Category Archives: NaPoWriMo

Poetry Superhighway 2015 Day 7 Old Timey Snake Gods

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Day 7 poetry prompt from Poetry Super Highway reads:  Find the book closest to your immediate location. Open to page 45. Go to the fourth sentence on the page. The first six words are the first line of your poem.
GO!  Submitted by Emily Vieweg.

I’ve had a book on my desk awhile, waiting for mye to write some ancestor poems, and that is my source text. The first six words of sentence 4, page 45: Religious prejudice also survived, although less
The source: Life Below Stairs in the 20th Century, Pamela Horn, 2001, 2003 Sutton Publishing

So, religion can be a difficult subject at the best of times. I just let the words take me where they wanted to go. When I found myself writing less formally, I made a couple of edits to the first few lines but other than that, first draft here.

Old Timey Snake Gods

Religious prejudice has also survived, although less
commonly among carnivores. Cats tolerate a lot
long as they got a warm spot to curl them tails around.
Consider theyselves top deities anyways.
’Specially them blue-eyed Siamese—
when they’s not actin’ like pups.

Dogs still howl at the same moon as mother coyote
and brother wolf. Get enough of ‘em together,
they’d holler the silver lady right down to Earth.

It’s the Animalia chordata, the reptilians. They’re
bad for it, still pointin’ their forked tongues, still the hiss and
gossip about the fallin’-out from the Garden of Eden.

Snakes. Not like us. You look at ‘em sideways and
they does their own sidewindin’ dance. Or squeezin’ the life outta
some poor little rat not quick enough leavin’ the nest.

One night I seed ‘em all wound round each other
hissin’ and a windin’, lordy, lordy, make yer blood
run cold as their own.

I betcha when we ain’t lookin’, they’s walkin’ around
tall on their rattles and wearin’ some fancy snake-god clothes.
I prayed on it the once, but nothin’s changed much. We still got
snakes hereabouts. Windin’ and a hissin’. Watch yer step out here.

Carol A. Stephen
April 7, 2015


Snakes Black

Snakes Black (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

NaPoWriMo 2015 Day 7 Blanketed

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napo2015button2

Today’s prompt:

(optional!) prompt: keeping to the theme of poetry’s value, Wallace Stevens famously wrote that “money is a kind of poetry.” So today, I challenge you to write about money! It could be about not having enough, having too much (a nice kind of problem to have), the smell, or feel, or sensory aspects of money. It could also just be a poem about how we decide what has value or worth.

 

My poem is an ekphrastic poem, based on a satirical cartoon by Pawel Kuczynski. You can view it here: Dollar – Pawel Kuczynski – Canvas. In March, a Canadian soldier was killed in Iraq by friendly fire. They held a ceremony on the tarmac at Erbil before takeoff to bring his body home.

 

Blanketed

Behold the desert, blanketed with dollars.
No sound of drums: instead the muffled thwack
of metal as it beats against the fabric of money.
A treasure of weapons rains down upon sand.

Which gun will kill our own in friendly fire
out of the dark? Whose casket will travel
on the shoulders of eight comrades, blanketed
in the red and white flag, in ceremony
at Erbil in Iraq on a Sunday in March?

Carol A. Stephen

Erbil International Airport

Erbil International Airport (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

 

 

#napowrimo2015

Poetry Superhighway Day 5 Fears

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Day 5 prompt from the Poetry Superhighway challenge is a fear-based prompt. My poem is titled Segue, as it segues from childhood to adulthood and from dreams to daily worries.

A Prompt-A-Day for National Poetry Month: April 5 – ‪#‎napowrimo ‪#‎poetry Lions and Spiders and Fears! Oh My!

 

  1. Make a list of your childhood fears. If you are feeling really brave, try to come up with one fear for every year of life until you turned age 18. If you can’t recall what you were afraid of when you were very young, try to imagine what might have frightened a typical infant, toddler, or young child in your family back when you were a kid. What images plagued your nightmares, and what scary thoughts ran rampant through your mind on sleepless nights?
  2. Turn this list into an image driven dream where you come face-to-face with each of these frightening images. Describe them with as much poetic detail as you can. They may each be only a brief presence in the dream returned to try to scare you again, or perhaps they will try to explain to you why you shouldn’t have ever feared them. Perhaps these “fears” were each trying to teach you something. One fear may take over the whole dream and become an extended metaphor or spokesperson for the rest of the fears. Follow the poem wherever it takes you. Even if it’s down a dark tunnel filled with lions and spiders. Have fun with it!
  3. Try to end your piece with the most comforting image you can imagine. Perhaps something that comforts you now.
  4. For even more frightening fun and perhaps a deeper analysis of your work and your psyche: circle words and images that stand out to you as powerful or meaningful (10 to 15 is plenty, but feel free to look up as many as you like. If you write a lot of poetry, some of these images may already be familiar themes in your work)
  5. Look each of these images up on a dream interpretation/analysis website and write a second poem which “psychoanalyzes” the writer based on the images in the dream.

Good news is that you likely aren’t crazy, you are probably just a poet.  Submitted by Raundi Kai Moore-Kondo ( http://www.theloveofwords.com/raundi.html

 

Segue

When I was 9, I dreamed the Creature from the Black Lagoon
lived our backyard swamp, legacy from winter’s skating rink melting
At night the creature tapped on my window  Creature from the Black Lagoon poster.jpg

Monsters might chase me in dreams where I can’t run, my feet
stuck in the mud, or working only in slow motion

I still dream my teeth are crumbling, I chew
dental fragments in my sleep

In other dreams I run down streets, lost, no keys
I look down. I am naked. It might be snowing
It might be raining, or even summer. Still I am naked
And running

Daylight fears are different. The regular mundanities:
Girls travelled in threes, but when two of us quarrelled, one
would be outside the circle and walk alone. I feared being the third girl.

I was afraid of baggy-knee jeans. Always wanted tight pants.
Before spandex, there was lycra. But the knees were still wrinkly.

Planet of the Spiders  Planet of the Spiders (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

I fight my fear of spiders with the vacuum cleaner.
I am afraid to use the telephone because I fear rejection.

I love red tulips and coral-coloured roses. I have no flowers at home.
I am afraid because my cat eats anything green. He spits up later.

One afternoon in the back field a cat running, a potato chip bag
over its head. Backwards, mostly. I scared it into losing one life.
I fear pain, mine, yours, theirs, that cat’s.

My first bank account, I took out two dollars each day. Didn’t know
how to ration. Afraid to run out of things. I still stock up at 3 for 1 sales.

I’d rather eat white bread. When I was a child,
my mother would cut off all the crusts. Not fear. Just loathing.

I fear illness, dependency, the way my body ages.
Not death. I won’t know, I will be dead.

My greatest fear is fear.

 

Carol A Stephen
April 5, 2015

 

 


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NaPoWriMo 2015 Day 4 After the Jettison

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napo2015button2Today’s prompt (optional, as always). Love poems are a staple of the poetry scene. It’s pretty hard to be a poet and not write a few – or a dozen – or maybe six books’ worth. But because so many love poems have been written, there are lots of clichés. Fill your poems with robins and hearts and flowers, and you’ll sound more like a greeting card than a bard. So today, I challenge you to write a “loveless” love poem. Don’t use the word love! And avoid the flowers and rainbows. And if you’re not in the mood for love? Well, the flip-side of the love poem – the break-up poem – is another staple of the poet’s repertoire. If that’s more your speed at present, try writing one of those, but again, avoid thunder, rain, and lines beginning with a plaintive “why”? Try to write a poem that expresses the feeling of love or lovelorn-ness without the traditional trappings you associate with the subject matter.

 

http://www.napowrimo.net/

 

After the Jettison

 

English: Flotsam and jetsam Evening at Ardmore...

English: Flotsam and jetsam Evening at Ardmore; flotsam and jetsam clearly visible on the beach. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Room after room the silence folds in
no muffled chatter of keyboards behind a closed door
nor muted music just below the level of interpretation

there’s no visual clutter here, no tossed heaps of unclean clothes
My sink holds no whisker wisps, nor spent soggy teabags,
and no discarded cheese wrappings on kitchen counter.

What vacant really means. A sense of adios, ciao, adieu
without the sad songs on my radio. In calm air,
my sense of self returns to me. Bonjour, ¡Hola!

and happy music.

Carol A. Stephen
April 4, 2015