Category Archives: My Poetry

Day Nine Prompt from NaPoWriMo.net

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NaPoWriMo

https://www.napowrimo.net

“And now for our (optional) daily prompt! Because it’s a Saturday, I thought I’d try a prompt that asks you to write in a specific form – the nonet! A nonet has nine lines. The first line has nine syllables, the second has eight, and so on until you get to the last line, which has just one syllable.”

I admit, I did not prep well for restarting this site. They’ve made changes and I have not yet found how to single space, although occasionally it works but mostly it doesn’t. I haven’t figured out yet how to add illustrations either. Please bear with me. For this prompt, something that has been on my mind since watching the news this week and all the rush to ban abortions. I love how all the male politicians think they should have sway over women’s bodies. Or how the rush to uphold sanctity of life with one law, while supporting a gun lobby that sees mass shootings every single week. This, in response to the prompt, is a double “nonet”.

Hypocrisy is Alive and Well in America

For the first time in thirty years, we

celebrate Easter, Passover

and Ramadan together

Same week that the States passed

laws to uphold life.

Ban abortions.

Still okay

to shoot.

So?

What reverence for life includes guns?

In the news reports, mass shootings.

In the news, a mosque attack.

How do these uphold life?

Hypocritical.

save one life

Even as they

destroy

more.

Carol A. Stephen

April 17, 2022

Day Six Ezra’s Garden

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“Today, I’d like to challenge you to write a variation of an acrostic poem. But rather than spelling out a word with the first letters of each line, I’d like you to write a poem that reproduces a phrase with the first words of each line. Perhaps you could write a poem in which the first words of each line, read together, reproduce a treasured line of poetry? You could even try using a newspaper headline or something from a magazine article. Whatever you choose, I hope you enjoy this prompt.”

For today’s prompt, I chose the last line from Ezra Pound’s In a Station of the Metro

https://poets.org/poem/station-metro

Ezra’s Garden

Petals, the colour of rubies from the explorer rose, fall

on the grass along the back fence,

a carpet of red in a world of green. Last night’s rain

wet everything in the garden, turning the branches

black and glistening. Over the gate, a single

bough, heavy with blooms bows at the end of its performance.

Carol A. Stephen,

April 6, 2022

Day Five Paul Bunyan

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On April 5, 2022

Day 5 prompt from NaPoWriMo.net https://www.napowrimo.net

…”Today, I’d like to challenge you to write a poem about a mythical person or creature doing something unusual – or at least something that seems unusual in relation to that person/creature. For example, what does Hercules do when he loses a sock in the dryer? If a mermaid wants to pick up rock-climbing as a hobby, how does she do that? What happens when a mountain troll makes pancakes?”

Paul Bunyan

Every day, Paul walks the half mile

to the barn, greets Babe, the blue

ox who shares his mythic story.

The two stand tall, dwarf us

all. They say that he was seven feet 

in stocking toes, but who knows?

Was he from Quebec? Who the heck

knows, his first mention, Beaverton, Michigan,

though some proclaim his California fame.

And when did Babe, the Blue Ox appear?

Whatever the case, her fate, I fear, to stand forever

in Minnesota. I bet she doesn’t give one iota.

Ten thousand lakes they say he made,

and carved the Grand Canyon too.

And piled up stones to create Mount Hood.

Seems a mythical lumberjack thing to do.

He’s even mentioned by Stephen King

in the novel, It, he’s a regular thing.

Carol A. Stephen

April 5, 2022

A Pause in the Poems, Sorry!

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I’m scheduled for surgery Thursday morning, (that’s tomorrow!) and that has required a few unexpected appointments to make sure everything is a go. As far as I know, I will have local anaesthetic, and a sedative to keep me calm, but not asleep. Anyway, that is what I am hoping for!

They will take a vein in my arm and join it to the artery to make what I guess you might call a “supervein.” My term, not theirs! They call it an A-V fistula. I’m a bit nervous, to say the least, but it’s something I need to do.

But if you’ve followed me in previous NaPoWriMo’s (is that a word?) you know that sometimes I can write three poems in a day. I think one year, quite awhile ago, I was so far behind I wrote 15. Were they good poems? Ha. Maybe. Maybe not so much.

All this to say, the rest of the poems are coming, as long as my typing muscles co-operate. It may take a bit to convince them to do that.