Posts Tagged PAD 2013
My PAD Was Super Bad
An apology doesn’t seem necessary, but sometimes I like to work at explaining my failures. I thought the Writer’s Digest Poem a Day effort for National Poetry Month would be a good thing for me to join in on, but I should have considered it more carefully. (I wanted to understand why some things get a day, some a week, and then poetry gets a month. Puppies only get one day, and if I were in charge, I’d give puppies a whole month and strip poetry down to one day with the side benefit of only needing to write one poem each year in celebration; however, I think it’s not that way because puppies don’t need much help in being lovable, but poetry sure does.)
I didn’t start PAD until the fourth day, clearly demonstrating my propensity for procrastination, but I thought no problem, Read the rest of this entry »
Art in Writing
PAD day 13 instructed us to write a comparison poem of some type.
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Art in Writing
Art’s not puerile, but childhood
is fair, not the same old thing,
not dual combinations of words
heard thousands of times, not
preachy but will often teach, will
lighten the world we’re in with
truth, something you might read
twice or more, where art will
say a thousand different things
on a thousand different reads,
where you may need to think
and think hard, but when
not art, you’re expected not
to think, not to question, not to
slow down, so how to enjoy?
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Brain Broke
A day late again, but here is my piece for PAD day 12 which was to be a piece about the word broke.
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Brain Broke
Not as broke as I was
in the early days. Broke
is what we use for a bank
account or a car, but for me,
broke was my brain.
There are days, nothing
but broke, and when I’m
broke all the way, I cry
hard, and the blubbery
actions help relieve me.
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In Case You Didn’t Know
A day late, and always short on dollars, here’s my shot at PAD 11, a challenge to write a poem involving the phrase “In case…”
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In Case You Didn’t Know
The lady in front of you, crawling,
intensely tight, lacking a gas pedal
is not attempting to make you late
for work. She had eye surgery two
weeks ago, and not one of her four
children was willing to take her
to the doctor today, that the boy
presently trudging across the bridge,
looking up as if looking for a space-
ship is not contemplating suicide
by jumping off the bridge as you have
concluded, mostly because you
have never seen someone walk
across that bridge and he does look
spaced and gone from this world,
that when you are thinking you
are a failure, you might be wrong,
that when you also feel gone from
this world, you are here, and some
slice of fucking goodness makes
you persist in this increasingly
futile activity, that sometimes, no
matter how hateful some may seem,
sometimes, some people like you,
that they are battling demons and
they grip tightly to prevent you from
seeing this in them, but you don’t
talk and no one talks to you,
so in case you didn’t know, you are
not alone, but life is the loneliest
plot created by those before us.
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What Is Wrong at this Moment Right Now
PAD 10 requires a poem about suffering, which I’ve never done before, but I decided to craft a Cinquain.
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What Is Wrong at this Moment Right Now
Despair,
I brew alone,
but when I don’t fight back,
when I ask myself what’s wrong now,
Carl’s fine.
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Me and the Woolly Black Bear
Today’s PAD prompt, in honor of two for Tuesday, was to write a poem about the hunter or the hunted or both.
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Me and the Woolly Black Bear
He is my rear shadow, the woolly
black bear. He doesn’t have
a name, and shadow because he
spends his time coming
after me, always getting close,
but not killing me. A few times
were close. I almost surrendered.
He’d love to eat me. He wouldn’t wait
to cook me. He’s fierce, and the winds
from his claws cause my hair
to fly like when I’m on a motorcycle
without a helmet, and a helmet
would be good when he’s
after me. I know it’s his nature,
but his battering and clawing
create tremendous distress. We
treat it with medicine, but my prayers
go unanswered, for I wish
the medicine would kill the woolly
black bear. I see a kind
lady, a doctor who specializes
in people who are traumatized
by these black bears,
and when I am with her, I
become the hunter, and
very rarely, I imagine I have
killed my tormenter, but it’s
never true, he’s never dead,
so I’ve learned not to celebrate
when it seems he’s dead because
his absences are far too short. I
am hunted, but I try to use
my injuries to help
others and sometimes, I forget
about my woolly black bear. Though
I know better, during these times,
for short spats of time, I celebrate
his absence and love the world.
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Lessons on Madness and Flow
Lessons on Madness and Flow
Rolling back, go gentle,
pray with the blackbirds
as they scatter to the soft
trees, trees bending graciously
with bright air, and remember
the leaves are moving for you,
so move with them and when
particles of evil come after you
fast and hard, duck down on a
slight bend and feel the energy
as yours, and if someone greets
you, smile at the beauty of being
there and remember those knives
from people who don’t know you
are false, and dig with integrity
to live as you wish, and this I tell
myself, each day, trying to be
the man I want to be someday.
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Seven Minutes of Healing
Today’s challenge for PAD 2013 was to write a “sevenling,” which is a poem with two tercets, which may be unrelated followed by a single punch line.
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Seven Minutes of Healing
Soft colors and faces warm the room,
and plunked, I’m in a corner, swamped
by sympathetic but foreign personalities.
Linda held the room to a low energy,
allowing our insides to come outside,
making our hot souls melt the evils.
I cried, and I wasted gobs of Kleenex.
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Marked Measures of Death’s March
The Poem a Day challenge today was to write a piece about the word “post.”
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Marked Measures of Death’s March
Walking what I remember to be
desert roads, cloudy but paved,
layers of dust bracketing charcoal,
and as a child, remembering ranch
fences, posts at regular intervals,
counting time and space in a day
broken by too many micro moments
of doubt. The posts work, providing
false assurance, brokering chunks
of lanky steps, and I’m done, remembering
now, an emptiness, ripping pains, merely
a prologue to destitute soaking old, blue
nerves on this miserable leather couch.
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Against the Minuses
This is my poem for Day 5 of the PAD 2013 challenge. I’m having fun writing more than I have been and forcing my editor to sit on the back bench instead of guarding the front gate.
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The work was a drag, but the music,
a plus. Tornadoes of gossip, wiped
by Mahler or the trinkly angels
of Beethoven’s Seventh. The edits,
the critics, but cubicle walls, a plus.
Crystal, a plus, she floated through
the hallways, another angel, dainty
with perfect shapes and glorious smiles
with reddish hair. The windows exposed
dystopian architecture, but the angles,
a plus, forging desperate thinking, clever
gimmicks. The carpet, not so staid,
with patterns of light dark medium dark
light, a plus, and, the biggest plus, three
four five four three, ending with two threes;
and march to fives, a plus when permeated
with a need to meditate, need to soften the blows
of the day, the battering of pride, which perhaps
should be gone, where we keep our heads down
so we don’t know about being disregarded,
and that’s a plus.
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