A man making candles out of beeswax

Purify the wax, rid it of the dross,
melt it, all the while knowing its power
to burn if not handled with care.

Wick the molds, fill the molds, cool the molds,
remove the candles, inspect them, all the while
knowing that your mistakes are never permanent.

Remelt, remold, reform once more.

Now you see your words wax and wane
and wax again and again on the page,
all the while knowing their impermanence.

The search, the quest, the process. The
intricate extended process.
Rebelliousness of inner hopes.

 
 

Today’s Impromptu prompt from Matt Trease asked us to write an astrological self-portrait by first creating a natal chart and then using the degree data from that chart to determine symbolic information related to the specific details of our birth. The challenge was to create a poem using, or inspired by the language found in this information. Matt provided two sites to help us interpret the symbols: Inside Degrees by Elias Lonsdale and The Degrees of the Zodiac and the Sabian Symbols by Dane Rudhyar. The lines in italics in my poem are taken directly from these sources.

Today’s Impromptu prompt was from Kristina Marie Darling:

First, choose a text by another writer. This can be anything from a Victorian novel to a field guide, an epic poem, a Shakespeare play, or a computer manual. Read through it carefully and consider the following question: What has been buried in so much other language? Then, by removing portions of the source text, your task will be to excavate what has been obscured by narrative, exposition, rhetoric, etc. There are many possibilities for excavating pieces of language from a text. You may choose to bring to light beauty, violence, a particular image that appears and reappears, or anything else that risks being lost.

My text, published through the Gutenberg Project, is from the Preface to The First Six Books of the Elements of Euclid by John Casey and Euclid, 1885.

 

a want much felt
at the present day
a necessity to understand
reality, considerably altered,
thoroughly revised
and greatly enlarged
 
 

 
 
The NaPoWriMo prompt for today (April 10, 2016) asked us to create a poem using the spines of books with one title per line. Here is mine:

Savor

California hiking.

One good turn

down the Yellow Brick Road.

Here and now,

all roads are good.

 
 

Life interred in suburban somnolence
and daring to dream of rebirth.
An insistent yearning, a shadowy itch,
a remolding, a breathless rush
into an unknown world.
“Do you hear yourself?” I ask.
I wait for my own voice,
but a voice reborn
illuminating life with her fireworks.

Come as you are or as you know you want to be.
 
 

Today’s Impromptu prompt is from Simone Meunch who challenged us to write a biographical cento sourced from lines of our own poetry. It was great fun to review poems back to January, 2015 to see where I’ve been and dream about where I might be going.
 
   

 

 
 
Today’s challenge at NaPoWriMo is to write a poem about, or inspired by, food. My response is a non-traditional haiku. [Photo by James Brooks, “Coffee Halibut“]

 
 
grit of the spice rub

between raw flesh and fingers

sharp taste in the feel

 

 

On Blacktail Mountain
in Navajo winter,
the desert king surveys
the jubilee bush, its
scaly bark camouflages
the Georgia rattlesnake
(black diamond yellow-belly)
the ancient enemy, patient
under golden honey starlight
and early moonbeam glow.

 

This poem was written for Day Five on the NaPoWriMo 2016 poem in which we were challenged to peruse heirloom seed catalogues to find interesting varietal names to use as inspiration for a poem. Although it’s hard to believe, every italicized word or phrase here is the name of a variety of watermelon, one variety per line.
 
 

Today’s Found Poetry Review Impromptu Prompt from Noah Eli Gordon was actually a series of prompts, most of which I found impossibly complicated or simply undoable.  However, the idea of a modern sonnet was appealing, given the following instructions:

Write a sonnet in the modern key:

Line 1: narrate action, include at least two nouns
Line 2: ask a question without using “I”
Line 3: make a statement without saying “I”
Line 4: now say “I” in another statement
Line 5: use a fragment
Line 6: narrate another action, include one of the nouns from line 1
Line 7: ask a question using “I”
Line 8: use a fragment that
Line 9: spills into the next line
Line 10: now say “I” and include the other noun from line 1
Line 11: answer your first question
Line 12: make a statement that is in total opposition to line 3
Line 13: combine phrases from lines 5 and 8 here
Line 14: answer your second question

In the spirit of found poetry, I decided to use vocabulary from a theater review in today’s New York Times;  Brantley, Ben “Middle-Aged Mortals Squinting at the Abyss,” New York Times, 04/06/16, p. C2.
 
 
Middle-aged mortals squint at the abyss.
When does dis-ease overtake our days?
Let’s sing the fragmented melody of the moment.
I’ll bury the past in bits and pieces.
Life interred in suburban somnolence
The abyss looms largest at four AM.
When I squint can you still see me?
From dream-laced moments of darkness
to frigid insomniac nights
I join with mortals in sleepless stasis.
Dis-ease confronts us with the sunrise
We’ll no longer sing; our melodies muted.
Interred once more in dream-laced darkness.
Squinting, I feel myself disappear.
 
 

 

 

I am doubling up today on my NaPoWriMo 2016 and FPR Impromptu prompts.  NaPoWriMo’s challenge: “write a poem in which you explore what you think is the cruelest month, and why.”  Impromptu #4 asks us to make a “word block” by selecting a word and then generating related words that share one or more letters with that word.  Technically, I think the words in the word block should intersect with one another and that the NaPoWriMo poem requires a bit more “why,” but it’s 11:10 PM on April 4 and this is what I have — so far.

 
 
 

 
 
I confess that I had no idea what to do here, but I decided to concentrate my visual attention on the word “VISPO,” through the process described in the April 3, 2016 Impromptu challenge and this is what I got.

eyes drawn by increasing roundness
as letters progress along the page
to a fecund, pregnant end

propelled ahead to await
the unseen wor(l)d to come
 
 
 

Yesterday, my mother’s portrait (you know
the one with the polyester paisley shirt, its red
clashing with the cheap silk tiger lilies over
her right shoulder?) fell off its hook and onto
the floor with a bang. The photo, encased in thin
metal, face down on the carpet, the glass cracked
and unsalvageable. I never liked that frame.

Sunlight penetrates leftover rain clouds.
Doors slam upstairs as cool spring breezes
blow through open windows “airing out the house”
as mother always said we should. The smile in that
photo, shy and full of apology, always concerned
lest offense be taken. Now I want to surround that smile
with something that suits it. Perhaps she did too.
 
 
This poem was written for the NaPoWriMo challenge for 04/02/16 in which we were asked to write a family portrait.