The prompt was to write an epistolary poem to an inanimate object and inserting the following into the poem:

1) a song lyric
2) a historical fact
3) an oddball adjective-noun combination (like red grass or loud silence)
4) a fruit
5) the name of a street in your neighborhood
6) a measure of distance.

I got those, but then forgot it was to be a letter…but since this one took me quite a while to do, I think it will have to not quite match the prompt.

T rex, Wikipedia

Dancing in Yucatan

Dinosaurs were of the kingdom Animalia,
phylum Reptilia, node Dinosauria,
even their scientific taxonomy different

from classes of extant species Archosaurs
vanished when the Cretaceous–Paleogene
extinction event sent a bollide colliding

with the earth somewhere
in Yucatan the old dinosaurs
rolling in the deep waves

of shock and tremble the newborn crater
teaching them to dance over impact-
melt rocks and breathing impoverished air

In Yucatan, campesinos planted henequen twisted   

Henequen farm Yucatán Peninsula Wikipedia

its fibre into twine into carpets fermented
juice of the agave’s ripe core for licor

Twenty miles away in Merida
on Camino de Miguel they dance, drink
tequila with lime wedges  They wait

for tourists
for December
and the new mythology.

This shaded relief image of Mexico's Yucatan Peninsula show a subtle, but unmistakable, indication of the Chicxulub impact crater. Most scientists now agree that this impact was the cause of the Cretatious-Tertiary Extinction, the event 65 million years ago that marked the sudden extinction of the dinosaurs as well as the majority of life then on Earth. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Carol A. Stephen
April 17, 2012

The prompt for Day 16 is to choose one of three pictures and write a poem based on it.  Here’s what I wrote based on this photo, chosen from the NaPoWriMo prompt.

When I Remember You

your face in shadow, this
double image, your face
two faces one forward, one
away. My fingers would reach

to touch your cheek, touch
only the ocean breeze, the light always
behind you, your features in-
distinct. Always at dusk, even

your silhouette a blur of black on
purple sky. And I, never quite
knowing if you turned
toward me or away.

Carol A. Stephen
April 16, 2012

So, the prompt was to write a parody of a well-known poem with a recognizable and distinctive rhythm.  So here is my attempt, based on a poem I had to memorize as a child. It may, however, be more familiar to Canadians…

NSF is a Bummer

Atop the pile of growing bills
The budget payments plan
And all the day collection calls
Are more than he can stand.

Now by chequebook his ways and means
And bank accounts are bled
And as he smacks the pile of bills
Journal’s black turns red

And as he makes his must have list
to feed each hungry mouth
despite his efforts made to pay
Bum cheques are bouncing south.

Carol A. Stephen
April 15, 2012

This is a variation of something I wrote for the Poetry for the End of the World Contest. That particular poem was NOT the one that was a finalist.

14 line Doomsday Sonnet of Whimper and Bang

This is the way the world ends/Not with a bang but a whimper.
    – T.S. Eliot The Hollow Men 

Tsesig (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

A whimper of hail, fire, blood, horses.
The white. the red. the black. the pale.
A meditational shatter of rapture, its undimmed variations.
Carpe diem. Read Nostradamus. Revelations. Mayan quarterly.
Aquarius pours knowledge into a virtual jug. quench.
The Age of Pisces ends. bang. Mayan wisdom. 3114 B.C.
(The Spanish churched them into catholics & whimper)
Hotel rooms in the Maya region? No room at the inn.

(Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Whimpering world_end a smash of asteroid. A perturbation of orbit and bang.
Hadron Collider creates microscopic black holes.
Hypothetical. strangelets. an instant swallow.
The speeding universe inhales every 25,000 years.
Thinking end of world? message: the world will/will not end.
This would mean nothing. Or the Green Party could win a majority.

Carol A. Stephen
April 14, 2012