Incandescent/Until Burnt Out

 

Can poetry’s fire flare out? 

If stoked too hard, will it blaze 

too fierce, soar so high

it thins, becomes air?

Or will it re-ignite?

The NaPoWriMo prompt was to choose one of 10 words taken fromTaylor Swift songs and make it the title. I chose 'incandescent.' The Poem A Day prompt was Until Blank: fill in the blank with a word or phrase and make that the title. So I had to use a double title!

Also, I felt for a little while that I was already incapable of writing one more poem, after writing them every day this month. Then I thought to make  that my subject, and to try a textu: a form invented by Fady Joudah in which the only rule is that it must be, including title and spaces, exactly 160 characters, the number allowed in a text message. (It's harder than you might think, to get it exact.)

Deadly

You've caught me dead to rights,

busy cutting out all the dead wood.

Well, look, they’re a dead loss, 

every one of them. They’re dead to me!

You’re dead right – I’m better off

without those old, deadly bad habits!

 

The NaPoWriMo prompt was to write a sijo – one of my favourite forms to play with. I like to write them as three lines and then break those into six. The Poem a Day prompt was to write 'a dead poem.' And suddenly we're very near the end of April! I decided just to have a bit of fun with this one. 

Letting Go of Julian

What is the nature of reality?

As my friend drives us to another town

for ‘TheTrust Fall’ movie that we missed here,

the pollen-heavy miles inflame my eyes.

In a strange, surreal state, I watch the screen

with a hand covering each eye in turn 

(to cut glare, soothe pain) as we all observe 

a far less transient torture, long-term,

likely to be fatal. It’s clear the man 

is not villain but hero. How can we 

save him? It needs all of us to keep on!

Home, I manage to smash a favourite

glass. Upset, I forget Assange – once more

blanking out that we live in the unreal.

The NaPoWriMo prompt was to write an American sonnet, i.e. more loosely structured than the strict sonnet form. (But I chose to keep 10-syllable lines, though not in iambic pentameter.) 

The Poem A Day prompt was to remix one of our old poems, so I turned Day 3's surreal prose-poem into a sonnet.

The Garden Fairies Protest

This woman – I don’t know! –

at present she’s left us a jungle

within her small back yard. Well, 

we do like to be left some suitably

wild spaces, especially now

when, all around us, foolish folk

allow the wilderness to diminish.

We fear it will all disappear too soon.

But then, we know of old, she’ll get

that kid from over the road to come again,

to prune and pare, to weed widely,

crash through and slash 

all the tall stems and grasses, 

until at last – wanna bet? –

there’ll be nothing much left,

and some of us will be out on our arses.

We’ll be looking for good weedy plots,

with lots of room, lots of thick growth.

Too much neatness makes us needy!

Yes I know, she rents. Has to appease

landlord’s conventional silliness. But still,

must she till every small corner, 

must she cut and cultivate it so fully, so tidily, 

so prettily and politely? Why, why, why, why?

Today NaPoWriMo asks us to use alliteraton, assonance and consonance; while at Poem A Day we are invited to write in the persona of someone or something not oneself.

When and Where Was I Happiest?

Let’s see. I  could say, any and every time 

I was near the sea – the magical ocean.

Or when I rose on tiptoe

to sniff deeply of a rose from my father’s

beautifully tended bushes.

Or when the moon shone full and bright

through my bedroom window

and I would stay awake 

to moon over pen and paper, gazing

out at the night sky and making poems. 

It might have been before I was four,

for that was when my dear, kind Nana died.

So much colour and warmth

faded from my life then – the kind

only she could give. That death cost me dear.

All these memories from childhood….

It’s fair, too, to say

that after I fare-welled infancy

to have one of my own, 

I thought I’d won the lottery! (I still do.)

His father’s blue eyes shone with joy.

(The First-born's and mine are green-brown hazel.)

I felt so green, so raw, so unprepared –

but I delved into the mine of my own

good memories to unearth what was needed.

When and where was I happiest?

If it’s a riddle, I give in.

There’s no one answer. Each

of these occasions, and many more,

give me happiness over and over again.

The NaPoWriMo prompt for this day asked us to respond to one of a collection of 'Proust Questions.' I chose the one that is the title of my poem. (What could be nicer than going over one's moments of happiness in memory?)

The Poem A Day prompt is to use homonyms. Explanation: ''A homonym is either (or both) a homograph (word spelled the same with different meanings and possibly different pronunciations) or a homophone (word that is pronounced the same but has different spellings).'

The Shadows Dance Upon the Wall (Cento)

And that recurrent dream of years ago, pulling 

lilacs out of the dead lands, mixing

peculiar unthinkable happenstances ...

I can’t understand, no I can’t understand.

None of it really happening –

don’t tell me it will be alright.

We trip on melted sidewalks,

boots pounding cobblestones,

until we reach that horizon

& in a moment it came back to me, that scent of wet

when I started having tender thoughts about

being eaten by the earth –

to be the stone that splits the stream of their vision   

with secret inward gleams

in a radiance dimly akin to happiness.

Consumed, consuming, we are consumed.   

The ocean has lost her baby teeth. 
I hear it in the deep heart’s core –

a heart inflamed …  

altered, estranged, disintegrated, lost.

I wish I was heartless to the core! 

But only so an hour,

and then my heart with pleasure fills.

There’s so much I want to tell you ...

When only the moon rages,

light lingering in the sky,
night turns dark and gold;

through the dark robe oft amber rays prevail.

My life held precariously in the seeing,

it did not matter if I believed.

This poem is written in response to three prompts. At Poets and Storytellers United, for the up-coming FridayWritings #124 we are invited to write something using at least three (or all) of these words: consume heartless inflamed peculiar teeth. (Of course I chose all! And then had to find them in other people's poems: read on!)

NaPoWriMo asks us to  write a poem that begins with a line from another poem (not necessarily the first one), but then goes elsewhere with it.  The first line of this poem was indeed the one I began with.

The Poem A Day prompt at Poetic Asides is to write 'a maximum poem'  – and, however we interpret that, to 'take it to the max.'  So I decided to do that by taking ALL my lines from other poems (a form known as the cento). I found most  of them in the pieces Knopf Poetry has been sharing with subscribers this April, and wove in a few lines from famous poets of the past.  Sometimes I needed to alter the punctuation, but the words are intact . After all that – hoping the thing makes some kind of surreal sense – it seemed appropriate to turn to Coleridge, poet of weird, hallucinatory visions, for the title. All the poets I took lines from are listed below, in order.

Title: SamuelTaylor Coleridge

Verses:

J.D. McClatchy

T S Eliot

Asha Dutton

Skeeter Davis

Brenda Shaughnessy

Leila Mottley

KB Brookins

Sandra Cisneros,

Michael Ondaatje 

David St. John

Sharon Olds

Tayi Tibble

Gregory Pardlo

Nam Le

Anthony Hecht

JennyJustice

Amy Ludwig VanDerwater

W B Yeats

Kahlil Gibran

Edna St Vincent Millay

John Chizoba Vincent

Robert Frost

William Wordsworth

Michael Dickman 

Dylan Thomas

Charles Simic

Federico Garcia Lorca

John Keats

Frank O’Hara

Jane Hirshfield

I Couldn’t Fall in Love with Aquaman

I wanted to. I expected to.

But the cinema seats were deep 

and soft, and tilted back … and 

there was all this fighting….

(Battle scenes – even underwater –

I always find incredibly boring.

I’m a chick, OK? Not a bloke.)

It was good to see Our Nic,

slim and beautiful as ever

in a role that was ‘different’ for her,

as Aquaman’s mum – great acting

not really required this time, 

although she did all right. I figured

she must have wanted a job

that would bring her home to Oz

(that’s what we Aussies call it)

for a while, and her birth family.

And they shot it just up here

at Hastings Point in the heart 

of our sub-tropics. She’d have known

how beautiful, with what great weather.

Even if Nicole couldn’t keep me awake –

and I’m a fan – you’d think Jason Momoa

would’ve had me glued to the screen.

But no, off I nodded. Afterwards I decided 

it wasn’t a problem of the heart; just that

it was never Aquaman I lusted for –

nor even cheerful, good-natured Jason

(or so he seems to be, in interviews).

No, it was always Khal Drogo, from the first

instant he appeared onscreen in my home telly.

I don’t even go for large, well-muscled men;

I like ‘em lean and hungry, thoughtful, 

and able to make me laugh. Well, usually. 

The Khal shattered every preconception 

I’d acquired in my seven decades of life 

until that moment, and furthermore

turned me young again. Oh, he was 

something else! But he wasn’t there

in that silly Aquaman film.

The NsPoWriMo prompt was to write a poem about, or involving, a superhero. The Poem A Day prompt was to write a '(blank) of the Heart' poem, and/or a 'Heart of the (blank)' poem.