Blue eyes, realties of retinas not mine, filtered unknowingly behind.

Bespoke lines wrote, onto wind to coat
the world stuns around me
shocking re-perceptions float.

Turned inside out, now upside down.
The world falls still, without a sound… into my ear drums again to pound.
Meaning, a Rosetta Stone, your buried treasure, yet to be found.

Your world swirls
Distorted vantages, alternate disadvantages highlight.
Your dim view of coming night,
To me, you see, never quite to seem right

My perspective runs from me
ricochets and returns in kind
yours in, a balance I can not find…
the world runs around me to flee.

I know not what to make of it, and its longings, but only of its need to run free

– W.B.

======================================================
======================================================

Day 00- Early-Bird Prompt -NaPoWriMo
Today, we’d like to challenge you to spend a few minutes looking for a piece of art that interests you in the online galleries of New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art. After you’ve selected your piece, study the photographs and the accompanying text. And then – write a poem! Maybe about who you imagine making the piece, or using it. Or how it wound up in the museum? Or even the life of the person who wrote the text about the piece – perhaps the Met has a windowless basement full of graduate students churning out artwork descriptions – who knows?

————————-

—> Cuxa Cloister | Catalan | The Metropolitan Museum of Art
–] https://www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/470314

Cuxa Cloister

Of legs of arches,
framed of leggy shadows
running off into the distance
across the grassed courtyard

Of Northeast Pyrenees
Cuxa Cloister sits
low fountain center around hunched down on its knees
intricately carved unmoving eyes, across a small bird flits

Of Pink marble capitals that squat overhead
stood at the foot of Mount Canigou
watching walkers march, in rows under led
or across to cross through.

What scale, what sight
to somehow proceed, its distance starts to recede
oh the magnificent view to a millipede
crawling alone along, steadily into the night


-W.B.

======================

NAPOWRIMO-2020-NATIONAL-POETRY-WRITING-MONTH.

For the Month of April have been writing poem a day using the daily Prompts from http://www.napowrimo.net.

——————————–


Another April month of poetry done!
Thank you to all that stopped in to enjoy.

——————————

Day 30 NaPoWriMo 2020

Our final prompt! -I’d like to challenge you to write a poem about something that returns. For, just as the swallows come back to Capistrano each year, NaPoWriMo and GloPoWriMo will ride again!
Happy writing!


—————————–
Many Returns

Surge of tide,
Break of day,
Waves to ride,
lighting of grey.

Seeding plant,
revolving door,
Flowers to grant,
turns once more.

Returns again,
all things,
to pretend,
Forgetting, to start anew, without strings….

       - W.B. 

——————————-
Daydreams in November

Slowly forgetfulness
Overcomes her
Days lumber on
Different patterns emerge
This way
That
Changing
Quiet silence fills
Heart & soul
Regarding him
Ahh ships that pass
Ahh hopes morass
Sliding always
Over, into
The horizon
Then
But then
Somehow life is sparked
Once again
New green shoots
Blossom out of Earth
His name already
A song
On her lips
A flower
At fingertips
And
She smiles
Warmly into
This ever new day
Slowly forgetfulness
Overcomes her

   - k



===============================
=============================

Day 29 NaPoWriMo 2020

Today, write a paean to the stalwart hero of your household: your pet.
If you don’t have a pet, perhaps you know one or remember one who deserves to be immortalized in verse.
Happy writing!

————————————
Shades of Grey

Tiny but mighty!
Came in for warmth
One assumes
Noises, nightly
Room to room
Shreds of paper
Nibbled bits
Then I saw it
Almost had a fit
Not alone
In my house
Have a wee mouse!
Need a safe trap
Company I guess…
Until I have that!
Squeak
Any company on lock down
Will do!
Welcome!
Hello little buddy!
I’ll call you
Joy
Least til I find out
If you a girl
Or boy!

   - k



———————————–
Stony faced

There, still, unmoving
An unwavering focus
My Loyal Pet Rock

   - W.B.


===============================
=============================
Day 28 NaPoWriMo 2020

Today’s prompt -Describe a bedroom from your past in a series of descriptive paragraphs or a poem. It could be your childhood room, your grandmother’s room, a college dormitory or another significant space from your life.
Happy writing!

—————————————–
Sunlit

Facing Mount Baker
Looking down
Over r garden in backyard
r
Huge rental House
@ Vancouver BC
11th & Commercial
Area
Well..
This backroom..
Sunlit
Glass portal
Stretching
Wall to wall
Windowsill
Generous, deep
Wide
Always warm
Deep into nights
Small space
With a corner!
To head
Downstairs
Rows upon rows
My
Aloe Veras
One year
They flowered
Who knew!?
They do that
In very warm places!
Sunlit..

   - k




———————–
View

There is a maze in my mind
Of rooms that are not mine

Window seats
of views that repeat

seldom seen
what meanings mean

potted plants
fabrics at a glance

Floral patterned lined shelf, Open closet with its dowel hanging bar, or Sliding door
Queen, king, or jester like single, perhaps a pair in a twin.
Muted single colour or patterned or floral coverings.

Each window opens to a self
dated inner expression, colour, carpet, items on a shelf

To each a person in kind
that that room reminds me of a time.

– W.B.


===============================
=============================
Day 27 NaPoWriMo 2020

Todays prompt- I’d like to challenge you to write a poem in the form of a review. But not a review of a book or a movie of a restaurant. Instead, I challenge you to write a poetic review of something that isn’t normally reviewed. For example, your mother-in-law, the moon, or the year 2020 (I think many of us have some thoughts on that one!)
Happy writing!

—————————

Pink

Bought a tin button
Pressing machine
It had always been
One of my dreams!
Price was fair
Would be fun art
To wear!
2.3/4 circle
Seemed just right
We
Lay the tin, paper
Vellum
Hard push on handle
Boom…it disappears
Where did it go?
I always tell them!
Swing machine base
Set button back
Press other side
Amazing, just amazing
Because then
Out pops newly made
A wearable badge
All ages love it
We now wish to buy
A bigger circle size
Maybe blue this time
One for the guys!
10/10 I mark it as
Such fun
For me & my pals!

   - k



—————————————-
My Left sock

‘My Left Sock, an unriveting tale of footwear. To nothing else to compare’

Delving into weave, knit and patterns without reprieve
The question to tell, of why one size fits all, and why ‘One size fits all’, fits none well

Two embroidered stars, one hole
But a little hole they said
‘These things happen, they add character’ though they said it with a note of dread…

‘Riveting! you’ll put it on one leg at a time’ says the laundry reviewer

‘Argyles, athletics, and even a pull-up’, if anyone wears those anymore

Mysterious and dark, heal and toe, how could anything ever stand up to THIS foe
Washed, worn and pilled, from one hundred percent cotton, milled.
Well that is a stretch, two percent is elastic around an ankle to catch.

‘you may never wear sandals again’ at least so they would like to pretend.
Hours waiting for laundry to finish, leads to impromptu filming of make-believe mock documentaries.
filmed barefooted, of footage no-one could, in good taste, defend.

A sequel is planed ‘The Right sock’ (*Working title) Due out sometime next year. Bigger holes are expected by then.
The left sock is rumoured to make a cameo, ( Spoiler alert! ) unless done in by the drier, ahem, I mean ’Lost’ before then.

In this reviews humble opinion, stay home and do your laundry instead, this is one short film you don’t want stuck in your head. Who ever dreamed up this nightmare should go back to bed.
But only after being forced to fluff and fold,
for who ever came up of a protagonist of a left sock to be told.

– W.B.

===============================
=============================
Day 26 NaPoWriMo 2020

Our prompt – You will need to fill out, in five minutes or less, the following “Almanac Questionnaire”
Then, use your responses as to basis for a poem.
Happy writing!

Almanac Questionnaire
Weather:
Flora:
Architecture:
Customs:
Mammals/reptiles/fish:
Childhood dream:
Found on the Street:
Export:
Graffiti:
Lover:
Conspiracy:
Dress:
Hometown memory:
Notable person:
Outside your window, you find:
Today’s news headline:
Scrap from a letter:
Animal from a myth:
Story read to children at night:
You walk three minutes down an alley and you find:
You walk to the border and hear:
What you fear:
Picture on your city’s postcard:                

————————–
Whom sends picture postcards anymore…

The weather lies, flora wilts.
Created spaces to open air, architecture flies, Outside the window is just outside from where light spilt.
Road markings found on the street, to control, tries, today’s news headline, repeated 50,001 times, lilts

Customs has long lineups and asks lots of questions, and likes few of the answers. Spies and persons of note are not always notable persons of interest causing heads to tilt.

You fear your fears because they are unreal, unfounded or exaggerated. All very unwise. Yes, that includes childhood dreams and its inherent guilt.
Conspiracy, hometown memory, often relating to ones home town guise. Whom told you to say that…! paranoia up to the hilt.

Dress down for casual, up for formal, the hight of wearing ties. You walk to the border and hear a line up, to art openings of Graffiti, usually best if of Tahiti. Export, Import, keep the economy going, even if you must pilt.

You walk three minutes down an alley and you find you found something three minutes away, an interest in you that buys,
for like lovers, best under cover, and mammals, reptiles and fish that always need feeding. The world gets to seem gilt.

Like old bed time stories, story read to young children at night just before turning out the light, ending in little surprise yes, yet childhood dreams still walk on stilts
Bookmarked of a scrap from a letter, do you scrap your letters? to be safe from prying eyes? Until tomorrows story of an animal from a myth. Mythical animals are just animals, if real, stalking from the silt

Lakes and back alleys plies, a question cries ‘What Picture is on your city’s postcard’ long ago found or built

   -W.B.

———————————–
Whispering Alder Tree

More like Van G Starry..
Swirly stars against
Blue black night
Ancient marine deposits
Deep underfoot
Remind us such
Ancient past/land mass
Stories in red ochre
Shamanic
Hand prints
Blue whales
Running mammoth
Remembered
Dreams old- to fly
Pyramids call me
Bare feet
Warm sand
Distant relations
Beckon always
‘I love you forever
I love you for always’
Millions years old
Rocks tumbled
Mountain to sea
Paint them cheery
Bright acrylic colours
Leave gently
Dropped for another to find
Some just for my
Imaginary lover
Make him laugh
At least I hope that..
Long dresses-covered
Crawl into womb
Mother Earth
Sweat Lodge
Drumming singing
Loud & clear
Only sometimes,
I fear
To be alone, sick
Abandoned
For others….
The 5 G microchips
Crypto currency
Of our movements
No purchase unless tagged
No, Oh
Love,Love,Love
Not war
No more war
Please
And youth!
Being small
Kokisilah River
I swim there still
Always will be part of me
The day the eagle swooped
Lifted salmon
Talons strong wings
Rising, away
Strong proud bird
Like Cher
My musical icon
Grew up with her
Do you believe
In life after love?
A note in mail recently
A stranger wrote
‘You inspire me’
How I felt healed
Knowing others
Were cheered!
Take down all walls
Forever
That Earth could be divided so
Hopefully one day
Borders must go!
Love remains
The only answer
To everything.

   - k



===============================
=============================

Day 25 NaPoWriMo 2020

The prompt, which you can find in its entirety here , was  developed by the poet and teacher Hoa Nguyen, asks you to use a long poem by James Schuyler as a guidepost for your poem. This is a prompt that allows you to sink deeply into another poet’s work, as well as your own.

————————–

Covid-Corvids

Rainy day multitude of greys
Inside and out, wake ponder
Hear scratching, rise,look outside
Shiny black crows, tearing grass up
Like expert excavator operators they
Seek nutrition hunt down Chafer Grubs
Caw Caw Caw
Notes of the murder
Exposed,Slow my pc whirrs
Pending sign small blue circle
Blurs Ahh good I am patient!
Listen as clear wet drops
Hit my window 2020
Planet on lockdown
Curious eternally what
Will come next for us all
Curious I search your face
Your eyes
Plaintive call, white soft grey
Sea Gull flies by
Tired today
Think I shall rest
Small comforts matter
Always

   - k


——————————
Season unread

Your letter arrives, softly drops, the postman walks away, his footsteps cover over in blowing seed husks of some tree down the street, over uneven sidewalks and the cracks, some falling between.
Squeaking lid closes, letter opener releases, the mailbox empty
contents unfold, unfurl, drawing out like the hours of the day
Snarls, turns into paragraphs and relays sentences imprisoned on the page. Converses of a world turning forward, persisting in every detail and want. Sputtering in idle moments, picking up, skipping over recollections in busy moments. A dirty silver car passes, turns, the next page, glances at the lines of traffic, the signs, the letters strung together into words, words follow one after another, Period, hexagonal stop to thoughts, as no one tickets run-on sentences, the weeds growing in the median, the unleashing of the word Go to grow, accelerating the thoughts and feelings into a journey, past the rows of houses, of all the people and their stories that will likely at some point intersect at a crossroads, one is to yield, will have to, but which?…

Your writing of seasons, the chill of the anticipation of Spring, cold shoulder of resentment to winters overstaying its welcome, harsh lettering, pens blue ink pressing too hard into the lightly textured surface of the giving paper taking down the emotions pleaded out in boxy forced letters drifting from the line of thought and text in distraction.
I leave the last page, for now at least, the turning of the point has not come, this is still the summer to read through, I have not prepared myself for winter in any sufficient way yet, not likely to, why turn the errant calendar before it is time. I shall content myself with the large butterfly longer, halting its migration by resistance, not to know yet what things might fill it’s space should I let next months image come, keeping the colours fresh.

The line echos in my mind “this young man in dun clothes who holds his hat so that the red lining shows and glows.” from this song line quoted through thoughts emoted of worn hat brims seasons shedding

The startling moment from the corner, startled by me, suddenly huge bulky a spider to see, darker than black, as my jaw goes slightly slack. One simply has to respond, or reread what will go on as actions become reactions that nothing can be done about.

The spider now trapped, glass ramekin, as it was the first thing I found, inverted beneath,.
glass prison holds it, the envelope that arrives to floor the prison, your stamp duly crossed out, dated, slips under to cary it away, release to the garden, off to follow the postman, footsteps lost now, only hints that seasons so still exist. Into the seasons of music calling out “the silence of a windless day’ to lead it away” .
I take the envelope inside for a second time.

There is more in this, I suspect on the last page, but who wants to go back into the cold slushy bogged down details of winter, rather shall I bring in flowers, keeping note of wayward spiders this time, branches of bud to open in the warmth of indoors, replaceable before the time they choose to drop leaves. Simple solutions to complexities of life.
And the reading of the ends of letters written in the midst of a storm.

– W.B.



===============================
=============================

Day 24 NaPoWriMo 2020

Today’s prompt is a fairly simple one: to write about a particular fruit – your choice. But I’d like you to describe this fruit as closely as possible.

Perhaps your poem could attempt to tell the reader some (or all!) of the following about your chosen fruit: What does it look like, how does it feel, how does it smell, what does it taste like, where did you find it, do you need to thump it to know if it’s ripe, how do you get into it (peeling, a knife, your teeth), do you need to spit out the seeds, should you bake it, can you make jam with it, do you have to fight the birds for it, when is it available, do you need a ladder to pick it, what is your favorite memory of eating it.
Happy writing!

————————–

Blue Berry

Well it’s dark blue when ripe
About 10 – 25 millimetres wide
The inside flesh is a light sickly green
And within that flesh are some very tiny seeds
Its overall shape is almost like a plump curling ball, with a crown of blue skin where the berry flower fell.
They are so delicious , sweet and sometimes tart.
I dream of days long passed where I used to pick them from rows of bushes in the sun
I picked to all day long, with a bucket around my waist
Those glorious days , all the berries I ate
One for the bucket, one to taste.

   - SDCRS



——————————————–
Natural Wonders

So tiny
Spot just a glint of red
Meadow wild strawberries
Alpine treasures
Forest delights
Remembering them
Never leaves my head
Small as thumbnail
Little beige cap
One bite bursts so sweet
Better then any other
Summer treats
I yearn for only a
Small wild berry
To eat

So neat!

      - k



—————————–
Can do

What of the ever omnipresent ‘canned fruit’
shelved and ready
comparatively you’d think them terrible, pulpy and thready
but in the dead of winter who gives a hoot

To have halved peaches in the middle of a snow storm
sans hard indented pits, in a fit of hail
canned of a time when it was still warm
of over productive trees of summer, from fruits did sail

jared and saved
the popping top
now the sweet flavour raved
aroma, how does one, eating them, stop

the mould form from negative pit
dark pointy bit sticking in where it used to sit
Wedged and awash in juice

Yet not in a can, but a jar
Golden lid glints
vacuum sealed for date afar
on top someone the date canned prints

pealed and prepped for today
second to last, waiting its silky smooth texture to eat
The last jar of last year is set to stay
unless after the first jar I repeat…

Away from them I can not stay
my mind still feels the fuzz
even as I stroke the smooth glass of the jar
waiting for my sugary buzz

– W.B.




===============================
=============================
Day 23 NaPoWriMo 2020

Today’s prompt (optional, as always) asks you to write a poem about a particular letter of the alphabet, or perhaps, the letters that form a short word. Doesn’t “S” look sneaky and snakelike? And “W” clearly doesn’t know where it’s going! Think about the shape of the letter(s), and use that as the take-off point for your poem.

————————————

Capital A

A pyramid – ancient energy and healing
A mountain – with a snowy peak on the horizon
A pencil tip – with the written word flowing
A for the air symbol – one of the elements
A scribe compass to draw sacred geometry
A letter of great symbology
A beginning
A part
An A

   - SDCRS


—————————————-
26

Silent much too
Often
Or overpronounced
So carefully
But mistakenly
Adding S to Z
Causes trouble
At times
For me!
Surname from afar

Zigs this way
Then that
Hard to find
Being at the very
End of alphabet

Sounds like sleep
ZZZZ
Or slithering snake
zzzzz
Fried electronics
Quick zzt zzt it makes
Lving with Zed
Keeps life
Interesting!
Now I have
Dancing Zebra’s
In my head

   - K


———————————-
Oslo

Ostensibly
Seams
Likely
Ostensible

But I really don’t know that I trust a town that starts and ends with an O
For some reason it feels like it just falls out of seasonS
Perhaps it’s just me as an IndividuaL
as I am hardly an aficionadO

Oratorical
Setting
Layered
Outright

around in circles, same beginning to end, looping O! ‘O’ perhaps it is ok to be sO
but wavering undulations, ’S’curving streets, that steal away, turning back in indecisionS
and layers turn, hiding around corners of the ’L’, quite confrontationaL
repeating a being too close thereinto thereintO

Oh how I keep having Oslo circling round my mind
Steeping in my swerving, curving thoughts
Leaning through troubLing corners
Over and back again Oddly.

Oh Oslo, O
into, and out of, my mind flowS
Churning and turning a corner at a crawL
circling back yet again, just to say another helO

– W.B.


===============================
=============================

Day 22 NaPoWriMo 2020

Our prompt for the day asks you to engage with different languages and cultures through the lens of proverbs and idiomatic phrases.
Many different cultures have proverbs or phrases that have largely the same meaning, but are expressed in different ways.

Today, I’d like to challenge you to find an idiomatic phrase from a different language or culture, and use it as the jumping-off point for your poem.
Happy Writing!

————————–
Cheyenne
Énêhpoése ma’eno.

The turtle is shrouded = it’s foggy.

Mother

Crawling ever slowly
Lumber, heave
Out of ocean,sea
Onto beach
Starting new life
Ancient ritual
She,
So beautifully
Digs perfectly
Flippers that swim
Also make holes in sand
So deep
Eggs large
Precious
We:
Her other children
See clearly now
Also live
Only by Her Grace
Forever

   - k




————————–
All my.

My connection to you
All that ever was
That ever will be
The song in the wind
The rain on the asphalt
All life , and every atom
Each animal and creature
Those that came before us
And guide us
and those that guide us now
Every being
Every soul
Every tree
Every spark

I give thanks

   - SDCRS

—————————
‘Even the rabbit dreams of the moon’

Even the rabbit dreams of the moon.
even, sure footed,
hopping crater to crater.
In fields of clover, burrowed in for the night,
dreaming.

Of flying high, rocket motors to blaze a rapid rabbit trail across the sky.
Past bushy tailed clouds,
where no hare has dare gone before.
Dreams of sciences and scenes beyond its means.
Awake, or as now as it does slumber and snore.
That soon, one small hop for a rabbit, will come, as at the door it preens
will come of perseverance, will power, over the planet to tower.
Imagination woken, by a moon that waxes, wanes and gleams
Still, leaning against the cage door, as the others in the corner cower,
Daydreams that illuminate big eyes, and do not sour.

Of proverbs, idioms, rabbit writings, found by them profound
the cultural utterings to me of a slightly different sound
yet all of us look up at the same sky as we lay across the ground
to what ever meaning we may have found.

Even the rabbit dreams of the moon
dreams and ambitions, that will stay not grounded, nor swoon.

Even the rabbit dreams of the moon…

   - W.B.




===============================
=============================
Day 21 NaPoWriMo 2020

Today’s optional prompt Find a poem in a language that you don’t know, and perform a “homophonic translation” on it. What does that mean? Well, it means to try to translate the poem simply based on how it sounds.

——————

Energy interpret

O Wiraqochaya – oh weary soldier
teqse Wiraqochaya – tired soldier
wallparillaq – take rest
kamaq, churaq- eat drink
“Kay hurin pachapi – here There is res
mikhuchun uqyachun,” for the tired one
nispa.- be stoll
Churasqaykiqta-change is coming
kamasqaykiqta – on the horizon
mikhuynin yachachun papa sara – the great father
imaymaná mikhunqan – the great mother
nisqaykita kamachiq mirachiq-the quiet magic
mana muchunanpaq – life givers
mana muchuspa qanta ininanpaq – give life to eachother
ama qasachunchu -deep earth rumbles
ama chikchichunchu-as you sleep
qasilla waqaychamuy.- under a starry blanket.

   - SDCRS

————————–

ÉPILOGUE
le ciel est bleu; une
semaine; le ciel est bleu; un mois: le ciel est bleu; une année
entière:

Il regarda le ciel et le ciel était bleu.
-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-
APPEAL OF FOG

Lay seal, established beautiful unity.
Sommelier, the seal establish, upmost: the seal establishes; unites
energy

ill-regardless, the seal electrical effects, through .

   - W.B. 

All Through the Night
Welsh Lullaby

O mor siriol, gwena seren
Ar hyd y nos
I oleuo’i chwaer ddaearen
Ar hyd y nos.
Nos yw henaint pan ddaw cystudd
Ond i harddu dyn a’i hwyrddydd
Rhown ein golau gwan i’n gilydd
Ar hyd y nos.
-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-
Oh more, Gwen was serene
Aye, past she looked
Deep into the night
Cold, she wore a sweater
Yet such hard dark fell
Never did she ask more
Only straightened her back
Hardened
Rowing into gales
I am glad she is strong
Against the hard dark
Night

   - k


===============================
=============================

Day 20 NaPoWriMo 2020

Todays prompt asks you to write a poem about a handmade or homemade gift that you have received.

And whatever gift you choose, we wish you happy writing!

————————————-

Spider

Woven threads
spiral , star , life & death
sacred geometry
a delicate tapestry
hung in my door Sill
In memory
a reminder from creator
of balance

– SDCRS


——————-

Beauty

With movements nimble
Shining heart & soul
She weaves wire
Into magic
Sore from bending
Twisting, wending
Labour of love
Divinity
Her only goal
Small cuts happen
She carries ever on
Knows all will heal
She doesn’t mind
Masterpiece in the making
Unique, astounding
Amazing
What, when she is set to
Creating
I admire this woman
Dearly
My daughter
Whose fingers
Speak
Clearly
My love continues to grow
May she always know!

    - k



————————————

By Hand

Touched,
built.

Paper card
Raffia wrapped
Knotted

Surprise,
delight
within

by heart.

– W.B.


===============================
==============================

Day 19 NaPoWriMo 2020

Todays prompt challenges you to write a poem based on a “walking archive.” It’s when you go on a walk and gather up interesting thing – a flower, a strange piece of bark, a rock. This then becomes your “walking archive” – the physical instantiation of your walk. If you’re unable to get out of the house (as many of us now are), you can create a “walking archive” by wandering around your own home and gathering knick-knacks, family photos, maybe a strange spice or kitchen gadget you never use.

One you’ve finished your gathering, lay all your materials out on  a tray table, like museum specimens. Now, let your group of materials inspire your poem! You can write about just one of the things you’ve gathered, or how all of them are all linked, or even what they say about you, who chose them and brought them together.
Happy writing!

—————————

Today iso dandy

Up stagger , plop
my couch spot
Up Reach blind a cup of water -vape + phone
Drop, slump ,zonked out
Head up stagger ,sore
Reach for blankets -snore
Awake , reach for glasses
Water, phone ,vape
Walk back to bed
Gaze at the parallel head
Sleep
Awake-reach for embrace
A kiss
Glasses, my necklace, phone, vape
Coffee pot, tap , filter , freezer , coffee can
Spoon
Phone vape
Mug, sugar , coffee ,milk
Satisfactory slug
Phone , vape
Back to bed , reach for blankets ,
Warm kiss embrace
2 mugs of coffee , phone, vape
Book , another, book
A crystal , a piece of jewelry I made
A cup of water, a jug of water
A song bowl , a framed artwork hung, crystals re re aranged
A cigarette , a lighter. Phone
A cup of coffee
An acorn cap
Super glue
My necklace
My love
A hug
See you later
Phone vape
Blankets

   - SDCRS


————————
Here To There

2 sets ceiling lights
Burnt out
House is dark
Carry candles for
I cannot change things
Up so high
Old lady plights

2 ply
No 3 ply
Happy to have any tp
At all to appply
New fancy shampoo
Conditioner
From my friend
Thank you!

Clean floors!
Mop buckets
Broom
Vaccuum

Tree roots
Block drain pipes
In my yard
Kitchen sink plugs
Often
I wait
Do work slowly

Boxes & bags
From community
Events
Unpacked
Haphazardly stacked
Push them aside
Until a new day

Indoors
I wander alone
Day after day
Waiting to end lock down
Visit friends
Family
Go out about town
Soon
I muse
Soon

    - k

———————–
Scarp

Pile of tiny rocks,
Handful of fanciful pebbles gathered.
The pile slides. leaving one side scarped.

A blade of grass, broad, from a reed bed,
towering over scene diorama-ic.

Lace of large skeletonize leaf
bridges gaps between wormwood stick ’logs’
sags, unable to suspend itself.

Billowing pink of a cherry blossom becomes shrubbery.

Micro nature pulled from pockets
Slides, finds its own form

To scarp and slowly dissipate back into the world
until pocketed by passers by,
caught by a walkers eye.

   -W.B.


==================================
================================
Day 18 NaPoWriMo

Our optional prompt for the day y challenges you to write an ode to life’s small pleasures. Perhaps it’s the first sip of your morning coffee. Or finding some money in the pockets of an old jacket. Discovering a bird’s nest in a lilac bush or just looking up at the sky and watching the clouds go by.


———————–
Ain’t no drought

Ode dilly dally
A song to be sung
bout that refreshing earth fragrance
after the first rain come.

Deep breaths through me nostrils
an o’er again
I love me the smell of dirt
after the first rain come.

I be lickin the air
an ‘ feelin em drops
be dancin starry naked if
me had me own land & props.

What a glorious feeling
a scent-uals d-light!
when the first rain come down
It lifts me troubles and plights.

   - SDCRS

————————
Askance

One looks away
Eternities go by
Swivel gently
Degrees
This way
Flowing train
Landscape ever shifting
Scenes close…down
Light up
We pass by
Blur’d neon
Set the stage
Blink
There it comes again!
Weekday
Weekend
Constructs
Of the dream
Never ending

   - k

————————-
A Wayward Tulip

Oh wayward bud

Lone,
unexpected,
solitary.

found
towering,
raising

waiting
pending,
Bloom.

Oh the small season of joy,
to bring flower, seed happiness bright,
that a wayward Tulip brings

Green form coy,
to colour in the light,
into one of the finer things.

Oh opulence, the joy
of a wayward tulip bright.
That singular finding of joy in wayward things.

– W.B.

=============================
==========================
Day 17 NaPoWriMo 2020

Our prompt Today, I challenge you to write a poem that features forgotten technology. Maybe it’s a VCR, or a rotary phone. A cassette player or even a radio.

————————-
Tangled

Cords
Adaptors
Plugs
Manuals
Huge ever growing
Messy ball
Dreaded by all
Fear reigns
Cannot toss
For one will need
NEED
What was thrown away
Immediately
The box is boss!
So
There sits unused
mp3s
Webcams
Cameras
Cel phones
All old
But ever useful!
I tell myself
As I
Hide it
Under the shelf
Once again

    - k

————————–
Cathode ray tube

Our tiny tube TV
not higher than a ruler
fully equipped with a
built in VCR player
Screen high and wide
by 14 & 18 centimetres.
Our bookshelf is stacked
with with VHS cassette favourites
dreams and adventures and lessons within , come my love , I’ve got popcorn
It’s time to dive in.

   - SDCRS

————————-
On/Off

in 1985 a universal electronic control device was created,
that responded equally to all.
But being a little too egalitarian a device, fated,
came of an increased scope to any whom did call
Soon, all too easily bated
from grace did fall.

Even added to, a model plus
had not the remotest of a chance
with any, but a very few of us
would give it a second glance.

For there was little applause,
as it just confused the poor things cause.

For few any longer, willing to ’Clap on’
There are few devices even left to ‘Clap off’.
Gone is the era of ‘The Clapper’

in tribute I shall flash my lamp off, and on
the best thing about the thing was the jingle, I do not scoff!
“Clap On! Clap Off! The Clapper!”…
Click

 - W.B. 

===============================
==========================
Day 16 NaPoWriMo 2020

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.

————————
My love

Lost without you
Found within you ,within me
Unsurmountable depths & heights
I yearn for your healing , I reach for your wisdom ,I’m called to your service, to serve the greatest good.
You make a lover of me, and I love you with all my soul. Come to me , oh love, and spread over this earth.
You are my truth, without you I would be barren, the world a place of only death and despair.
You give me sight , and reason and knowledge
You give me integrity and choice and hope
My soul rejoices
My days are filled with meaning
I know my direction
And I walk steady with you
Still I may fall, but always shall I get up
As long as you my love
are in my life.

   - SDCRS



———————–
Top Drawer

Yes..
Upper most shelf
Darling!
You are so fabulous!
No-one better in any lands
I am left speechless
In my admiration
Shower of praises
Awards
Trophies
Could not
Would never
Be enough
I mean totally amazing
You are
You are!

   - k

——————————
Ode to number 10

Of all the menu to defend
I have to say the best, by far, is dish number ten.
Its long luscious noddles, broad, thick and wide, leave it not even needing a side,
for all other dishes would pale, after number ten.
Mushrooms acme to perfection,
Pictured, plated, with the picture perfect reflection.
Glowing peppers, blazing like a perfect sunset,
dash of wonderment, of a seasoning unknown, but that you will never forget.
Probably loaded with MSG, but is that even a thing anymore, as it be.
Scintillating sauce flowing far as the eye can see,
over cubes of beautiful eggplant, rubbery amethyst, of taste buds to rant.
Floating slivers of silver onions, salivary, starts a quiver.
This unmatchable take away is quite a giver.

Foresight, ahead of their time, it comes around in a square brown paper bag,
sent out straight away without the slightest sight of a hint of lag.

Yet it says number ten, but it can’t even to that aspiration of perfection even pretend.
But then what is this thing they have sent me,
Could it possibly be…
that it was item nine they sent to thine, rather then the ten I loved so dear
had they skipped up a line, I started to fear.

It had not the texture divine, but rather tasted like an old vine
It was certainly not a ten, not even a nine
it would engender no love of mine.
Oh where was my perfect ten,
to be flowing around chopsticks, in sauce swimming, diving in without end

 - W.B. 

=================================
===============================
Day 15 NaPoWriMo 2020

Our prompt for the day Today, I’d like  to challenge you to write a poem inspired by your favorite kind of music. Try to recreate the sounds and timing of a pop ballad, a jazz improvisation, or a Bach fugue. That could mean incorporating refrains, neologisms and flights of whimsy, or repeating/inverting lines or ideas – whatever your chosen musical form would seem to require!

————————–
Boom Boom Boom

Moon Lodge
Medicine Wheel
Equinox
Solstice

Heart beat
Or drum?
I lay awake listening
Boom
In synch
In tune
Men’s
High pitched Prayer
Or
Low baritone rumble
Begins
Boom
Woman singer
All the Women
This time
Boom
Everyone together
Boom
Ancestors Respect
All living beings
Boom
I drift into the dream
Smiling

    - k

————————
Track of day

Beginning

starts long… and slow…
too distracted to notice….

the day gains pace,.. FINDs rhythm in rushing
Rushing into the next half measure
TOO many things…. TOO many things to do,… TOO many THINGS to do BEFORE lunch…
The volume raises, intensity BUILDS

Running down stairs, up a flight, then dashing down again
BUILDING then falling
Pausing for breath on the landing

Sitting just for a moment,
The anticipation of the empty vase
Who has time for roses, either the smelling, or the buying of
Just because, JUST because

RUSHING through the kitchen, CLASHING cupboards and POTS
kettle, boiling DRUMS
Momentum rolling, full rolling BOIL
Crashing over the top, screaming clouds of steam PITCH
STEEPING
too soon, WEEK, too late a measure, tepid


..
.
Jutting change of pace,
into the middle of things, LUNCH does lace
RUTTING GROOVE cuts across the MIDDLE, pace, in place

Something on a sourdough, Wrapped in plastic wrap, fused at the corners
Imposible to open, imposible to rewrap
Hard to IDENTIFY, easy to MYSTIFY
A day half done, gets NO shorter..

Wrappings crumped up, cleaning crumbs, PUTTING out to trash
wiping counter, rinsing off, hanging up
mindless actions taken a thousand times.
repetitive refrains, repeats again
lulling, lulling, waiting next

Tranquil terror, a quiet triangle surrounds
note, soon to be lost to the next measure
Us, Them & ME…

Turning of sheet music
Oboes off, horns horning in
Elbows fly at the ends of bows
notes from desk fly like arrows

egress, egress, hovers somewhere ahead in anticipation
a weekend waits somewhere beyond
violin cases come out
somber realization that work will be done, another day

the furry of BUILDING an END
Away, comes the echo of notes
The last stands at the door, waiting for its opening
it’s SOULFUL EXIT!
its the SHUTTING OFF of LIGHTS
slowly dimming, DESK by DESK

Folding of sheet music…

The last sound of the closing door, the locking of the tumbler
FOOT STEEPS, trailing OFF, and OFF, & off, and off…

It’s the classical track of the day.

– W.B.


===============================
==============================
Day 14 NaPoWriMo 2020

Today’s prompt asks you to think about your own inspirations and forebears (whether literary or otherwise). Specifically, I challenge you today to write a poem that deals with the poems, poets, and other people who inspired you to write poems. These could be poems/poets/poepl that you strive to be like, or even poems, poets, and people that you strive not to be like. There are as many ways to go with this prompt as there are ways to be inspired.

————————-
Click

Locked journals
Diaries keyed
Fumbling
Secrets of children
Small youth
Thro teens
Record of all,
All one has seen
Poems
Notes
Dates & times
To have them now!
What would we find?
Inner treasures
Such special finds..
Our earnest past
Hearts & Minds

   - K

————————-
Wordsmiths Timeless Chronicle

The chair is hard
Though comparatively, soft in comparison to the desk.
These are the only lines I can compare, across non-contemporaries, that I can draw.
Lines!, Illustrations seem so much more novel than cut & Paste clip art…
Even that only takes me back so far, perhaps the hard bench,
Soft blotter covered desk…
before even, out doors, turning page of notebook, no not that kind of notebook.
Spiral bound?… String…. There is a video of how to do that.
But I should be writing
Perhaps that is the only comparable thing,
Procrastination…
So long as there be writers, there be writers block?…
I can think of nothing more to write on that at this moment.

Flickering thoughts of candle light,
as I write under Light Emitting Diodes.
They wrote of magic,
Love that lasts a lifetime when lifetimes were short.
Leather bound hardcover volumes soft, handy to prop up a hard leaning desk
Pulp, Paperback, three lovers by page 33.
Quill in hand, ink well dripping, Amateur Vs Professional
Short haiku or tome processional.

Writers of ages
lost in endless pages
Voices, voices, ringing out, the bell at the end of the line.
Editors.. Comment removed indeed, for that one line back I pine.

Sunset Sandy beach, or Tree lined drive
the perfect openings line derived, for strived.

The chair is hard, The screen cold
timeless act of words to mould.

‘Ode to a weed
as all the flowers long ago went to seed
Sitting, wooden edge rotten
the first things planted here, long forgotten
Rusting staples stain
the worn wooden grain
Nothing as noble as an oak
Through the nails poke.’

Poetry, words for strove
trailing off into the wooded Grove.
They awe, as timelessly as before
all the emotions of time into, that did pour.

   -W.B.

==============================

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.

————————

(The alternative spelling — catsup — popped up in a Jonathon Swift poem in 1730)

Free?

Carefully carrying catsup
Expanded
Tiny paper cups
Blocks to get back home
Both hands loaded
‘Work to fill our bottle’
Mom said
Ohh little
Peanut butter/jams
Yes we were childhood thieves
Full throttle
Vinegar packets
Honey mustard
Brown sugar
What a racket!
Getting
Tiny creamers
Pepper/salt
Bbq sauce
Sometimes a tp roll
It was all so messed!
Games of children
When parents get hard pressed

   - k


—————————-
I shall stand by my last word, to impress.

I shall not, allegations and charges against say ,that they invest
I shall not recriminate or waste breath of mine chest.
I shall not at them, even jest.
I shall not rest.

I shall not confess.
I shall not confess,
I shall not confess,
I shall not, under any duress.

I shall not confess,
I shall not, no matter what state of dress.
I shall not redress,
I shall not confess.

I shall not do what’s best,
I shall not confess.
I shall not flee from the West,
I shall not guess.

I shall not, no matter the mess,
I shall not confess.
I shall not hold it close to my vest,
I shall not confess.

I shall not confess,
I shall know matters regressed .
I shall not confess,
I shall not repress.

I shall not confess,
I shall never a button press,
I shall not contest,
I shall never divest.

I shall not confess,
I shall not, no matter how it might test.
I shall not be as the rest,
I shall stay abreast.

I shall not confess,
I shall not confess,
I shall not confess,
I shall not apologize, I confess.

- W.B.

============================

Day 12 NaPoWriMo 2020

For today’s prompt I’d like to challenge you to write a triolet. These eight-line poems involve repeating lines and a tight rhyme scheme.

———————————
Day

We wake,breath,weep
Smile deep
Give ‘Thanks’
Each morning’s prayer
Are we awake?
Is this sleep?
Each breath weeps
Each joy
For we Pray
Good Morning
We wake
We wake
We wake

   - k



———————————
Still water holds me
Drowning my belief in waves
Still unknown is the sea
Still water holds me
To content to flee
Held by sandy staves
Still water holds me
Drowning my belief in waves.

‘The Lake’

   - W.B.


===========================

Day 11 NaPoWriMo 2020

For todays challenge – write a poem in which one or more flowers take on specific meanings.

————————–
Roar

Memory so young
Of weeds unsung
Picking Dandylions
Roots & flowers
Bag after bag
Day-dreams wild
Fields for hours
Yellow green fingers
Smell of sunshine
Recalled
Lingers
Shook off small bugs
Chased bees away!
Home we’d trudge
Root beer
Would be reward
We’d drink treasure
Each summer day
Hooray!

– k

—————————-
Dear Flower Yellow

Mellow yellow
fellow flowers.

What things calm in a bower,
If meanings come to plants to shower,
yellow blooms, that terms cower.

-Regard – Daffodil
Thrill, on petard.

-Dandelion – Rustic oracle
Rhetorical bright yellow flash of charged pion.

-Sunflower, Dwarf – Adoration
Aberrations of hight, devourer of solar power.

-Sunflower, Tall – Haughtiness
Gaudiness, mirroring the sun, over all others to tower.

-Carnation, Yellow – Disdain
Refrain cowardly contentment at relation.

Bitter weeds,
to a root leads.
Body language that starts at a glower,
growing more open by each hour.

What meaning slander,
if just glanced at a gander.
We are more than just pretty yellow flowers to candour,
that through the garden meander,
we must leaf out and up our dander,
not to weeds to such needs to pander.

– W.B.

===================================================
Day 10 NaPoWriMo 2020

Today’s prompt is the hay(na)ku). The hay(na)ku is a variant on the haiku. A hay(na)ku consists of a three-line stanza, where the first line has one word, the second line has two words, and the third line has three words. You can write just one, or chain several together into a longer poem.

——————————-
Sunset
Day sleeps
Look other side!

Crazy
I refuse
Yes sanity hurts

Build
Bridges connecting
Souls of earth

Rape
Finds everyone?
Check your lottery!

Shoppers!
One ply
To the greedy

Look
Not away
Ignorance is peril

Rise
Past lies
Build new lives

    - K



——————————–
Bricks
Kiln fired
Red, Square, stacked

Offset
Mortared, grey
In herringbone sometimes

Rough
Irregular sized
sharp pointed corners

solid
Plane, wall
enclosing, by clay

Towering
soft, malleable
moulded, transformed, built

Home
Brick House
Straw, Wood, BRICK

– W.B.

================================================

Day 09 – NaPoWriMo 2020

Our prompt for Today, I’d like to challenge you to write a “concrete” poem – a poem in which the lines and words are organized to take a shape that reflects in some way the theme of the poem.
Your poem can take a simple shape, like a box or ball, or maybe you’ll have fun trying something more elaborate, like a poem in the shape of a Christmas tree.

—————————–





————————–

================================================
Day 08 -NaPoWriMo -2020

Our prompt for the day asks you to peruse the work of one or more twitter bots, and use a line or two, or a phrase or even a word that stands out to you, as the seed for your own poem.

——————
Still I..

You may write me down
In history
But alive or dead
Echoes the
Poetry in my head
Life- greatest mystery
My truth
Your truth
We lived

With your bitter,twisted lies
We breathed
In synch
Heart to heart
Eye to eye
Lifting each other
Or
Humanity denied
Watching souls
Laughed
Cried

You may trod me in
The very dirt
From which we come
For to where we go
Even with my breaking self
My deeper path
Holds joy
Beyond
All I ever claim
To know

But,still like dust,I’ll rise
For I see us all
As family
Humans reaching
Greater goals
A life where we
All stand beside
Honesty integrity
Love
No longer had to hide
Thank you
World
One by one
We enter/exit
Earth’s amazing ride

   - k

————————
To ripple the water

‘Suppose for a moment we are crowded around a pier, waiting for something to ripple the water.’

Here
Shakes the Ground.
Something
Ripples time, tears,
Pulles,
takes exaltations aside.
Reverberates.
Intent follows actions,
Wavers.
The quiet stillness,
falls…
in dusty drops,
Lands
unremarkably, un-notable, un-satiable.
Merges,
thin film, blends.

‘Suppose for a moment we are still crowded around a pier,

Here
Something
Pulles,
Reverberates,
Wavers,
falls,
Lands,
Merges…

‘Still Waiting for something to ripple the still water.’

Dried out tear
Wears,
Covered over footprints
Teetering,
forgetting our path,
Faltering
tide of motivation.
Unerringly,
unshadowed still water
Forges
planks underfoot onward.
Commonality
brings to edge
Flowing,
clustered crowds confined,
Outward,
reaching to ripples.

‘for a moment we are crowded around waiting for something, Suppose a pier,’

Wears,
Teetering
Faltering.
Unerringly
Forges
Commonality,
Flowing
Outward…

To ripple the water.


- W.B.


================================================

Day 07 NaPoWriMo -2020

Today our prompt is a poem based on a news article. Frankly, I understand why you might be avoiding the news lately, but this is a good opportunity to find some “weird” and poetical news stories for inspiration.

————————–

Woke in Strange Land

(life after death confirmed news article)

Overslept an eon
Woke A God/Goddess
Spirit
No longer fleshed
No more a peon
Not
Earth emeshed

All these
Souls
Around me
Shone
Stars for hearts
Wind of eyes
Truth a colour
Emanating
Radiating
Brightly
Trust flowed
Streamed like electricity
Deepest love
Rumbled
In/out/through
‘Til I could see
New choices
Potentials
Possibilities
Of universe
So I lifted up/in/off
Flew about the galaxy
Just to see
What one could be
Saw earth shining there
Made a vow
Return one millenia
To share
This dream unfolding
But will anyone
Beleive me?

   - K


—————————
The short of it

The news made me cry.
Tankers of trouble,
Normalcy downtime drain,

Why after all of it, this,
Double even what I have been though,
bane of it all,

my eyes had still stayed dry.
Till now, finally, had burst the bubble,
washing me away, taking my emotions on a journey down the lane.

Try as I might,
rubble of nagging thoughts tripping me up
grain, dark fleck of stone, highlighted by flow.

The short of it they say, is one must simply not cry over spilt milk

   - W.B. 

The news made me cry
As down the drain it did fly
Why over spilt milk?

Based on Article –> ‘Nowhere for it to go’: Dairy farmers dump their milk down the drain | CTV News

================================================

Day 06 NaPoWriMo -2020
Today’s (optional) prompt write a poem from the point of view of one person/animal/thing from Hieronymous Bosch’s famous (and famously bizarre) triptych The Garden of Earthly Delights . {https://archief.ntr.nl/tuinderlusten/en.html} or you might write from the viewpoint of Bosch himself? Very little is known about him, so there’s plenty of room for invention, embroidery, and imagination.

—————————-
Whitewashed

Board
Plain
Unconvinced
I could be anything
But that H.Bosch!
Took me
Made me
Three panels of Gosh!
From nothing I became
Triptych of fame
Uncertain of name
Crass but never blamed
Curious without answers
Death
Life
Abundance
Strife
Oddities of nature
Never seen
Actions of weird wonder
World set asunder
For all to see
Precious
Preserved
Hopefully throughout
All of eternity

   - K

————————
Skate

Tie on,
Knotted over boot.
Three holes, repeat the left.

Quivering cold,
stage, into the right boot,
quartet, feathered arrows.
Haunting hunting cold,
into I must go.

Following, exertions,
of pushing off to the sides, the icy white marks,
cloud of breath.

I fly across the sheet ice,
straight track of pursuit

Bright eyed, beak slightly agape in anticipation
The ice is perilous and brittle thin

I have dreams of prey within,
to shoulder,
Longbow, taught

To my torso winged arms wrapped tight, for warmth
streamlined, pursuit, closing in.
they wait to be caught

The heart rate quickens,
the Skate- the uncouth and disreputable man
Becomes alive, each moment he stays ahead
in honorable evasion

The chase endless…
The Pond, cluttered,
infinitely, we loop
Tomorrow, again must I strap on the skates

Tie on,
Knotted over boot.
Three holes, repeat the left.

Draw the long bow
take aim
The flight of arrows
too soon to fall short

For If I have nothing left to pursue
am I any longer the pursuer…
This chase gives us each life.

We must skate
Each to its own nature.

– W.B.

==========================================

Day 05 NaPoWriMo -2020

Our prompt for today is to use/do all of the following in the same poem. Of course,  if you can’t fit all twenty projects into your poem, or a few of them get your poem going, that is just fine too!

1   Begin the poem with a metaphor.
2   Say something specific but utterly preposterous.
3   Use at least one image for each of the five senses, either in succession or scattered randomly throughout the poem.
4   Use one example of synesthesia (mixing the senses).
5   Use the proper name of a person and the proper name of a place.
6   Contradict something you said earlier in the poem.
7   Change direction or digress from the last thing you said.
8   Use a word (slang?) you’ve never seen in a poem.
9   Use an example of false cause-effect logic.
10  Use a piece of talk you’ve actually heard (preferably in dialect and/or which you don’t understand).
11  Create a metaphor using the following construction: “The (adjective) (concrete noun) of (abstract noun) . . .”
12  Use an image in such a way as to reverse its usual associative qualities.
13  Make the persona or character in the poem do something he or she could not do in “real life.”
14  Refer to yourself by nickname and in the third person.
15  Write in the future tense, such that part of the poem seems to be a prediction.
16  Modify a noun with an unlikely adjective.
17  Make a declarative assertion that sounds convincing but that finally makes no sense.
18  Use a phrase from a language other than English.
19  Make a non-human object say or do something human (personification).
20  Close the poem with a vivid image that makes no statement, but that “echoes” an image from earlier in the poem.

Happy writing!

———————–
Yesterday

Her smile broke ground like an emerging flower
Our whole planet knew peace that day
I smelled purple & just knew you were close by
Great Mystery I give Thanks
Here in Heaven
The tears that dropped watered the roots
But the salt needed filtering slowly
Existence was always micromillesecondal
They loved deeply but still all was not well
Blue, his eyes spoke to me
Stay where your’e at I will come where your’e to!
The airways birthed life of the heart
The days light brought only darkness
Humbled they flew, jumping mountains
He said ‘Then how they knew the wrath of Kath’
I saw clear skies, heard new babies sighing happily
All would be well, very well
Today the crows mewed like cats
What’s up with that?
Reached out, caressed the air & was comforted
Living forever, still we all died
My delicious pillow called my name-Shhh I told it!

उन पर ध्यान मत दीजिये जो आपकी पीठ पीछे बात करते है,
इसका सीधा सा अर्थ है आप उनसे दो कदम आगे है!

Hindi quote-‘Do not pay attention to those who talk behind your back,
It simply means that you are two steps ahead of them!

In beautiful technicolours we rise while remain stationary

   - K

———————–
Insanity, but whom was keeping score of this bore?

The Grass sauntered off the field
The game all but long over, the people having exercised their rights to exit via three lefts.
Looking back ,the scent of red in the red banners, with its bright texture was a bitter sight to hear about, It almost left one staggered or, reeled.
Its grid of floorboard joints exposed, The bare field sat banner-less.

One gets tiered of being underfoot, trodden upon.
The Liquid door faithfully yielded, solidly slamming without a sound
as the Grass stormed on until the calm anger was gone,
Tender windows passed partially reflected acrimony from all around.

Crowded after game dressing room, Turning on the lights brought darkness,
‘Ayy, ye Bark, ney net no matter moor then yoor overbite, er bit, ney goood ta mention bed orthodontics. Cause in as indelance as soo nootch afair of you know no naciance matter of little importance en too find too much cracker matter of do think, know what Im meaning?’ …. … .. . . . . .
. . .. … …. ……. Dumfounded at the starkness
Unable to weed out understanding of words un-banding, unfounded and un-gleaning

Turning away
From, or back to, loyalties, impartialities, and blind loyalties
leaving to not stay
staying for the mindlessness, at the end of the day, escalating royalties

There was no home team in deep space, it was just a metaphysical argument that saturated the stands, along with the usual ‘how do you know the gravity is the same as at home’ and Whoms home would you set it to’?
‘Yo, Rhyme that!’
Half time, Locker room, the same old, same old, half the galaxy through
Rivalry, competition, ego and the usual unending spat

If the shoe fits, It’s not you, and maybe one really should go find a pair of boots
Cleats perhaps, steal toe?
For the salesmen are all old coots
What about deep space sport can they really know!

Of Jasper Okra, From Jupiter
Lead charger
They say he cheated on his exams, as in no way could he be worldly stupider
only his ego was, than his points tally, larger

Grassy was going to go insane
why did he stay
if there wasn’t anything more here for him to gain
it was all to do, just for the rest of the game there for him to lay.

The Whole game was pointless! There was simply not point in coming to watch these two teams play,
well other that the entertainment, challenge and need to try ands second-guess the outcome and micromanage things you had no control over or held of no clout
This was what filled the bleachers at then end of the day
and it could hardly be claimed pointless, as it was scored by points for the bout

Tomorrow coming an hour late right now,
In twenty minutes would be the second quarter,
Five after that will be the opening somehow
Thirty three later the awards ceremony, 5-3 for the Blues, in standard order

twenty two after that the end would start.
This all assumes that we will hold warp factor Y
Why, the real X factor would be where we managed the Zed threshold at heart.
We had to hold power as no one would ever settle for a tie!

The sight of the ebony bounded green lit scoreboard again starting up
Drew down the smell of rectangular trays hawked foods synthetic,
hearing the droll monotone calls from the players bench shouting, hands cupped
in bad bitter taste, just another forceful touch of the pathetic.

Crossing through space, motivation turfed, Grassy lay there in mirth
At this crazy game, flying through space, all but worthless
one team fighting the other, Egos Vs
The empty shadows of the arena, fading smell of red, in vivid textures, another fifty thousand lightyears into space, waiting for the fifth of four intermissions, turf-less.


– W.B.

===================================================

Day 04 -NaPoWriMo -2020

Our prompt for the day asks you to write a poem based on an image from a dream. We don’t always remember our dreams, but images or ideas from them often stick with us for a very long time.

——————–

Drummers In The Sky

This sleep I had
Woke me deep
I felt
Whole planet panicked,
Mourned
Our global combined stress
Seeped, weeped
Build this huge glob
Of our souls
Collected aura
That then
Broke off from the Earth
Formed itself into spirit
Representing
Of us all
Our human hearts
Joined a circle
Spirit Elders
In @ dusky sky
BOOM The loudest sound
Uttered forth
In a flash
More then lightning
Here
All was transformed
Was it
Death?
Life?

– K

——————–
Rut

The canyon, jagged angles, smoothed off, yet still rough,
Angles jutting out, running down the length.
sitting there in the shade, as away mid day sun fell
cold walls tower in strength
carved into stone tough

I can’t say if I am coming or going
it just goes on, into the distance
Lines come together, lines diverge
but never seem to merge
the walls go on in resistance
with no end showing

the strip of sky flies overhead
The world lies, out of sight, beyond
this liner maze
inside a calmness lays
Where cool air sinks to pond
To where ever it is I am to be lead

The flow of thought
river of subconsciousness
worn into my mind
into dreams, its way to find.
Tunnelling through dry heated deserts of maliciousness
To bring needed escape, sought.

– W.B.

===================================================

Day 03 Prompt NaPoWriMo -2020

Today’s prompt asks you to make use of our resource for the day (Rhymezone Web site ).

First, make a list of ten words. You can generate this list however you’d like – pull a book off the shelf and find ten words you like, name ten things you can see from where you’re sitting, etc.

Now, for each word, use Rhymezone to identify two to four similar-sounding or rhyming words. For example, if my word is “salt,” my similar words might be “belt,” “silt,” “sailed,” and “sell-out.”

Once you’ve assembled your complete list, work on writing a poem using your new “word bank.” You don’t have to use every word, of course, but try to play as much with sound as possible, repeating sounds and echoing back to others using your rhyming and similar words.

—————————-

Sans Souvenir

A lucky plucky Albatross came across a ducky Caravan,
from the ocean gloss, just a span and a toss.
All mucky and covered in green putty sea moss.

Sitting on tan sand,
In long refuge from Deluge,
and to the collective breeze
subjective to decrees, yet no pleas.
Would refuse to churn a cloud,
to form from astern, a rain to dilute,
only to see, to high mountain screes, every raindrop always flees.

Prairie’s tarries snares, to green squares, morning dew on chairs,
but over the seas beach only a hot sun flares, rays descending by stairs
to dually delude and denude, that any moisture might ever extrude or exude.
Next to ferries to skerries,
Like little UV fairies, to scan and burn flan flesh, to the colour of ripe Strawberries

Effective of directive perspective to yearn,
how of holes in sky to durn, to be able to learn to retard,
to be on the vanguard of how, of unwanted things, to discard.
Able to return to picturesque unflappable card of verdant image of the picture postcard
taken, once, in its prime, from high above on the Boulevard.

   - W.B.
...........
Word bank --->

Albatross 
	-across -gloss -toss -sea moss
Lucky
	-mucky -plucky -putty -ducky 
Boulevard 
	-card -discard -vanguard -postcard
Effective 
	-collective -directive -subjective -perspective
Learn 
	-yearn -durn -churn -stern
Decrees
	-breeze -screes -pleas -flees
Strawberries
	-prairie's -tarries -skerries -ferries -fairies
Stairs
	-chairs -flares -snares -squares
Deluge
	-refuge -refuse -dilute -delude -dually
Caravan
	-scan -span -tan -flan
..........

———————————-

Pardon?

Mimosa trees with rosaries
We bowed, we vowed
Paid notaries
Meanwhile sphinx blinks
Together we weather
Following moot routes
Heading somewhere?
Eyes seek a spare
Any variation
Ah vexation
No train at station
Even after I’d paid
A reading of palmistry
Her finger doodled
Feudal across my hand
Searching my inner nation
Climbing high branches
So high up
One cannot see

   - k

================================================

Day 02 NaPoWriMo-2020

Our prompt for the day asks you to write a poem about a specific place —  a particular house or store or school or office. Try to incorporate concrete details, like street names, distances (“three and a half blocks from the post office”), the types of trees or flowers, the colour of the shirts on the people you remember there. Little details like this can really help the reader imagine not only the place, but its mood – and can take your poem to weird and wild places.

——————–


Remember 9

Meadow straw
Berries, tiny
Bursting such
Sweetness
Each more treasure
Then gold
Flash of red tint
Among short grasses
A cherished afternoon
When country
Youth’s diamonds
Yearly
Unfold

We’d walk so carefully
Slowly
Sun drenched
Eyes happily scanning
Mother earth’s colours
Of summer
Above & beneath us
Gently drinking
Softest of fresh Alpine air
My little Sister
June
Memory forever
Together
Her hand in mine.
Tell me…

What childhood
Great memory
Do you find?

– K

——————–

Station


Tin Corners, at the folded standing seams, just rusting here and there,
where scratched, dented.
Or at the dimpled meeting of the occasional Philips screw cross crossing.
The vertical streak of rust running down.


The horizontal stripe,
to add interest to the otherwise faded dull siding of a dull building.


The flat roof, of a tin utilitarian box,
Sided, bottom third white,
middle third an off white freight,
a sort of cream, the top again white,
this time less faded and so a little more bright,
a colour scheme of which no one ever would dream.


The glass sliding door to save space.
Opening only occasionally in the sea air to let pass,
White shirt, dated collar, the old logo, dark slacks of someone with no one, for to pump gas.


Circling now the centred tin sided building,
sweeping the barge deck of the floating station,
just jutting out from the building by a meter and a half,
around the edge,
swept over the edge and into the still waters today.


Cleaning of two square shaped old pumps, that at no one in the last few hours stopped to pay.
Before returning through the sliding door
to await more boats, fuel to pour.


We watch the station, as it sits across Mosquito Creak,
in all its lack of presence, meek.


From a park, short walk down from Bewicke Avenue,
past the fenced off parking lot of the Burrard Yacht club,
with its ugly chain link fence,
Holding back dark green, olive leaved hedges.

Down the other side, the beauty of the Cedar split rail fence framing the water.
Next to the three cold metal, power-coated bright red Adarandock chairs, and one bench
lays the view, wedged between two marinas
off the end of the breakwaters,
rows of boats flank.
But in the center floats the station, barely labelled,
nudged by old messy, abandoned dockwork un-fabled,
some half submerged, yet not looking too unstable.
Tethered to docks lining back up to breakwater,
running to shore.
It blends in there, too easy to ignore.
Connected, unevenly by narrow planking
Floating in the distance
blending into the background with little resistance


In the time it has take to eat a lunch,
clean the sandwich crumbs of sourdough,
All the little nothing details,
so often overlooked,
have come alive in my mind
into a story I find.
Telling, of an old boat station,
into an odd space, oddly crooked
I find myself to it, an oddly strange relation.

– W.B.

===================================================

Day 01 Prompt NaPoWriMo -2020

Todays prompt, which deals with metaphors!
Today I’d like to challenge you to write a self-portrait poem in which you make a specific action a metaphor for your life – one that typically isn’t done all that often, or only in specific circumstances. For example, bowling, or shopping for socks, or shoveling snow, or teaching a child to tie its shoes.

Happy writing!

————————-

Kindling the Fire

Springs murmurs wake moist soil
Where Sophia’s seed laid sleeping
White roots break brown wrapper shell
As her responding belly begins to swell
I wonder as I observe her unfurl,
Was she afraid as she entered the yawning dark?
Did she interrogate the lingering night?
Resent the bitter wintertime cold?
And was she comforted, obtaining refuge in the earth
Dreaming all the while, of a verdant and fecund rebirth.

– Tree

————————–

Miracle
Abused
Overused
Taken for granted
Polluted
Ownership convoluted
Need solutions
Not rantings
A better way
To grow
Mono crop plantings
We come to see now
More precious then gold
Wars fought
To buy it-be sold
Moves undergound
Can be 10,000
Years oldMen learn not
It has memory
Magic
We only now see
Much more respect
For H2O
I plead
We need new laws
Re-think it
No life least
We drink it

– K

————————-
The Lanyard

Within a loop is to pull.
Pulling against itself,
Binding within.
Caught on its own conflicts,
but first, a needle to be thread.
The fine eye blinks every time,
the opening unseen, the opportunity missed.
A premature pulling, closing off,
the conflict of push verses pull,
The secure connection of solid webbing, waiting on this tiny thread.
The whole, waiting on a start,
the end, unfinish-able until.
Loops around again,
the knotting of nerves, frustrations at the unbound.
The infinite loop, needing to be never-endingly caught
The simple act of turning it into itself
and pulling through.

   - W.B. 

==================================================
Day 00 Prompt
Early-bird prompt, I’d like to invite you to write a poem about your favourite bird.


Beached on branches, but moment
Bleached white breast, capped black
eyes dart
Branch to branch
Plump form follows
calls from perch to window
Pauses a moment
Gone before the echo fades
Chickadee, dee, dee…..

   - W.B. 

=========================

=========================

Cedar Bark Poets Poetry Meeting-Dec14th

It’s Cedar Bark Poetry night again (the second Saturday of the month)

Come join us for a small fun relaxing get together.
Read, Write, or just listen to a bit of poetry
December 14th
6:30PM- 8:30PM
at the Newton Wave pool Room #1

Hope to see you there

 - the Cedar Bark Poets

CedarBarkPoets: Book# 34 ‘Poets & Fall’

And here is Poetry Book 34 ‘Poets & Fall’  from the Cedar Bark Poets community.


The theme for the next Poetry Book(#35) will be
‘ Landscapes & Vision ‘
Due by November 30th
Sent your Poems to [email protected]




Enjoy

Friends of the Grove presents free pop up public art button making in the Newton Grove

Wednesday July 24th 3:00-6:00pm in the Newton Grove

Come make free tin buttons with Friends of the Grove! You can bring artwork or design something at art table! 2-3 buttons per person!

Hope to see you there

– Friends of the Newton Grove

CedarBarkPoets: Book# 32 ‘Tables & Happiness’

CedarBarkPoets: Book# 32 ‘Tables & Happiness’

And now, heres Poetry Book Number 32 ‘Tables & Happiness’

Thank you to all the people that sent in poems, or stoped by the Espreso cafe to take part in Aprils ’ Pay with a poem.

-The Cedar Bark Poets

——-

The theme for the next Poetry Book(#33) will be

‘ Fireworks & Phases ‘

Due by July 31st

Sent your Poems to

[email protected]

——-

Having fun, strengthening our neighbourhood, and hoping you'll join us!